Page 58 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

He tore at the lace. She didn’t tell him how expensive it all was. It thrilled her that he was destroying it. That it inflamed him enough that he couldn’t be patient.

She responded in kind. She ripped at his white shirt, at his tie, she undressed him all backward, her hands growing desperate. Then she leaned in and bit the muscle on his chest. He gripped her chin, forcing her face up, claiming her in a hard kiss.

She loved it. It was everything. So was he.

This was no gentle coming together. No soft Merry Christmas. No snow falling outside on evergreens. It was a storm. The kind that left you isolated on a mountain. The only two people in the world. The kind that toppled trees and power lines, the kind that caused landslides.

That was what they were.

Even here in this land of glass and steel, they were elemental. He clung to her hips, kissing his way down her body, pushing her back against the wall as he parted her thighs and began to lick her deep. He gave no quarter. He took her to the heights again and again, made her cry out her need.

“Again,” he growled, pushing two fingers within her and thrusting.

She came again, holding on to his shoulders, leaving blood behind where her fingernails dug in deep.

He pulled her down, wrapping her legs around his torso as he stood them both up, pressing her down onto the sofa and entering her in one swift stroke. It was brutal. It was magic.

It was the damn season of cheer and happiness and joy, and she cried out a hosanna at the top of her lungs.

When it was over, she was spent and breathless. She kissed him on the chest, and looked at his profile, hard cut and glorious in the darkness of the penthouse.

“I used to be a nice girl,” she whispered.

“And now you’re not?”

She leaned in and kissed his chest. “No. I am obsessed with sex. And you.”

“You could pick a better obsession.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“Too bad. Obsession works in mysterious ways.”

“Good for me, I suppose.”

He rolled so that he was over the top of her, looking down at her, his dark eyes burning with intensity. And that was when she realized, it wasn’t simply another half of herself that had come to the fore. It wasn’t simply that she had found a part of herself that she had never known before.

Being with him had changed her. Fundamentally.

It made her more assertive. It made her more sexual. It made her want things that she had never wanted before. It made what had been so important only a couple of months ago feel like a distant memory.

Being with him had changed her. It changed what she thought about. It changed what she ate, and where she was willing to live.

It upended every plan that she had ever had about herself. It was incredible.

She reached up and touched his face. And right then she knew. With a certainty. With a spark.

It was love.

She had fallen in love with him.

By inches. In hours and minutes and days. In his eccentricities, in his revelations. In the things that she learned about herself when she was with him.

The way that he made her feel. The way that he made her want to. The way that he was.

She loved him, and it was a stunning, stirring realization.

---