Page 24 of Chasing Caine

I gasped. “What is that! Did your cousin seriously buy me underwear?” And where was the cotton?

“Underwear?” He winked at me and threw it over his shoulder, crawling over top of me. “Bella, it’s lingerie. Something for your sexy Latin lover to appreciate.”

I inched my way up the bed away from him, moving bags as I went. They were all around us, like a cocoon. “They’re still outside the door, right?”

“Perhaps.” He withdrew a pink silk slip from a bag. Pausing in his slow pursuit of me, he ran it across my arm, the gentlest caress. “You’d look stunning in this.”

Faint voices at the door. Mario and Chiarawerestill right there.

Settling himself over me, hips between my thighs, he popped the button of my shorts, and his mouth found my neck. One hand slid down the front of my underwear, cupping my sex.

There was nowhere to go other than to push him away. Not what I wanted, but his cousins were listening. I twisted my hips and pulled my neck away from him. “Should we do this later?”

His head snapped up, facing the door. “Privacy, you two!”

Chiara’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. “Is she going to keep everything? There was a white dress I really liked.”

“It’s yours!” I hollered, and Antonio gaped at me playfully.

“Perfetto!” called Mario. “Can we go for gelato now?”

“Get lost, Mario!” Antonio yelled.

Two quick raps on the door, followed by silence.

“Now where were we, bella?” He bit my bottom lip, his fingers pulling my underwear aside to trace the edge of my opening.

I arched my back, tugging at his shirt. “Pretty close to there, I think.”

“I love you for who you are, not the clothes you wear.” There was that word again. “But I want you to know how beautiful you are.”

He withdrew the hand from my shorts and I whimpered.

Sitting up, he pulled his shirt over his head, allowing me to take in his remarkable body. His broad shoulders were the first thing I noticed about him beyond his gorgeous face and sharp jawline, but his hipbones were my favorite. I traced a finger along one, which poked up from the waistband of his shorts.

When I reached for the button at his waist, he smacked my hand away with a grin. He pulled his phone out and streamed some music through the speaker, then tossed the phone onto the bedside table.

“Samantha, you flew all the way here to tell me you wanted to be with me. You could have called.”

I froze. This conversation was leaving me dizzy from all the curveballs.

“That was something you did for me.”

He still had the look of lust on his face and the bulge in his shorts made it clear where our bodies were headed, but his emotions threw me for a loop. But that was him, wasn’t it? Always more emotional than me. It hadn’t taken long to figure that out.

“Now I want to do this for you. If this is going to work between us, you’ll have to accept I have money and I’ll want to spend it on you.”

“Okay.” Words stated. Moving on. Time to take care of the pulsing between my thighs. I hauled my T-shirt off, but his eyes stayed above my jawline.

“We’re going to Capri tomorrow and you’ll keep everything, sì?”

I shimmied my legs out from underneath him and sat up on my knees so I was eye-to-eye with him. “Depends on whateverythingactually is. Is there jewelry?”

He gestured around the bed, to all the bags surrounding us. “You said you want me for me. This is part of me.”

My turn to play. I lifted one leg to plant next to him, grabbed his shoulders, and swung my weight toward him, pivoting us as I rose. The move flung him to the bed, eyes wide, and my leg followed so I straddled him. “If I say yes to all of it, will you stop talking?”

He rocked his head back in laughter. “Marone, bella! I do! I promise.”

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