Page 26 of A Very Rossi Christmas
I'd watched his father's men dragging him away, knowing exactly what was going to happen to him, and I'd gone for my own gun, intent on saving him. But he'd come back at me, grabbed my wrists, and told me to run.
And goddammit, I'd gone. I'd left him to those goons.
I'd spent the last five years wondering, somewhere deep down in my soul, whether he'd survived—and what would have happened between us if we'd managed to stay together.
Well, now I had a pretty good idea. He put both of his hands on the wall behind me, caging me in, and growled somewhere deep in his throat, the sound sending shivers through my blood and right into my core.
My God in Heaven, I was kissing Joseph Rossi.
And we were going to do a whole lot more than that.
I reached up and started unbuttoning his shirt, then realized that it was going to take too long and jerked the two sides apart, ripping the thing right down the middle.
"Impatient much?" he breathed against my mouth.
Hell yeah I was. I'd been waiting years for this.
But even right now, when I was burning up for him from the inside, I realized that it wouldn't do me any good to tell him so. Because at the end of the day, he was still a Rossi. He might bemyRossi, but I had zero intentions of trusting him with my deepest, darkest secrets.
Not yet.
Instead of answering, I looked up at him and ran my palms over his chest, taking in the smooth, clean feel of him. The sharp definition of his pecs and, when my hands dipped lower, the even sharper definition of his abs.
My breath caught at that, and I pushed him back so I could look at him.
The man looked like he'd been carved from marble, a Greek god just waiting for his throne. He was fucking gorgeous. Beyond gorgeous. He was perfect.
When I lifted my gaze back up to his, I found his eyes on me, hot as molten steel. "Like what you see?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
I shrugged. "It'll do, I suppose."
He barked out a laugh, then reached down and grabbed me, cradling me like a baby and turning in one smooth move. I'd barely registered what he'd done when I found myself being thrown onto the bed—actually thrown—and landing with a softthwump.
"Enough looking," he said, stripping out of the rest of his clothes.
I should have fought. I should have sat up and told him that he didn't get to throw me around like some girl who didn't mean anything to him.
But I was too busy enjoying the view.
The magnificent chest and abs were just the icing on the cake. His entire body had changed since I'd last known him, a gangly eighteen-year-old who didn't know his own strength. These days he was... Adonis. Apollo.
Fucking Zeus.
His hips were narrow and strong, his legs incredibly well-muscled and between them...
"You," I told him frankly, "are beautiful."
He gave me a quick grin—a flash of the boy he'd been—and then he was in my bed with me, kissing me again while his hands skimmed over my body, going from my neck down over my breasts and to my belly, which quivered with anticipation. I bowed up off the bed, so hot for him that I couldn't have stopped myself even if I tried, and he reared back and looked down at me.
"Having second thoughts?" he asked, teasing.
"Never," I gasped. "Don't stop."
He held my eyes, that half-smile still on his face, while his fingertips crept lower... and then lower again, brushing against the front of my panties and then sliding them to the side and dipping into the wetness there.
I gasped at the touch, as everything—our history and his blue eyes boring into my own and the fact that he'd just saved me—came crashing together in that one brush of fingertips against sensitive skin, and his grin grew wider.
When he dipped down to kiss me again, his fingers parting me and sliding up inside of me, I did myself a favor and stopped thinking entirely. I stopped questioning whether this was a good idea and what the repercussions might be and let myself float away on the avalanche of sensations he was handing me.
