Page 42 of Innocent in the Sicilian’s Palazzo

A door kicked open hit the wall and made something in the room fall and smash; the noise barely penetrated her sex-soaked brain. They fell together onto a bed and as he shifted himself off her for a moment, she breathed for what felt like the first time in minutes as she sank into the mattress and gazed up at the man kneeling over her, who looked like the living embodiment of the storm that raged outside, primal and wickedly exciting.

Her brain was mush; sheachedfor him. Reacting to the throb of need between her legs, she reached up her hands, fastening them to his hips, and she pulled him down, arching to meet his body, hungry for the contact.

The eyes looking up at him were green pools of confusion and need that Soren could readily identify with. She was vibrating with tremors that shook her entire body. He had never known a woman who was this responsive; he’d known the passion was there but the intensity of it still surprised and excited him. She was a temptation that he could not resist.

The sliver of silk she wore was the only thing between his bare chest and her skin, and then it wasn’t... Anna wasn’t even aware of him peeling it off, until she experienced the first breath-catching skin-to-skin contact.

She gasped at the heat of his skin, and then as he pulled back to look at her she felt the first stab of self-awareness and awkwardness as they lay side by side facing one another.

He was so perfect and she... Thinking of the women she had seen pictured with him, women that were everything she was not, she lifted an arm to cover herself. ‘I’m—’

A finger pressed to her parted lips, he cut off her words. ‘You have the most perfect, sensual body, elegant...sleek, exquisite. I want to see you,cara.’ His throaty whisper against her neck made her shiver and drop her hand.

He took the action to be an invitation and his hand dropped from her flushed face to her small, smooth breasts; the peaks hardened and pinched tight under his scrutiny and his husky, fervent, ‘Perfect.’

Anna felt excited and empowered and unbearably aroused as his blue eyes moved hungrily over her body, the scrutiny accompanied by a low growl, half appreciation, half pain.

The carnal intent on his face made her pull back, but not because she didn’t like it, not that it didn’t excite her.

‘No, Soren, I have to tell you this...’

Something in her voice, the urgency, penetrated the fog of lust in his head. Breathing hard, he rolled away from her and lay on his back, one arm curved above his head, his flat belly sucked in as his chest heaved. The eyes that stared back at him were wary, filled with need, glittering like twin emeralds. Looking at her, he felt something beyond lust, something he denied a name, something it would be safer to detour around, but it didn’t go away.

‘Look, I’m not sure if this makes a difference to you but the one-night-stand thing...’

‘I’m not interested in your sexual history.’ He was only interested in making her forget it and every other man she had slept with. He did not doubt for a second his ability to do so.

‘That’s the point. I don’t have any.’

He’d been staring up at the ceiling but at this he turned his head her way, the flush along his cheekbones making them look like razors. All his features were more sharply defined. The deep febrile glitter in his darkened eyes made her shiver low in her belly and wish she hadn’t told him and risked this not going any further.

If he rejected her now, she’d die.

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I am saying I’m...well, I suppose...a virgin.’

CHAPTER TEN

HELOOKEDATher as though she were talking a foreign language. The muscles along his jaw quivered. ‘Is that a joke?’

‘A person has to have a first time.’

Not with me, they don’t, he thought, but somehow the words never made it to his lips, because he was looking at her mouth and it was hard to speak when he did. He just wanted to taste her.

‘And I was a late developer,’ she added, glancing down and giving a little grimace.

It seemed to her that his anger came from nowhere.

‘Do not do that!’ he growled, taking her face between his hands and throwing one heavy hair-roughened thigh across her hips.

‘What? I...’ Her wide green eyes reflected her bewilderment.

‘Believeyou’re beautiful.’ He took her hand and placed it against her own breast. ‘Just feel how beautiful you are.’ His fallen-angel grin gleamed white as he stared down into her shocked face. ‘Say it!’

‘I’m beautiful,’ she whispered and felt every inch of her skin prickle with heat. ‘Oh, God!’ she groaned as she reclaimed her hand and held it above her head, hiding her eyes.

But he took her left hand instead. ‘That’s better. I want to see you.’ He kissed his way up the curve of her neck.

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