Page 31 of In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard

The words were magic for Luca, making the iron-strong bonds of his restraint disappear in an instant. He’d wanted this woman from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her and he could have lied, told himself he didn’t know where he wanted to start, but he didn’t have time for that. He knew exactly where he wanted his hands.

He pressed the length of his body against hers, crowding her, thrilled when she didn’t back up and give him space. He felt a wicked smile pull at the curve of his lips as his knuckles grazed the hemline of Hope’s skirt, pulled tight across her thighs.

He flexed his thumb and brushed across the satin of her skin just beneath the skirt of her dress, sending a scattering of goosebumps across her thighs. He could tell that she was trying to hide her reaction to him, unsure whether it was a hangover from the days they’d spent fighting their attraction or whether she was making him work for it, and both turned him on just as much.

He slipped his hand between her thighs and gently pressed her legs apart just an inch or two. He watched her face like a hawk—the way her lips parted just enough to suck a shocked inhale through them, the way her brown eyes burned with even just the hint of heat between them. Her chest was still pressed against his, but he could see the pulse flickering at her neck and he wanted to cover it with his open mouth, to feel that beat on his tongue.

Wicked. What he wanted to do with her was wicked. The heat from her legs warmed his hand as he palmed both thighs, sweeping round to run his thumb across the curve of her arse. A gentle roll unfurled through her body as she grew slightly longer in her spine when the back of his hand met the damp material of her panties.

He held back from doing what he wanted, which was to walk her back to the bare wall behind her and devour her. While that would be delicious and something he would absolutely do before returning to London, tonight was about Hope—her needs and her wants.

He caressed her thighs gently, again and again, almost accidentally brushing against her core as it grew damper and hotter each time. He felt her urge to move, to take control, to seek the pleasure he was denying her, but she didn’t—and he knew how much that must cost her. Because it was driving him out of his mind. Every inch of his body was sensitised and tuned to her frequency, to her.

She opened her mouth, the plea in her eyes before it made it to her lips.

‘Don’t,’ he commanded. ‘Don’t beg—you don’t ever beg with me. Just ask. Ask for what you want,’ he said, not missing a moment of how she felt about what he’d just said. Relief, thanks, excitement, arousal. And it infuriated him that someone had taught her that she couldn’t just ask. As if she didn’t have the right to pleasure on her own terms. He forced down the anger and twisted it into something else, something deliciously sinful.

‘Oh, Hope. I’m going to give you so much pleasure you’re not going to be the same again,’ he promised.

The taunt, the promise, the cocky arrogance he knew she would rise to meet, worked.

‘Really? You talk a good game, Luca, but—’

Her words slipped into a gasp as he ran his thumb between the folds outlined by the damp silk of her panties. She shivered beneath his touch as his caress became more purposeful and less playful.

Hope’s head fell back, the long line of her neck exposed and, unable to resist, he bent forward to press his lips against her skin. Open-mouthed, he gorged on the salty sweetness of her. Her murmur became a purr of pleasure as his fingers slipped past the wet silk to tease her and finally,finally, he had what he wanted. Hope—hot, wet and wanting in his arms.

Impatience choked him, clogging his throat with a desire so thick he could barely breathe past it. His pulse pounded in his veins and his ears like a drum, an incessant refrain. Taste, taste, taste.

He hooked a thumb around the thin band of her panties. ‘May I?’ he asked, his voice gravel against the satin of her throat.

‘Yes... Luca?’ she asked, her head straightening, waiting until he pulled away from her neck and looked her in the eye.

‘Give it to me. All of it. All the pleasure you promised. I don’t want to ask again.’

Oh, she was incredible, this woman.

There, in her eyes, he saw the heat that matched his own, saw the need, the desire, the passion and the power. He didn’t have to hold back with her and she didn’t have to pretend to be less with him.

In response, he sank to his knees. Not quickly but slowly, so she could see, so she could imagine what he was going to do to her. Like this, he was level with the juncture of her thighs, and he didn’t think he’d ever find anywhere else he’d want to be more.

One hand pushed up the ruched side of the dress as the other pulled her panties down, a delicious tension between the two opposing forces, revealing a delicate crosshatch of curls. Musk on the air and heat from her body so close he could practically taste it turned his own arousal from painful to near unbearable. His erection pressed hard against the zip of his trousers, but he ignored it over a much more pressing need.

He ran his thumb between her folds again, one hand behind her, supporting her as she shivered in response, the tremble of her legs a victory, the gasp of heady need his rallying cry and the taste of her as he spread her for him, as he pressed the most intimate of kisses to her core, the only reward he would ever need.

Hope was shivering between fire and ice. Her lungs sucking in oxygen like she was drowning, because that was what he was doing to her. Drowning her in pleasure, just like he’d promised.

Sex—and it had only been sex—with Martin, had been perfunctory. Bed based, missionary, near mathematical, calculated. As if it were something he was assessing himself on. But this? This was sensuality, this was exquisite, powerful,arcane. This was what femininity was. This was what adoration was, she thought, before Luca fastened his attention and his teeth gently on her clitoris.

She bit her lip to stop the groan of pleasure that begged for release.

‘I want to hear you,’ he said against her core, before laving her with his tongue in a way that nearly had her coming right then.

She wasn’t sure she could do it. She wasn’t sure that, after years of not, owning her pleasure vocally was something she could...and then she didn’t have a choice. Luca didn’t give her one. He teased his fingers into her slowly but surely, at the same time grinding his tongue against her clitoris, bringing her to the brink of mindlessness, where she had absolutely no control over the pants of need falling from her mouth.

Pushed by his relentless pursuit of her pleasure, closer and closer to stand before the impending orgasm that felt bigger than anything she’d experienced before, she tried to hide from it, but Luca wouldn’t let her. He made her acknowledge the force of it, welcome it, bear it as it crashed down about her. Wave after wave collapsed over her as she sobbed for breath, for mercy, for more, she didn’t know any more.

By the time she came back to herself, Luca stood from where he had knelt before her and was pressing open-mouthed kisses to her neck. His hands gently caressed her sensitised skin, warming her body to his all over again. Her pulse had barely settled into a satiated throb when his thumb found her taut nipple and he pressed his tongue over the material it strained against.

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