I pull away and slip his shirt off his shoulders, then look down at him, and can’t help staring. There’s no ostentatious bulk, just perfect lines in classically beautiful proportion. I sweep my fingertips over the smooth olive skin along the curve of his biceps, needing to touch him to be sure he’s real. But as my eyes eat him alive, I see the thin, white scar that extends from his side, just below the ribs, toward his hip, disappearing under the waistband of his jeans. I remember it was purple and raised when we were younger. Newer. I glide a fingertip over it and he finches. “What happened?”
I never asked before. When we were kids, I had my ghosts and he had his. We let them lie back then. But now I want to know.
His expression hardens. “I was in a gang. I hurt a lot of people. Some of them hurt me back.”
I reach for him, but he draws away, and there’s so much pain in his expression, right there, so close to the surface. I want to take it from him so he doesn’t have to bear it by himself, but I know he won’t give it to me.
I lift his face and smooth my palm over his stubble. “You are so beautiful, Alessandro. Every inch of you.”
He stiffens as he fights with his desires, but his desires win. His mouth crashes into mine, his kiss deep and urgent. His tongue twists through my mouth, tasting all of mine. My hands smooth over flawless muscles under flawless skin as I glide my fingertips up the sides of his rib cage and massage his nipples with my thumbs. He closes his eyes and moans as they harden.
That moan undoes me. “I want you,” I tell him, my voice course and thick with sex.
He opens his eyes and looks at me, his expression full of anguish. “I want you too, Hilary. God,” he says, screwing his eyes shut and turning his face away from mine. “I want you so much. But this is wrong.”
“Why?”
He opens his eyes and they find mine again, haunted and unbearably sad. “Because I didn’t come back to take advantage of you again. I came back to apologize . . . to help if I could.”
I press against him so he can feel the need pulsing through my veins. “You’re not taking advantage of me.”
His eyes flutter closed and he tips his head back into the couch and shudders as I lick from the base of his neck to the corner of his jaw. I pull back and lift my shirt over my head. He watches as I unhook my white lace bra, letting it slide off my shoulders.
His hands are fisted into the fabric of the couch cushions next to my legs. He’s fighting so hard with himself not to touch me.
But I want him to touch me.
I slide my hand down his abs to the bulge in his jeans and lean forward, my chest against his, skin on skin, and my lips on his neck just below his ear. “I want to feel you inside me again,” I whisper.
He growls, grabbing me and spinning me onto my back on the couch. He’s propped over me on one knee, the other foot on the floor, and he’s got my yoga pants and thong off before I even realize what’s happening.
The pure animal need on his face sends a shudder through me. And the next second, when he spreads my legs, and his mouth finds the sensitive point there, the sex rush is so intense that everything south of my belt convulses. I turn my face into the cushions as I arch up and cry out.
His tongue moves over me, flicking and teasing, tasting and owning. As he devours me, I gasp at the unexpected jolts of electricity that skitter under my uber-sensitive skin. And just like that, he has me right on the edge of coming. I’m panting out short breaths, my fingers fisted into his hair as he slips his fingers inside me and sucks. And a second later, when he sends me over the edge, I do everything I can to stifle my cry as I fall apart.
The flood of sensations is overwhelming. Whatever just happened has never happened to me before. I don’t know what this was, but it was more than just sex. It was bigger. Louder. Higher. I’ve never felt like I couldn’t get close enough . . . like I wanted to climb right under the guy’s skin. But that’s how Alessandro makes me feel.
As I spin with my orgasm, the flash of insight nearly blinds me. Alessandro makes me feel. Not just physically, but in every sense of the word.
And it scares me.
Because with Brett and everyone before him, sex was mechanical. Predictable. I was in control and it felt good, physically, but that’s all it felt. The purpose was to ground me and remind me I existed. Sex with Brett didn’t reach into my soul and tug at my heart. It didn’t move me to tears. But Alessandro took me there with no pain. No props. I’ve never been able to come like that for anyone else.
But as Alessandro crawls up the couch, and I feel his knees press into the cushions between my legs, I realize this is different. I open my eyes, and see him working the button of his jeans. I reach up to help him and he looks down at me with a question burning in his raw, animal gaze. The same question that was there eight years ago, the first time we did this. In response, I drag his zipper down.
He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet and rips the condom out of it, chucking the wallet on the floor. I slip it out of his hand, and he sucks in a sharp breath as I roll it over his length. I lay back and open myself up to him, guiding him to me with my hands on his hips.
He hesitates and lets out an agonized groan, but I don’t want him to think. I just want him inside me. I roll my hips and take him deep.
He moans my name as he sinks into me, and a seriously intense sex rush seizes my body. All the muscles in my belly, my groin, down my legs contract hard around him and my breath catches in my throat.
“Am I hurting you?” he breathes into my hair, concern edging the roughness of his need.
For a second I can’t speak. “God, no,” I finally manage. Nothing has ever felt this good.
He begins to rock, and the feel of him moving inside me, filling me, sets my blood on fire. His pace is slower than I’m used to, so it takes me a minute to catch his rhythm, but when I do, and we move together, hot, aching pressure starts to build in my belly again, like lava roiling under the volcano, preparing to erupt.
He drops kisses over my shoulders and neck as he moves on top of me, picking up his pace as our breathing does the same. With every thrust, I give a little moan, unable to stop myself. I catch his earlobe in my teeth and tug gently and am rewarded with an animal growl from Alessandro’s core.
Something changes with that growl, like he was holding back but now he’s set the beast free. He trails a hand from my left hip down to my knee and lifts it higher, spreading me wide, then groans deep in his chest and plunges deeper, burying himself to the root.
I spin with the sensation of him moving inside me, doing everything I need him to do—bringing me just where I need to go. And the only pain is the ache in my heart for not being able to get close enough.
As he pumps faster and deeper, I feel myself start to spin out of control. I gasp for air as he brings me right to edge of the cliff again, and arch into his body with his last thrust. As I come hard for the second time in ten minutes, I cry out, “Alessandro!”
And his name falling from my lips sounds like a prayer.
I’m ready, I realize just in that second. I’m ready to open up and tell him everything. I want him, and more than that, I need him. I think I always have, on some level, even when I thought I’d never see him again.