One Summer at The Villa: The Prince's Royal Concubine / Her Italian Soldier / A Devilishly Dark Deal

She wasn’t certain. The intake of his breath brought her attention upward. He hadn’t opened his eyes, and he didn’t appear to be in pain—

She squeezed him. Was rewarded with a groan. A moment later, he’d pushed her back again, fused his mouth to hers and kissed her until she lost her mind. Then he lifted away again and started to pull her dress up.

“This needs to come off, Antonella.”

She didn’t protest. Instead, she sat up and helped him pull the jade material over her head. Her hair fell in long waves around her, helped to cover the lacy aqua bra she’d chosen this morning. Her panties, while not especially sexy in any way, at least matched the bra in style and color.

Cristiano’s gaze devoured her. Oddly enough, she didn’t feel shy about it. The way he looked at her made her feel sexy, beautiful. Special.

Had he looked at his wife this way?

No. She couldn’t think like that, couldn’t allow herself to go there. He’d loved his wife. This was just sex. She knew it, she’d chosen it, and she could deal with it.

He reached up and gently swept her hair back, revealing her breasts. When she would have covered herself, he gave her that sinfully sexy smile of his. “You are everything a man could want, cara. Never doubt that.”

She wanted to weep at the tenderness of his comment, but he gave her no chance as he eased her back on the carpet once more.

“And now I wish to show you how beautiful this can be,” he said, his mouth tracing kisses along her shoulder, up her neck, until he captured her lips once more.

Her body was hot and cold all at once, her nerves singing and snapping with every stroke of his tongue against hers. And then he broke the kiss, slid his gorgeous mouth down her body. When he pushed one of the lacy cups aside to bare her breast, her breath squeezed tight in her chest.

“So lovely,” he murmured before his mouth closed over her nipple.

Antonella’s back arched as her breath left her in a shocked gasp. An unbelievably pleasurable gasp. She’d never known it could feel so good. She clutched his shoulders, her hands kneading his skin as his tongue teased first one nipple and then the other. Before she realized what he was doing, he unsnapped her bra and shoved it up and out of the way.

Pressing her breasts together, he spent what seemed like hours—but was in reality only minutes—sucking each nipple into a hard peak. Again and again until she thought she would explode from the exquisite pleasure.

“Cristiano,” she gasped. “Please!”

And then he was pressing kisses to her belly, sliding down her body until—

Once more, she couldn’t breathe. Was he really about to do what she imagined? She wasn’t stupid; she knew the kinds of things people did when making love, but she hadn’t considered this would happen to her.

He traced his tongue along her panty line. When he pressed a kiss over the silk, she couldn’t stop the groan that escaped her.

“You like this?” he asked, his voice rough around the edges.

“I feel so strange,” she replied. “Like I’m about to dissolve into a million pieces.”

His chuckle was completely masculine. Supremely satisfied.

“Let’s fix that, cara mia.”

When he slipped her panties down her thighs, she didn’t protest. He pulled them from her legs and tossed them aside. And then he was pushing her thighs apart, kneeling between them…

The first touch of his tongue against her slick flesh made her cry out. But he didn’t stop there. He continued the sweet torture, his lips and tongue doing things she’d never imagined. Vaguely, she recognized she was panting.

Recognized that some feeling was gathering inside her, pressing into a tight, hard knot, compressing again into something so concentrated—

When the knot exploded, she was shocked. Stunned. Gasping. Her back arched as waves of sensation rolled through her limbs, sizzling hot. After it was over, she felt drained of all energy. Exhausted. Ready to sleep for a million years.

Until Cristiano began the sweet torture again.

Twice more she gasped his name into the candlelit air, her body shivering and melting and reforming in the aftermath of stunning climaxes.

“Do you still wish to go forward?” he asked a few moments later.

She opened her eyes to look at him. At his handsome face, his concerned expression. She had the feeling that if she said no, he would stop right now.

And he’d be in agony, she was certain. Because she would have been, had she not reached her peak three times already.

“Show me more, Cristiano.”

“Grazie a Dio,” he said. “With pleasure.”

He stretched out beside her, used his fingers to stoke her passions again. She was no longer surprised at how quickly he was able to push her toward completion.

Just when she was ready to come for a fourth time, he stopped and retrieved a condom from a pocket in his suitcase. She tried not to imagine why he carried condoms with him. And yet he was irresistible to women, as she’d heard more than once. No doubt it was wise to always be prepared. But it took a little of the joy out of it for her, knowing this wasn’t his first time and wasn’t in any way special to him.

It was just sex.

And isn’t that what you wanted?

It was. She had no right to get upset because this was a casual encounter to him.

“Antonella,” he said, the sexy timbre of his voice stroking into her razor-sharp senses. “You are thinking too hard again.”

She blinked up at him. How did he always know? “It’s nothing.”

“Do you want to stop?”

“No,” she replied honestly. She really didn’t. Her body, while satisfied, was still keyed up in a very elemental way that she knew would never be fully appeased until he was inside her.

He leaned forward and kissed her again. “I was hoping you would say that. But if you change your mind…”

“I won’t,” she said, winding her arms around his neck to kiss him back.

Very quickly, the heat and need fanned higher until all she wanted was him. The past didn’t matter. The future wasn’t a guarantee. Now, right now, was all they had.

“Cristiano, please…” Her body was achy, ready. She reached between them, grasped that hot, hard part of him she wanted.

He gasped. “Cara, you will undo me before we begin—”

“Then we need to begin.”

Cristiano swore, but he rolled the condom into place in a quick, smooth motion. And then he settled between her thighs. The weight of him, the hot press of his skin against hers, the blunt tip of his manhood sliding into her wet heat—

It was so much to process, and yet she didn’t want to miss a single moment of it in her rush to fulfillment. She closed her eyes, tried to feel everything at once.

“This will probably hurt.”

“I know,” she breathed. “It’s okay.”

“Look at me.”

She did. Cristiano smiled at her, and she felt as if she’d suddenly swallowed the sun whole. It was both a frightening and exhilarating feeling.

“Thank you for trusting me,” he said. “I hope you will not regret this moment.”

“Kiss me…”

He did, so gently her heart turned inside out. A second later, he pushed forward, sliding into her so far that she knew she was no longer a virgin. The pain was less than she’d expected, but startling enough that she cried out. He drank in her cry, then lifted himself on his elbows and gazed down at her.

“You are okay?”

She tilted her hips, getting used to the size and feel of him. Sensation blazed through her with each small movement.

“I—” She swallowed, tried again. “It’s amazing, Cristiano. I had no idea.”

His laugh was rusty. “Dio santo, it is a crime. And yet I am thankful I am the first.”

Slowly, he retreated—and then he slid forward again, filling her more fully than before. Her scalp tingled. Her toes. Everywhere, there was heat. Heat and awareness that she’d never known existed.

Yet he was so careful she wanted to scream. Innately, she knew she could take more. Wanted more. Antonella tilted her hips up to meet him and Cristiano growled low in his throat. The sound thrilled her.

He began to move faster, though he took his time to do so. She knew he was being careful with her, trying to make sure he didn’t hurt her, and her heart soared with the knowledge.

Soon, he anchored an arm behind her back, tilted her hips even higher—and Antonella gasped. How could it possibly get any better?

“Yes, Antonella,” Cristiano purred, his voice like a sizzling brand in her psyche, “like that. Move like that. Dio, yes.”

“Kiss me again,” she pleaded, surprised at how badly she wanted him to, and at how fast she was spiraling toward a culmination that she sensed would be bigger than the last.

Cristiano’s lips fused with hers, his tongue mingling with hers. He tasted of sweat and of her—earthy, sensual, and so overwhelmingly male she wondered how she’d ever thought she’d been kissed before he’d first kissed her.

Her climax hit her with a force that stole her breath away. She wrenched her mouth from Cristiano’s, shocked at the speed and intensity with which her release hit her. She’d had warning the last time, a gathering of tension into a tighter and tighter knot—yet this time, the tension imploded in a flash, rocketing outward again in a blinding burst of sensation that had her crying his name in wonder and surprise.

“Antonella, mia bellisima Principessa,” he said between wet kisses to her throat, her jaw, her lips. “You amaze me. So beautiful, so sensual.”

She couldn’t speak. It took too much effort just to breathe, to recover.

Cristiano’s hips moved, and she realized he was still hard. Still ready. They weren’t finished yet. The thought made her shiver in anticipation.

“Please,” she whispered when she had the power of speech again. “Please…”

His gaze was raw—tormented?—but his eyes were suddenly hooded, as if he realized he’d shown too much emotion.

“Anything you desire, cara mia,” he said. And then he began to move.

It didn’t take long before she was gasping at the top of another peak. Cristiano’s climax followed hard on the heels of her own as he gripped her hips and ground his body into her one last time.

Her name on his lips at the moment of his release was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.

She’d thoroughly destroyed him. Cristiano lifted his head, once he had the energy, and gazed down at her. Her eyes were closed, and though a tear leaked from one corner, slipping down her silky skin into her hair, her half-smile of contentment told him she was not in pain.

He was still inside her, and more than anything he wanted to repeat what had just happened. But he couldn’t. She would be sore, even if she was not at the moment.

Dio, a virgin. If his body didn’t know the truth, his mind would insist it wasn’t possible. She was hot and tight, and so naturally sensual it amazed him she’d not been with a man before.

Guilt snapped against the surface of his conscience. He’d had no right to take her like this. No matter she’d given herself willingly, she’d done so under false pretenses. Not only because she believed their lives in mortal danger, but also because she believed he truly meant to marry her.

It was wrong…

And yet nothing had ever felt so right—

No.

Guilt of a different kind speared him. Since the moment he’d awakened and looked into Antonella’s frightened eyes earlier, he’d not thought of his dead wife once. He’d spent seven months with Julianne, married her, thought she was the woman he would fall in love with. How could he possibly forget her? She’d died because of him, because of who he was. Because he’d failed to protect her.

How could he lose himself so completely in the body of a Monteverdian princess?

He let his gaze slip down Antonella’s form, over the perfect rounds of her breasts, the pink nipples so stiff and straight, the tiny waist, the apex of her thighs where he still joined his body to hers. A pleasurable shudder went through him.

He was just a man. How could any man look at this woman and not do as he’d done?

No excuse. He was a bad, bad man.

She must have felt him shudder because her eyes opened. She smiled and arched her back beneath him like a cat. One hand drifted up, smoothed over his jaw, tickled his ear before threading into his hair. “Thank you,” she said.

Another pang of guilt stabbed into him. “For what, cara mia? The pleasure was all mine.”

She yawned. “I could get very used to this.”

“Yes, I imagine you could.”

Her brows drew down at his tone, but she seemed to shrug it off easily enough. He cursed himself inwardly. What was wrong with him? She was a virgin—was—not a wanton woman with a whole platoon of lovers. She didn’t deserve his sarcasm. She deserved far better. It wasn’t fair to take his disgust with himself out on her.

“You deserved a bed,” he told her. “Silk sheets, a bubble bath, champagne. You deserved to be treated like a princess.”

She frowned. “In my experience, being a princess doesn’t mean much when it comes to how I have been treated. I’m glad it happened this way.”

Because he didn’t want to think too deeply about her meaning, he focused on a red mark that marred her creamy skin where her neck and shoulder joined. And realized it hadn’t been there earlier. “I have hurt you.”

“What? No.”

“Your skin. I’m sorry if I was too rough.”

She touched the area in question. “It was nothing like that, Cristiano. Nothing at all.” She yawned again, finished with a smile. “You were very patient with me.”

Patient wasn’t quite how he would have described it, but he was glad she thought so.

He rolled to the side, withdrawing from her body and gathering her against him. For tonight, he would hold her close. If they survived—and he expected they would—he would deal with his tangled feelings about this in the morning. He pulled the blanket over them, yawning.

“Can you sleep now?” he asked once he’d tucked it around her.

The only answer was a soft ladylike snore.

Antonella came awake slowly. Something was different. For one thing, her bed was hard. For another, there was someone else in it with her. Someone large and warm. A man.

Her eyes popped open. And then she remembered.

The dressing room was pitch-black, the candle having died out presumably hours ago. She was lying on the carpeted floor, wedged up against Cristiano.

They were both naked.

Oh, God.

Images from a few hours ago played in her mind: Cristiano’s body tangled with hers, his magnificence, his utter lack of shame in allowing her to explore him. His skill at knowing just what her body wanted and in delivering it so expertly.

The sound of his voice when he came.

She couldn’t quite believe her own boldness at asking him to make love to her. She’d thought they would die, yet they were still alive. What was the storm doing now? She could hear the wind, but it didn’t seem to be a deafening roar any longer.

She tried to ease away from Cristiano. Perhaps she could open the door a crack and peer out.

Muscles she hadn’t known she possessed protested against the movement. Beside her, Cristiano stirred.

“Where are you going, Antonella?”

How did he wake so instantly? “I think the storm has lessened,” she said.

He was silent for a long moment. “I believe you are right.”

A second later, he was sliding away from her. The flick of a lighter, and then a candle flamed. Instinctively, she clutched the blanket to her breasts.

Cristiano’s expression flooded her with heat. Sexy, sensual. Knowing. “I’ve seen it all, Antonella. It’s too late.”

“I know.” But her cheeks heated anyway.

Cristiano pushed to his feet. His bronze body gleamed in the candlelight. He reminded her of a carved marble statue, he was so beautiful. He stepped to the door, then carefully slipped it open.

The candle flickered in the breeze coming from outside it.

“The wind seems to have lessened a bit, but I’ll need to see if I can hear anything on the radio,” he said as he closed the door and turned.

She dropped her gaze, afraid of what he might see in it if she kept looking at him. What was this hot, needy feeling uncoiling inside her? Desire, yes. But there was another emotion in the mix.

Companionship. She felt closer to this man than to any other person alive. It was a frightening feeling. Because he was still the enemy. In the cold light of day, he still wanted Monteverde’s ore. And the fact she would give him anything, including her soul, if only he would make love to her again, terrified her.

How could she be so greedy? So self-centered?

“Antonella.”

She looked up—because if she didn’t, he would surely demand to know why. His eyes glittered diamond-hot.

“You are feeling regret?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then what is wrong?”

How did he always, always know? It was unnerving.

She tossed her hair over her shoulder, tilted her chin up. “There is nothing wrong. I was simply hoping you would make love to me again.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Her heart lodged in her throat. Perhaps she should have kept quiet, not been so bold—

“You will be the death of me,” he said softly. “And I find I can think of no better way to die.”

For the next two days they ate crackers, sausage and cheese from their meager stores, talked, made love, and listened to the weather. Antonella learned so many things about him in those two days—and she shared more of herself than she’d ever thought possible.

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