A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [21]
And those flames had her totally in their grip now. They were licking along every nerve, searing every inch of skin. Gio seemed to sense unerringly just what she was feeling and where as he freed his right hand from her hair, leaving the other one to hold her head captive, and let his other hand roam wilfully over her body. Somehow he touched unerringly on every most sensitive spot, every yearning pleasure point that pulsed just below the surface of her flesh. And in the same instant that his touch appeased one hunger, it also awoke another, deeper, more primitive one. One that demanded a satisfaction as wild and potent and as primal as its own forceful nature.
‘Gio…’
His name was a muttered sound of encouragement mixed with protest on her lips. She wanted more than this exploratory touch on her body, through her clothes. She wanted the feel of his hands on her skin, the warmth of flesh on flesh. She wanted to feel his hands demand, and her body respond. Every inch, every sense, every nerve rising to meet this, the most basic claim of all that a man could make on a woman.
‘Gio…’
And yet at the same time she wanted to prolong this moment into infinity. She wanted this first coming together to go on and on forever. For a lifetime. Because only a lifetime would be long enough for her to fully experience, to fully know this first stage of making love with Giovanni Cardella.
Never again would it be so new, so unknown, so fresh. And she wanted to linger in that freshness, even as some deeper, inner claim of her female nature was throbbing hard and wild at the joining of her legs. And much as she wanted to delay, to savour, to enjoy, she knew that that demand would soon grow too strong to be ignored. It would have to be appeased or it would tear her apart.
‘Oh, Gio…’
This time the impatience was uppermost in her tone, and in the moment of hearing it she also felt Gio’s silent laughter against her face.
‘Calma, bella mia. Calma,’ he whispered into her mouth. ‘We have all night.’
But even as he said the words, he knew that they were a lie. There was no way that he could wait, or delay this much longer. It was the difference that had kept him on a tight rein so far—the stunning, shocking differences between the woman in his arms and the wife he had made love to before. The only woman in his life for so many years.
And the differences had seemed so important in the first moments that he had touched her. The colour and length of her hair. The pale cloud of blonde that fell around her face and shoulders where Lucia’s had been short and dark. The long, slender limbs; the way her face was so much closer to his when she stood next to him. The intensely personal scent of her skin.
In those first seconds of touching her, holding her, she seemed so very, very different. And the kick that his senses gave, the way that his heart clenched painfully, made him wonder, just for an instant, whether he could go through with this. But then Terrie stirred against him, and he knew that his mind, his senses, were no longer in the past. That what mattered was here and now.
And she was here, now.
And she was what he wanted.
What he desired—so much.
And so he kissed her again, losing himself in the feel of her lush mouth beneath his. The warm, moist delicacy of her kiss seemed to melt his bones, turning his blood to white heat in his veins. He wanted to rush, to grab and snatch at the pleasure offered, yet at the same moment he wanted to delay, to linger and stretch it out as long as possible.
He wished that her white top had button fastenings. The thought of the slow, sensual delight of slipping each one through its hole, sliding apart the two delicate sides of the garment, appealed to his sense of anticipation, the thrill of waiting, building excitement on excitement. But in the moment that he tugged the stretchy