She yanked an emerald shirt-dress off the rail and punched her arms through the sleeves before pulling it over her head. “This wife doesn’t do good morning kisses.”
She felt the air move around her before hands clasped her hips and a mouth nuzzled into her neck. “One kiss before I shower.”
Despising the tingles racing through her skin and the heating of her veins, she clenched her jaw even tighter.
It was that damned good night kiss that had stopped her sleeping. Of everything that could have played on her mind, it was the sensations his kisses had evoked in her that had plagued her excuse of a sleep.
“One kiss and you’ll leave me alone?” He’d kept to his word last night. The problem was that damned kiss was a lot more than she’d expected or prepared herself for. God, she could still feel his tongue against hers. Where it should have been laden with spikes, it had felt like silk.
He laughed softly and kissed the arch of her neck. “Yes, my beautiful wife, one kiss and I will leave you alone… For now.”
Hating that her pelvis was stirring in anticipation, she put her best poker face on and turned around. Instinct already telling her he was naked, she stared stonily at his face. She had no wish to see below his chin, especially not below his waist.
That was another thing that had plagued her thoughts. The feel of his hardness against the top of her thigh. It should have repulsed her, but it hadn’t, and that was as shaming to her pride as the reluctant admittance that the sensations of his kiss had been… Not unpleasant.
This time, she was prepared. He might be as naked as when he’d kissed her goodnight, but she was standing upright, notpinned beneath him. If she felt it necessary, she could raise her knee and swiftly connect it to his balls, something she still wished she’d done when she was fourteen. But she’d been caught off-guard back then. She would never let that happen again.
Elio’s smile when their eyes locked made her want to punch him in the face.
The vampiric silver eyes glittering, he lightly rubbed the back of his fingers over her cheekbone. “You are exquisite,” he murmured, gently threading his fingers through her damp hair and slipping an arm around her waist. Bringing his mouth to hers, he whispered, “Simply exquisite.”
Closing her eyes, Siena told herself she was a mannequin, an inanimate object. She had no capacity to feel anything or react to stimuli. Elio’s mouth could be a piece of tissue she used to blot her lipstick…
Except a tissue wasn’t deceitfully warm and inviting. It didn’t caress her lips the way Elio’s mouth was doing, slowly coaxing them to mould to it and part…
Moisture filled her mouth, and as hard as she tried to block out the sensations slowly unfurling inside her and give him nothing, when his tongue slid against hers in fresh exploration, she was helpless to stop herself exploring his mouth in turn.
There was movement against her belly, a growing hardness pressing against the softness of her skin. The fingers in her hair tightened, the arm around her waist pulling her flush to him, and suddenly sensation was everywhere. Tingling heat pulsed like a hot, heavy beat between her legs; the urge to tilt her pelvis and press herself against him so strong that if Elio hadn’t pulled his mouth from hers, there was no saying she wouldn’t have done it.
Still holding her flush to him, he rubbed his cheek to hers. His stubble scratching her skin, he seductively murmured, “You are allowed to touch me, wife.”
But Siena could hardly breathe. Forget finding the strength to push him away; it was taking everything she had not to melt into the hard heat of the body still enveloping hers. Taking even more not to turn her cheek and seek his mouth for another of his bone-melting kisses.
“You’ve had your kiss,” she whispered hoarsely. “Now take your filthy hands off me.”
The hand on her back slid down and clasped her butt cheek, pulling her even tighter against his arousal, but before she could find what was needed to wrench herself away from him, he’d let her go.
The hateful, mocking smile on his lips, he brought his face down to hers. “I love it when you talk dirty. Can I look forward to more dirty talk when you seduce me tonight?”
“Fuck you.”
He laughed and strolled to the door. “Oh, you will, my little wife. Tonight. If not, you know what the consequences will be.”
“Even if it all comes at my initiation, it will still be rape,” she spat.
He turned his head back to her, his silver eyes dangerous with amusement. “You can tell yourself that, but your body betrays the lies your tongue speaks.”
“What, because I responded to your kiss?” she scorned, as furious at his arrogance as she was at her own treacherous body. “So what? With all the practice you’ve had, it would be more surprising if you couldn’t coax a reaction from me.”
His eyes still dancing, he looked her up and down. “All my practice?”
“Your reputation is foul. You’re as big a slut as the man my cousin’s fallen for, and that kiss meantnothing.”
“And there I was thinking you knew nothing of me apart from my name,” he said silkily.
“I didn’t even know that until a few years ago,” she spat. “Your name was nothing but a part of the folklore of my family’s history, and not evenyourname. You, as a person, weren’t even a footnote, and you don’t even deserve that. You’re a man-whore, Elio. You don’t just screw women and leave them like Francesca’s Gino did; you treat women as if they’re just their bodies, as if they’re nothing but walking vaginas for you to fuck.”
He’d stilled so much that in the weighted silence that followed, Siena had the sensation Elio had become a mannequin himself.