The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain (13 page)

Tears burned her eyes and she blinked them away as the hot water masked any signs of her inner turmoil. Her hand hovered above his hardness, her nails scoring through the nest of dark hair from which it sprang. His big body trembled and sounds of need rumbled from deep in his chest.

Incredible how much she loved those sounds. She was addicted to them and she had spent hours in bed with him listening, watching, paying oh so very close attention to his reactions so she could have more…and more…and more.

His hands were busy, too, molding her breasts and caressing sensitive areas he knew so well. It was as if he knew this was a special moment in time, a unique opportunity that might not come again because he touched her so carefully, arousing her to a fever pitch of sensation. And she made her own sounds of desire, moans and whimpers that mixed with the beat of the pouring water.

Her control slipped moment by moment until she was a living, breathing, quivering mass of feminine sexual need. She cried out against his lips from his touch even as she demanded more with the movement of her body and hungrily caressed his body with all the fire burning inside her.

The sound of Therese’s sexy whimpers drove
Claudio
crazy as she went wild for him. She had always been incredibly responsive…when she let him touch her, but there was a quality to her response right now that had never been there before. Her body shook and trembled and her hands were all over him, so hot against his skin that he felt singed.

She touched him with a furious desperation. As if she had never touched him before…or would never touch him again.

But he dismissed that last thought as ludicrous in the face of how much she so obviously wanted him. This kind of desire did not get assuaged in one attempt at lovemaking…or even a hundred. He should know. He wanted her that much.

Would always want her.

And his shy and proper wife was practically climbing his body in an attempt to join her body with his. She was completely out of control and he refused to believe she could give even a fraction of this reaction to another man. She might think she wanted someone else for reasons he had yet to discover, but it was he who could touch the very core of her soul with a simple hand to her breast.

It had been that way since the very first time he touched her with the intent to seduce.

Their sexual connection was too strong to be tampered with, too primitive to be explained or even understood on an intellectual level. She might have withheld herself from him more in the past few months than she had at first, but when she did allow him close…she went to pieces. Perhaps not as spectacularly as this time, but definitely too strongly for him to seriously believe she could want another man.

No way could she be this way with anyone else and still respond in such a primal fashion to him…not his wife, a woman who had spent her whole life tamping down her emotional reactions and hiding them. It went against everything he knew her to be.

Unless she was thinking of the other man when
Claudio
touched her…unless she was using him to assuage a need she could not have met another way.

Where the thought came from, he did not know, but it detonated with the power of a nuclear blast in his head. No, damn it. He would not believe that. And yet, it made sense of a woman who asked for a divorce and then made love like she would die if she could not have his touch.

He broke his mouth from hers as he lifted her up his body to position his hardness at the entrance to her slickened flesh. He had to have her…even the disturbing thoughts could not dampen his need, but he couldn’t allow her to use him like that. He would not let that scenario be reality for them. “Say my name…ask me to take you.”

Her eyes opened, revealing beautiful green and very dazed depths. “Wh-what?”

“Who am I?” he ground out in harsh demand.

“Amore mio.”

The words slammed through him like a sledgehammer…was that her pet name for the other man or was she calling
Claudio
her love? He could count on one hand the number of times she had used that expression with him during their marriage and none of them in the last six months. “My name, say it.”

Her lips curved softly, her expression an odd mixture he could not decipher. It seemed as if both exultation and sadness resided in her green gaze, but that made no sense. “
Claudio
…my prince.”

Then she leaned forward to reconnect their lips and kissed him with desperate passion, devouring his mouth before kissing along his jaw until she was right at his ear. She whispered, “Love me,
Claudio
. Please. Be one with me…if only for a little while.”

Her voice had a strange quality to it, as if it was not merely sex she was asking for, but he did not know what else she wanted. He could give her the sex, though. Was in fact dying to do so. He levered her body onto his shaft at the same time as surging upward so that he was impaled in one urgent thrust.

She cried out, her head falling back on her shoulders, her expression one of agonized bliss.

He grunted, a sound that was entirely primitive and would have at any other time embarrassed his sophisticated sense of self. “You feel so good around me, amante.”

“You feel…perfect…inside…me…” she gasped out as he withdrew and thrust again.

Therese
thought maybe she would die from pleasure. If she did, it would be the way to go…so much better than the pain inflicted by the endometriosis every month.

The feel of him inside of her was so incredible. She and
Claudio
had made love many times in many ways, but never anything as primal and basic as this. There was no bed to support them. He was not even using the wall to support her as he had other times they had made love in the shower, just sheer animal strength.

It was as if they were in a world entirely apart from anything normal, anything they had known before. Steam surrounded them like a heated fog as hot water cascaded down their bodies locked in ecstatic intimacy.

She cried out as he thrust upward and hit that special pleasure zone inside her.

“That is right, mi moglie. Come apart for me. Show me this side to you that no one else ever sees.” His mouth landed on her neck, sucking, nibbling, licking and sending shivers of sensation to the most sensitive areas of her body.

She locked her ankles behind his back and rode him…he surged into her…she squeezed his hardness into her…he guided her body with a bruising grip on her hips and buttocks.

She opened her eyes to look at him and saw that his head was thrown back in abandon like hers had been, his face etched with sexual pleasure. She leaned forward and bit his chest in an act so primitive, even in her advanced state of passion…it shocked her.

He was not shocked, though, but merely growled and increased the rhythm, slamming into her with pounding force with every thrust. It was so intense, she felt like she was on the verge of shattering into a million over-pleasured bits.

Tension spiraled inside her, a feeling of leaping from one experience to the next up a circular incline, traveling toward a precipice and then going over as her body convulsed around him and she cried out his name. She was falling too fast and she cried out in fright.

He gripped her tighter and she wrapped her arms around him, pressing to his body, the only sense of reality in a universe exploding from pleasure. He was silent when he climaxed, his teeth bared in a feral grimace that said more eloquently than any words could have how intensely he was feeling.

Chapter 7

Afterward, he wrapped her up against him, soothing her with gentle words and tender caresses against her back until the sobs she had not realized she was crying ebbed. Her body relaxed slowly, until she dangled in his arms, a boneless heap.

He held her for several long and silent moments, while her legs dangled and the connection between their bodies remained, reminding her that once was rarely enough for this man…even when their lovemaking culminated in a mind-blowing pleasure that left her completely spent.

Finally he lifted her off of him and began washing her with gentle hands that touched every inch of her as if to say, “Mine. Mine. And this is mine, too.”

She tried to return the favor, but her hands were clumsy, her movements jerky with a special kind of fatigue only he could induce. Eventually he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, his arm still supporting her.

She forced herself to move away so they could dry off, but even in that he ended up helping her. Then he pulled her into his body and walked her from the bathroom, her nightgown forgotten on the floor of the en suite.

They climbed into bed together and she went willingly into his arms, closing her eyes, so tired that she fell asleep immediately.

She woke scant hours later to a kiss on her temple. “Wake up,
cara
. We must hurry and dress or we will not make it to the hospital before they take Papa down to surgery.”

She sat up, feeling out of sorts. Despite the pleasure of lovemaking beforehand, she had had disturbing dreams and her sleep had not been restful. Pain was dragging at her lower abdomen and she wished she could have kept on sleeping. Because restful, or not, it was at least a respite from the reality she was loathe to face.

Her period was due soon, not that it was super regular now that she wasn’t on the pill. But she knew the pain would only get worse every day until it started and unbearable during the flow of blood from her body.

Claudio
was already half dressed and looked over his shoulder as he did his tie. “Get a move on,
Therese
.”

She nodded, wincing as her head ached from the movement. She climbed gingerly from bed, her eyes glued to his figure. That at least gave pleasure. She could not imagine life without this man and said so before she thought better of the admission.

He stopped in the act of pulling on his suit coat. “But you do not have to. After last night, it is obvious we can forget this talk of divorce.”

“Are you saying you aren’t bored with me anymore?”

“You need to ask after our sojourn in the shower?” he asked with the devil’s own smile.

But she did not smile in return. Their time in the shower had been incredible, but they had spent what remained of the night wrapped in each other’s arms. Only he didn’t mention that, did he?

Sex. That was all he wanted from her and when it was on offer, she was the perfect wife. He’d said that when he told her he was bored with her…that her value had dropped significantly when she began turning him down. The fact that the night before and his reaction to it only supported that truth was not a particularly pleasant reality.

She turned her head away. “Last night did not change anything important.”

He said a truly foul word and her gaze flew back to him.

He finished shrugging into his coat, his dark brown eyes hard as granite. “You are not telling me you still think a divorce is necessary. I refuse to accept you are saying that.”

“But that is what I am saying,” she admitted wearily, her head now pounding.

The look he gave her would have brought about her demise if looks truly could have been lethal. He looked like he hated her and he didn’t say another single, solitary word. He simply finished dressing and left their room.

Moving as quickly as she could with the cramps now reaching toward debilitating levels, she dressed as well and followed him. She found him downstairs, giving instructions to his father’s assistant as well as his own.

“The others are waiting for us in the car,” he said when he saw her. Then he dismissed the employees and headed toward the back of the palace where the car would be parked.

“
Claudio
.”

“Do not speak to me,
Therese
.” The venom in his voice silenced her as effectively as a gag.

He did hate her.

He was like that for the rest of the morning, only managing to maintain a thin veil of civility in front of his family. It slipped to blatant hostility when they were not within earshot.

The one bright spot was that King
Vincente
came through the surgery with flying colors and was mostly lucid for visits with his family afterward. When Flavia offered to stay at the hospital with him, he gratefully accepted and sent the rest of them home with a good dose of his trademark arrogance.

Despite her father-in-law’s continuing improvement in health, the next few days were a torment for
Therese
. Both in mind and body.
Claudio
stayed in their suite for appearance’s sake, but the width of the Great Divide ran down the middle of their bed…that was when he was in it. He also refused to speak to her when they were alone, except to discuss their respective duties.