was as if all the walls he kept up fell down in dust and a primitive hunger filled his gaze. “I feel need, Alexis. When I look at you...all I feel is desire.”
Even then, it was she that lifted her head, reached up and pressed her mouth to his. She, who had no experience with men, that wrapped her hands around his nape and refused to let go.
She that touched her mouth to his.
Soft and hot and hard at the same time, his mouth was a gateway to heaven and hell. Every nerve ending quivering, every instinct driving her forth, she ran the tip of her tongue tentatively, slowly, over that cruelly sculpted lower lip.
With a growl that made her belly tighten, finally he relented. Finally, he touched that hard, harsh mouth to hers.
Lights exploded behind Alex’s eyes as if the world was a kaleidoscope of sensations and textures.
Masculine and demanding, he parted her lips and pushed in.
With his tongue and teeth, and with an expertise that made her sex shockingly wet, Leandro devoured her.
There was no playfulness, no seduction to his kiss, just as his words. It was a full-on sensual assault that left no doubt about where it was leading.
His hands skimmed everywhere—her breasts and the boldly taut nipples, her hips, the curves of her buttocks—before they crept under her dress and pulled it up.
Long fingers hitched her thigh around his hips until the heat of her was intimately pressed against the rigid length of him.
Every inch of her vibrated with excitement, desire, need, every inch of her thrummed at the sensation of power.
When he pushed her against the wall and covered her breasts with his hands, Alex whimpered.
When his fingers reached her wet core—alien and intrusive, her gaze flew to his, shocked and aroused and oh-so-willing. Her mouth dried at the stark need in those gray eyes.
Groaning, she came off the wall like a bow when he curled a finger inside her just so, driving a fork of heat through her pelvis.
When he flicked the rim of her ear with his tongue, and told her what he was going to do to her, Alex buried her mouth in his neck and gave herself over.
To the man, to the moment, to the incredible sensation of being wanted.
Seven years later
“DOES YOUR ARM still hurt, Mamma?”
Alex tucked the quilt around Isabella and kissed her forehead. “A little, baby,” she said, opting for the truth.
She was only six but Izzie somehow always knew if Alex lied to her. Or maybe it was that penetrating, deep gray gaze that Alex had never learned to handle. “But the cast should be gone in a couple more weeks and Auntie Jessie said I was healing well.”
Little chubby fingers traced the yet unhealed, inch-wide scar that ran from her left temple to her eye, bisecting her brow where a shard of glass had pierced the skin. This bruise, unlike the fracture to her ribs and arm, was only skin-deep yet looked much worse.
“It scares me, Mamma,” Izzie whispered in a low voice.
Tears coated Alex’s throat but she resolutely swallowed them back. “But you’re such a brave little girl always, baby.”
Her little chin wobbled. “I am but all the days you were in hospital and me here, alone. Grandmama didn’t tell me when you’d come home.”
Pushing herself completely onto the little bed, Alex gathered her bundle of joy closer. “It looks scarier than it hurts. See, I’m perfectly fine, okay?”
When Izzie nodded, Alex hugged her tight. Felt the tension unwind in her little girl’s body.
But fear lingered, a bitter taste at the back of her throat, leeching warmth from her very veins.
The sixteen-wheeler that had crashed into her compact sedan from the side had wrecked it into a pulp of metal. It was a miracle she’d survived, the doctor had said, and without permanent damage, too.
But all Alex could think of was the alternate scenario...
She could’ve lost her life.
And Izzie would be...
Like a black cloud waiting to swallow her, she felt the loss of breath, the violent impact of the air bag, of the crunch of bone and the shaft of nightmarish pain in her left arm all the way to her fingers...
The acidic taste of fear in her mouth...
Her hands shook, her skin clammy with sweat.
She buried her face in Izzie’s hair and took a deep breath.
As always, the sweet smell of her little girl’s skin anchored her in the now. Pushed back the nightmarish fingers of that panic to the edges...but she knew it wasn’t gone for long.
Anything could trigger it, she realized, remembering the almost episode at the store that very morning when the door had banged too hard.
She couldn’t go on like this, debilitated by fear.
Control, she needed control of this fear for Izzie. She needed to do something that wouldn’t paralyze her like this, something that would take care of her baby whatever the future brought...
And instantly her mind went to him.
The man with blue-black hair. The man who had given Izzie her shockingly clear gray eyes and her thick, straight black hair, unlike Alex’s strawberry blond curls. The man who had refused to see her again. Or speak to her. Or answer a single phone call seven years ago.
Even in that second before she’d lost consciousness, she’d thought of him. Of the desperate yet muted violence of his passion as he’d kissed her that night, of the way he’d moved inside her, of the way he had driven her to the edge of such intense pleasure that she’d thought she’d fragment into a million pieces...
One memory brought another now...
The disgusted look in his eyes after when she’d hung on to him like a limp vine, as his lust-heavy gaze slowly focused on her, followed by utter shock and disgust, of the jagged, agonized howl that had fallen from his mouth...the way he’d withdrawn immediately, righted her clothes so coldly and clinically, the way he wouldn’t meet her gaze as he drove them to the hotel Valentina and she’d been staying at in Milan...
The way he’d told her that he never wanted to see her again...
But now, now that she had faced almost certain death, Alex wasn’t willing to slink away in silence anymore. Even if that meant facing his rejection and failing.
Failure had haunted her throughout her entire life. She’d lived through being a disappointment, first to her parents, and then to herself, again and again, but she wouldn’t be one when it came to Izzie.
She deserved security, and she, Alexis, needed the peace of mind to live her life normally again. She needed to know Izzie would be taken care of if something happened to her.
The very thought of facing Leandro Conti again made her skin prickle alarmingly. But she’d do anything for her daughter.
* * *
“One of you will marry the Rossi girl.”
Impossibile!
Leandro Conti’s answer reverberated inside him to his grandfather’s ultimatum but walking deeper into the study, he stayed silent.
“Sophia Rossi?” his brother, Luca asked, shock etched into his face.
“Si.”
Leandro studied with interest the frail form of his grandfather, Antonio, behind the gleaming dark mahogany desk, still determined to intimidate his grandsons, while, next