what to say to convince me. You didn’t let your mum frighten you off today.” His gaze searched hers, as if he was seeing her anew. “Despite the emotional toll it’s taking on you.” A lone tear tracked down her cheek, the tenderness in his words a balm to her soul, the sheer conviction in his voice a steely source of strength.
He pulled her up to face him, and Neha could have drowned in the emotions swirling in those blue depths. His grip on her hands was the only anchor in a collapsing world, the warmth radiating from his solid body the only reality she could hold on to while she built a new foundation for her future.
With infinite gentleness, he flicked away the tear. “Do you remember the heated arguments we used to have about my opinions of women?”
She nodded, wondering where he was going. “You were a budding sexist.”
He laughed and she watched that stark, serious face bloom into gorgeousness that shook her knees. “You’ve been the biggest, most positive influence in my life, Neha. Like a river carving away at the bedrock of a mountain, you cleared so much anger I’d harbored toward women, just because of what one woman did to me when I was a child. You helped me realize how irrational and hateful I could become if I didn’t let go of it. Watching you become this woman of grace and courage and beauty...helped me in ways you can’t imagine.
“So don’t you dare say you’re a coward because that’s my friend you’re trashing.”
A sob rising through her, Neha threw herself at him. And luckily for both of them, the giant of a man that he was, he caught her. The strength of his arms rocked her as she tried to curb the emotional storm unleashing within her.
She kissed his cheek and whispered a hundred thank-yous. The scent and warmth of him was a cocktail she felt drunk on, the muscled wall of his body a heavenly slide against her own. Her arms vined around his neck, she pulled back and looked at him.
Nostrils flaring, eyes shining with desire, he radiated the same kind of energy she could feel thrumming through her veins.
A ribbon of awareness whipped around them as her gaze fell to the languid curve of his mouth. It was a matter of seconds, maybe, but it felt like an eternity as Neha pulled herself closer. Their breaths were a harsh symphony around them. She moved her hands down to his chest, scrunching her fingers in his shirt.
She’d spent an eternity wanting this man...wanting one kiss, wanting to be the woman he needed. And now she couldn’t turn away even if her very next breath depended on it.
After years of living in a prison she’d made for herself, Neha stepped into her own life. And took Leonardo’s mouth in a kiss she’d needed for more than a decade.
Lips that were both firm and incredibly soft met hers. That first contact spread warmth through her, unraveling in spools through her limbs, leaving her trembling, stomach tightening with anticipation, standing on the cliff of something new and painfully exciting. He was unnaturally still, not rejecting her, but being a passive participant that was nothing like the man.
She flicked her tongue over his lips next, tracing the defined curve while the rhythmic in and out of his breath coated her skin in soft strokes. A continuous thrill thrummed through her veins as she fit her mouth this way and that, teasing and tasting, tugging on that lower lip with her teeth, licking her way into his mouth and touching the tip of his tongue with hers before she retreated and started all over again. And again gorging herself on him. Breathing him in.
And still, he held himself rigid, his hands not holding her but not pushing her away, either.
He tasted of whiskey and maleness and Neha reveled in the high of having him like this—hers to pet and play with, hers to ignite. Hers to rumple. When she dug her teeth hard into his lower lip, his chest rumbled. Her own need deepened at the utterly masculine sound drawn out of him despite his control.
Dampness bloomed at her sex, every part of her aching to be touched and stroked and possessed. She ran her palms down to his neck and pulled at the lapels of his shirt until the buttons popped and she could sink her hands inside.
Her groan was joined by his, creating a symphony of need and desire.
Defined pectorals and warm skin, the sensation of the springy hair under her palms, the tight points of his nipples—his chest was an endless delight to her questing hands. She touched him all over, loving the hard clench of his muscles, the feral sound that fell from his lips. This time, when she explored the moist cavern of his mouth, she tangled her tongue with his, sucking it into her mouth. Playing hide-and-seek with it. Digging her teeth into the soft inside of his lower lip.
Her breasts ached to be touched. Her hands roamed restlessly over his hard body, across his broad chest, back onto his rock-hard abdomen, her fingers digging into the waistband of his trousers. She dragged her mouth from his, trailing kisses over his rough jaw, down to his throat, and pressed her tongue against the hollow there.
Salt and sweat and incredibly male—he was heaven on her tongue.
The growl that fell from his mouth reverberated up from his broad chest, shaking her with its ferocity. Like an earthquake rearranging everything beneath the ground on which she stood. His powerful body shuddered around her, and then he was jerking her up to him, his fingers sinking deep into her hair, and his mouth crushed hers.
The kiss was raw, fiercely honest, and it whipped her into a frenzy of sensations. Not a single one of her dreams had done justice to what the man could do with his mouth.
There was no exploration in how he took her mouth, no tentative melding to see if it could be anything more than a pleasant experience. No gentle welcome or a soft landing. No initial awkwardness that came with two people kissing for the first time, no searching for rhythm, no place for anything that was remotely rational.
The savagery of the need between them...this need that had been building for a long time, it tossed him around just as it did her.
He devoured her lips with his. Hunger and heat and hardness... Neha drowned in a surfeit of sensations he seemed to evoke so easily with a masterful glide of his lips, or a sensuous nip with his teeth or a rough, needy dance with his tongue. Everything she’d done to him, he paid back a hundred times over—sometimes smooth and slow, sometimes hard and demanding. Leaving her mouth stinging, her nipples taut and needy, her body scandalously ready for his possession.
A needy groan fell from her mouth when his arousal—thick and hard—rubbed against her belly, sending sparks of renewed need. She stole her hands down his body, desperate to trace that, desperate to feel what she’d done to him. He grunted in denial, his fingers arresting her questing hand. “Basta, cara!”
Neha felt his soft whisper like a cold lash against her skin. Her body cooling off in a matter of seconds into a frigid cold despite the warm air currents, she stepped away from him. “I’m sorry.” She ran a hand through her hair and bit her lip. Which was swollen and tender. The memory of digging her teeth into his lower lip and his answering growl...it was a sound she’d never forget. “I’m... I’ve no excuse for attacking you—”
“You didn’t attack me!”
She looked at him and away, but not before noticing how devastatingly handsome he looked with his hair all rumpled up, by her fingers. The flaps of his shirt open and baring that magnificent chest covered in hair. “I’ve been so up and down tonight, and I—”
“Look at me, cara! I knew what you were doing, and I was a more than willing participant.”
“Still, I’m sorry, Leo. I’m—”
“Stop saying sorry. All you did was make the first move. One nanosecond later, I would have been all over you. Cristo, do you have any idea what watching you in that wet shirt sticking to your body is doing to me.” He thrust his hand roughly through his hair, his breaths harsh. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted you? Dio mio, it seems wanting you has become a part of me. If not for the fact that you’re very important to me and my lovers don’t last long, I wouldn’t have mustered the sense to put