was an intrinsic part of him etched on his features again. Lost to her in those few seconds. “This ghastly place needs new memories, anyway. I can think of nothing better than walking in here a few years from now and picturing you, all damp and naked and waiting for me.”
That glitter in his eyes at his imagined image of her was incredibly sexy. “But—”
“Second thoughts, cara?”
Neha shivered at the blatant hunger written over his features. At the dawning resolve in his eyes. At the unspoken challenge in every pore of his body. It wasn’t enough that she’d thrown herself at him, was it? He would strip her bare, of clothes and defenses, until there was not even a sliver of doubt that she’d walked into this with every sense alert, every cell desperate for it.
Leonardo Brunetti wasn’t a man who would give anything of himself without demanding everything in return.
“I’m more than ready to persuade you, like you did me. Unless you prefer the dark and a bed, then, we will walk back to my—”
Neha tugged the hem of her T-shirt up and over her head in a smooth movement that surprised the heck out of even her. The appearance of the lacy baby-pink bra and how it cupped her breasts, the way his eyes drank her in, pushed away the hesitation that came with baring her body to a man after a long time. To the man she’d always be attracted to on so many levels.
“I forgot there’s a reason you’ve held my interest for so many years, despite my every effort to suffocate it, sì? Dio en cielo, you’re sexy and bold and you will be the death of me, cara.”
Every word out of his mouth bucked up Neha a little more.
She didn’t wait for another order. In for a penny, in for a pound. Not that her heart wasn’t beating at a pace that might send it careening out of her chest. But Neha had never lacked for guts once she’d set her mind on a goal. Never lacked the gumption to see things through thoroughly.
While the media regularly published articles about how she’d gained weight or that her body type wasn’t currently in fashion, Neha had never let the criticism get to her. Thanks to her mum’s constant positive dialogue and praise when Neha had complained as a teenager that she was too big, everywhere, she’d developed a healthy appreciation for her body early on in her life.
Reaching her hand behind her, she undid the clasp of her bra. An expansive sigh drummed up her chest as her heavy breasts were freed from the metal underwires of her snug bra. Dark color streaked Leo’s cheeks as he watched the gentle bounce of her breasts.
Her spine straight, she threw her bra at his feet, reveling in the naked desire chasing away every other shadow from his face. The damp air currents swirling around the greenhouse kissed her nipples, making them rigid. Her skin was damp, and hot, and felt far too tight to contain her.
Holding his gaze, she kicked off her shoes. The smooth floor was surprisingly cold against her bare feet, a welcoming contrast to her overheated body. Then she peeled off her shorts and stepped out of them, standing in front of him in white lacy knickers. She’d never been more glad of her expensive lingerie habit—her one decadent indulgence.
He made a thorough inventory of her—as if he was determined to not miss an inch of everything she had bared. Her heart thudded so loudly in her ears that she could barely hear herself think.
“I’m glad you waited to take this chance with me, cara. I’m glad you decided I wasn’t worthy of you back then. That twenty-year-old, he was full of arrogance and ego and vigor. He didn’t have enough sense to appreciate—” his gaze touched her everywhere: her bare breasts, the firm and yet soft curve of her belly, her muscled thighs, the white lace barely covering her sex “—everything about you. He wouldn’t have known what to do with a bold, sensual creature like you. But me, now... I can appreciate everything you are. I can appreciate what a gift you are.”
And just like that, Neha knew she’d picked the right man to do this with. She mock frowned and licked her lips. His gaze zeroed in on the action. “Are you saying the thirty-six-year-old man has all the sense but lacks in vigor?”
A flash of white teeth against dark skin that gleamed with such masculine intent that some places in her body tightened and some loosened. He undid the rest of the buttons on his shirt and shrugged it off those broad shoulders. “Why ask questions when you’re about to try it, tesoro?”
Between one blink and the next, he was all over her, a violent storm of need and demand that pulled her in.
His mouth crushed hers, his arms were steel bands around her body and his hard thigh was lodged in between hers, almost lifting her up, rubbing exactly where she needed contact. She dug her nails into the bands of muscle in his back and rubbed herself shamelessly against the taut clench of his thighs.
“Cristo, you’re wet already,” he whispered, licking into her mouth just as eagerly as she clung to him.
The slide of his rough chest over her sensitized nipples was a sensation she’d remember to her dying breath. His hands seemed to be everywhere on her body and yet landed nowhere. Not for enough time. Not to her satisfaction.
His hands patted every inch of her back, his teeth tugging and his tongue licking at the hurt, and then moved to her chest. The graze of his callused fingers over her swollen nipples sent a needy moan rippling out of her mouth. Learning her, drawing on her body’s cues, he rolled the tight knots back and forth between his fingers, tightening the arrow of need concentrating in her lower belly.
Pleasure flew in rivulets up and down her body, there one second, fleeing to a new part of her the next, driving Neha to near madness.
When he bent her over the counter that he’d been leaning against and brought his mouth to her breast, Neha jerked at the wet warmth. He licked around the center begging for his attention in mind-numbing circles. Blew hot air, plumped and shaped and caressed the soft weight with such exquisite skill that Neha arched into his touch, begging for more and more. Again and again his clever fingers and his cleverer mouth ministered to her, noting her responses, driving her wild, waiting for the wet lash to reach the place where she needed it the most.
“I’ve had dreams of touching you like this. Cristo, I’ve brought myself to...”
He stopped when Neha jerked her head up, his words just as arousing as his caresses. “You what?” The thought of Leo taking pleasure in an image of her was like a hot cinder going off in her entire body.
Color streaked his cheeks and those thick lashes hid away his expression. She rubbed his lower lip with the pad of her thumb. “Show me,” she said, knowing that he’d always be a man of actions and not words. Never words. Even if every cell in her wanted to hear all the intimate things he’d thought of her through these years. “I’m in your hands, lover. Do whatever you want with me.”
“Sì?”
“Sì.”
“What do you want?” he asked, his hands never stopping in their exploration of her body. Cupping her buttocks, tracing the line of her spine, palming her breasts, nipping her lips. On and on and on, he kept the fever building in her.
“Your mouth, now, here,” she demanded boldly, cupping her breast and raising it up to his mouth like a prize.
His nostrils flared, primal male satisfaction in every carved angle. “Dio, only you could demand and yet somehow give, cara mia.”
She didn’t have enough brain cells left to figure out his cryptic remark. All she cared about was that he...
And then he was there. The cavern of his mouth was there, surrounding the hard tip of her nipple. Wet. Warm. Welcoming. First this breast and then its twin, until her nipples were gleaming with wetness and exquisitely sensitive even to his warm exhale.
He licked and stroked the nipple with a thousand lashes of his tongue, pressing up against it in such a cleverly wicked way that each swipe