CHAPTER TEN
LUCCA’S MOUTH MOVED over hers with heart-stopping thoroughness, taking his time with each stroke and glide of his tongue against hers, building her need for him to a point where she was feverish to feel him inside her. Her inner core was slick with a clawing, aching want, a pulse beating so insistently for satiation she moved against him, breathlessly urging him to take things to completion.
He kept her dangling, teasing her to the edge and backing off again, his mouth on her breasts, then underneath them where the skin was baby soft and supersensitive. Then to the cave of her belly button where he swirled his tongue in and out, making her nerves scream for him to go farther down south. His fingers played with her, not enough to set her off but enough to make her desperate for the fulfilment he promised.
She raised her hips off the bed, giving a gasping plea for him to end this torture. ‘Now. Please now.’
‘Condom first.’
Lottie watched as he sheathed himself, held her breath as he came back over her, balancing his weight on his forearms. He took it slowly, far too slowly for her liking, but a part of her secretly delighted in his consideration for her comfort. The shallow sex-crazed hedonist the press painted him as was at complete odds with who was making love to her so tenderly now. Nothing about his movements, his caresses, his kisses, his strokes, had anything selfish about them.
They were all about her pleasure. Her comfort.
He had put her pleasure before his own. It must be killing him to have to wait so long for his own release. She could feel the turgid length of him against her labia, only his steely self-control delaying the primal urge to mate.
He gently nudged her apart and tested her acceptance of him. ‘Tell me if I’m hurting you.’ His deep voice was a sexy burr.
‘You’re not hurting me.’ She clutched at his buttocks and drew him in farther. He felt so thick and strong and her body was so wet and greedy for him. She heard him suck in a breath as he went in deeper. She could feel his control wavering. He wanted to bury himself to the hilt but only kindness and consideration for her comfort was stopping him.
Lottie dug her fingers into his taut flesh as she lifted herself up to receive him farther. He glided a little deeper, waiting for her body to accommodate him. Her body gripped him tightly. She felt the ripples of pleasure course through her. Her wetness. His thickness. His strength. Her softness.
She grew more and more impatient. Her body was poised on a precipice. Tense. Titillated. Tortured. Her flesh was crying out. Every nerve screaming, Now. Now. Now.
‘Please...’ Her voice was a gasping plea. ‘Oh, please...’
He gave a grunt against her neck as he surged forward, the swollen thickness of him completely filling her, the friction of him delighting her senses, reeling her senses in a crazy whirlpool.
His thrusts were gentle to start with. She could feel him holding himself back in the way he measured each stroke of his body within hers. He gradually increased the rhythm, which felt strangely familiar to her and yet unlike anything she had experienced before. It was as if her body recognised him. Was uniquely tuned to him. Responded to him like no one else. Responded to him with honesty, with naturalness, with enthusiasm and zero self-consciousness.
He slipped a hand between their bodies, caressing her *oris in soft little teasing strokes that triggered a tumultuous release that reverberated throughout her body, shaking it like the tremors of a powerful earthquake. So intense was her release she momentarily lost all sense of time and space. She was limbless, floating in a languid sea of contentment....
He kept thrusting, working himself to his own release, and taking her along for the ride. She clung to him as his pace quickened, her body tingling at the way his was so thick and tight within hers. She felt the tension building in him, in the strongly defined muscles of his back and shoulders, in his thighs where they were entwined so erotically with her own.
He drew in a breath and let it out in a shuddering whoosh as he emptied himself, the quaking of his body sending aftershocks of pleasure through hers.
Lottie waited for the moment of awkwardness. The messy business of the condom. The furtive scramble for clothes. The regret. The I-shouldn’t-have-had-sex-with-you moment that always felt like a blot on her conscience.
It didn’t happen.
Instead Lucca brushed a tendril of hair back off her face with a touch as gentle as the sweep of a feather. His expression was not arrogant, proud or smugly satisfied. It was contemplative...thoughtful, searching. ‘I didn’t hurt you?’
‘No...’ She touched a fingertip to the small frown that had appeared between his brows, smoothing it like one would do a knotted muscle. ‘It was wonderful. You were wonderful.’
He captured her finger and kissed its tip, his eyes holding hers. ‘We were wonderful.’
Lottie wasn’t naive enough to think he’d found sleeping with her anything out of the ordinary. She had both of her feet firmly planted on the concrete-solid ground of reality. But it was hard to stop a tiny segment of her heart from hoping he had found something different about their union . Not just her lack of experience, but her response to him and his to her. Had he felt that powerful surge of sensation through his flesh with every partner he’d ever had? Had he felt the world spin out of control in that senses-spinning moment when no thought could anchor itself?
Had he wondered if one night could turn into many nights?
No.
She put on a breezy smile. ‘At least in future I won’t have to pretend. My future lovers will be eternally grateful to you for sorting that out for me.’
He eased away from her, dealing with the condom with what seemed unnecessary attention to detail. ‘I thought the goal for royally born girls like you was finding a suitable man to marry, not go shopping for multiple lovers.’
Lottie rolled onto her stomach and propped her chin on her crossed-over hands. ‘I think it’d be wise for me to try before I buy. Get a feel for what I like in a lover. Get a little more experience. Experiment a bit.’
It was a long moment before he turned to glance at her over his shoulder. She wondered if he had paused long enough to assemble his features into an indifferent expression. ‘Go for it.’
She idly kicked her lower legs up and down. ‘Maybe you could suggest someone for me. That guy who owned the nightclub seemed—’
‘No.’ The word was delivered flatly. Implacably. He got up from the bed, snatched his trousers from the floor, stepping into them with what looked like controlled violence.
‘What’s the matter?’
He picked up his shirt but instead of putting it on he scrunched it in one hand as if it were nothing but yesterday’s newspaper. ‘Listen to yourself. One orgasm and you’re suddenly ready to open your legs for anyone who shows the remotest bit of interest in you?’
‘It wasn’t one orgasm. It was two.’
He made a sound halfway between a laugh and a muttered curse as he sent his hand through his hair. ‘I knew this was going to be a mistake.’
Lottie got off the bed and used the sheet as a wrap around her nakedness. ‘I don’t know what the fuss is all about. I’ve a perfect right to express myself sexually with whomever I want. You’ve had loads of lovers. I’ve only had two.’ She freed her hair from behind the makeshift collar of the sheet. ‘I want to make up for all the time I’ve lost. I’m twenty-three years old and I’ve only had two orgasms, apart from the ones I—well, let’s not go into that. It’s not the same thing. It’s much nicer with a partner.’
‘Make it up with me.’
She looked at him blankly for a moment. ‘What?’
‘Make the time up with me.’ He tossed his balled-up shirt to the wing chair, not even noticing it hit the floor instead. ‘Have a relationship with me. Just till your sister’s wedding is done and dusted.’
‘Did you just say “relationship”?’
‘Fling.’ A muscle ticked in his jaw. ‘I meant a fling.’
She pretended to take her time thinking about it, tapping at her lips with two fingertips. ‘I don’t know...seems pretty risky to me.’
‘Risky?’ A frown beetled his brows. ‘How?’
‘There are a lot of perks to partnering a princess. As social climbing goes you don’t get to go much higher.’
His chin jerked backwards. ‘Social climbing?’ He let out a swear word in Italian. ‘You think that’s what this is about?’
She gave him her best arch look. ‘What else could it be about?’
He took her by the shoulders in a grip that was undergirded by steel. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said, and crushed his mouth to hers.
* * *
Lucca opened his eyes after a long deep sleep and realised he was still in Lottie’s bed. She was snuggled up next to him, her cheek resting on his chest, her hair in a sexily mussed-up tangle on the pillow. Her right hand was lying just above his groin. He could already feel the stirring of his blood at the thought of that dainty little hand going lower.
He had never spent the night in anyone’s bed but his own. He had never spent the night with anyone, period. But here it was close to 6:00 a.m. and he wanted to drive himself into her hot wet centre and forget about everything but the lust that consumed him when he was with her.
For that’s all it was—lust.
He had a strong sex drive. He hadn’t had more than a day or two of celibacy since he was a teenager. Which was why this set-up was acceptable for him right now. Even more acceptable since he’d received that email from his father’s CEO the day before. He’d almost talked himself into believing that’s why he had offered Lottie a fling till the end of the month. Almost. The anticipated drop in hotel bookings due to the quarantine imposed in Monte Carlo hadn’t occurred elsewhere as expected. Apparently the news of his involvement with Princess Charlotte of Preitalle had precipitated an upswing of bookings in Chatsfield Hotels across the globe, unmatched by any advertising campaign ever conducted before. The romantic mix of prim-and-proper royal and irascible promiscuous rake had somehow lifted the Chatsfield brand to an all-time high.
Lucca felt Lottie stir beside him. One of her feet brushed against his and she gave a little purring murmur as she burrowed closer, her hand closing around him. ‘Ooh, is that for me?’ she asked.
A shudder of desire shot through him like a lightning bolt. He deftly rolled her beneath him, only pausing long enough to get a condom in place before he entered her in a slick deep thrust. ‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those annoying morning people who insist the day begins at dawn.’
She smiled against his lips. ‘You’re a fine one to talk. I barely touched you and you sprang to attention.’
He kissed her deeply, stroking her tongue with his, swallowing her gasps and whimpers, pushing her to the edge before backing off. He did it again and again and again, teasing her with the anticipation of release, making her want him so badly she clawed at his back like a cat.
He relished the power he had over her. He needed to prove to himself that she wanted him more than he wanted her. He had never allowed that power balance to shift. He wasn’t going to start now. He would have a fling with her but it would be physical, not emotional.
He hooked one of her legs over his hip and drove into her relentlessly, deeper and deeper, faster and faster, until she finally threw her head back and gave a primal scream, her body thrashing and bucking wildly beneath his. Then and only then did he let himself fly free in a shattering orgasm that made his spine buckle as if each vertebra had been loosened.
He rolled off her and lay on his back, taking a moment to get his breathing back under control as the afterglow settled over him like warm, healing rays of sunshine.
Lottie circled one of his nipples with her fingertip. ‘Is it always the same for you?’
Lucca kept his eyes closed. ‘Not always.’
She sent her finger anticlockwise this time. ‘What makes it different?’
You make it different. He pushed the thought away, along with her hand, and got up to dispose of the condom. ‘Lots of things.’
‘Like what?’
‘Energy levels, alcohol consumption, jet lag, mood.’ He picked up his trousers, grimaced at the creases and tossed them back on the floor. He turned to see her worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Something fisted in his chest when he saw the reddened patch of beard rash on her chin. If he had done that to her face what had he done to her with his trying-to-prove-a-point-to-himself lovemaking?
He got his answer when she rose from the bed. She winced as she took her first step but tried to disguise it by turning her back to him as she hunted for her glasses.
‘Lottie?’ He put a hand on her arm and handed her the frames he had taken off the bridge of her cute little nose the night before. ‘Are you sore?’
She put on glasses and a brave smile all at the same time and his gut fisted again. ‘I’m fine.’
He gently tipped up her chin. ‘You’ve got beard rash. I’m sorry.’ He touched her lower lip with his thumb. ‘I should’ve toned it down a bit.’
‘It’s fine...I’ll put some concealer on it.’
He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. ‘A warm bath might help. Want me to run you one?’
‘That would be lovely.’
* * *
A few minutes later Lucca sat on the edge of the Jacuzzi-size bathtub and watched like an indulgent parent as Lottie played with the soap bubbles. ‘I can’t remember the last time I had a bubble bath,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten how much fun it is.’ She cupped a handful of bubbles and blew them towards him. ‘It’d be more fun if you were in here with me. There’s heaps of room. I could practically do laps. Why don’t you join me?’
‘You know why.’ He picked up a handful of bubbles and piled them on her tawny head like a crown.
She gave him a shy little smile and then gathered some more bubbles and placed them on the tops of her bent knees, watching with what seemed studious intent as they wobbled there precariously for a moment before sliding down her legs. ‘Do you run bubble baths for your other lovers?’
‘No, but I had a hot tub orgy once.’
She made a business of scooping up two more kneepads of bubbles, positioning them just so. ‘Was it fun?’
Lucca didn’t have to think too long before he answered. ‘Not particularly.’
She looked at him then, her gaze direct. ‘Why do you use sex as an outlet when you’re such a talented artist? Why not put that energy into your drawing and painting instead?’
He got up from the bath’s edge and brushed the suds off his thighs. ‘You shouldn’t stay in too long. You’ll get all wrinkly like a prune.’
She turned in the tub to face him, sending bubbles over the edge of the bath like lava flow. ‘Why are you running away from your talent? Why are you hiding it from everyone?’
‘Talented artists line every street throughout Europe.’ He wiped his hands on a towel and stuffed it back on the rail haphazardly. ‘Didn’t you see some of them the other day outside that restaurant we went to in Nice?’
‘Then why aren’t you out there with them? At least then other people will get to see your work.’
Lucca resorted to his tried and trusty friend—scorn. ‘Oh, yes, I can see that headline. Hotel Chain Heir Touting Amateur Wares on Back Streets of French Riviera. Yeah, that would work.’
‘You don’t believe you’re talented.’ She said it as if it were a total shock to her.
It wasn’t to him.
He knew his limitations. He knew what it took to get a foothold in the art world.
And it wasn’t family money and bedroom charm.
Lucca turned his back on her frowning expression. ‘I’m going to see what’s happening about this crazy quarantine. The manager was supposed to call me an hour ago to update me.’
‘I’ll pose for you.’
He stopped at the bathroom door and turned to look at her. She was standing in a sea of bubbles, her hands cupped across her breasts and her feminine mound like a modern-day version of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.
His breath snagged in his throat like a fine cotton shirtsleeve catching on a nail. She was all that he was not: innocence and beauty. Trust and honesty. Decency and integrity. Sweetness and sincerity.
Her gaze challenged his in a little lock that made her eyes look like green sea glass. ‘I want you to draw me, Lucca.’
‘I’ve drawn you.’
‘Not like that.’ Her hands fell from her body to hang by her sides. ‘Like this.’
Lucca let his gaze soak up the sight of her. She had never looked more beautiful than she did right now. How could he not want to draw her? To capture this moment when her body told him a story that only he and she knew. A private sensual tale of two opposites finding something in the other that no one else could ever understand. He didn’t understand it himself. It was a story he was still uncovering. Page by page. Chapter by chapter. Scene by scene. Word by word.
Discovering layers to her and of himself he had not realised were there until now. ‘Why?’
‘Because I want to see how you see me.’
‘I’ve never done a nude before.’ He gave her a flash of his bad-boy smile. ‘Well, not like that, I mean.’
‘That will make it even more special. Something that’s just between us. No one else has to see it. I wouldn’t want anyone else to see it. It’ll be totally private.’
He rubbed a hand over the back of his head, still wrestling with his conscience. It was a surprise to him that he still had one. A big surprise. He saw the trust shining in her bright clear gaze and felt like something dark and dirty inside him had been cleansed. ‘I thought you said art was to be shared?’
‘It will be shared.’ Her dimples appeared as she smiled. ‘By us.’
* * *
‘Can I look now?’ Lottie asked the following afternoon.
‘No, sit still while I get the angle of the light falling across your shoulder.’
‘But I’m getting cold.’
‘Hey, sweetheart, this was your idea, remember?’ He dipped his paintbrush and bent back to the task, his concentration fiercely played out on his features, making him look formidable and cross rather than playboy handsome.
Lottie wasn’t cold so much as she was dying to see what he had done. They were due to fly back to the island tomorrow now the quarantine had been lifted. The bug had been identified as food poisoning, ironically from a bakery that supplied the hotel. Only a handful of guests had been affected but the authorities had taken conservative measures to keep the infection contained.
The time spent with Lucca had more than made up for any inconvenience. She could not remember a time when she’d felt as happy and contented in someone’s presence. The private Lucca was not the public Lucca, or maybe she brought out a different side to him. She didn’t delude herself with the thought their relationship—fling—would last longer than it took for Madeleine and Edward to drive out of the Chatsfield Hotel driveway with Just Married written in shaving foam on the back windscreen.
But at least she would have something of him to keep with her always. His painting of her would be a reminder of the first time in his life when he had committed to something—someone—for more than a few hours.
‘Right.’ He sat back and wiped his forehead with a paint-smeared cloth that looked suspiciously like a Chatsfield Hotel hand towel. ‘It needs a few more touches but I’ll do that when we get back. This coat has to dry before I add any more detail.’
Lottie stepped out of the bath and quickly dried her feet and ankles on a towel before coming to look over his shoulder. ‘Do I really look like that?’
He frowned. ‘What? You don’t like it?’
She suddenly realised he was uncertain and hiding it behind a gruff impatience. ‘I don’t know....’ She put a finger to her lips and tapped against them as if in deep critical thought. ‘I think you could’ve done a better job with my breasts.’
‘What do you mean?’ He scowled at her irritably. ‘I spent bloody ages on your breasts. They’re perfect. They’ve got just the right amount of form and light and shadow.’
Lottie tapped him on the end of his nose with a playful fingertip, flashing him a cheeky got-you smile. ‘You are such a sensitive boy.’
‘Little witch.’ He grabbed her by the hips and pulled her close, taking her right breast into the hot cavern of his mouth and drawing deeply.
She looked down at his dark head against her white skin and shivered. She stroked her fingers through his closely cropped hair, breathing in the scent of the signature Chatsfield shampoo. She wondered with a sharp little pang if there would be a time in the future when she could smell cedarwood, leather, white rose and lavender and not think of him.
Lucca’s mouth went to her other breast, his tongue teasing the nipple into a hardened point. Her belly turned over in delight as one of his hands left her hip to cup her intimately. She pushed against him, wanting more, aching for him with every throbbing cell of her being.
‘We’re supposed to be giving you a rest,’ he said.
‘I’m rested.’
‘No, you’re not.’ He put her from him but softened it with a rueful smile. ‘Stop tempting me, baby girl. Don’t you know creative types are easily distracted?’
‘I like distracting you.’ She traced his bottom lip with her finger, then over his top one. ‘You look so intense when you’re working. You get deep frown lines here.’ She touched his forehead. ‘You look moody and grumpy, sort of like Beethoven.’
He gave a self-deprecating laugh. ‘Yes, well, that’s a side of me no one else sees. Thank God.’
Lottie put her hands on his shoulders and looked into dark brown eyes. ‘You’re a good person, Lucca Chatsfield. Don’t let anyone ever tell you any different.’
‘Don’t go pinning any angel wings on me, little princess.’ His eyes contained a dangerous glint. ‘I’m rotten to the core.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
His hands cupped her bottom, bringing her between his spread thighs. His erection was tenting his jeans; she could feel it pressing against her thigh, making her need of him all the more desperate. She reached down and undid his waistband, sliding his zip down and freeing him to her hand, caressing that proudly jutting flesh as she watched pleasure play out over his features. ‘You like it when I do that?’
‘What do you think?’
She rubbed his shaft up and down, rolling her fingertip over the bead of moisture that oozed from his tip. ‘I want to pleasure you.’
‘Here’s the thing.’ He stood and scooped her up in his arms. ‘I have this little rule about ladies coming first. Call me old-fashioned but that’s the way I always do things.’
Lottie quivered with anticipation as he lowered her to the bed in his suite. His eyes were black with desire as he parted her legs, stroking the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, ramping up her excitement with each slow caress. By the time he put his mouth to her she was already flying. Her back arched off the bed, her fingers clawing at the bedcover as wave after wave of ecstasy rippled through her. The intensity of her response to him always shocked her. It took her by surprise each and every time. Her response was never quite the same. There were new things to learn about her body each time he touched her.
But now it was time for her to learn more about his.
Lottie pushed him onto his back on the bed and straddled him. He was fully engorged, painfully so if the look on his face was anything to go by. ‘I want to suck you dry.’ She could barely believe she had said the shockingly erotic words, let alone meant them.
‘Not without a condom.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s safer for you with one.’ He reached for protection in the bedside drawer and handed it to her. ‘You can put it on me if you like.’
She took it from him and tore the packet with her teeth. ‘Can I put it on with my mouth?’
‘You’re inner bad girl is letting it all hang out tonight, isn’t she?’
She gave him a teasing look. ‘Do you think you can you handle her?’
He smiled a wickedly sexy smile. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’