Page 75 of Coerced Kiss
“Was she Italian?” I ask carefully.
His reply is curt. “Yes.”
“Did you learn to speak it?”
“She tried to teach me, but she didn’t have the energy when she got sick. I remember only a few words.”
“Liketesoro?”
I noticed he sometimes calls me that when he’s angry. Otherwise, he reverts to the Englishtreasure. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about his pet name for me. I’m still undecided if it’s an endearment or patronizing. Maybe it’s a little of both.
A smile warms his eyes. “Yes, liketesoro.”
Suddenly uncomfortable with discussing the pet name he chose for me, I change the subject. “You really do know how to cook.”
Taking a spoon, he dips it in the sauce, blows on it to cool it, and brings it to my lips. “What do you think? More salt?”
For a change, I’m starving without being nauseous. I’m just about salivating for anything with tomatoes.
I close my lips around the spoon, and then I almost moan in ecstasy. I swear it’s the best tomato sauce I’ve tasted. The oregano and basil are subtle and the salty-sweet taste of the tomatoes not too overpowering.
“Mm.” I lick my lips. “This is good.”
His gaze homes in on the action, his eyes darkening as he withdraws his hand and puts the spoon on a plate. “I’m glad you approve. The pasta is almost ready.” He rounds the island station, turns my seat so that I’m facing him, and plants a palm on either side of me on the counter, effectively caging me inbetween his arms. “While we wait, how about we practice our public appearance?”
“Practice?” I say, my breath catching in my throat.
His pale blue eyes roam over my face, the light in them serious even as a playful smile tugs at his lips. “Let’s see if we can push things a little further than a touch on the shoulder.”
“Further?” I mumble like a parrot. “Further like how?”
“Like a kiss.” He fixes a heated gaze on my lips. “How would you react if I kiss you, Ms. Brennan?”
As I stare at his mouth that’s mere inches from mine, my heart starts to gallop in my chest. I freeze, my words drying up. I’ve kissed enough men in my twenty-three years, yet the prospect of pressing my lips against his does something to me that messes not only with my mind but also with my body.
Maybe it’s because he’s so far out of my league and I’m completely out of my depth. I have no idea why I don’t move when he ever so slowly lowers his head because he’s giving me ample time to react, to pull away, to say no. Yet I don’t. I do nothing, nothing at all, and when he brushes his lips over mine in the softest of caresses, it’s as if fireworks go off in my belly.
There’s no way he couldnothave heard the soft but sharp intake of my breath. He had to have felt it in the air we exchanged. We stay like that for a second, frozen on the precipice of dangerous, foreign terrain, and then he molds his lips around mine like did outside the bar, claiming my mouth with faultless tenderness and undisguised heat that ignites an inferno inside me.
He’s a good kisser. I’ll give him that. But it’s not just the skill with which he explores my mouth that elicits this powerful reaction. It’s the honesty. Because he likes this too. It’s evident in the bulge that grows against my hip.
I don’t know what comes over me, why I open my lips for him when he teases the seam with his tongue. I only know that I’mnot thinking straight any longer, not when he spreads my legs and yanks me to the edge of the seat while threading his fingers through my hair and tilting my head back for better access. Not when he cups my skull like a fragile glass bubble between his palms and plunders my mouth with hungry strokes of his tongue. Especially not when he rubs his hardness against the soft spot between my legs.
It’s the single most exhilarating kiss of my life.
Unable to bite back the sound, I moan when he deepens the caress. I’m past thinking. Past forming coherent thoughts. All I can focus on is the fire that leaps inside me. I’ve never felt so out of control. All I can do when he sucks my bottom lip into his mouth before biting down gently is to wrap my arms around his neck and to hold on.
He cups the back of my head in one big hand while putting the other on my hip. I like the soft weight of his fingers there. I like the warmth that seeps into my skin. I like it even better when he brushes his fingertips down my thigh to the hem of my dress. My breath catches on a hitch when his palm makes contact with the naked skin of my knee. Flames lick over my body as he smooths a calloused palm up the inside of my leg. I arch my back, quietly begging him to touch the place that throbs with need. When he finally brushes his knuckles over my clit in a touch so featherlight it’s barely there, I jerk in response.
He likes that too, groaning into the kiss as he doubles his onslaught on my lips while dipping his hand into the elastic of my panties. The pressure of his fingertip on the pulsing nub at the apex of my sex is as much as I can bear.
“Fuck,” he says with a sound close to a growl. “You’re soaking wet.”
It’s true. I’ve never been more turned on in my life.
I cry out when he circles my clit, tightening my arms around his neck. I’m so sensitive the softest pressure threatens to send me over the edge.
He tears his mouth from mine and pulls away to look at me. My lips tingle from the roughness of his stubble. They feel swollen and bee-stung in the most delicious way.