The Surprise Conti Child (12 page)

That she'd undone him.

He already felt as if he'd cheated himself of the sight of her unraveling, of seeing those gorgeous eyes widen and flash in pleasure, of that sensuous mouth softening. Of being drenched in the passion of her cry.

So before the tremors of her orgasm had subsided, even before she had caught her breath, he turned her around, desperate to see her.

She hung on to him like a limpid doll, eyelids drooping down, pink flush staining her cheeks and damp neck, her naked body bowed in the aftermath of her release.

High and pouty, her breasts were a languid invitation, the flare of her hips, the lithe length of her thighs a sensual feast.

Desire and tenderness and every emotion he'd never experienced buffeted him from all sides. How had he even assumed he could separate sex and emotion, especially when it was Alexis?

How could he be in control when she eroded it so easily? How could he hold himself back when she stole all of him by giving everything of hers?

Hands on her hips, he lifted her onto the bed. He shed his trousers and boxers and climbed up over her.

Feasted his gaze all over her damp, trembling body.

Doe-like eyes fluttered open and then widened slightly. “I can see you,” she said with a smile. “And touch you. I've had dreamed so many times of stroking my hands over you, of learning every inch of you. Of seeing your eyes widen in desperate need. Of you smiling at me, of knowing that you revel in this attraction between us as much as I do.”

“I do,
bella
,” he admitted hoarsely. He bent his head and surrendered to this woman. “Touch me, Alexis. All you want.”

Pushing herself onto her elbow, she reached out instantly. Fingers fell on his shoulders and fluttered down his collarbone.

Feather-soft caresses that burned him. Light strokes that learned him.

Traced the ridge of his chest. Moved in maddening circles that made his throat dry.

“Leandro?”

“Si, mia cara?”
he said breathless and still beneath her tentative touch, pulse thundering under the surface, senses screaming for more.

A fingernail raked his nipple. His breath hissed out of him. “Why does the press call you a saint?”

“The press is not always truthful,
bella
.”

“But they call Luca the devil and I know he is one when he sets his mind to it.” Now her finger moved over his abdomen, traced the roped ridge of muscle there and moved lower.

Grasping her wrist, he pushed it up over her head. With her other hand, she smoothed his brow, plunged her hands into his hair and tugged. Mouth against his, she pleaded with her lips.

She didn't demand like he had done, she simply gave of herself. And made him give of himself to her.

“After the night we shared, I stayed away from women for a long time.”

“How long?” she whispered, pressing her hot little mouth to his pectorals.

“Does it matter?”

“To me, yes.” Now, her tongue came out, licking him as if he was her favorite dessert.

He fisted his hands on the sheets, desire a live beast inside him. “Alexis...” he groaned, and held her hair in a punishing grip.

As if she understood his unspoken command perfectly, as if she was tuned in to every dark fantasy he had ever had of her, she grazed his nipple with her teeth. When she pursed her mouth and sucked on his skin, Leandro jerked, his erection drawing tight against his belly.

Dio,
he wanted her on her knees, that pert mouth around his rigid length. He wanted all the pleasures with Alexis that he'd never allowed himself before.

Her mouth reached his abdomen now. Steel would have more give than his muscles then. “Do you still want me to believe I was one of many?” she whispered against his skin. “That I was just a convenient lay?”

“
No...
my father...was indiscriminate with any number of women, abusive of my mother in ways I can't even bear to mention. I promised myself a long time ago that I would never become like him.” He forced the words out wondering if they would bring back a little sanity. “After I was with you...that next morning, I realized you had been a virgin. That I had taken you like that, with such little tenderness, against the wall, that even your gasp of pain couldn't penetrate the haze of my desire...”

A hard, inflaming kiss that delivered the depth of her want on his lips. It soothed and yet claimed. “But that pain was momentary, Leandro...nothing compared to what I felt after. Nothing compared to what you made me feel.”

He closed his eyes, the memory haunting him even now. “I couldn't bear to look at myself. I couldn't stand to think I had been so reckless with my hunger. So mindless.

“And I abhor befriending women, letting them think I was interested when I had no intention of ever marrying, just for sex. So I never touched another woman again.”

Something akin to wonder crossed her face as she cradled his cheek. “Seven years, Leandro?”

The implicit trust in her gaze, the pure pleasure in the curve of her mouth felt like a gift, one he had never received before. “Any release I needed, my hands provided it.”

Even as she stared back at him like a queen, gloriously naked, color suffused her cheeks at that. “Then it's true. I have toppled the saint from his pedestal,” she whispered with a satisfied smile before she claimed his mouth.

Soft and tentative, she slanted her lips this way and that, looking for that perfect fit. Swiped her tongue over the seam of his lips.

He pushed his hand through the silky curtain of her hair and held her there, awash in the heated seduction of her mouth. But he needed more. Soon, he took over the kiss. Dueled his tongue with her tentative one. Scraped his teeth across her lush lower lip. Sucked it into his mouth.

He explored and ravaged that soft mouth so thoroughly that her whimper raced along his spine.

But it wasn't enough.
Dio,
nothing was going to be enough except utter possession. And complete surrender.

He pushed her onto her back and covered her body with his. Inch by inch, skin to skin, hardness against soft curves, he settled over her lithe body.

A perfect fit, as if they were made for each other.

As if there was magic in the room. Something beyond passion and pleasure. Beyond the frantic beats of their hearts and the sweat-slicked friction of their skin.

There was a raw intimacy, a closeness with Alexis that he vowed to never lose.

Alex's jagged growl joined his as her breasts rubbed his chest, as she brought her knees up and his thick shaft settled against her womanhood. He jerked at the heated invitation of her sex, slick against his. Her arms vined around his neck, fingers plunging into his hair and scraping. Softness settling against his hardness in all the right ways.

She was made for him, the thought circled him.

“Leandro, please, I want to touch you... I want to—”

“No
, cara.
I can't...wait anymore.”

Pushing her thighs wide with his hips, rough hands holding her down for him, he entered her in one slick thrust and sheathed himself in her fully.

A gasp wrenched out of her as her sex stretched and closed over him like a tight fist. Every muscle in him screamed for movement, for friction, sweat gathered on his forehead. Leandro buried his mouth in the crook of her neck and counted his breaths.

Only then did he realize the tension in Alex's body, the punishing grip of her fingers on his shoulders. The thought of hurting her,
again,
cleaved him in two.

“Alexis,
mia cara
,” he said, her name a prayer on his lips, “did I hurt you?” Had he been rough in his desperation?

Slowly, she relaxed under him, her breath blowing warmly against his shoulder blades. “No...it just feels unfamiliar and strange.”

Her skin tasted like summer to his lips. “Good strange?” he somehow managed through the shrieking demands of his body.

“Overwhelmingly good, achingly...intimate.” Her words mirrored his thoughts in a moment of pure perfection. She glanced at him and then away as if she needed to hide her expression from him. “Don't you think so?”

He smiled against her trembling mouth. “You think me capable of thinking,
cara
?”

After a moment, she found his gaze again. Kissed the corner of his mouth.

Slowly, her hands drifted down his back, cupped his buttocks and then she wiggled her hips under him. Liquid fire surged through every nerve ending. “I like when you can't think, Leandro.”

It was all the sign he needed.

And then he was thrusting deep and hard inside her, breath balling up in his throat and she met him thrust to thrust, raking her fingers over his back, urging him on and on with her whimpers and moans.

Hands on her hips, he tilted her up for him and pistoned in and out, deeper and faster.

The slap of flesh, the pounding of their hearts, the damp whisper of their skin...

There was nothing civilized, nothing even remotely like self-control left in him anymore. Only the mind-numbing pleasure rushing at him mattered.

In the blink of a breath, he moved his hand and tugged the center of her slick sex with his fingers.

With a whimper, Alex bowed and bucked and fell apart around him and the convulsions of her body sent Leandro careening toward his own release.

Pleasure splintered him into a thousand pieces, slammed his heart awake as if it had merely been a functioning organ until now. His very breath a fire in the back of his throat, Leandro let out a guttural grunt at the surfeit of sensation.

Alex's hands came around him and held him hard as he fell from the dizzying pleasure.

And Leandro knew that he'd never been more vulnerable in his entire life. Knew why he'd fought and resisted this rushing fate from the moment he'd seen her again.

Not when he'd discovered the abuse his father had heaped upon his mother. Not when his mother had walked out and he had hugged a sobbing Luca and had taken on the mantle of his family and business. Not when Rosa had died and he had suddenly felt anchorless.

It seemed as if there were no coping strategies left. No automatic mechanisms that his mind could conjure to lift away the strange weight on his soul, the fever in his blood.

Alexis had burrowed herself under his skin, into his heart and if he lost her, he had a feeling his world was never going to be the same again.

CHAPTER TEN

“A
LEXIS
?”

Burrowing deeper into the warmth of his body, Alex purred. Or at least that's what the sound that escaped her throat sounded like.

“Wake up,
tesoro
.”

A deep languor claimed every sated muscle, every sensitive nerve ending. Leandro had carried her to the en suite and washed her. A rainfall shower that she hadn't known existed, purple marble tiled bathroom and Leandro's roving hands that had persuaded and pushed her to another release—the erotic sounds from her own mouth were going to haunt her every time she went in there.

Her sex felt swollen and pulsed between her legs, her muscles sore in the most delicious sort of way.

Mind numb with a profound sense of well-being, she took her own time before she remembered he'd said her name. “Hmm?” she answered back lazily, tossing about on the bed.

“Stop wiggling around and stay still.” Large hands, capable of heart-wrenching tenderness, gripped her. “I can't think if you keep doing that. Or I can think of only one thing.”

As if he didn't trust her to listen, Leandro himself shifted behind her.

His arm went around her waist and rested snug between her breasts, the long T-shirt she'd donned after their shower no barrier. Somehow, she had convinced him she needed the T-shirt, not completely comfortable with her nudity yet.

He was another issue altogether. The rough velvet of his skin was a visual and sensual feast she couldn't get enough of.

As if there was an embedded chip that reacted to his touch, her breasts became heavy, nipples sprang to peaks.

One of his legs rested between her thighs and she could already feel him hardening against her again. Her head rested on his hand, his hands combed through her still damp hair.

Need slowly uncoiled within her again. She traced his leg with her foot, a languid invitation. “Something wrong with that?”

He pushed away her foot and slapped her on her bum. “Behave,
cara
.”

She grabbed his hand and pressed a kiss to his rough palm. “Sorry, I forgot, you're ancient and decrepit. This last session probably wiped you out.” She made a regretful sound as she moved a palm up and down his forearm. God, how she loved the silky rasp of his hair-roughened arm against hers. “I won't see action again for a while, will I?”

The words had barely left her mouth when he pushed up her T-shirt, lifted her leg and entered her from behind.

The shock of his invasion made the pleasure sharper and a desperate cry wrenched from the depths of her soul. She clutched his forearm and hitched out a hard breath.

“Any complaints now,
cara
?” he asked at her ear, his breath a rattling rumble.

“God, no,” Alex whimpered as he tested their fit. The sensation was exquisite, like a lick of fire traversed down her spine, lighting every nerve ending on fire.

He felt even deeper like this, as though he was a part of her that she never wanted to lose.

“Take off your T-shirt,” he growled then. With arms that could barely hold up, Alex managed to roll the thin cotton up and over her head.

The moment she did, he slid his hand under her head, turned her so that her torso faced him. “One more time,
mia cara
.” Dark and deep, his command sent shivers through her.

Alex groaned, every inch of her supersensitive. “Enough, Leandro, please.”

He shook his head, his fingers rubbing her lower lip. When he pushed his finger into her mouth, she sucked on it. Wet heat rushed between her legs, and she writhed restlessly against him.

The dark sensuality of his demands was as revealing of the man as they were of her.

Such passion he leashed, such need he'd denied for so long, Alexis couldn't help but feel as if only she had unlocked it. Only she that all his desires belonged to.

Only she that could make all his fantasies come true.

“Yes,
mia cara
. I need to hear your scream, again.” His eyes with a deeply possessive heat. “It's never going to be enough with you,
bella
.”

Her gaze collided with his, excitement and something else a pulsating drum in her ears.

Without breaking her gaze, he bent that dark, arrogant head and took her nipple in his mouth. Soft lips suckled in that persistent rhythm that he'd discovered she liked until a flood of fire filled every inch of her.

And then he was moving within her even as his teeth grazed the hard knot, their flesh more joined than even before.

Control and inhibitions were dust beneath the thunderous roar of pleasure and the darkly sensual net of intimacy. They danced to a primal, age-old rhythm, instincts already honed to each other's needs and wants, hearts pounding together, skin slicked with sweat.

Release came upon them together in a violent cacophony of such pleasure that Alex thought she had died under the onslaught of it and became born again anew in Leandro's arms.

* * *

After what felt like an eternity of heaven, Leandro spoke into the darkness. The sheets were blissfully cool against her skin. And behind her, Leandro a fortress of warmth.

“Tell me about these folders that are full of drawings and stories.”

Alex stiffened, hitched a much-needed breath. She clicked on the night lamp and turned toward him. “How do you know about that?” She sounded defensive, but she didn't care. “It was horrible of Antonio to snoop into my private matters. For you to do that is just plain crossing so many bloody lines. Don't manipulate me—”

“Izzie told me.”

She tried to move away from him but his grip only tightened. “Because you prodded her?” she snarled. “Will you use her now to get your way?”

“
No.
She sounded very upset that she found you crying over one of them when you thought she was sleeping.”

“Oh...” Dismay and a sense of failure swirled through Alex. “I should've been more careful. I hadn't realized... God, she must have been so scared. What did—?”

“Shh...calm down,
tesoro
. Izzie is just like you, strong and resilient. I reassured her that I would take care of her
mamma
.”

The wild beat of her heart calmed as Alex glanced into Leandro's gray eyes. She bit back the instant, defensive retort that sprang to her lips. It was his instinct to be protective, true. It didn't mean that he didn't care for her, just a little.

She couldn't believe him heartless anymore, not after what they had shared. Not now when she understood what had made him so rigidly protective of those around him.

Something in her ached at the thought of him losing his innocence at such a young age, of him taking over responsibility for Luca and Valentina.

How would there be anything left for his own indulgence? Would he even know his own heart when it had always been buried under such weight?

“Thanks for reassuring her,” she said.

Something warm filtered through his gray eyes and he laced their fingers together. “Should I thank you for raising such a wonderfully strong girl? We're a team now,
si
?”

She nodded, liking the sound of that.

The kiss he pressed to the back of her hand was tender, almost reverent. “So...what do I have to do to have the privilege of seeing the contents of these folders?”

“How do you know it's a privilege?” she retorted, keeping it casual.

Sharing those stories was like giving him a piece of her heart, the most precious, guarded part. So much of her sense of self was tied to them.

What if he thought they were rubbish like her parents had done? Or what if he used them and their value to her to manipulate her?

Alex didn't think she could bear it if he did that. There would be no coming back from that, even for Izzie's sake. It was better to keep that part to herself as she'd always done.

That way lay safety. For all of them.

“Izzie says they are fantastic. I believe her.”

“Izzie is six years old. And they are very private. Only one person's seen them besides Izzie.”

Instantly, he scowled. “Justin?”

Alex smothered a smile, knowing it would only rile him further. He sounded so fiercely jealous and her heart did a skip.
God
, how pathetic was she. “No, Adrian,” she answered. “My parents thought it was an utter waste of time when I showed them once.”

“Your parents are idiots,
bella
.”

“Hey!” She swatted him on his shoulder. “I'd just gotten an F in math, they discovered Adrian pretty much did my science project from start to finish
and
they had been called to a meeting with the teacher to discuss my lack of
application to academics
. And then they found out I had pages and pages of these...doodles,” Alex repeated her mother's word, though a part of her still hurt at the denigration. “They didn't know what to do with me.”

“So tell me, what did Adrian think of them?”

How did he always know to ask the right question?

“He loved them and told me I should never stop. Never lose my pleasure in them. He had all these grand plans of becoming my agent and selling them and used to beg if he could live off me when I became a famed, big-name author.” Tears filled her eyes, just remembering his goofy smile and his tight hugs. And his easy acceptance of all her flaws and weird quirks. “He was just being kind but I loved him even more for that.”

“Wait, so other than Adrian, you've never shared them with anyone? Never wondered if they should be shared with people, if they would bring pleasure and joy to someone else?”

Alex shrugged. “I told you they're not important.”

“Leave it to me to decide that,” he growled back at her. In utter contrast, he cupped her cheek with such tenderness and kissed her mouth. “Why were you crying,
bella
?”

She lowered her eyes, her insecurities and her love of those drawings roping together into a twisted knot. “I was just probably feeling emotional. You already know that the accident was bad and not just physically.”

“Will you lie after telling me we have to do better with each other, Alexis?”

Alex sighed and pulled up her left hand. She could never share them with him but maybe speaking of her loss would lessen the pain of it?

“I'm left-handed, Leandro. For years, those drawings and stories were my only escape, my only relief from the pressure I felt at not being brilliant like Adrian. Even from the grief of losing him.

“Now, I can't even hold a pencil properly for more than a minute, much less draw anything. It feels like the one thing I enjoy so much—” The one thing she thought defined her, the one thing she had built her entire identity around, “—has been snatched away from me.”

As if she was now truly nothing, just as her mother had said for all those years.

Her tears slipped from her eyes, and Alex hid her face in his neck, refusing to let him see them.

She felt so small in that moment, like that little girl who had forever waited for her parents to tell her that she was loved just as she was.

But at least now, she had accepted that no one would. That her own acceptance of herself had to be enough. There was relief, painful but still there, in that truth.

Soundlessly, he wrapped those corded arms of his around her and squeezed her tight. “We'll see world-class specialists,
cara
. We'll do whatever it takes. It'll come back, you will see. Whatever exercises they prescribe, you'll do them with me from now on.” Authority clipped his words, making it a harsh command. “No more lifting things or—”

Instantly, her hackles rose. “I'm not an imbecile, Leandro. I've been doing everything I was told to.”

“You will indulge me. In the meanwhile, you can show me some of those lovely folders,
si
?” Pure mischief glinted in the gray eyes and the serious mouth, transforming his entire face. He looked younger, carefree in a way she'd never seen him. “I think it's important to share them with me so that you don't feel like you're alone—”

Alex thumped him hard on his shoulder. “You're a horrible, manipulative man, do you know that? You just can't help it, can you?”

Laughing, he fell back against the bed, and took her with him. Alex lay sprawled over him, her legs tangled with his, her breasts crushed against his muscles. It felt so natural to lie with him like this, so effortlessly easy.

“Maybe I'll have to withhold other things from you until you share them with me then.”

Share them with me...

He was asking to know a part of her, showing interest in the thing that mattered to no one except her. Only Adrian had ever done that.

A matter, for all Leandro knew, that didn't give him any advantage in this relationship of theirs. Hope yawned in her entire being, an incandescent flicker that was as good as imagining that she, only Alexis, and not the idea of the mother of his child, held his interest now, without his sense of duty chaining him to her.

“Let's see about that,” Alex challenged before sliding over him and straddling him.

She gasped as she felt him hardening and lengthening against her core, just where she needed. She fisted her hand around the base, and the feral growl that fell from his mouth filled her with a satisfaction unlike she had ever known.

Rising up on her knees, she took him into her body and then there were no challenges between them, no withholding, nothing but mutual pleasure.

* * *

Alex finished her swim in the infinity pool and rubbed down her arms and legs. The Italian sun was at its peak but she lingered at the covered stone patio deck for another few minutes.

The scent of olive trees and the spice garden to the side of the villa that she had learned Leandro tended to personally permeated the air.