Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Ruthless Demands. Lynne Graham

full breasts with an almost reverent hand, pausing to toy with the protruding tips before bowing his head to lash his tongue across the tender crests.

      Jemima huffed, lashes fluttering as sweet, seductive sensation snaked down from her nipples to her feminine core and joined the throbbing heat gathering there. Long brown fingers cradled her bare, rose-tipped curves and his mouth grew a little rougher while he teased the engorged buds, licking and suckling and nibbling with an erotic expertise that made her hips writhe against the mattress. She did not have a single thought in her head, only a sense of shock at the raw intensity of what he was making her feel.

      With impatient hands he wrenched her out of her skirt and tossed his shirt on the floor to join it. Jemima gazed up at him with wondering appreciation, her attention lingering helplessly on the sleek bronzed torso composed of lean, hard muscle that swooped impressively down to frame a flat stomach and narrow hips. His shoulders were wide and as rounded with rippling muscles as his biceps. Only then as she reluctantly tore her attention from him did she become conscious of her naked breasts, but as she lifted her hands instinctively to cover herself he caught them in one of his and pinned them above her head.

      ‘No interfering,’ he told her in a roughened undertone. ‘We only do this my way, piccolo mia.’

      Colour washed her cheeks because she felt literally shameless lying there half-naked. He used his mouth to torment a straining nipple and she gasped, all self-consciousness wrested from her in the space of a moment. ‘Let me touch you...’ she pleaded.

      He released her wrists. ‘Some other time,’ he mumbled, kissing a haphazard trail down over her ribcage and her tightening stomach to part her thighs.

      Jemima froze, incredulous at his position and mortified, at least until he touched her and it was as if wildfire shot through her veins. Just as quickly there was nothing in her mind but a feverish concentration on what he was doing to her and how incredibly good it made her feel. Pushing her thighs back, he started slow with a long swipe of his tongue and when her hips lifted of their own accord he laughed softly.

      ‘I’m really good at this,’ he told her shamelessly.

      And he didn’t lie. He found every sensitive spot of arousal hidden in her tender folds, traced and teased those places with sleek, skilled fingertips, the glide and dip of his tongue and even the edge of his teeth. She could feel herself growing achingly wet in response, her heartbeat thumping inside her chest as if she were running a race. A fullness like a dam began to gather and build low in her pelvis and she turned this way and that to cope with the rise of heat and the throbbing torture of his electric exploration, restricted by his strong hold on her hips. Fire was burning through her as sensation piled on sensation at mesmerising speed. And then her own response started becoming more than she could contain, tiny spasms rippling through her quivering body and finally growing into a convulsive wave that swept her up and flung her high before sending her sobbing to earth again. She felt as though the top of her head were flying off while her body felt detached and heavy.

      ‘I am burning for you, piccolo mia,’ Luciano growled, sliding up over her to claim her mouth again.

      He tasted of her and that shocked her but she was already in a state of shock so a little more didn’t seem to matter. She had stepped out of her safe comfortable world into a far more dangerous one and learned weakness. And it wasn’t the incredible allure of what he had made her feel that was her weakness, she acknowledged numbly. Her weakness was him. It was the heady joy she experienced when she saw the wicked smile in those lustrous golden eyes gazing down at her with satisfaction. It was knowing that his pleasing her had pleased him, made him feel good, lifted him out of the bad mood he had been in. That gave her a high more powerful than anything she had ever felt and incandescent warmth filled her.

      ‘You do something crazy to me,’ Luciano groaned as he rolled back from her to deftly take care of protection. ‘I almost forgot to use a condom.’

      Long fingers gripped her hips as he tilted her back and shifted against her. And she felt him nudge against her most tender flesh for the first time. It relit the fire that he had only recently sated, sending a frisson of reflexive hunger coursing through her again. Below his tousled black curls the arresting planes of his lean dark face were taut; his eyes blazed scorching gold with need. He took her mouth again with his, unexpectedly slow and gentle until his tongue delved between her lips and tangled with her own in a delicious dance. Nothing had ever been as arousing as that kiss and it fired her adrenaline. Her hands lifted to sink her fingers into his luxuriant hair and hold him to her but he pulled away a split second before he pushed into her.

      ‘You’re still so tight,’ Luciano growled in frustration, stilling in an effort to accustom her to his girth, raw need driving his big powerful body as potently as a gun to his head.

      She could feel her body stretching to accommodate him and apprehension gathered. She couldn’t tell him that he would be her first because he believed she had birthed his son. He believed she was experienced and would undoubtedly prefer that to the rather pathetic truth. She squeezed her eyes tight shut and arched up to him in determined welcome, keen to get her introduction over with before the little regretful voices inside her head could gain her attention. And she knew what those little voices were about to tell her and she flatly refused to listen. She wanted Luciano and she wanted to know what all the fuss was about. His every tiny movement sent rippling sensation through her outrageously sensitive body.

      Luciano pushed her back another few degrees to get a better angle and thrust home.

      A searing flash of pain flared through Jemima and she cried out, eyes flying open filled with tears and surprise. ‘That hurts!’

      Luciano stilled, staring down at her with brooding, dark disbelief. He knew what his brain was telling him. He knew that his body had met with a resistance that he could not credit existed. While he had known she was not the mother of his son, he had certainly assumed she would be almost as practised with men as her sister had been. The awareness that he had got that badly wrong shook him back to full awareness, clearing his shrewd brain of the fog of alcohol and aggression that had clouded it.

      ‘Are you OK?’ he asked rawly.

      ‘Yes, of course I am,’ Jemima assured him and she shifted under him, washing wild sensation through Luciano’s screamingly taut body while need continued to grip him like a hammer blow to the head. He eased out of the wonderfully tight grip of her and sank back into her with a groan of helpless satisfaction.

      The pain diminished to a stinging discomfort closely followed by a jolt of exquisite pleasure. As Luciano moved the pleasure kicked in again and again and Jemima clutched at his arms, her knees rising as she arched to meet his next potent thrust. A wild singing impatience shot with primal need held her firmly in its grip and she lifted her hips in time to his fluid movements. He drove deeper and ground down on her and a helpless moan was torn from her lips as he picked up the pace. He slammed into her and her body clenched round him in excitement, her heartbeat thundering. Glorious sensation shimmied through her pelvis and set up a chain reaction that sent her out of control when she convulsed beneath him. She plunged over the crest into a climax of intolerable excitement that sent spasms of delight rippling through her satiated body.

      Weak as a kitten, Jemima wrapped her arms round Luciano only to stiffen as he literally shook her off. In a fluid movement he withdrew from her and sprang off the bed to stride into the bathroom. There was blood on him, Luciano acknowledged incredulously as he stepped into the shower. She had actually been a virgin. Where did that unexpected little attribute fit into the lying and gold-digging and plotting he had ascribed to her? What the hell had he been thinking? What the hell had he done?

      Luciano pulled on jeans. Incredibly the mere thought of her lush, shapely body aroused him afresh and he wanted to punch something in frustration. A virgin? He was in deep shock and feeling ridiculously guilty. He had been so convinced that Jemima was a lying, gold-digging cheat like his son’s true mother, like... No, he refused to go there, believing that the past was better left buried. But that past had made Luciano a cruel, distrustful cynic with women.

      Jemima should have warned him. But how could she have without telling