Of Blood and Bone (The Minaldi Legacy #1)(33)
Author: Courtney Cole

I swallow and I can practically feel my heart in my throat.

Luca is breathing harshly now, loud in my ear.

“Luca!” I cry out, finally finding my voice.  “What are you doing?  This isn’t like you.”

“Don’t you like it?” he asks thickly, and his words are almost slurred.  He looks up at me and the expression is almost lucid, but not quite. It’s still hazy and empty.  I don’t understand it.

“Are you drunk?” I ask, trying to assess him.  He doesn’t smell like alcohol, however, even though he vaguely tastes of it.  He also doesn’t move.

Instead, he leans forward and kisses my neck, his teeth nipping at the skin beneath my earlobe.  His touch gentles, then firms; gentles, then firms. It’s a rhythmic rush and against my better judgment, I find myself leaning into it.  His hands grip the sensitive tissue of my inner thigh, hard, then harder.

He is rough and this isn’t how I pictured this scenario with him.  I pictured it as sweet and sensual, like when I kissed him in my cottage or when I fantasized about him during those first nights here in Malta.  This is very much not that.  This is charged and electric and violent.

He laughs, but doesn’t answer my question.

Of course he’s drunk, I answer myself silently.  He has to be.  This is not the Luca that I know.

He yanks me to him, ripping my nightgown from my body before he drops the delicate silk into a twisted heap on the floor by the bed.  I’m pushed na**d backward onto the bed and his fingers are inside of me, sliding in and out, while his arm creates a fascinating friction on the delicate skin of my belly.  I can feel the moisture from my body dripping onto his hands.  In this moment, I have to admit that I like it.  He’s being rough and I like it.

What is wrong with me?

I moan as he sucks on my nipple, as he slides it in and out of his mouth at the same speed that his hands are moving.

Sweet Jesus.

He gets rougher, sucking harder and moving faster.  His hands are everywhere and I arch up toward him, bucking my h*ps to get closer.  I have no excuse for enjoying this.  I’m not drunk.  But I want him anyway.

Things that I should care about seem to fall away.

I don’t care that he isn’t answering me. I don’t care that theoretically, he is my employer.  I don’t care if this isn’t my dream scenario.  All I care about are the sensations that are overwhelming me.  

The moments are coming in flashes now.  His lips against my neck, his mouth on my breast, his hot breath on my skin.  His hand brushes my thigh, his fingers grip my side.  His fingernails cut into me and I gasp.  He glances at me, but doesn’t truly see me.  His gaze is unfocused.

Luca steps backward, away from me.  The cool breeze blows over my skin as I watch him, causing goose bumps to form. I wait, my breath frozen and my cheeks flushed, for him to come back to me.

His strips his slacks off and kicks them to the floor.  His penis is long and hard and curved against his belly, an impressive sight.  I eye it and then him.  It’s been awhile since I have been intimate with anyone but he doesn’t give me time to be nervous.

He pushes against me again and he is not gentle.  His bare chest slides over mine as he thrusts hard and fills me up, sliding with an exquisite friction.  I whimper and clutch at his back.  I should be angry, I should be resisting, but I don’t want to.  I want him here. I want him inside of me.  I can’t lie. The truth is that I’ve fantasized about this from the day I met him.

The flashes come back, instead of logical thought.

He thrusts.

I arch.

My leg curves around his hip.

His hands are in my hair.

He pulls.

I moan.

He bites my lip.

I taste blood.

As he thrusts into me, hard and rhythmic, I force myself to focus.  Because when I stare into his eyes, they are flat and black.  The thunderclouds that I sometimes see in them are markedly absent.  The milk chocolate gaze that I sometimes see there is gone.  There is nothing there right now, just an empty void and it startles me.  I grip him tighter at the same time as I pull him closer with my legs.  He is filling me, filling an emptiness that I didn’t even know that I had.  I find myself wishing that I could do the same for him.

“Luca?” I whisper.

But he doesn’t answer and his handsome face is twisted into something angry.  But then, I’m distracted by the overwhelming sensations that threaten to carry me to a place that I hadn’t expected to go tonight, not like this.

Luca thrusts harder and harder and finally I’m screaming his name as intense pleasure wracks my body in waves and leaves me shaking on the sheets.  He throws his head back and groans and I feel his hot seed pouring into me, completely filling me and then he falls limply to the side.

“Luca?”  My voice is quiet in this large room, tentative.

He doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t stay.  He simply picks up his slacks, puts them on and walks away without a word.  The door closes once again behind him and I’m left alone.

Did that just happen?

The wet ejaculate running down my thighs tells me that it did.  

I lie in a motionless heap, my legs still quivering, as I think about what just happened.

Was I just raped?

That’s absurd.  You can’t rape the willing, I tell myself. 

And I did want it.  I was willing and I wanted Luca more than I’ve wanted anything in quite a while.  But if I’m honest, I know that it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d submitted willingly or not.  Luca would have taken me with or without my consent.  The look in his eyes told me that.

My son is evil.

I can’t shake the words.  He’s not evil. I know it. I know it in my bones and in my heart.  He’s not evil.  But he’s… something.  I just don’t know what it is.  And he was right earlier.  I deserve an explanation, especially now, and I can’t wait to get it from him tomorrow.  But it will definitely have to wait until tomorrow. I’m not leaving this room tonight. 

I get up and clean off, then lock the door.

Then I go back to bed and replay every moment of the intimate exchange.

It had been primal and intense and electrifying, even as it was puzzling.  And as I think about where his lips had been, the way he thrust into me, the way he bit at my neck, I find myself getting wet again.  My lips are swollen from his kiss, my body aching from the rough sex.  Everything about it seems so forbidden, so erotic.  My fingers slip beneath the sheets and into my panties, and for the second time since I have known him, I satisfy myself while I think of Luca.