Revenge at Bella Terra (21 page)

She paused, as if that wasn’t quite right.

He thought it was
great
. But he held himself motionless in an agony of need.

With a look of concentration, she gripped the coffee table in one hand and the couch with the other and used them for leverage. Up and down, up and down, straight up and straight down, a half smile growing on her face as she found the pace.

He wanted to let her do it all, to find the place where only pleasure existed. But as she thrust onto him a little more, as she rubbed her clitoris against him, as the ripples of bliss started inside her and spread throughout her body, as her faint smile disappeared and she moaned, and that entirely feminine expression of blossoming glory took her, it broke him.

He thrust back at her, answered her motion with his own, seeking pleasure, giving pleasure, Eli and Chloë blending until he couldn’t tell where one left off and the other began.

He wanted to possess. He wanted to own. He wanted to be on top, direct the motion, the rhythm, give and not be given to.

But he’d trapped himself between the table and couch, and all he could do was grip the table leg on one side, the foot of the couch on the other, try to crush them in his fists, and follow Chloë’s lead.

Instinct and desire directed her. Her motion grew faster and faster.

His balls grew tighter and tighter. He was barely holding himself back.

With a cry, she thrust hard, grinding herself on him, her inner muscles clutching his cock as she climaxed.

He arched beneath her, his body caught in a spasm as he came so hard and so fast he thought his heart would burst. Like a kid having his first girl, he groaned. Caught himself in disbelief. Groaned again, in rapture so intense it truly did feel like the first time.

Then she collapsed on him, overwhelmed, gasping for breath, laughing and crying.

He wrapped his arms around her, stroked her hair with hands that trembled—what had she done to him?—and, driven by some primal directive he scarcely recognized, he said, “That’s it. You’ve got to marry me. Tonight.”

Chapter 27

C
hloë laughed huskily and kissed his nipple. “Eli.

You’re sweet.”

“No.” He grasped her arms, half lifted her so she would look into his face. “I’m not kidding. We’ve got to get married. Tonight.” He spoke, frantically, urgently, as if he meant it.

“Eli, that’s not necessary. Yes, I was a virgin, but I knew what I was doing.” She patted his shoulder, trying to calm him.

“You know the worst part of me, and still you let me . . .” His chest heaved as if he struggled to carry a heavy burden up a long, dark road.

She wanted to put some space between them, give him time to return to his right mind.

But it wasn’t that easy. She was sitting on him, naked. He was stretched out beneath her—long, muscled, beautiful as only a man who worked for his living could be. “Eli, you didn’t force yourself on me. I mean, obviously. You have no reason to feel guilty. I knew what I was doing.” She tried a joke. “I knew what went where, didn’t I?”

Predictably, he didn’t laugh. He didn’t even seem to hear her. Sweat popped out on his forehead. “We can go to Reno now, marry, and get home tonight.”

She should have been annoyed. She
was
annoyed. But he was suffering for reasons she couldn’t fully comprehend. “As romantic as that sounds, no.”

“You love me.”

Propelled by shock, she sat all the way up. “That is so not true.” Her voice had gone into the highest possible octave, and she attempted to bring it down. “Eli, you’ve slept with other women. You didn’t love them.”

“No, but I was a typical guy who didn’t equate love with sex. You . . . waited. It means something that you gave yourself to
me
.” He sounded like he wanted to believe that. . . .

No. He sounded as if he did believe that.

But men were supposed to be logical. So she would attempt to be logical. “I slept with you because you shared yourself with me, showed me you’re a man of deep feelings, a man who had suffered, not like most guys, because you’ve got a hangnail or something, but for good reasons.”

She already recognized his stubborn look, and he was wearing it now.

“Eli, I managed to get through my teenage years without having sex. It happens. So now I’m twenty-three years old, which means I know how to wait, plus I’ve got a smidgen of intelligence. I recognized that we have shared interests and we’ve now shared experiences and here’s the good part.” She smiled brightly. “I know how to seize the day.”

“As do I.” He sat up. “But what happened between us wasn’t seizing the day. That phrase indicates a deliberate choice was made. What we did wasn’t a choice. It was a force of nature.”

His words rang a little too true for comfort.

They hadn’t enjoyed sex; they’d survived a cataclysm.

He continued. “Nothing you’ve said has changed anything. You love me.” He looked deep into her eyes. “Don’t you?”

She found she couldn’t look away.

He was confusing her. He wasn’t right. She knew he wasn’t, and yet . . .

What was it about this man that made her yield, and yield eagerly?

She was pretty enough, and as far as she could tell, most high school and college guys would do it with a troll. So while she hadn’t spent her whole life getting hit on, she’d had plenty of opportunities to dance the bump. Once her father started playing chess with her life, guys even more eager had stepped onto the stage of her life.

She had been interested in sex; she hadn’t been interested in the guys.

Now Eli had come along, they hadn’t yet spent a total of twenty-four hours in each other’s company, and so far she thought he was basically a stodgy, stuck-up man with intimacy issues . . . and yet here they were, chest-to-chest, face-to-face. His breath touched her lips, his eyes gazed insistently into hers, and he was still inside her, the two of them so intimately touching that they were one.

He thought she was in love with him.

She wasn’t. She couldn’t be.

But his gaze hypnotized her, and his palms settled on her shoulders, warm and supportive.

“We barely know each other,” she whispered.

“I know you.” His fingers massaged up and down her arms. “And you know me better than any other human being on earth knows me.”

“Yes. I do.” She was good for him. When she had first met him, he’d been closed as tightly as a clamshell. Now the shadows over him were lightening—and she gave herself the credit. If she stayed with him . . . would he heal from the wounds of his childhood? Would he open himself to love? “We don’t need to get married merely because we know each other.”

“I need to marry you.” He spoke definitively. “Call me old-fashioned, but I need to bind you in every way possible. I need to know you’ll be here with me tomorrow and forever.”

Old-fashioned? Yes, that probably defined Eli Di Luca. She compromised. “Let’s wait a few days. Think about it.”

Beneath her, his legs tightened. He lifted his hands from her shoulders and, with his palms embracing her chin, he caressed her cheeks with his thumbs. “I can’t wait a few days. I don’t need to think about it. I didn’t expect this to happen, but I can’t in all honor touch you again until we’re married, and I can’t be with you and not touch you. You’ve seduced me, Chloë, and all I want is to taste you, be inside you, make love to you in every way possible. You’ve got to marry me. I’d rather be lost in the Andes in the deep snow than bear this kind of suffering.”

Inside her, he was stirring, hardening, even while his fingertips slid down to trace her nipples. The excitement of making love for the first time reignited. She breathed deeply, thrusting her breasts more deeply into his cupped hands.

“Yes,” he murmured. His eyes grew darker, his gaze more intense.

Inside, she flexed, not because she meant to, but because she had to.

He flinched. His breathing grew deeper. His gaze smoldered. “Please. Chloë. I can’t be strong if I don’t have you. We were meant to be together. Please. Marry me. Live with me. I want you desperately. I need you . . . desperately.”

His words coaxed. His touch seduced.

She wasn’t thinking right. She knew she wasn’t.

But maybe he knew something she had barely realized. Maybe she did love him. Maybe that was why she went to bed last night and dreamed, not of the diamond, but of him. Maybe that was why she woke up this morning as excited as a child on Christmas morning. Maybe that was why his kisses stirred her and his pain made her ache for him.

Maybe that was why they were together now, intimately joined and desperately in need, and she felt . . . oh, she felt as if she were made anew. Torn between the desire to giggle and a blossoming horror, she said, “My God. I do love you!”

“Yes.” His eyes fluttered closed as if in relief, then opened again, and now the chocolate brown of his eyes was warm, happy.

In
love. In
love
. No matter where she put the accent, she couldn’t quite believe it.

“So you’ll marry me? Now? Tonight?” His urgency lit a similar fire in her.

She’d been trying to be logical and now . . . now she was considering . . . she was considering marriage.

“Don’t hyperventilate,” he said.

“No. I won’t.” Although she was feeling light-headed.

She had never done anything really stupid in her whole life. But then, she’d never fallen in love before.

A woman in love must be the definition of stupid.

She took a last long breath . . . and took the plunge. “Yes. I’ll marry you now. Tonight.”

He kissed her, and kissed her, and before it was over, wine magazines were shoved off the coffee table and she was flat on her back on top of the cool, polished wood while he showed her again how much he wanted her.

When they were finished, she hid a smile in his shoulder. “About the wedding . . . I ask only one thing.”

He had the good sense to sound suspicious. “What’s that?”

“I want Elvis to marry us.”

“Elvis? You mean . . . an Elvis impersonator justice of the peace?”

“I think that would be great.”

“No.” Eli sounded grim. “Absolutely not. Marriage is a serious business.”

Chapter 28

T
he Elvis impersonator justice of the peace worked overtime to marry Eli and Chloë.

They used Eli’s grandfather’s wedding ring. It was so big Chloë had to make a fist to keep it on her left hand.

As soon as the ceremony was over, Eli drove them back to the Reno airport—they’d had the rental car less than three hours—to catch a flight back to Santa Rosa, and Eli drove to his house.

He drove to their home.

Other than “I do,” he scarcely spoke a word during the entire trip. It was as if he’d said everything possible earlier and now he had nothing left.

Yet he held Chloë’s hand as if he couldn’t bear to let her go, and that was enough. Because she didn’t care whether he spoke. Once the ceremony was over, she didn’t have anything to say either.

She’d never done anything so stupid in her life.

The phrase echoed over and over in her brain. She didn’t have a doubt that marrying Eli in such a hurry was stupid. Yet she couldn’t scrape up any regret. Something was keeping her unrepentant, some emotion that was growing stronger by the second.

He pulled to a stop in front of the house, and came around to help her out of his truck.

He looked as if he were in shock, drawn and pale beneath the tan.

Good. That made two of them.

When she stepped onto the chrome side rail, he swept her off her feet and into his arms.

Startled, she laughed and clutched his neck.

He stood holding her, looking down at her as if . . . as if he held his life’s desire.

His expression was so intense it made her heart beat faster. Blushing, she lowered her lashes. And all the while, she was thinking,
This is my wedding night. My wedding night.

She was trying to convince herself she had done this. Married him. She’d never done anything so stupid in her life. She must be in love.

His arms tightened, and he headed for the house.

“I can walk,” she said.

“I did everything backward. I’m going to get
this
right.” He ran with her up the stairs—it was interesting and a little unsettling to realize how strong he was—and put her down only to put his key in the lock and open the door. Picking her up, he carried her across the threshold. He shut the door with his foot, lowered her to the ground, pushed her against the wall, and gave her one of his patented kisses, lips to lips, tongues seeking, breath shared. When she was clinging to his shoulders, he pulled back. His eyes were almost black again, and hot, and she remembered what to do—wrap her legs around his waist so he could carry her to the couch and . . .

He said, “We can’t do that.”

“What?” What was he talking about?

“You just . . . I’d hurt you again.” His voice was rough, a rasp on her fragile feelings. “We’ll have to wait.”

“What?” she repeated.

“I’ve got to . . . I’ve got business to attend to.”

She stared at him, bemused and disbelieving. “At three in the morning?”

He drew a long breath. “International market.”

“You sell wines to the international market?” She knew she sounded incredulous. She
was
incredulous.

But why would he lie?

For that matter, after that impassioned speech about wanting her, why would he refuse to make love to her? “You skunk,” she said.

“Skunk?” He half laughed. “Skunk. As insults go, that’s . . . cute.”

“I can be more explicit.”

“No.” He kissed her again. “No.” He kissed her as if he couldn’t resist.

This time when he pulled away, she clung to the collar of his shirt. “Eli . . . even skunks need love.”