Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Shocking Scandals: Castelli's Virgin Widow / Expecting a Royal Scandal / The Guardian's Virgin Ward

Luca muttered something in Italian that washed over her like a caress, and then he bent his head and took one nipple she hadn’t realized had pebbled into a hard point deep into his mouth.

Kathryn heard a noise that could not possibly have been her, so high-pitched and keening, bouncing back from the canopy above them, the ornate ceiling. She felt the dark current of his laughter shake through him and into her, making his shoulders move beneath her hands and shudder against her breasts. The sheer physicality of that stunned her, and then he simply sucked on her, that rich tugging setting off an explosion inside her. It seared its way through her, like a lightning bolt from his mouth straight down the center of her body to kick between her legs.

Hard and something like beautiful, all at once.

And Kathryn didn’t know what to do. There was too much of him, everywhere. All over her, pressing her down with him into the embrace of her soft, soft mattress, making her wish this mad dream could go on and on forever.

He made a low, greedy sound that she recognized somehow, in a deep feminine place inside her she’d never known was there, and thrilled to at once. She dug her hands in his hair, but not to guide him—only to anchor herself as he smoothed his wicked palm down over her exposed belly, pausing to test the indentation of her navel, then dipping even lower to slip beneath the waistband of her soft trousers.

Kathryn opened her mouth to speak, to say something—to do something—

But Luca knew exactly what he was about. He didn’t pause. He simply slid his hand down, so hot and hard, and then held the core of her, molten and hot and swollen with need, in his palm.

She made a noise, and he laughed again. He used the faint edge of his teeth against her nipple and made that lightning bolt roar through her again, wider and hotter and far more dangerous, and then he ground the heel of his hand against the place she ached most.

And Kathryn disappeared. She went up in a column of flame that tore her apart. She lost herself, shattering into too many pieces to count. She shook and she shook, bucking against him and unable to stop or hold on or do anything but survive the explosion—and when she finally came back to earth it was with a giant thud and a heartbeat so hard against her ribs that it hurt.

It hurt.

There was no pretending that was a dream.

Luca’s hand was still down her trousers, tracing lazy patterns in her wet heat, and he’d propped himself up next to her while he did it. Watching her. Learning her. And Kathryn found she couldn’t quite breathe. Something he made that much worse when he shifted from watching his own hand play with her, letting his gaze slam into hers.

His eyes were dark. So very dark. There was something powerful and supremely knowing in the way he looked at her then, and she shuddered again, as if she couldn’t keep herself from falling apart. As if now he needed only to look at her to make her crack wide-open.

“Luca...” But she didn’t sound like herself. She didn’t recognize that small, profoundly needy voice that came out of her own mouth.

And she had no idea what to say.

He murmured something else in Italian, a low string of syllables that danced over her the way he did as he moved down the bed, hooking his fingers in the waistband of her trousers and yanking them down over her hips. He peeled them down her legs and tossed them aside, and Kathryn was shaking. She couldn’t stop shaking.

And she was still so hot. So needy. Helpless, somehow, in the face of all that yearning and that intense look on his beautiful face.

“Luca,” she said again, forcing herself to speak because this wasn’t a dream, and reality was coming at her as hard as if the canopy had collapsed above her, bringing the whole of the château down with it.

“I have to taste you,” he growled at her, his voice thicker and rougher than she’d ever heard it before, and that, too, slicked through her like lightning. Then he said something in Italian, and that, somehow, was worse. Or better.

“I don’t think...” she tried to say.

“Good. Don’t think.”

He moved to take her hips in his hands, then settled himself between her legs as if he belonged there. He wedged her thighs open with his sculpted shoulders, and then he made a growling sort of sound that made a wave of goose bumps crash over the whole of her body.

“Bellissima,” he murmured, directly into the heart of her need.

And then he simply licked his way straight into her core.

* * *

She tasted sweet and hot, the richest cream and all woman, and Luca drank deep.

Kathryn went stiff beneath him, shuddering anew, her hands tugging at him as if she couldn’t decide whether to pull him closer or shove him away.

He took her over. He licked and he hummed, throwing her straight back into that fire, until she was rolling her hips to get closer to his mouth, begging him with her body.

He was so hard he thought it might kill him.

He found his way to the hot little center of her and sucked, hard.

And Kathryn made a low sound, long and wild. Then she was bucking against him, her hoarse cry rebounding off the walls, shattering beneath him all over again, and if he had ever seen anything better in all his life, he couldn’t recall it.

Luca waited her out. She sobbed something incomprehensible and he liked that. He liked it too much.

He knelt up, letting his gaze trace over her as she lay sprawled there before him, more beautiful than he could have imagined—and the truth was, he’d imagined this very thing far more often than he was comfortable admitting, even to himself.

Her breasts were the perfect small handfuls, tipped in rose, and the center of her femininity was slick and hot. The taste of her poured through him like fire, arousal and need, the spice of a woman and her own particular sweetness besides.

And even here, open and shuddering, splayed out before him, there was something about her. A certain innocence, however impossible that seemed, that made him that much harder—the need in him taking on a near vicious edge.

He shoved his hair back from his face and looked around, wondering where she kept her condoms. Because surely she had some. Or perhaps she dealt with birth control a different way entirely, which meant he could—

And Luca froze then.

Because if Kathryn was on birth control, that would have been to keep herself from getting pregnant with his father. To keep herself from giving birth to a child that would have been Luca’s own sibling.

Disgust and self-loathing hit him like a blow. Like an attack. He felt dazed.

How could he have forgotten who she was? How could he have let this happen?

You didn’t let this happen, you fool, he growled at himself. You did this all yourself.

Kathryn was a spider at best, and now he knew exactly how sweet her web was, and he was ruined. Ruined.

Damn her.

He pushed back, levering himself off the bed and letting the chill of the winter night, even here inside her bedroom, sink into him from his bare feet up. He hadn’t been able to sleep. No surprise, given the direction of his thoughts and his knowledge that she’d slept just there on the other side of his wall.

He’d tortured himself with the temperature, bathing himself in the winter moon as if it had been a form of cold shower. He had no idea how long he’d been out there, fighting a pitched battle with an enemy that he knew wasn’t Kathryn at all. It was him. It was this need in him, gripping him hard and mercilessly even now, making him want to forget all over again and lose himself in that sweet, dangerous oblivion between her thighs.

You are the worst kind of idiot, he told himself harshly.

He watched her come back to herself, flushed and satisfied and more beautiful than any woman should be. And far more dangerously compelling than this woman should be, especially to him.

He hated himself.

He told himself he hated her more.

“Is this how you do it?” he asked, and his voice was as cold as the night outside. “Stepmother?”