Married on Paper: The Argentine's Price / The Inherited Bride / Marriage Made on Paper

“No, it’s not about anything but …” She sucked in a sharp breath when he covered her breasts with one of his hands and pressed against her stomach with the other, drawing her more tightly against him, bringing his erection into firm contact with her bottom. “But how much I want you,” she choked out.

He kissed her neck, her shoulder, and a tremor wracked her body, longing making her weak. But there was a fire smoldering in her stomach, a need for more. For more than simple lust. She’d confessed to wanting him, apart from their marriage arrangement and everything else.

She needed him to do the same.

She wiggled out of his grasp and turned to face him, her back against the balcony railing, her breasts pressed tightly against his chest. “Tell me you want me too.”

He rocked against her, the hard length of him pressing into her stomach. “Doesn’t it feel like I want you?”

“Tell me you want me, right now. Me. Not my status. Not my connections.” She slid her hand down his chest, past his belt, pressing her palm over his erection. “Tell me,” she said again.

His eyes were dark, nearly black with passion, his jaw locked tight, tension holding his body taut, every muscle rock-hard. “I want you.”

“My name,” she said, the words coming out broken. “I need you to say it.”

“I want you, Vanessa.”

She let out a gust of air. “Lazaro.”

He captured her lips with his, his kiss hungry, devouring, and she returned it, sliding her tongue over his, taking his bottom lip lightly between her teeth and tugging. He growled and scooped her up in his arms.

“We’re making it to bed this time,” he said, striding into the penthouse and heading into his room.

She’d avoided his room since they’d arrived in Argentina, and not by accident. Just seeing that big bed pushed her desire up to another level. Of course, now her fantasies were strengthened by the memory of what it was like to be with him, to have him inside her, his steady rhythm taking her to the heights of ecstasy.

He set her down in the center of the bed and she shivered.

“Cold?”

She shook her head.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“I am, a little bit.” It didn’t seem like the place for self-preservation. In this moment at least, honesty seemed imperative.

He made quick work of the buttons on his shirt, shrugging it off and casting it to the floor. Vanessa could only stare at all the sculpted, masculine perfection before her. She’d been with him once, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t intimidating. He was perfect, experienced and fantastic in bed. She wasn’t sure she was offering him an even trade.

“I just …” She got up on her knees and inched to the edge of the bed, putting her hand flat against his stomach, his muscles shifting beneath her palm. “I don’t know if I can compete with the memory of … more women than you can remember.”

He encircled her wrist with his hand and pulled her gently to him, kissing her on the lips. “There’s a reason I don’t remember. They didn’t matter. They aren’t here in bed with us. When I look at you, you’re all I can see.”

For now, she would accept his words. She wouldn’t think too far into them. She refused to wonder if he’d felt the same about all of them at the time, only to have his desire for them fade as time went on, and to have memories of them fade completely later.

She pushed that thought aside because she didn’t want to think of it now. Even if it was stupid and dangerous, she wanted to believe him.

He discarded the rest of his clothes and joined her on the bed, kissing her, putting his hand on the curve of her hip and dragging her panties down her legs. She kicked her shoes off and shoved them off the bed with her foot, anxious to have all of the barriers removed.

And when he took her in his arms, every inch of his body pressed against hers, she closed her eyes and inhaled his scent, tears forming in her eyes because he was everything she’d fantasized and more. He had been perfect the first night, but that had been frantic, and the main event had been so new it had been hard to focus on the finer points of what it meant to be intimate with a man. With Lazaro.

Her fingertips blazed a trail over his bicep, his skin smooth, hot, his muscles hard beneath. She skimmed her hands over his hair-roughened chest, flat abs, down to his hardened shaft. She kissed his mouth, catching the harsh sound of pleasure that rose in his throat as she explored his body.

He moved his hand down between her thighs and she stilled her movements then, luxuriating in the response he could call from her body. Orgasm built in her, quick and intense, ripples of sensation making her internal muscles tighten.

“I love watching your face when you come,” he whispered.

She laughed, her throat tight with emotion. “I can’t think of anything when you do that.”

“Then I’m doing something right.”

Yes, he was. It was something that reached down into her, something that surpassed her body and went straight for her soul.

He pulled away from her for a moment and opened the drawer to the bedside table, retrieving a condom.

And then he was in her, filling her, the friction so delicious it surpassed the climax she’d just experienced. She gave herself up to the sensation washing through her body, to the building pleasure that was blocking out everything else.

Her orgasm broke over her like a wave, spinning her in the tide, making her feel weightless. For a moment there was nothing more than her and Lazaro. Nothing more than what he was making her feel.

Dimly, she was aware of him coming with a harsh groan, his body braced hard against her as he kissed her fiercely.

Afterward, she lay with her hand on his chest, his fingers sifting through her hair, their legs tangled together.

Vanessa drew back and looked at him, running her fingers over his stubble-roughened jaw, tracing his brow, his high cheekbones. “You look different,” she said, languor slurring her speech slightly. “But the same too.”