Page 15 of Seduced by Her Fake Husband (The Martinelli Wedding #2)

Chapter Eight

T here was a breeze in the cool evening air that felt delicious against Luisa’s fevered skin.

Small clusters of people were standing outside, most of them enjoying a post-dinner cigarette.

Her head felt separated from her body and yet in complete connect, a paradox she couldn’t begin to make sense of any more than she could make sense of the paradox that she, a woman who’d never particularly enjoyed sex and had never wanted it for its own sake, had allowed a man to bring her to orgasm in a room filled with approximately five hundred people.

Not just any man but the man she hated. Her husband.

And now here she was, her hand gripped in his, abandoning the ball and sweeping past the smoking revellers to head to their suite to have sex for sex’s sake.

She felt like she was floating and yet didn’t think she’d ever walked with such purpose before.

She wanted this. Him.

Maybe there wouldn’t be tenderness or thoughtfulness but there would be pleasure, and if that’s all she could walk away from their marriage with then she would take it.

They kept the same purposeful, rhythmic strides all the way up the stairs to their suite. Not a single word was exchanged between them. Not a single word needed to be said.

The second Gennaro kicked the door of the suite shut, Luisa found herself pinned to the wall. A second later her mask was whipped off her face and thrown to the floor and then his mask was ripped off too, joining hers.

There was no ceremony, no tender build-up.

When Gennaro’s mouth found hers it was with a hungry intent she responded to like she was the touchpaper to his flame.

His mouth crushed hers, his lips forcing hers apart as his tongue swept into her mouth, filling her with a dark, sensual taste that was instantly addictive.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she matched his hunger with her own, kissing him back with the furious passion his touch had ignited.

His mouth devouring hers, the bristles of his beard scratching her skin, his hands made quick work of undoing his trousers before he bunched the skirt of her dress to her waist and ripped her knickers off.

In barely the blink of an eye, she found herself weightless and being lifted higher up the wall.

Fully trusting in his strength to support her, she lifted her thighs and wrapped her legs around his waist.

Again, there was no ceremony or tender build-up but she didn’t care. They were both ready – more than ready – and in one deep thrust Gennaro was fully inside her, exactly where she wanted him. Needed him.

Clinging tightly to him, she closed her eyes and allowed the pleasure of his wild fucking to saturate her, moaning her encouragement as he pounded hard into her, barely aware of a picture frame falling off the wall and crashing to the floor, aware only that this was a sensation like no other and that it felt incredible.

The ripples of her earlier climax were still in her, and soon they’d formed into another undulating swell of ecstasy that had her scratching her nails into his head and crying out loudly as he drove her orgasm higher and higher until he shouted his own climax and threw his head back as he slammed into her one final, glorious time.

The world took its time coming back into focus and for that, Luisa was glad, content to cling to Gennaro like a sloth and luxuriate in the sensation of his breath hot on her neck and the sensation of him still being inside her.

But the world was always turning and its focus was never more than a shimmer away, and so when he released his tight hold around her in a silent command for her to put her feet back on the floor, she sighed inwardly and braced herself for whatever came next.

Please don’t say you regret it , she silently pleaded.

She’d made an active choice to have sex with him and she refused to regret letting her hormones rule her head.

It had been the most wanton and exciting experience of her life, but there was still so much that was unknowable about Gennaro that she couldn’t predict how he would react to what they’d just done now that the heat of passion had burned itself out.

The last thing she expected was his troubled expression. “We didn’t use protection.”

Disappointment lanced her, although she had no idea why.

She’d hardly expected him to throw himself at her feet and declare eternal love after what had been, in reality, a quick knee-trembler against the wall of their suite.

Other than her knickers, they hadn’t even removed any of their clothing.

The only part of his body she’d touched had been his head .

Tucking his shirt back into his trousers, he swore under his breath and shook his head, biting out, “I’m sorry.”

Still pressed against the wall as support for her wobbly legs, her brain still in a bit of a pleasure-saturated fog, she blinked. She didn’t think apologies formed part of Gennaro’s vocabulary.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Is it too much to hope that you’re on the pill?”

She cleared her throat and strove to sound normal. “I’m afraid so.”

“Fuck.”

“But I do have a contraceptive implant.”

“What?”

She tapped the underside of her upper arm and injected brightness into her voice. “It’s inserted right here. It’s coming to the end of its use-by date but it’s still effective.”

“So you’re protected against pregnancy?” he clarified.

“Yes.”

He seemed to sag, blowing out a long puff of air as he sank onto a chair and gripped the back of his neck.

Even though she knew she shouldn’t take this reaction personally – he’d implied before that he didn’t want children – she couldn’t help but feel wounded at his overt relief that there was no danger of her falling pregnant and the implication that she was good enough to have sex with but not good enough to breed with, which was a ridiculous way to feel seeing as he’d be the last man she’d choose to have children with.

Hating the contrariness of her thoughts and feelings, and needing to do something to distract her from them, she carefully picked up the broken picture. She was thankful the shattered glass was contained within the frame. Her feet were bare and she had no recollection of removing her shoes.

She put it on the table. “I don’t think the picture itself is damaged. ”

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “Please accept my assurance that I’ve never had unprotected sex before.”

Strangely, his formal speech and clipped tones had the effect of loosening her chest, and she looked at him, really looked at him, taking in the strain etched on his face and experienced a sudden swell of her heart to realise she wasn’t the only one to have acted completely out of character.

“I guess even an android’s hard drive can malfunction,” she said softly.

His eyes snapped back open.

She gave a small shrug. “For a brief moment in time, you seemed entirely human.”

He dragged a hand down his face and grunted a laugh. “For a brief moment in time, I felt more alive than I think I’ve ever done before.”

His honesty made her heart swell even harder.

Pulling the chair out next to his, she twisted it to face him before sitting down. Impulse had her putting a foot on his lap. The way he looked from her foot to her face made her smile. “I liked the human Gennaro.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Yes I should. I’ve never come with a man before.”

His next grunt of laughter had more substance to it, and he shook his head. “Are you being serious?”

“Completely. Sex has never done anything for me,” she admitted.

He shook his head again in clear disbelief.

She wriggled her toes and expelled a long, peaceable breath.

She’d spent so many years… her whole life…

thinking of Gennaro as a forbidding block of ice – a gorgeous block of ice, yes, but a block of ice all the same – that she’d never allowed herself to imagine him as someone capable of having the same doubts and fears and uncertainties as everyone else, and certainly not as someone who ever lost control .

A few minutes earlier, they’d both lost control and her veins still buzzed from it.

“You make me feel sexy,” she said simply.

“And your previous lovers didn’t?”

There was only one, and no, he didn’t.”

“So why were you with him?”

“Because I loved him… just not in that way.” She pulled a rueful face. “If he’d made me feel like you do, I’d have married him in a heartbeat, but I guess you can’t force desire. It’s either there or it isn’t, and with you it is.”

His face fell, eyes narrowing with a warning. “Don’t fall in love with me, Luisa.”

“I loved Riccardo because he was a good, kind man. You, dear husband, are an arsehole.”

There was a beat of silence after this before Gennaro burst into a deep rumble of laughter.

It was such a rich, infectious sound that Luisa laughed too, laughing even harder to remember herself just a few hours earlier, all skittish and filled with nervous anticipation for what the evening would bring.

Well, the evening had brought her pleasure, and it had freed something in her too that allowed her to see her husband with the eyes of the woman she’d grown into and not the frightened child she’d once been.

His fingers wrapped around her foot. “You will remember that, yes? That I’m an arsehole?”

“I’ve only got four days left of being stuck with you so I’m hardly likely to forget.”

The amusement faded. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She raised her shoulders. “You don’t have to worry about that – I hate you too much to let myself do something stupid like fall in love with you.”

His brooding face creased into a smile that was far more heartbreaking than she’d ever have imagined a smile from Gennaro could be. “Despite the childlike illustrations she produces, little Luisa Rossellini really did grow up.”

She grinned. “Just not in height.”

His eyes gleamed, thumbs slowly sliding up the length of her foot. “Trust me, I’m not complaining about that aspect.”