All my soul knew was that it craved this.

Marco broke the kiss, pulling back only to grab the hem of my baseball shirt in his hands and yank it upward. I lifted my arms, helping him out. My top went flying behind him seconds before his nimble fingers made quick work of my bra.

Despite the fire between us, I shivered, my nipples turning to hard pebbles that drew a groan from deep in the back of Marco’s throat. He cupped my breasts and I arched my back with a sigh as he kneaded them, his touch shooting darts of liquid heat straight through my belly and down between my legs.

The sensation increased when he pulled gently on my hair, arching my neck and back further and lifting my breasts closer to his mouth. He bent his head, his hungry eyes on my low-lidded ones. I shivered again, this time in anticipation, and a smirk of satisfaction quirked his lips before he dropped his gaze and closed his hot mouth around my left nipple.

I whimpered at the molten pleasure that rippled through my lower belly and I clutched the nape of his neck with one hand while the other caressed his upper back. He sucked hard, causing a sharp streak of pleasure/pain, and then he licked the swollen nipple before moving on to the other.

Wanting the feel of his hard muscles and smooth skin under my hands, I started pulling on the long-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing.

He got the hint and jerked back impatiently to remove it. He’d barely dropped it to the floor when I clutched him, yanking him back to me, our kisses hard, hurried, and hot. With one hand I caressed his strong back, with the other his sculpted chest before sliding it down over his hard abs. At the feel of his abs rippling under my touch, arousal pulsed between my legs.

Mind reader that he was, he took his lips from mine to ask breathlessly, roughly, “You wet for me?”

I looked directly into his lust-fogged eyes with my own lust-fogged eyes and whispered, “I’m one touch away from coming.”

His eyes flared. “You’ll come with my mouth,” he promised.

My belly squeezed deep down low and I knew I was more than wet now. I was soaked. I was always turned on for Marco, I always wanted him, but I couldn’t remember ever being this hot and desperate to have him. As he pressed hot kisses against my jaw, my neck, his tongue flicking against my skin as he did so, I rubbed my thumbs over his nipples, scored my nails lightly down his stomach, and panted with excitement when he started unbuttoning my jeans. I stopped touching him momentarily to brace my hands on the sideboard at either side of my hips so I could lift my bottom to allow him to pull my jeans off.

My underwear quickly followed and, completely unabashed, I delighted in the way he pressed my legs apart to stare at me.

There was a primitive need etched into his taut features and it spoke to whatever echoing primitive need there was in me. My heart was racing so hard, I was panting in expectation, my breasts rising and falling as I tried to catch my breath.

“You promised your mouth,” I said softly, barely sounding like myself.

My voice pulled him out of his intense perusal of my body and suddenly he was kissing me again. He gripped the backs of my knees in his hands and wrapped my legs around him so his jeans-covered erection pushed between the folds of my sex, brushing my clit in a way that made me spasm deliciously. I wrapped my arms around him, my sensitive breasts crushed against his chest. He continued to kiss me, our desperation building in that kiss, in the way he stroked my naked back and the way our hips undulated together.

The pressure of his erection heightened my arousal and I tried to press harder, my fingers digging into his back.

Marco growled into my mouth and I swear I almost came, it was so hot.

Then his lips were gone from mine, moving down my neck, across my chest, down my ribs, across my stomach, and he was lowering himself to his knees as his hands pressed my thighs apart.

I watched, lost in my daze of utter need, as he licked me.

“Oh, God,” I gasped. I threw my head back, his name a plea spilling from my lips over and over as he tortured me with light licks.

Then his mouth found my clit.

He circled it with his tongue.

I climbed higher.

He pumped two fingers inside me.

I climbed even higher.

I tensed.

He sucked on my clit. Hard.

I reached the top on a scream and then shattered, falling into blissful oblivion.

Still shuddering through the remnants of my orgasm, I was barely aware of Marco standing up and yanking his zipper down. Within seconds he was gripping my thighs, and pulling me to the edge of the sideboard. My palms were flat on the piece of furniture, my arms braced a little behind me. It was a good thing too. I was steady and prepared when he thrust into me. Hard.

I cried out, closing my eyes to savor the rough but pleasurable assault on my senses.

“Look at me,” Marco demanded, his voice so thick with sex the words were clipped, the tone guttural.

My eyes opened on command and our scorched gazes collided.

My lips parted as he continued to fuck me, another orgasm building inside me, my arousal only increasing at the way he was watching me as he stroked inside me.

“Yeah?” he panted, his hot eyes never once leaving mine.

“Yeah,” I answered breathlessly.

His grip on my legs became almost biting as his thrusts came faster. “You’ve got to come for me, babe.” He panted harder, a bead of sweat glistening on his forehead from the strain of holding back his own climax.

“I’m coming,” I promised, jerking my hips in rhythm to his thrusts. “Baby, I’m coming, I’m com —” I tensed. Then over the precipice I fell again, crying out on my second orgasm, this one shorter and sharper than the last but no less brilliant.

I shuddered against Marco as he continued to pump into me, my inner muscles squeezing around him.

He stiffened, his grip on me almost painful.

His eyes never left mine as he groaned through gritted teeth.

“Fuck.” His hips jerked against me while he came.

He let go of my right leg to kiss me deeply. I wrapped my legs around his hips, squeezing him closer as we kissed, loving the feel of him shuddering with little aftershocks.

Gradually, as our muscles relaxed and the haze of desire began to clear, reality began to intrude upon us.

I dropped my legs from his waist and pushed on his chest as I pulled my lips from his. I saw the consternation in his eyes but ignored it. “This doesn’t change anything,” I whispered, feeling the déjà vu of this moment from the first time we had sex three months ago. Except this time around there were no more secrets between us.

Marco went from consternation to pissed. “You sure about that? Because by my count you just came twice. Once with my mouth and again with my dick. I’m pretty sure that means things have changed.”

I scowled at him. “I obviously just need to get you out of my system.”

His whole expression tightened. Now I’d pissed him way off. He put his hands on my thighs again and jerked me back to him, before sliding his hands under my arse and lifting me so I had to wrap my legs around his waist for purchase. I clung to his shoulders as he began to carry me down the hall to my bedroom.

“What are you doing?” I snapped, trying to wriggle out of his grip and failing.

Marco didn’t answer until we were in the bedroom and he’d dropped me none too gently on my bed. He pushed his jeans down and started kicking them off and I scrambled to get off the bed. Marco was too fast for me, though, grabbing my hands in his as he lowered his body over mine. He pressed my hands to the bed, holding me captive.

“I guess I’ll be fucking you until I’m out of your system, then.”

I narrowed my eyes and tried to push against his hold, to no avail. “You have to leave.”

“Sex first.”

My belly rippled at the thought, my appetite for him clearly insatiable. Sensing it, he looked smug.

“Fine!” I gave in because… well, frankly, because I wanted him and I wasn’t thinking clearly. “But you can’t stay.”

“I won’t,” he promised darkly, eyes on my lips. “But I’m going to make you come again before I leave.”

And so he did.

Brilliantly, I might add.

He filled me up with his heat and lust and tenderness.

However, as soon as we were finished, he was good as his word and he left the flat.

Just like that, I was back to feeling empty.

CHAPTER 24

“Marco,” I said on a gasp, as he moved inside me.

I was on my side, as was he. His warm hand was wrapped around me, kneading my breast, as he thrust up into me from behind.

I came hard, crying out in satisfaction as I shook through my climax. A few seconds later Marco followed me, his hold on me tightening as he tensed and then groaned against the back of my neck as he found his own satisfaction.

I lay there, trying to catch my breath and get hold of my senses.

The soft touch of Marco’s lips on my shoulder drew me back into the room. He slid out of me and I felt the loss of his heat. Turning around, I watched as he climbed out of bed and started to get dressed.

For two weeks we’d been doing this. Marco would turn up at my door, I’d let him in, and then we’d have sex until our bodies were weary and my heart was in even more turmoil than before. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from giving in to the sexual heat between us. But every time he left, I felt emptier. What we were doing, just sex, made a farce of what we’d had before.

Tonight, however, was worse.

Marco hadn’t even bothered to clean me up, as had become his ritual. It was something that I’d always found sweet.

Watching him fasten the last button on his shirt, I recognized that he was agitated, perhaps even angry. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but I didn’t want to encourage him into thinking that there was more here than there was. It was just sex. No matter how much that hurt.

I should end it. I should end it now. But I didn’t know if I was ready to cut him out of my life completely. I thought I could…

My eyes drifted away from him to stare blankly at my ceiling. It was about time I sorted my head out, it really was.

“You’re not even going to say anything?”

I snapped my gaze back to his to see him standing with his hands on his hips, his legs braced, as he exuded major pissed-off-macho-man vibes. Ignoring the threat, I replied, “What do you want me to say?”

Disbelief flashed in his eyes, and he leaned in to answer in guttural tones, “I want you to put a stop to this shit and admit you were wrong and that you love me. This arrangement is total bull and you know it.”

Somehow I kept my face perfectly relaxed. “It was all I was willing to give. And now I think it’s time to end it.”

Despite the disgusted look he gave in answer, he grunted, “Like I’m giving up that easy.”

Fine. I sighed, lacking the energy to fight him on this. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

Marco exhaled heavily, as if clinging to the last threads of his patience. He shook his head. “I can’t. I’m doing a favor for Leah tomorrow. I’ll see you Monday after my weekend with Dylan.”

I nodded casually, which pissed him off even more. The way I know it pissed him off even more is that he stormed out of the flat without saying good-bye.

I reached for my phone on the nightstand and texted Cole:

I’m a mess.

“Okay, so your solution to taking my mind off Marco is to take me to D’Alessandro’s?” I frowned up at the exterior of the restaurant.

Cole chuckled. “What? I like the food.”

“We could go anywhere,” I grumbled. “Miscreant.”

Laughing, Cole grabbed my hand and led me inside, out of the cold and into the pleasant warmth of Marco’s uncle’s restaurant. “You know we’re going to spend most of the meal talking about him and why you’re acting like a hormonally imbalanced madwoman around him, so I don’t see why we can’t eat his family’s food as we do so.”

My hand still clutched in his, I warned, “Well, we’re going to spend the whole of the meal talking this through as payback, just FYI.”

He squeezed my hand. “I think I can handle a wee bit of girl talk.” We stopped at the hostess’s table and Cole gave her his name. She was leading us into the back room of the restaurant and I was about to respond belatedly to Cole’s comment with something cheeky when Cole jarred to a stop and I bumped into his back with the sudden loss of momentum.