Page 46 of Savage Proposal

Isabella checked on both of them with quiet efficiency. The first man had a clearly broken nose that she packed with gauze from the kit. “I think you have a few broken ribs, but I can’t be totally sure. You’ll need to get checked out at a hospital.”

The second man had a gash over his eyebrow and a split lip. Isabella dug out liquid stitches, and holding the edges of the gashes together, she glued his head back together. Once he had stopped bleeding, she declared him good to go, more or less.

A security guard helped the men out of the casino. I watched her put the first aid kit back together. “You’ll need to replace what I used,” she said. “Honestly, you could use a better medical set up.”

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me what we need, and I’ll make sure that we have it.”

“At home too.”

“Of course.”

Isabella let out a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She was trembling again, and I helped her off the ground.

“Come with me,dolcezza.” I got her a bottle of water from the bar and took her to my office. I clicked the lock shut behind us. “Drink some of this for me.” I opened the water bottle and handed it to her. She brought it to her lips and drank, almost absently, and I touched her cheek with the pad of my thumb. “Good girl.”

She whimpered and leaned into my touch. “Lorenzo,” she said plaintively.

I took the water from her lax fingers and set it down on the nearest table. “You did well tonight,” I told her and pulled her into my arms. “I hadn’t planned on needing your medical expertise, but I’m glad that you were here.”

Isabella hummed softly. “They would have been fine without me.”

“But they might not have been, and you couldn’t have known that until you looked them over.” I dipped down and kissed her. Just a peck on her sweet mouth.

“Kind of a lousy first date, though,” she said.

I kissed her again, less softly now. “It wasn’t a date.”

She put her hands flat on my chest and pushed me back, frowning when I didn’t budge. “Whatever you want to tell yourself,” she said. “Can we go home now?”

Isabella had done that several times now: referred to the estate as “home.” I didn’t care for the way warmth seeped into my chest whenever she did. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s head back to the estate.”

Her mouth twisted downward; she’d noticed what I’d said. The warmth banked and melted away again, leaving the familiar numbness that I had grown accustomed to before she’d come into my life.

CHAPTER 28

Isabella

“Lorenzo!” My belly was full of fire, and it was leaching into every part of me. From the tips of my toes to my fingertips to the top of my head. Instinctively, I tried to reach down and touch him, but the rope that secured my wrists to the headboard tightened, reminding me that I was at Lorenzo’s mercy.

I had every intention of going straight to bed when we’d gotten home from our not-date, but he had insisted that he “apologize” to me for how everything turned out. Except he would never say those actual words, of course. Instead, he’d taken a length of nylon rope out of a dresser drawer and asked if I trusted him.

I had no idea why I said yes. But Lorenzo had already pulled three orgasms from me with his tongue, and a fourth was coming. I could feel it in that wonderful, awful fire burning through me. I dug my toes into his back and pulled at my restraints again, moaning. Despite being tied down, I had never felt less anchored in my entire life. I couldn’t decide whether I hated it, or if I never wanted it to end.

“I know you’re close again,” Lorenzo teased, pulling back just enough so that he could look me in the eye. He flicked his tongue out again, teasing over my clit, and my pussy clenched around the two fingers that he had tucked inside of me. A near-panicked noise escaped my throat as I teetered on that edge again. I shook my head, almost pulling a muscle in my neck; my hips tried to move away from his touch. It all felt so good that it was scary, and my body didn’t know what to do with it all.

Without my needing to explain, Lorenzo understood. He didn’t stop touching me, but he did slow down, let my body ease back a bit. “Are you done, Isabella?” he asked. All of the teasing had dropped from his voice. “It’s okay if you are; you just need to tell me.”

The prospect of stopping didn’t do a thing to calm my nerves. If anything, it made it worse. I glanced up at my secured wrists. “Can you?—?”

He reached up and pulled at the rope; the knots fell away in an instant. Lorenzo examined my wrists, rubbing softly over the red lines that braceleted them. “Do you want to get in the shower? I’ll go start it for you.”

My heart flipped in my chest. Why did he have to be like this? He’d pushed me away at the casino. I had felt it. But now, he was being so careful with me. Lorenzo Vitali could never be a delicate man, but the way he was looking at me right now was so…soft. Fond, almost. “I want you.” The words came out in a whisper, a plea.

Lorenzo didn’t ask me if I was sure, or if I was sore at all. Instead, he stood and took off the slacks that he hadn’t bothered to remove before. I couldn’t help but stare at how hard he was. I don’t know what I looked like, but Lorenzo groaned, and thenhe was between my thighs again. He pushed inside of me in one, long thrust.

His pace was immediate and furious, and I scrambled to find something to hold on to. One hand gripped his back; the other was tangled in the blanket beneath me. I could hear myself whining and moaning and begging, but none of it made sense to me. All of it seemed to incense Lorenzo, who was fucking into me so hard that he was shunting my body up the bed. The headboard kept pace with him as it smacked into the wall.

The orgasm that I had run from before was barreling down on me again, but this time, I wanted it. Ineededit. That feeling grew and grew and grew until, finally, it let go, and I went screaming over the edge.

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