Page 55 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

And then...and then her father had overlooked her, in his opinion, and everything in him had been twisted, turned sideways. It was all complicated and he didn’t want that now. He wanted it simple.

He wanted her.

He wanted her to know she was his.

Maybe there was never going to be a way to untangle the emotional threads from all of this. But he wanted to stamp her, claim her, make her certain that she was his so that she would never look...hollow and alone as she had for a moment standing there in her father’s entry.

He growled, moving his hand to her hair and pulling hard, drawing her head back, kissing her throat, down her collarbone.

She let out a sharp gasp.

“You are mine,” he said. Something primitive was rioting through him. Something that made him feel like a stranger even to himself.

He wanted her. He was no stranger to sexual desire, but this was something else entirely. This was like a foreign entity had taken him over. This was something he was at the mercy of. And that was an entirely unfamiliar concept.

He couldn’t wait. He was starving for her. He stripped her naked, bared her gorgeous body to his gaze.

The dress she had on was beautiful, but it had nothing on her bare skin.

Her breasts were full, pink tipped and lush.

He was held captive by the sight of the pale thatch of curls between her thighs.

His sex grew heavy with need, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would make its way out of his chest entirely.

She was everything.

“Take your hair down,” he commanded.

He moved to a wingback chair in the corner and sat, watching her.

She was still wearing her high heels, her legs looking endless in those.

She reached behind her and undid the clip, let her blond hair fell down past her shoulders.

“Very good,” he said. “I think that you should bring me a drink, Lyssia.”

She looked at him, challenges parking in her blue eyes. “Why?”

“To see if you’re any sweeter now that the promise of pleasure is before you. Sweeter than you were back when you were my assistant.”

He felt compelled to marry those moments. This glorious need that he felt for her, combined with those past interactions. With that moment that he had first noticed her beauty when she’d walked into his office. When she had brought him the coffee and spilled it, gotten down on her knees before him.

“What would you like, Mr. Rivelli?” she asked, her voice sultry.

A satisfied, masculine sound sounded short and sharp in his throat. “Whiskey. Neat.”

“Anything for you.”

Still wearing heels, she walked to the sideboard and grabbed a bottle of amber liquid, pouring a measure of it into a tumbler. Then, with one hand at the bottom of the cup, and the other at the top, holding it as though she was grandly presenting, she made her way to him, her eyes never leaving his.

He took the whiskey from her hand.

“Do you remember, the day you came into my office, and spilled coffee all over the floor?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was mortified.”

“I wasn’t. I was consumed by fantasies of you. You got on your knees before me, and all I could think of was how glorious your lips would look if they were wrapped around me.”

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