Page 95 of Valentino

I stroke myself through the rest, painting her chin, her cheek. My breathing is wrecked. Every nerve ending in my body is firing simultaneously.

She licks her lips. Slowly. Holds my gaze while she does it.

I will remember this image on my deathbed.

The water runs over both of us, hot and relentless. She stays on her knees, looking up at me, and there's something in her expression I can't catalog. Not triumph, though there's some of that. Not submission. Something closer to ownership. Like she's the one who just claimed me and not the other way around.

My thumb traces her cheekbone, pushing a strand of wet hair off her face. The gesture is tender in a way that contradicts everything we just did, and I don't care. She turns her face into my palm, presses her lips to the center of it, and the softness of it after the filth almost buckles my knees.

Amanda

I've scrubbed my face twice, and I'm blinking at the fogged-up mirror when two hands grip my ass and lift.

My feet leave the tile. My wet fingers scramble for his shoulders, finding slick, warm skin and the hard ridge of muscle underneath.

"Now," Valentino says, his voice a low scrape against the steam, "you need to get fucked properly."

The washing machine meets the backs of my thighs. He sets me down on the edge like I weigh absolutely nothing.

My palms flatten against the marble's cool surface. His chest is still wet from the shower, dark ink glistening across his pectorals.

He steps between my knees. Not gently. His hands find the insides of my thighs and push them apart, wide, wider, until the stretch burns in my hip flexors and cool air hits me everywhere at once.

"Valentino—"

His thumb lands on my clit.

Every coherent thought I've ever had in twenty-five years of existence flatlines.

"Tell me," he says. "How much do you want my cock inside you?"

Nothing comes out except a whimper.

His thumb presses harder. "Words, bella."

"More than anything." My voice cracks on the second word. "I want it more than anything."

His hand wraps around his cock and strokes once, slow, base to tip while he watches my face.

I watch his hand. His thumb keeps moving on my clit. Lazy circles that tighten into something sharper, then ease back just when my hips start chasing the pressure.

I'm soaked.

He steps closer. The head of his cock brushes my entrance, and the sound that leaves me is embarrassing. His free hand grips my hip, holding me still when every muscle in my body wants to push forward and take him.

"If you're in pain," he says, and his voice has dropped into a register I haven't heard before, "you say so."

I nod.

"Amanda." His fingers tighten on my hip. "Out loud."

"I'll say so."

He pushes in.

The first inch steals every molecule of air from my lungs. He's big. I knew this, I tasted this but knowing and feeling are two entirely different things. The stretch is bright and sharp that radiates outward from my center in concentric waves. My fingers dig into my thighs where I'm holding myself open, knuckles white, legs shaking.

He stops. Barely inside me, and he stops.