I’ve kissed her before, but never like this.

Raw. Open. A live wire. There’s nothing between us, not even the hard wall of my family name.

Sia melts into me, exactly the way I always imagined she would. She’s got to be nineteen now, almost twenty, but she’s still so sweet that the taste of her bursts on my tongue like the early spring. God, she’s soft. God, she’s warm. And so pliant. So pliable.

She makes a little sound into my mouth from the back of her throat, and my cock jumps in my pants. Jesus. I’d fight a thousand battles to hear her make that sound again. I’d carry out a million missions for my father. I’d die for it.

I flick my tongue into the boundary of her lips and she makes the sound again.

“Fuck.” The word leaps out of my mouth and into hers, a prayer and a curse at the same time.

No, this isn’t how I imagined, back as a sex-starved teenager. This is infinitely better.

I run my fingers up through her golden hair and tug, tilting her face back and up, and she moans, soft and low, as if nobody has ever touched her like this before. For all I know, they haven’t.

And me? I’ve fucked plenty of women. I’ve been to college. I’ve traveled the circuit, in dorm rooms and hidden closets and dead-end hallways. But never, never have I tasted anything this precious.

I inhale her, my chest expanding with the clean, soft scent of her overlaid with new fabric, and pure need ignites at the pit of my gut, embers bursting into full flame. I have to have her. I need her like I’ve never needed anyone. I kiss her again, harder, deeper, and a flickering montage of all the things I want to do to her spins through my brain, beginning with stripping off those clothes and ending with her bent over my bed while I claim her, fuck her until she’s senseless with pleasure.

None of this is what my father wanted. He would be appalled at the idea of me sleeping with a Ricci. Don’t allow them pleasure, he’d say. Pleasure is the opposite of revenge.

Even the ghost of my father’s disapproval can’t keep me from sliding a hand under the hem of her shirt to the smooth, soft skin there. It can’t keep me from working my fingers underneath her bra to pinch at one of her nipples, already hard, drawing a surprised, hungry gasp from her. And it can’t keep me from scooping her up into my arms and charging for the bedroom.

The wooden door smacks hard against the doorstop and bounces back, but I’m not there by the time it swings shut. I’m collapsing onto the bed, Sia underneath me. She arches, stretching, wriggling up toward the center, and I follow her. I won’t be away from her for another instant. Not when she’s so needy, her pink lips opening to form my name.

Clothes.

Too many fucking clothes.

I pull her up to a sitting position and strip off her shirt, a boat-necked thing, black, that makes her look royal. Sia, the last of her line. Then everything slows down, because her gorgeous tits are encased in something lacy and delicate, and as her breath heaves them up toward me, I’m sucked right in.

“Do you like it?” Her question is soft, tentative, and it makes me harder. “I thought—”

“You thought right.” I slip one finger under the strap and tug it down her shoulder, then the other. The clasp comes undone with one movement of my fingers. College—this is what college was for. All those senseless, quick fucks—this is what they were meant to teach me.

She’s perfect.

I graze the pad of my thumb over one of her nipples, already risen, and her eyelids flutter shut. Jesus, these breasts—the exact size and weight to fit into my hands, as if she was born for me.

I worship them with my tongue. One first, then the other, and Sia squirms, little moans rising from the back of her throat. She pushes up toward me, back arching, and I’m seized with the urge to taste more of her. I need her sweetness in my mouth.

Peeling the skinny jeans from her legs is a revelation. And tugging the lacy panties beneath over her slim hips and thighs and exposing the smooth flesh beneath? I’m looking directly into heaven.

Sia stretches out on the bed as the panties drop to the floor, her cheeks flushed, blue eyes vivid from beneath her eyelashes. “It’s not very fair,” she says with a little pout.

“What’s not?”

She pushes herself up on one elbow. “I’m like this.” She flicks her eyes down to the naked expanse of her body. “And you’re still fully clothed.” There’s a flutter of her pulse at the corner of her neck, and despite the sultry words, I see it now—she’s nervous.

“So many thoughts,” I comment, and wrap my hands around the delicate bones of her hips.

“I can’t stop them,” she murmurs.

“I can.”

I spread her legs open wide and dip my tongue to the softness there.

“How can you—oh.”

Another stroke of my tongue against her clit, and Sia has forgotten the English language. She’s wet—so wet—and I lap her up, the sweetness sparkling against my tongue like champagne. I learn a lot, between her legs. I learn that it makes her muscles clench when I press my tongue inside of her opening and curve it like the crook of my finger. It makes her pant when I flatten my tongue and lick all of her in one, hard stroke. And it makes her writhe and call out and come when I suck her clit into my mouth and swirl, oh Gio, oh, god, oh fuck falling around my ears like a gentle rain.

She rides the wave of her orgasm all the way down, clutching the comforter for dear life, but I’m not done with her yet.

I crawl up over her, her eyes closed, lips parted, and kiss her. She tastes like desire. “I need you,” I growl into the space between her shoulder and her neck. “I intend to have you.”

“Gio—” She breathes the word as my belt opens with a clink of metal. My cock is so hard it hurts, heavy with that need, and when the head brushes against her inner thigh her eyes fly open. Sia puts one knuckle into her mouth, her fingers trembling. “Oh, I want this....oh, Jesus, I want this—”

There’s a but in her voice.

“Sia?” I freeze, because I’m inches away from impaling her, I’m a thrust away from claiming what’s mine.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” she blurts, and I see the whole truth on her face.