Read Online A Starlet in Venice by Tara Crescent - Free Book Online Page A

hands were running over my body. She was tracing each and every muscle with her fingers, then lowering her tongue and following the same path. She went lower and lower and my cock twitched and jumped in anticipation.
    “Fuck, Tia,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes closed.
    Her warm hand slid under the waistband of my boxers, and found my cock. “I hope so.” Her voice was feather soft, and my eyes flickered open. This wasn’t a dream. “Tatiana.” My voice was gruff as I met her eyes, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted her so much, but I wanted all of her, and I wanted her to want me with the same need. Because with each passing moment, it became so much harder to do the right thing and walk away.
    “What are you doing to me, rabbit?”
    ***
    Tatiana:
    He was right next to me. So very, very close, and I could feel every breath he took, every steady inhale and exhale. I wondered if he could hear my heart, beating like a trapped butterfly as I reacted to his nearness. It took so much effort to fight my need, to force myself into lightness, to pretend I didn’t want Liam with a deep, enduring ache.
    He looked at me, his green eyes steady. “What are you doing to me, rabbit?” he asked. He pulled me against him so that my back was pressed against his chest. I looked at my reflection in the mirror on the dresser. I expected to look different. I felt different, with his body against mine. I felt soft, yet strong. Nervous, yet perfectly secure.
    “I was touching you.” I responded to his question, my voice a thread of sound in the quiet room.
    He responded by kissing my neck. I closed my eyes, unable to confront that reflection in the mirror. It was too much. He looked like my lover, but I didn’t get to stake such a claim on him. “There are strings attached,” he said huskily. “When you come to me, Tatiana, you don’t get to leave. When you come, you come to stay.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’m not looking for a quick fuck.” His blunt words shocked me. “I’m not looking for a one night stand. When you come to me, you come looking for involvement and commitment and togetherness.”
    Liam was a Dom at Casanova, a BDSM club where submissive women threw themselves at him near constantly, and sex was always at hand. He was my best friend. I’d laughed with him. I’d dragged him to movies that he grumbled about seeing. We watched football games together, me cheering for AC Milan, and him cheering for the opposing team, just to rile me up. And if I were to believe the truth of his words, he wanted to be in a relationship with me.
    If I believed the truth of his words…
    I had three secrets. I’d already told him about the abortion. But the first secret, the one that shaped everything in my life was both my parents were still alive, and neither of them wanted me, or cared what became of me.
    My father had been a visiting Russian politician, and he’d slept with my mother and abandoned her when he found out that she was pregnant. My mother had been eighteen when she’d given birth to me, and she’d been alone and afraid, and had left me in an orphanage to try and resume her life. On my seventeenth birthday, I’d found out I’d been cast away by both my parents.
    There’d been three of us at the orphanage, three best friends, who were there for each other. Through thick and thin. Enzo, the oldest, serious and responsible. Antonio, always a daredevil. And me, of course. Yet when I was thirteen, Antonio had run away, unwilling to take the beatings anymore. The next year, a family had adopted Enzo.
    I was the one left behind. Many people had visited the orphanage looking for children, yet year after year, no one wanted me. Until my body started to change, and then, I was faced with a different kind of wanting, a leering attention from men that frightened me.
    As much as anything else, I’d had an abortion so that I wouldn’t impose the same pattern on a child.
    I was a walking contradiction. I’d been