Dio del Cielo. She’d opened her robe. He’d known from the way her breasts had moved when she’d walked across the room that she was naked, but to have it proved right when she stood only feet away from him…
‘How can you doubt that I want you?’ he asked hoarsely, only just managing to successfully blur his eyes to her nakedness. All his efforts to turn himself back into a diamond were collapsing around him. ‘Now, please, close your robe.’ He swallowed the moisture that had filled his mouth and tried to blur his brain from the searing image of her beautiful naked body. ‘I—’
‘I saidlookat me,’ she cried, slipping the robe off and stepping towards him. ‘You’ve been with hundreds of women of all different shapes and sizes, so tell me what’s so wrong with me that the only way you can bring yourself to make love to me is when you want to make a baby or when you’re drunk.’
He’d kicked his recliner seat upright, slammed his glass on the table to the side of his chair and grabbed hold of her hips before he could stop himself.
He forced himself to unblur his eyes and meet her stare. There was such distress in it that something inside of him broke. His fingers losing the grip they’d been clinging to, he plunged head first into the truth of his feelings for her.
‘I do want to make love to you, Marnie,’ he whispered raggedly, ‘more than I have ever wanted anything, but you’re so fragile that I don’t want to do anything that could hurt you.’
Her eyes…they were a stormy grey…widened, her breath audibly catching in her throat.
He skimmed a trembling hand over her breasts. Pregnancy had made them swell like it was making her stomach swell, and all he could think was that she was the Venus de Milo come to life, but a million times more beautiful.
Pulling her closer, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed his cheek to the soft, succulent breasts. He could hear the rapid thump of her heart beneath his ear, a sound that filled him with so much emotion that if he could burrow his hand through her skin and hold it in his hands, he would. He would hold it and cherish it, do all the things he should have done when they were married.
‘I want you so badly it hurts,’ he confessed. ‘Tonight… I didn’t reject you,fiore mio, never think that, but you’re so small and I’m so big and bulky that I fear I will break you. I think of all you have suffered carrying our child, and I will wait however long it takes before I make love to you again because all that matters to me is that you are here with me, back in my life where you belong.’
Just as he belonged to her.
If it wasn’t for the thud of her heart against his ear, he’d fear Marnie had turned to the stone he’d tried to turn himself into. She didn’t move a muscle.
Then, after time seemed to have stretched to the end of eternity, her fingers slipped tentatively through his hair.
Domenico expelled his first proper breath since she’d walked into the room and nuzzled his cheek tighter into her. The fingers of her other hand joined the first, clasping his skull and tilting his head back.
He opened his eyes. The storm of the grey in her stare had disappeared, but there was no calmness in it. The storm had been replaced with an emotion so potent he felt it penetrate every cell of his body.
She leaned her beautiful face to his, close enough that he could feel her breath on his face, and whispered, ‘You can’t break me, Dom.’
Her scent swirling through his senses, he clenched his hands into fists, barely able to speak for the desire thrumming so wildly inside him. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ Not in any way. Never again.
‘Then you won’t.’ With a boldness Marnie had never dreamed she possessed, she cupped Domenico’s cheeks and pressed her mouth to his, holding it there as she breathed his dark taste deep into her lungs.
Hedidwant her. Wanted her with the same depth of need that she wanted him. She’d seen it in his eyes, heard it in his voice, and now she could feel it in the tremors of his magnificent body as he continued to resist the desire that belonged to them both.
Belonged to them both.
Maybe he would never have the great passionate lust for Marnie that he’d once felt for Carmela, but he did want her. He desired her. Felt enough for her that he would put his own needs aside for her protection. That meant something. It might not be the something she’d once so desperately craved, but it was enough.
She didn’t want protecting. Not anymore. She just wanted him, the man who’d captured her heart when she’d been only eighteen years old.
Moving her mouth slowly against his, she slid her fingers back into his hair, threading the soft strands in the way she’d ached to do when they were married. And, slowly, he responded. Slowly, the taut lips relaxed and began to move with hers. Slowly, the fists behind her back loosened, his hands spreading open and flattening tightly against her skin.
With a shuddering breath, he moved his mouth away and pressed his forehead to hers. ‘Are you sure about this?’
She gazed into the gorgeous eyes pulsing with his hunger for her. ‘More certain than I’ve ever been about anything.’
A bone-deep certainty that wasn’t fuelled by unrealistic dreams. The Marnie who’d married with those unrealistic dreams didn’t exist anymore. She didn’t doubt that Domenico could still hurt her emotionally—that had already been proved that night—but how she reacted to it was in her own hands. He could only hurt her if she let him.
His eyes closed, the strong column of his throat moved, and then he was sliding a hand beneath her bottom and rising to his feet, lifting her with him until she was nestled securely in his arms. Without another word spoken, he carried her out of the room and up the stairs.
It was beyond magical to be carried in Domenico’s arms in the way she’d once dreamed he would do on their wedding night, and when he kicked open the bedroom door, her heart ballooned so big it threatened to choke her.
He’d kicked open the door to his room.
Since she’d agreed to try again, they’d only shared her bed. Although Domenico had said she could choose which of their two rooms to make their own, she’d not set foot into his territory, and he’d extended no invitation for her to enter it.
