That he was carrying her across the threshold of his room signified the crossing of a much more significant threshold, and it was all she could do to snatch air through the suffocating emotion in her chest.
Feeling like he had the most precious cargo in the world in his arms, Domenico gently laid Marnie on the turned-down bed.
Needing a moment to gather himself, he sat beside her and soaked her in. The staff had switched on the headboard lights. They cast her in a perfect soft, golden glow.
He’d never allowed himself to look at her naked before. Not truly look at her. He’d never allowed himself to see the smooth perfection of her lightly golden skin or the plumpness of her milky breasts and the perfect roundness of her pale pink nipples.
His heart thumped harder as his gaze drifted lower, over the swell of the belly that used to be flat, down to the neat pubic mound. The dark blond hair there was as soft as the hair on her head, he remembered. He’d stroked that hair more times than he could ever count, but never the long blond locks of her head. It had been an intimacy he’d refused to allow in his desperate quest to keep his wife at a distance.
During their marriage, he’d always gone to her bed when she was already tucked beneath the sheets. He’d always made love to her with the lights out.
No, he acknowledged painfully. He hadn’t made love to her. He’d never allowed that. He’d never allowed true intimacy, only sexual intimacy. Even that sexual intimacy had come with barriers.
Was it any wonder she’d become so desperately unhappy, he thought wretchedly. The one night the barriers he’d erected had broken, it had been anger driving them both in their wild coupling. Anger and misery and despair.
Marnie had been desperately unhappy with him. Domenico had been desperately unhappy without her. He’d just been too arrogant, stubborn and pigheaded to realise either of their unhappiness.
Too blind to realise he’d been in love with her all along…
It felt like a hammer slammed against his ribs, and suddenly he could feel the scald of heat crawling through him as the truth he’d plunged into when his fingers had lost their grip hit him even harder.
He loved her. Loved Marnie. Loved her with every fibre of his being.
Rubbing his thumb over her flushed, high cheekbone, he breathed a gentle kiss to the softest lips on this earth and breathed in the softness of her clean skin. When he drew back, her eyes were liquid.
Chapter Eleven
DOMENICO UNDRESSED SLOWLY, keeping his eyes fixed on Marnie’s as he unbuttoned his shirt and unzipped his trousers. He experienced only fleeting relief when he freed his arousal from the confines of his underwear.
Not a word was exchanged. Not a word was needed. Their locked eyes did all the talking for them.
Naked, he stretched out beside her and propped himself on an elbow to gaze down at her. His chest felt so full with his love for her that anything but shallow breaths was impossible.
Closing his eyes, he brought his face down to hers to capture her mouth in a lingering, featherlight kiss. And then he kissed her again.
Slowly, their lips fused and began to move. Delicate fingers reached into his hair as their lips parted. The tips of their tongues flicked together, electrifying him with sensation.
Mouths and tongues entwined; the kiss deepened.
If the kiss they’d shared after their child had moved had been the kiss of Marnie’s dreams, then this was the kiss of her life. With the glorious taste and scent of Domenico filling her senses, she slipped away from the world. Her lips and tongue didn’t just follow his lead but made demands of their own, kissing and being kissed with such passion that she wanted to cry from the emotion of it all, and she moaned into his mouth at the exquisite sensation of his finger circling her ear and trailing down her neck…
Oh, but it was nothing on the sensation that filled her when his fingers skimmed to her breasts and he cupped one in his palm. Caressingly, he kneaded the sensitive flesh, and when he ran his thumb over her hardened nipple, a bolt of sensation flew directly to the flame burning in her pelvis.
His mouth moving away from hers, he draped a thigh between her legs, and then his lips were following the trail made by his fingers.
The shock of pleasure when he took a breast whole in his mouth and sucked was so acute that she cried out, the cry deepening into low, throaty moans as he slowly encircled her hardened peaks with languorous strokes of his tongue and teasing bites of his teeth. Oh, but this washeavenly…
While his mouth continued pleasuring her breasts, his hand roamed her body in a tender, unhurried exploration, as if he were touching her for the very first time.
It felt like hewastouching her for the very first time.
Her fingers burrowed in his hair, Marnie closed her eyes and sank into the thrills cascading through her.
How, Domenico wondered dimly as his teeth gently bit the underside of Marnie’s breast, had he never before acknowledged the soft perfection of her skin? The soft perfection ofher?
Dio del Cielo, how had he closed himself off so fully that his reaction to her virginity had been to want to slam a door on their marriage?
He’d made it good for her, he knew that, but he’d deliberately done the bare basics. Selfish, selfish bastard.
