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‘Can you feel that?’
The strong, powerful thunder of his blood. Her head fell to his shoulder. ‘Yes.’ She shuddered against him. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘That is for you, cara mia. All and only for you. Now lift your arms,’ he instructed gently, as he would a child, and obediently she did as he said, so that he pulled the T-shirt off and tossed it away, snapping the clasp of her bra open so that her breasts fell free and unfettered. He wanted to take one into his mouth, to suckle and to tease it, but a need even stronger drove him on.
Ruthlessly, he stripped the clothes from his body until they were both naked and then he drew her down onto the bed, smoothing the hair away from her face, looking deep into her eyes.
Luca sighed. ‘I want you. So very much.’
There was a split-second silence. ‘Then kiss me.’
‘I will kiss you until you beg me to kiss you no more,’ he promised. But still he gazed at her, as if wanting to prolong this moment, this mind-shattering realisation of all that she had come to mean to him.
Eve lifted her mouth. ‘Don’t make me wait any more,’ she moaned.
He kissed her back, feeling her fingers slide with abandon over his skin as if she was relearning his body by touch alone. ‘Greedy woman,’ he laughed, with soft delight.
He felt as though there were a million new nerve endings in his body. She could thrill him by the soft whisper of her lips, make him tremble with the wet touch of her tongue. He shuddered, helpless beneath her and then he moved above her and made his mouth move along the moist, erotic pathways of her skin until she cried out.
And when he entered her, he said her name and it was as if he had never made love before—the way people spoke of, but he had never believed could happen. Not to him. A complete communion, he thought dazedly. Afterwards he lay back and stared at the ceiling with eyes which felt new and reborn. ‘Oh, Eve,’ was all he said.
Eve kissed his elbow. It was a particularly gorgeous elbow. Then she clambered on top of him, her hair spilling untidily all over, some of it on his face, so that he laughed and blew it away.
‘Luca?’
‘Mmm?’
‘How long have you loved me for?’
He picked up another errant strand and thoughtfully twirled it around his finger. ‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly.’
‘If you want me to give you a time and a da
te, then I cannot,’ he admitted. ‘It kind of crept up on me. Like being out in the rain. A little drop at first, here and there, so faint that you thought you might have imagined it. And then a little more, and then more still—until suddenly I was standing in a deluge without quite realising how I’d got there!’
She pretended to pout. ‘So I’m like a storm?’
‘Mmm. Wild and strong and overwhelming.’
‘But you knew that I loved you?’
He smiled. It had happened to him too often in his life not to. And as always the realisation had scared him, but this time for very different reasons—not because he wanted to run away from her love, but because he had to be sure he was worthy of it. It would have been easier to have been impetuous, but, caught up in these new and strange emotions, he had used caution. ‘Yes, cara,’ he said softly. ‘I knew.’
‘And when were you going to get around to telling me you loved me back?’ she persisted. ‘How long would you have waited? What if we hadn’t had that row today—then I would never have known.’
‘Oh, yes, you would. I suppose I was waiting for the right moment only, when it happened, it was a wrong moment, really. Not champagne and flowers but a misunderstanding over a jealous woman.’
Eve wriggled luxuriously against him. ‘But it brought things to a head.’ She yawned.
‘Mmm.’ He idly put her little finger in his mouth and sucked on it. ‘You see, we have done everything the wrong way round, cara. At first there was passion and only passion, but before we knew it there was a baby, too.’
‘And anger,’ she ventured.
He nodded. ‘And anger. But no getting to know you. No old-fashioned courtship. No getting to know each other. No trust built nor friendship established. I wanted that and you deserved no less than that—we needed that if we were to share our future.’
It was, she realised, a very matter-of-fact way of looking at it, but she didn’t mind. And really—when you thought about it—it made sense. For marriage was a contract as well as a love affair.
