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She was hungrier for him. Not that she’d jump his bones again. The overwrought situation, her excuse and what had ignited him, was over. He’d decided to walk away, and she had to tell him he was free to go. She’d be damned if she clung to him through his guilt over Rico, or any obligation to her. Being unable to stop wanting him was her curse.
Suffocating with heartache, she struggled to find words to breach the awkwardness as Richard put the tray beside her then sat on the bed. His eyes downcast under a knotted brow, he silently poured her coffee, buttered a croissant, adding her favorite raspberry jam. His heat and scent and virility deluged her, hunger a twisting serpent in her gut.
Cries bubbled inside her: that he didn’t need to stick around, or coddle her, that she was okay now—they’d be okay. Before any escaped, he put the croissant to her lips. But it was the look in his eyes that silenced her, made her bite into the delicious flaky warmth, her senses spinning.
It felt as if he was showing her inside him for the first time. It was dark and scarred and isolated in there. A mirror image of her own insides. She’d already worked all that out, but she’d thought he’d grown so hardened, was so formidable, that his demons were just more fuel for his power, that he didn’t suffer from his injuries the way she did. But he was exposing facets of himself she would have never believed existed—wounded, remorseful...vulnerable.
Enervated by the exposure, she could only eat what he fed her and drown in his gaze, in a world of aching entreaty, and what she’d despaired of seeing directed to her...tenderness.
Then he began speaking. “I’ve been damaged in so many ways, been guilty of so much, I can’t begin to describe it. But Rico...he’s purity and innocence and love personified. And you...by God, Isabella, you. Against all odds and in spite of all you’ve suffered, you are all that and everything that’s shining and heroic. And while I can’t breathe without you...”
That statement was so...enormous it had her pent-up misery bursting out. “B-but you didn’t come near me for weeks!”
His gaze flooded with incomprehension, then incredulity. “Didn’t you feel me warring with myself not to?”
She shook her head, every despair she’d been resigned to evaporating, bewilderment crashing in its place. “Why?”
“Because I spoiled everything, in every way possible. In the past and in the present. But even after I discovered the extent of my crimes against you, you still gave me another chance—but only for Rico’s sake. I was going out of my mind needing you, but though I knew you wanted me still, physical intimacy had so far only driven you further away, made you despise me, and yourself. And I didn’t blame you. I didn’t know if I had more in me than what you already rejected. So I enforced the no-touching rule on myself to see if I could offer you what I never did, if I had something inside me that was worthy of you, of Rico...of the extended family who’d reached out and accepted me as one of their own because of you.”
Every word unraveled the maze of confusion she’d been lost in, shattered the vice of anguish gripping her insides.
He’d been holding back. He still wanted her.
He went on, dissolving the last of her uncertainties, giving her far more than she’d dared dream of. “But as I fully realized the extent of my emotions for you, I started to worry about the sheer depth of my attachment to Rico, the staggering force of my love for you. I started to fear myself. Then Rico asked if I was his father and Numair summoned me, and it all spiraled out of control in my mind.”
The staggering force of my love for you... My love for you.
The words revolved in her mind, spinning an all-powerful magical spell, enveloping her whole being.
Richard loved her.
As mind-blowing and life affirming as this realization was, the more pressing matter now was his distress. The need to defuse it was her paramount concern. Her trembling hand covered his fisted one. “What happened? I could have sworn you’d come back to tell him the truth.”
He continued staring at her, adrift in his own turmoil. “I was so lost in you, in my yearnings for a future together as a family, I totally dropped my guard. I almost got myself killed. And I didn’t even notice it. Numair saved my life unbeknownst to me.”
Each nerve in her body fired, every muscle liquefied. A wave of nausea and horror stormed through her at the idea that he could have been...been... The images were...unbearable, unsurvivable...
“That was the last straw. It made me believe that whatever I do, just because of what I am, I’d only blight your lives, cause you even more untold damages. I had to keep you safe, from myself most of all. That was why I had to walk away.”
Another surge of dread smashed into her.
He believed his love, his very life, would be a source of threats to them? And that was why he’d still walk away?
His eyes were haunted, desperate, as they left hers, searched space aimlessly. “I thought my control and strength of will limitless. But it all crumbled in the face of my need for you. What can I do now when it’s beyond me to leave you?”
The heart that had been pulping itself against her ribs did a full somersault. She swore.
And she did what she’d told herself she couldn’t do again. She launched herself at him, over the tray, knocking everything over, tackling him down to the bed, bombarding him with kisses and raining now-ready tears all over him.
“You can do only one thing for the rest of our lives. You can love, love, love me, and Rico, as much as we love you.”
Richard, lying speechless beneath her unrestrained passion and relief, looked as if he was coming out of a fugue. “You love me?” If she’d told him she could stick to walls he wouldn’t have looked more stunned. “You love me? How? When I did everything to deserve your loathing?”
His guilt, his hatred of himself, his conviction he didn’t deserve her love felt so total, she knew he’d need a lengthy argument to persuade him otherwise. She wasn’t up to that now.
She wanted to get to the good part at once. At last.
So she asked one simple question. “Do you love us? Me?”
