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She pulled her face back. ‘Don’t you dare kiss me to keep me quiet,’ she said, but she made only a half-hearted effort to push him off. ‘Anyway, you still haven’t shaved. You will cut my face to ribbons…’
‘You wanted a man with a beard, Aurora.’
‘Perhaps—but I want a man who is devoted. I want a man who does not tell me he’s in the office—’
His reply was to haul her over his shoulder.
‘You wanted a man to come home to a house in chaos and laugh and then spank you.’
‘Nico, no!’ She was wriggling, and she did not know what was happening, but then he let her down, slowly against his chest.
He did not let her go; he held her tightly in his arms. ‘Good, because I could never spank a woman—let alone the woman I love.’
She missed the moment. It was just so impossible that her mind brushed it off.
‘Oh, the woman you love? Did you say that to your redhead? Did you say that to your blonde?’
Nico had the audacity to laugh.
‘It’s not funny, Nico—howcouldyou?’
‘As it turned out, I couldn’t.’ He was the accusing one now. ‘You’ve not only messed with my head but with my prowess, Aurora.’
‘Liar.’
‘It’s true,’ Nico said. ‘There’s been no one since you.’ And then he amended that a touch. ‘Thesecondtime around.’
That should have made her rage, but then she saw the intense look in his eyes, and she realised that in the midst of all this he had told her he loved her—that in these past agonising months there had been no one but her.
‘Don’t tell me you love me unless you mean it,’ she begged.
‘I do mean it.’
He was breathing hard and he put his hands gently on her cheeks. His thumbs wiped away her tears and he made her look at him.
‘I love you, Aurora, and you were wrong last night. This is not an occasional love—it’s an endless love. Over and over I told myself that I didn’t want it, but it turns out that I do.’
‘Why would you not want love?’ Aurora asked.
She thought she had already worked out the answer, but she needed to hear it from Nico.
‘I never knew how good it could be,’ Nico said. ‘I thought life would be better lived for the most part alone.’
For look what love had done to him.
‘I thought it was better to stay back,’ he explained. ‘But of course I couldn’t. I always wondered if it was guilt or duty that pulled me back to Silibri—I could not decide between the two. But it was neither. It was love—my love foryou.’
And then came that almost grim smile. The one she was getting to know. The one that meant Nico might lose his head at any given time.
It was a gesture she could read and it was a little more that she knew about this remote man.
A shiver that ran through her as she thought how much more there was to know, and that soon he would ravish her.
He lifted her onto the granite bench, so she was at eye level with him. She looked deep into his black eyes…
One day she would count those thick dark lashes, Aurora decided. One day, when she could hold off for a moment, she would count every last one.
But there was no holding back for Nico.
