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His gaze dropped to her mouth, and she felt everything inside her shudder to life. Then bloom, in a riot of sensation and need.
But he did not kiss her.
“Thank you,” Cristiano said instead, his voice like gravel. “I cannot describe to you what it was like to see the baby.” That look in his gaze, as stricken as it had been earlier, sharpened. “My son.”
And Julienne could blame her hormones all she liked, because it hardly mattered when the end result was the same. Her eyes welled up, then spilled over.
“Our baby,” she whispered. “Our son.”
And for a moment, there was nothing but the deep red and thick gold of the setting sun, his hands on hers, and the new life they’d made between them as they stood, not quite kissing.
Finally,she thought, a dangerous hope careening around inside of her.
Because she’d imagined this moment, but she’d never thought it would happen. Never.
And as if he knew they were discussing him, the baby kicked. Hard.
Julienne took Cristiano’s hands in hers, then slid them down onto her belly. She pressed them in, smiling up at him as she waited. Then smiled even wider when the baby kicked.
“He’s saying hello,” she whispered. “To his father.”
Cristiano jolted. Julienne could feel the electric charge go through him. And then his face changed. She saw a flash of wonder. His dark eyes lit up, and in that instant, he was...unguarded. Disarmed.
The baby kept kicking, and Cristiano’s hands molded to her belly. She could feel all their heat and strength. She could feel the baby kicking. And she had the indescribable joy of watching a smile creep its way across Cristiano Cassara’s austere face.
She could feel how wet her cheeks were, and it didn’t occur to her to wipe them dry. Julienne could have stood where they were forever, and she wanted to—lost in this moment that felt as old as the hills and fields around them. A man and a woman and their coming child. She felt ancient. Connected to the earth, the seasons, every woman who’d come before her and all the women who would follow.
Julienne had understood that she’d gotten pregnant, of course. And she’d understood how. She had been overwhelmed by what that meant, for both of them. And apprehensive about his reaction.
But it was not until now, with only the soft, golden sunset in Tuscany as their witness, that she truly understood what it meant that she and Cristiano hadmade a new lifetogether.
She felt her heart break open inside her chest, but it wasn’t a heartbreak in the classic sense. It was more love, not less. It made more of her heart to go around, suddenly. All the shattered pieces fused back together, better than before.
More, not less.
“We did this,” she whispered now. “You and me.”
“This feels like a miracle, Julienne,” he replied, his voice a mere thread of sound.
And then he broke her heart into pieces all over again, then stitched them back together in the same breath, as he sank down to his knees before her.
Julienne couldn’t believe that any of this was happening. That she was here, with him, and that look on his face. That Cristiano was looking at her—or her belly, anyway—with so much tenderness. So much obvious, astonished delight. He spread his hands out to cover as much of her bump as he could, and then he leaned forward and placed a kiss there where his thumbs nearly met.
She couldn’t stop crying, and she had never been quite so far from sad in all her life.
He looked up at her, this beautiful man, his eyes so bright they blocked out all that Tuscan gold. Like another miracle, right here on this terrace.
“We will marry,” he said, a gruff command. “We must marry.”
“I will marry you,” she replied. “Of course, I’ll marry you.”
But it wasn’t until she’d said it that she realized he hadn’t exactly asked.
“He will be one of the good ones,” Cristiano said fiercely. “I will see to it personally.”
“He will be absolutely perfect,” she agreed, because this was their son. And there were no curses, no poisoned blood. And the life inside her would turn into a boy who would never know the vile things others might predict about him. She would be his mother, and unlike her own, Julienne would make sure of it.
Cristiano stood then, this man she had loved for as long as she’d known him. First as a teenage girl with a crush, then as a hopeless employee he never once saw as a woman. And now, she knew all too well what it was like to have his mouth between her legs, his hands on her breasts, and best of all, the hardest part of him deep inside her, again and again.
