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“Look at me.” His hands fell to my waist. “Are you okay, Darla?”
You’re here and everything is okay.
“I have a small graze on my thigh.” It could have been a lot worse and I was grateful for the firefighter who’d caught me under my armpits and dragged me out of the small opening before it was too late. “Besides that, I’m okay.”
Zeno hissed, palming my thighs for the scrape and finding it. He smoothed his fingers over the skin and growled, “I’m going to murder Felix. You are never to be left unattended, goddammit! I can’t have you hurt. I fucking can’t—”
I kissed him to shush him. “You’re not going to do anything except tell me why you’re here.”
He wrenched his mouth from mine. “You’re asking me why I’m here?” he whispered, hurt.
I licked my lips and nodded.
“I couldn’t breathe when I realized you were in danger. My heart fucking stopped and my mind went to the worse possible conclusions. I called you for every minute it took me to get here, going insane listening to your voicemail and wondering if that would be the last thing I heard from you.”
I once said that my husband spoke with actions and not words.
Yet when he used his words, he made every single syllable count.
Speechless, I watched enraptured as he confessed another truth.
“So you’re asking me why I’m here?” he rasped, pressing his forehead to mine. “I’m here because next to you is the only place I want to be.”
There was nothing cold about the king of Montardor’s underworld right now.
Zeno Gianni De la Croix may not have been what I wanted initially, but he was everything I needed. Passionate. Fierce. And so devoted, he made me feel like the most valuable woman on earth.
“I kept thinking about you as the fire raged. I wondered…if I would get to see you again,” I confessed. “You’re where I want to be too, Zeno.”
He exhaled, eyes wild.
I inhaled, my trembling smile sealing the deal.
Our mouths crashed together at the same time and we kissed like the world around us no longer mattered.
Loneliness had no place between us.
Only aliveness.
The final nail in the coffin was pounded.
I had feelings for my husband. The kind that weren’t hatred related and one step away from love. The line was thin and I was dangerously close to crossing it.
I stirred awake to the soft, supple feel of my husband’s lips against mine, his body heat blanketing me. My eyes fluttered open and he was the only thing I saw, looming above in his larger-than-life presence.
Like a villain, he stole another kiss.
“Wake up,monange.”
My palms travelled over his torso—donned in a crisp white dress shirt—and around his neck, pulling him down to me so we both lay on the Cleopatra chaise in my conservatory room.
Zeno’s hot tongue demanded entrance and I gave it to him. For once, we didn’t war with our mouths. Simply basked in our truce.
After talking to the police and ensuring all the students and faculty members were safe, I came home with Zeno. My husband had patiently waited for me to finish by leaning against his Lamborghini and watching me with an awed look.
If that look alone didn’t prove what I already knew, the voicemails he’d left me in such a heart-wrenching fervour did.
“There’s a fireat St. Victoria and you’re not picking up yourphone. I’m coming for you. Call me back.”
