AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Flora grabbed his face. ‘Look at me,’ she demanded. ‘Open your eyes and see me.’
Still moving inside her, he opened his eyes. Saw her.
And she saw him.
‘I trust you,’ she declared. ‘Let go.’
His jaw tensed.
‘Trust yourself.’
The pulse in his cheek throbbed frantically. ‘I...’
She felt him holding back. Holding on to the fear. So by instinct she tilted her hips, taking him deeper into the pulsing, clenching heart of her.
‘Come for me now, Raffaele,’ she demanded. ‘Let go.’
He thrust harder, deeper inside her.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.‘Yes!’
Harder, deeper, faster, he thrust. His eyes never leaving hers until the moment had nowhere to ascend to. Only the greater pleasure of climax.
‘Flora!’He gripped her hips, roared his release into the world, into her, and let go.
And so did she. Clinging to the man she was in love with. The father of her baby. The man she was going to marry.
Raffaele buried his mouth in the crook of her neck. She smoothed her fingers through his damp hair and panted in sync with his every breath. Their booming hearts pressed against each other in a crushing caress.
Flora placed her lips to his forehead, inhaled the heat of him, the vulnerability of this moment. But she wasn’t ready to tell him. Confess her love. Not in the throes of ecstasy. Not in the storm that had set his mind and body on edge.
He raised his head, his breathing shallow and deep. He rasped, ‘That shouldn’t have happened.’
‘You’re still inside me,’ she whispered.
And she couldn’t help it. Her muscles contracted around him as if to prove her point.
He groaned deep in his throat, the skin pulling tight across his cheekbones. ‘It shouldn’t have been like this.’
‘What should it have been like?’ she asked, her voice just as low as his. But she didn’t let the rejection in his words penetrate her mind. Because she recognised it for what it was.
Fear.
She’d lived with it her entire life—had felt it when he’d confronted her and thought she was missing.
He feathered his fingers over her hips. ‘I came to you in anger...amisplacedanger,’ he corrected. ‘I never should have put my reactions because of the past on you. I see that now.’
‘But I did the same thing,’ she said—because she had, hadn’t she? ‘Your fears smashed against mine and exploded into—’
‘Sex.’
The hands at her hips pressed into her hipbones and lifted her, breaking their intimate seal and bringing her to her feet. He tugged up his jeans and then reached for the blanket on the floor.
He wrapped it around her shoulders, cocooning her nakedness. Concealing it. But the rawness remained and she wanted to explore it. To explore her feelings. To make him explore his.
But he’d retreated. Physically. He’d stepped back until the distance between them was a palpable length. And emotionally she felt it too. As if the words they’d whispered between kisses had never been spoken. As if he hadn’t released whatever power the storm had over him into her body.
‘And wasn’t that reaction normal?’ she asked. ‘The sex?’
