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‘It shouldn’t have been so desperate. So animalistic.’
‘But it was. Because that’s how we were feeling.’
‘It shouldn’t have been like that foryou.’
‘Why not for me?’ She swallowed thickly. ‘I wanted this. I wanted you. And you wanted me too.’
‘You arepregnant,’ he interjected fiercely. ‘And I...’ He exhaled a shaky breath. ‘I took you against a wall...without softness, without care. I could have hurt you...the baby—’
‘You didn’t hurt me. Pregnancy doesn’t make me breakable.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I was raised on a farm.’
‘We are not animals, Flora.’ He scrubbed a hand over his face. ‘We are human beings.’
She let her breath calm and tried to clear her mind. It wasn’t the pleasure he’d given her that had pushed words of love into her head, was it? It was him, filling her mind, her body, her heart...
He kept on ripping apart the doubts she presented to him...the fear that who she was wouldn’t be wanted. Because he wanted her. Despite his best intentions to stem the urgency in him to—
Love her?
She searched his face. Ran her gaze over every tight muscle. Heard the shallow rasps of his breath. Even if he was feeling things for her he wasn’t ready.
And you are?
She was ready because she refused to be anything else. Refused to hide from her feelings any more. But him? He was a man who had loved her body in his grief six weeks ago—a man now vulnerable and raw from the memory of a storm that should have killed him who had loved her body today.
If she could persuade him to explore this side of their relationship, maybe he’d...
‘We’re going to be stuck on this boat for a few more days, aren’t we?’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Until we leave, I want to do everything we’ve been doing. Sharing breakfast...all our meals. And at night I want to explore this chemistry between us.’
‘Burn it out?’
‘Understand it,’ she corrected. ‘Give it a place in our lives before we get married. Before we have a baby. So you don’t fear it.’
‘I am not scared of sex.’
‘But youareafraid of having sex with me. Why?’ she asked, eyes narrowed. ‘Because of the intensity of it?’
His eyes darkened. ‘Because I can’t protect you when I’m buried deep inside you.’
‘I don’t need protection.’ She clutched the blanket closer around her midriff. ‘I need—’
‘Not this,’ he said roughly. ‘You need—’
‘I need you to stop sweeping our attraction for each other under the carpet. I’m tired of hiding from the elephant in the room,’ she interrupted honestly. ‘But if your goal in our relationship is to keep me safe...what better way to protect me than keeping me close? Isn’t that what you said? That if I’d been in your bed then you could have protected me from the storm?’
‘Flora...’ he growled.
‘Let’s go to bed, Raffaele. Give this side of our relationship enough time to either run its course or...’
‘Or?’
