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Teach him to trust it.
To trust her the way she trusted him...
CHAPTER TEN
THESTORMHADPASSED.
Raffaele slipped the grey button through the hole that housed it. Then the next. Methodically. Without emotion. He reached his throat and pushed the last button through the loop. He picked up his tie from beside the basin. Threaded the charcoal silk through the collar of his matching shirt. Flipped and twisted it between his fingers and pulled, forming a knot against his neck.
He reached for his suit jacket, pushed his arms through, and only then did he meet his reflection. Stare at the man who had stepped on this boat seven days ago and, regardless of what had happened in between, would be leaving as him too.
The man in the suit.
The billionaire.
In control.
Resolute in his decision, he turned. His leather shoes slapped against the marble floor. The burn in his chest set fire to his throat. He knew it wasn’t indigestion. It was the burn of the man he’d been for the last three days, disgusted at what he was about to do.
He was going to take back control of himself. Of all their lives. His. Flora’s. The baby’s.
This piece of paper with its numbered lines would end whatever step out of time he’d allowed himself these past three days.
He picked it up from the gilded table, opened the bathroom door and stepped into the master suite. The bedroom.
And stood there.
Looking at the evidence of how the last few days had overturned his life.
Flora.
She was everywhere.
The white towelling robe he’d draped around her after their swim, only to discard it as soon as they’d closed the door to their rooms, flung on the back of a chair.
Her black panties lay on the floor. Panties he’d slowly taken down her thighs on the sofa last night. Gently teasing them down her legs and over her ankles to present himself between her legs on his knees and taste her.
The taste had lingered in his mouth and drugged him into a stupor of desire. He hadn’t been able to sate it. That desire. That need to grip her hips, lower her onto any available surface and thrust himself inside her. Again and again.
In the pool.
On the floor.
The sofa.
The bed.
Slowly, he let his gaze fall on every piece of evidence of her until his gaze came to Flora herself. Asleep. Oblivious. A white sheet drawn up to her hips, her bare back exposed, her brown hair spread out over the pillow as her hand rested on his side of the bed. His vacated spot.
He’d left.
And he wasn’t going back.
He couldn’t. Not the man who had draped his arms around her, pulled her to his chest in the Sky Lounge with a blanket shared between them as they watched the storm.
Because she’d been right. He had needed to give this part of their relationship a place in their lives. And now he had. And it would remain on his boat. The intensity. The chaos.
In the real world, he wasn’t the man who had claimed her softness with his unrelenting urgency. Nor the man who had accepted her tenderness, her cuddles, her laughter.
