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“I’m worried about Clara.”
His sudden speech startled me. “About her pregnancy?”
“Not so much that. She’s handling the physical stuff pretty well. A while ago, she came to me and told me something was off with Miller. She’d asked him if he was cheating, which he denied.”
I shuddered. “I can’t picture Clara sleeping with Miller, let alone anyone else.”
His grip tightened. “Please don’t try. I’m already horrified when I think about how she got knocked up.”
That made me laugh a little. “Has she said anything else lately?”
“No, and that’s why I’m worried. Every time I’ve tried to broach the subject, she shuts me down. I was hoping things were better. Hell, I even hired a PI who’d found nothing on him. But she’s here.”
“And he’s not,” I filled in.
“Yeah.” His chest rose when he sucked in a deep breath. “I’m at a fucking loss. If she doesn’t open up to me, how do I help her?”
I raised my head, looking at his worried face. “Give her space and support. Let her stay here without questioning why. It’s not so bad having her here, is it?”
The anger in his gaze ebbed as his eyes flowed over me. He reached up and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear, then dragged his knuckles along my jaw.
I didn’t breathe as he touched me with a gentleness that was foreign and reverent.
“It’s not so bad, right?” I whispered.
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t bad at all.”
He cupped my crown, drawing me down to him. Our lips met in a tentative caress. Testing the waters. Taking a sip, then another.
But I was so thirsty for Luca that one sip or a hundred would never be enough.
At first, all we did was kiss and kiss and kiss. Slow and soft. Deep and searching. Fingers in hair. My hand over his heart. His holding me tight against him.
We were careful with one another in a way we had never been. I was achy, like I had the flu. My need for Luca’s touch had seeped into my bones. Each slide of his hand over my silky nightgown soothed.
But it was when he shifted us so his chest was on top of mine that I melted and tension flowed out of me in ragged rivers.
Words weren’t spoken. There was no discussion when he slipped my nightgown off and lowered his sleep pants. Our heated skin melded like it was always meant to be touching.
Luca didn’t command me. I didn’t sass him. This was different than all the other times, yet exactly the same. His body knew mine. We were drawn to each other in a way I’d never been drawn to anyone else. Even as we broke the rules in Luca’s quiet, dimly lit bedroom, that hadn’t changed. He held my strings, and I danced for him, though it was a languid, sultrypas de deuxinstead of the usual fiery tango.
Luca pressed my thighs apart as he buried his face between them. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand, muffling the moans he elicited from me with the flat of his tongue on my slick, swollen flesh. In the back of my mind, I still feared if I was too loud, the spell would break.
And I would die if the spell broke.
When I reached my peak, Luca’s palm traveled up my torso and rested over my thrashing heart. The heart he’d unknowingly unlocked and set free.
I crumbled then. Crumbled and fell even harder for this man.
When he climbed over me and stared down at my face, I thought there was no way he couldn’t read the magnitude of my feelings for him. But if he did, he showed no signs. He remained intense and focused on me, fitting himself inside me in one smooth stroke.
He moved above me, into me, advancing and retreating, but never for long. As soon as he slid out, he pushed back in, somehow deeper every time. When we weren’t kissing, we were caressing, stroking, touching. Eyes locked, panting breaths exchanging air that wasn’t mine or his but ours.
Luca wasn’t in love with me. He cared for me, though. Deeply, tenderly. And he was showing me without any restraint.
I wasn’t certain the unbound emotions running rampant within me could be called love either. But I suspected that was what this was, and I couldn’t keep them neatly tucked away.
I didn’t want to terrify him either.
