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The strong column of his neck worked. “That is simply good business.”
“You love Jules,” she said softly. “I’ve seen the way you look at her when you think I’m not paying attention. But I’ve seen it. And I know.”
“Geraldine...” he gritted out.
She slid her palms down so she could press them into his chest. Then she moved one, just slightly, so she could make it clear that she was feeling the way his heart pounded.
And how it pounded even harder once she did it.
Geraldine smiled. “You pride yourself on being cold and unreachable, but you’re not. I’ve seen the way you look at me, too. Every time you look at me.”
“I am warning you, Geraldine.”
But her smile only widened. “Lionel, I don’t know how to break this news to you. And I’m sorry you don’t want to hear it. But I’m as certain as I can be that you’re in love with me, too.”
And it was like watching a hurricane.
The storm wrecked him and she watched it as it happened. She watched it play out in his gaze, in that anguish etched into his face.
She watched it tear him apart.
But then his hands were on her, pulling her closer and spearing his fingers into her hair so he could hold her right there before him.
Not that she wanted to be anywhere else.
“Don’t you understand?” he demanded, as if the world was ending. As if, outside, the trees were bent in half beneath the howl of the wind instead of standing prettily beneath a perfectly blue sky. In here, in him, the storm raged. “What if I do?That can only mean that I will destroy you, too.”
And for a moment the only sound of the storm was the way the two of them breathed, ragged and intense, as if they’d just climbed up something steep. For hours.
“You couldn’t destroy me if you tried,” she told him when she could speak again. When she could hold her gaze steady on his. When she could make certain he understood that she meant this. “I come from peasant stock, Lionel. I’m built to withstand far greater horrors than the love of a good husband.” She leaned in then, sliding her arms around him and holding him close. The way he deserved to be held. “Bring it on, I say.”
His arms moved, and she thought for a moment he might try to push her away—trybeing the operative word—but instead he wrapped them around her.
Not exactly gently.
He gazed down at her, stern as stone. “If I love you, Geraldine, there is no going back. There is no escape. There is not only no divorce, there is no separation. I don’t like leaving you. Coming home to you is a joy, but I would far rather have you at my side, and I mean that. I mean everything I say and you should know—I am not a man who traffics in half measures. If I say I am in, I will never be out.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she shot right back. “Because you do realize, don’t you, that you haven’t used even a hint of protection with me? That you never even asked?”
And as she watched, then, Lionel Asensio began to laugh.
He laughed, but he held her close until she was laughing, too. And somehow that became kissing, desperate and delighted. Then they were wrapped up in each other, rolling on the bed, and this was as it was supposed to be. This was right.
Geraldine said as much when he worked his way inside her, filling her completely, thrusting in deep. Then deeper still, and yet it was never deep enough.
“You are the only lie I have ever told myself,” Lionel growled down at her as he braced himself above her, taking up the whole sky she should have been able to see beyond him. A better view, in her opinion. “Because this is the truth, Geraldine, and it always has been. I want you naked, just like this. I want to be inside you. I want nothing between us, ever. As many children as you wish to give me, I intend to raise. Right here, with you. I want you so much a part of me that it will be as if we are two sides of the same coin. And even that will never be enough.”
“Good,” Geraldine retorted fiercely. “Because I have been waiting my whole life to love you and I didn’t even realize it. It will take me the whole rest of my life to revel in it, and several forevers after that, I would think, for it to sink in.”
“Geraldine,” he said as he began to move, that slick, hot, perfect rhythm that took everything they were and made it a sweet hot celebration that they could share, over and over again, “I love you. And I promise you, I will love you forever.”
So she wrapped herself around him and she fixed her gaze to his. “For richer and for poorer,” she told him, because the last vows they’d taken had been a blur, and then she’d fainted.
This felt much better.
“I promise you,” he said at once. Then he smiled. “But I must assure you that there is very little possibility that you will ever be anything like poor,mi media naranja.”
And then, together, they made the only vows that could ever matter.
