Page 88 of Forbidden Deception

Rafael stops and turns to me.

He takes my breath away.

The streaks of grey in his hair are the sexiest thing I have seen. His chocolate-brown eyes always manage to hypnotise me, and I adore the smile he often graces me with.

“I meant what I said.” His voice lowers. “You are my love.”

His eyes watch me, his brow crinkling, a holding a hopeless look on his face like he wants me to truly understand what he means. He is trying to make me read his emotions that are very clearly written across his face.

“So is that what you’re going to be calling me from now on? You haven’t even asked me to be your girlfriend yet.” I lift a brow, my hand diving into his hair at his nape.

His eyes flutter, and he takes a shaky breath. “You need validation like that? You need me to spell out what you mean to me?”

I tilt my face.

He starts walking again.

“I’ve introduced you to my family. I’ve let you into my home. I kiss you and want to be in your presence every minute of the day, and you don’t think I have given you a label?”

Rafael slowly lowers me to the floor, and I notice that we are in a bedroom, possibly his.

“Who am I to you, Venezia?” He rests his forehead against mine, his hands on either side of my hips.

I smile.

Leaning up on my tiptoes, I press a quick kiss to his lips and loop my arms around his neck. Then I start slow dancing with no music.

“You are my heart, my home, my warmth, my lover, my everything.” I nudge his nose with mine with a grin.

Rafael shuts his eyes for a second, as if soaking in my words. He opens them again and this time they twinkle. How? How does he look so much more in love? Like he has never been this in love, like he has never shown this much emotion.

“And you?” I throw his question at him with a tilt of my head.

We rock back and forth, slowly rotating. We still have no music, but Rafael goes with the flow.

“You are my love, my only love, my first and last, my beginning and my end. If doom were ever spelled out for a man like me, it would come in the shape of you.” His lips land on mine.

We both start smiling during the kiss and end up laughing. Our teeth clash until we are broken apart by our own happiness.

“Don’t you fucking ever question what you mean to me,” Rafael mutters against my lips. “I trust you, and trust doesn’t come so easily for me, Venezia. I told you my step-mother doubted me. She went behind my back to try to pull me apart. She went to extreme lengths to push me off the board team forGustav Industries. I had no idea and never doubted her until I finally discovered her deception. Everyone knows that, and it’s why I have so much damn security.” His brows pinch.

The sight of his pained face makes me curl my hands around his waist. I wish she were alive. I wish she was here so I could give her a taste of her own bitter words and actions. To doubt your son so much that you were willing for him to lose everything…

“I trust you. You’ve won it all, and there is just nothing left for me to give you because you have taken it all. So no, Venezia, there should be no doubt about who you are to me.” He leans back, creating a couple of inches of space between us and then his eyes drop to my body.

“My…My own mother and father gave me up and put me in an…foster home.”

Rafael reels back like he’s been slapped in the face.

His hands drop from my body, and the frown on his face turns thunderous. He looks ready to commit murder.

“I was nine years old when I found out that I wasn’t going to a new school but to a foster home, where the other children were also left by their parents because they were no longer wanted.”

I thought it would be hard to talk about my past. I thought I would hyperventilate, that I would shake and stutter, but I’m surprisingly okay.

The look on Rafael’s face should scare me, considering how dangerous he can be, but I’m not fearful of him.

“I haven’t said anything except that one time it spilled out of me. I just couldn’t muster up the courage to admit to you that my parents didn’t want me for whatever reason, though that reason became clear once Re—my brother told me our parents had been using me as leverage against him. He took full revenge on them. He took what was mine and gave it back to me, which was mylife, my opportunities, my future… He never, not once, let me go.” Emotion chokes me to the point I can’t speak.

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