Page 213 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

Her words held such feeling and such quiet power that the only thing he could do in that moment was claim her lips and it was a kiss that contained everything. Joy and passion. Forgiveness. But also regret and sorrow. Because, as badly as they wished it, neither of them could change what had happened, their many mistakes and the many hurts.

And yet, amongst all that wreckage, there was a single revelation sticking in Domenico’s mind. That Rae had never stopped loving him, and that made his heart feel fuller than it had in a very long time.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

RAEWOKEFROMher sleep with a jolt.

Her skin was sticky and her heart was pounding, a hot and sickly panic gushing through her veins.

She lay still, waiting for the threat of the dream to fade, for her breathing to settle into a more even rhythm, for the drumbeat of fear to grow smaller and shallower and her limbs to unfreeze and, as soon as she was able, she swept the covers aside, casting a quick look at Domenico to make sure he was still sound asleep before carefully extracting herself from his tight embrace and slipping out of the bed and the room.

Her feet carried her down the stairs and outside and she welcomed the waft of the cool, clean morning air against her face and the feel of the sand beneath her feet as she walked across their private horseshoe-shaped beach towards the gentle froth of the waves.

Taking a seat on the sand, Rae hugged her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees, her mind going back to her dream. No, not a dream—her nightmare. It was one she’d had before, but not for many months. In it she was lost, casting around for any kind of anchor or raft to grab on to, but there was nothing apart from an encroaching blackness, looming thick and dark and growing even greater the nearer it came. It was blinding and choking, strangling her screams and sucking her in, no matter how hard she fought it, until it was all around her, taking her over, pulling her down. That was when she’d woken up. That was always when she woke up.

Pulling her knees in tighter, Rae sucked in a shuddery breath of air, feeling the surge of a fresh wave of panic. Because she knew exactly what that dream was about, and she knew exactly why she’d had it again.

Because of last night. Those emotional, transforming few hours in which everything had changed.

Everything.

She and Domenico had become closer than they had ever been before. Closer than she had ever felt to another person, than she’d ever believed it was possible to be.

There was nothing standing between them now. Nothing pushing them apart or holding them back. There was just the two of them, their defences lowered and their hearts open. Together, they had ripped down the last few walls that had stood between them and dragged all of their secrets and fears into the light, but what had endowed those moments with even more power, even more meaning, was that they hadchosento do that. Individually, they had each decided to be more honest than they’d ever previously been, decided that they wanted the other person to know all of their heart as if they had been holding it in their hands. That they had both found themselves in that same place at the same time, both of them filled with courage and willing, seemed to Rae to be incredibly beautiful and incredibly poignant.

All she had ever wanted was for them to be reading from the same page, and for the first time in a very long time they were.

And with every new piece of himself that Domenico had revealed to her, Rae had fallen more and more in love with him. Because, with his whole story out in the open, she was able to see how strong and determined and noble he truly was.

She’d always been in awe of his strength, that ability he possessed to carry everything and even more on his very broad shoulders, but knowing that he’d been rejected and abandoned and broken and was still upstanding in spite of that was mesmeric. That he had found the perseverance to go on, to retain the trust he had in Elena, and to believe in Rae enough to want to marry her, spoke volumes about his capacity to feel and the fact that didn’t understand how remarkable he was only made Rae’s love for him so much greater.

But that meant her fear was that much bigger too.

Because the love she was feeling—the fierce, intense, passionate devotion to him—was anchored too deep and consumed too much of her. It had the power to be utterly devastating and that was terrifying.

It was a risk that Rae wasn’t sure she could live with.

She knew too well what followed devastation. The darkness. The swallowing, surrounding, smothering darkness, which had been hunting her in her dream. The one that she feared coming for her in reality, just as it had preyed on her beautiful, strong mother. And as long as she loved Domenico as much as she did, that was a worry that she would carry with her each and every day. What if she lost him? How would she cope? Would she even be able to?

As those questions mounted, a cavern opened in her stomach, filling with the bitterest kind of dread, so strong that she could suddenly taste it in her mouth. And all she wanted to do was run. Run fast and far and away from all of those feelings.

As much as Rae had loved her mother, she didn’t want to follow in her footsteps. She didn’t want to force her sisters to watch another person they loved suffer and there was no way for her to reel in her feelings. They were too powerful, with a force of their own. Intense. Enthralling. That was the way it had always been between her and Domenico. She didn’t believe it could be any other way. Their love had been forged in the sizzling flames of their instant, scorching passion, and the many ways they had opened up to each other in recent days had only fanned those flames.

It was everything that Rae had once wanted with him. A soul-deep, unshakeable, unbreakable bond...but back then she hadn’t known how deep that fear was anchored in her, hadn’t fully comprehended the consequences of such a connection. The power and sway it held over her. Now she did, and she knew those consequences could be catastrophic, and that scared her more than she could say.

She didn’t want to live with fear shadowing her every move. She didn’t want to feel fragile every minute of every day, worrying about what lurked around the corner. It had been hard enough last time and even with all the work she had done to make herself strong, to make her life fuller and become more robust so that nothing could ever break her the way her mum had been broken, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was powerful enough to counter Domenico’s presence and power over her. She still felt vulnerable and afraid.

Toovulnerable.Tooafraid.

She felt it when she spotted Domenico striding across the beach to join her, felt it as she watched him work on the plane going home to Venice, his head bent low as he typed out email after email, occasionally looking up to send her one of his slow, devastating smiles, and she felt it when he kissed her goodbye at the airport before he went off in one direction to the Ricci offices and she returned to the palazzo.

Every time she looked at him, she felt that overpowering wave of love for the man he had become in spite of everything he had had to endure. And then a deep, threatening stab of fear.

It was a relief to have some space from him and some time to herself, a few hours without that frantic back and forth of feeling. But once back at the palazzo Rae became restless, unable to settle peacefully to even the smallest of tasks, and so when, mid-afternoon, her phone rang with an incoming video call from Nell, she leapt to answer it, eager for the distraction that a friendly conversation would provide.

‘I have some very exciting news for you,’ Nell announced after they’d exchanged pleasantries, launching into a description of the conversation she’d had with the owner of New York’s biggest and world-famous bridal boutique.

‘Are you serious?’ Rae gasped in disbelief when Nell had finished. ‘They want to stock my dresses? Even though there aren’t even samples of all my designs yet, only sketches?’

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