Page 47 of Loving My Enemy

“Why?” The question came out breathless, expectant. Almost hopeful.

“Because, I…because.” Christ, this was harder than I thought it would be. “Dammit, because I love you Elka.”

She gasped and put a hand to her mouth while her head shook slowly, side to side. “You don’t…you…can’t.”

“I do, I love you and I want you to stay in Tulip. Give us a shot.” She didn’t look convinced but she didn’t look ready to bolt either so I closed the distance between us and put one hand on her shoulders, the other sifted through her hair. “Please Elka. Stay.”

Confusion flickered in her gaze and then hope. “Antonio, don’t just say it because you think its what I want to hear.”

“I’m not. I wouldn’t. Did you say it because you thought I wanted to hear it?”

“I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I told her and lowered my voice to a whisper pressed close to her ear. “I didn’t know how much I wanted to hear it until you said it. In the past tense.” She gasped and glanced over at me with a question in her eyes and I took advantage of the moment, pressing my mouth to hers and I kissed Elka until she was a boneless mass in my arms. “Now I want you to love me again. For real.” The more I said it, the more I felt it all the way down to my bones. Deep in my soul.

“I want that too Antonio, but I’m scared.” She put a hand on my chest while the other curled around the hairs at the base of my neck. “I want you but I’m scared.” Then before I could say another word, she was kissing me with her whole heart, her body.

Telling me she still loved me too.

Chapter 28

Elka

“We shouldn’t have done that.” Not this time or the last time. Or the time before that.

“Which time,” Antonio asked, his voice was a smile filled with masculine pride. “Because there have been many times.” He kissed one side of my breast and then the other before kissing the nipple. “Many, many times.”

I shivered at his kiss, at the way his hands softly climbed from my calf up my thigh and over my hip until his thumbs brushed over hard nipples. “Any of them. I shouldn’t have attacked you like that.” Not without talking first, anyway.

“You don’t hear me complaining.” His hands stopped moving and his eyes bore into my soul. “It’s no secret that you want me, Elka. What I want to know is can you love me again?”

As if I ever stopped loving him. I don’t even know when it happened, or how. What did it say about me that I could so easily fall for a man who treated me the way Antonio did? Nothing kind, that much was certain. “It’s not about whether I can or not.”

“That’s all it’s about,” he insisted and kissed the warm skin between my breasts. “Can you?”

My eyes fluttered closed when his lips wrapped around my nipple and I arched into him, the word, “Yes,” ripped from my lips.

Antonio smiled and looked up me, hope swimming in the amber and green swirls of his eyes. “Yes you can or yes to this,” he asked and swiped a tongue across my breast.

“Yes to both, but yeah I could love you Antonio.”

“Again,” he clarified. “You can love me again.”

“No. I do love you.” Denying it would just be cruel and I wasn’t ashamed of how I felt, at least I didn’t think I was.

“But you don’t trust me,” he guessed correctly at the reason for my hesitation. “I don’t deserve it, not yet. But I can only prove you wrong if you stay.”

I didn’t want to leave Tulip but I couldn’t stay. “I can’t live this down, Antonio.”

“There’s nothing to live down. Nothing at all.”

As if proving his point, the doorbell rang and I groaned into his chest. “See what you’ve done?”

He chuckled and the sounded reverberated through my whole body, making it even harder to tear myself away from him. “At least they gave us a few hours before ambushing us.”

I glanced at the clock. Five-fifteen. “Crap, you’re right. Keep them company, will you?” My whole body caught on fire at the way his gaze raked down my body, slow and tempting until I could feel his hands all over my body, his body pumping into mine. “Keep looking at me like that and…,” I sighed or maybe it was a swoon. Who could say?

“And you’ll stay here and let me show you what we have to look forward too after work every day?”

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