Page 34 of His Vow
She startles, turning in my direction. Tracks of dried tears run down her cheeks.
“Oh, Luce.” In three steps, I’m beside her, wrapping my arms around her shaking body. She buries her face into my chest as my fingers brush through her hair. “He’s gone.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs, and a shuddering breath heaves her slim shoulders.
With one finger, I tip her chin up to face me. “Hey, we may not have a traditional marriage, but when I vowed to protect you, I meant it. You’re my wife, and I’ll never let him hurt you again.” The rest of the words disappear as I drown in two pools of forest green.
“I know,” she whispers, her hand reaching up my chest, then sliding farther to curl behind my neck.
My head drops, and her face tilts up, our lips meeting somewhere in between. It all happens in slow motion until the moment we touch.
A flame ignites in my chest with one taste of her sweet wine-infused lips, and I’m addicted. A hunger in my gut rips through me like never before. I want to swallow her soft moan, breathe in her next breath as her mouth opens and our tongues tease and taste.
This is what I’ve longed for since Vegas, and now isn’t the right place, but still, I don’t pull back. The tug of Lucia’s fingers in the back of my hair tells me she needs this, and if I’m honest, so do I. Even if it’s only for a moment that helps her forget about seeing Bruno. Or for a moment when it feels like she’s mine. I’ll take any time I can with her in my arms.
Reluctantly, I drag my lips from hers and pepper light kisses to the pulse point below her ear. “Fuck. Do you feel what you do to me?” I whisper as I pull her closer. Not an inch separating our bodies from shoulder to thigh, my cock a rod of steel between us.
“It’s difficult not to.” Her breathing is as choppy as mine.
I gather a handful of her silky hair in my palm, something I’ve been itching to do ever since she walked out of her room at the hotel looking like a beautiful goddess. She tilts her head to the side, giving me unfettered access to the long column of her neck. The skin here is as soft as silk against my lips and smells like I’ve buried my nose in a bunch of wildflowers. I fill my lungs with her scent and become dizzy from not wanting to release the air again.
“We should return to the party,” I murmur, between the tiny string of kisses I’m trailing up and down her neck. It isn’t what I want to do, but taking my wife back to our hotel suite andmaking love to her for the first time is a line we can’t cross. Not yet.
“Hmm” is all the response I get.
“Is that a yes or a no?” I tease, enjoying how she seems as reluctant as me to stop.
“It’s more that I don’t want to, but I guess we should. After all, it is our party.”
I lift my head and release her hair to fall back in a curtain, covering her neck and hiding the little red marks I’ve just put there.
Then, cupping her jaw in my palm, I rest my forehead against hers. “I guess we’d be missed.”
“I guess. But we can leave after we cut the cake.”
The lines of strain that marred her forehead when I first found her in the loggia have disappeared, and a gentle smile has softened her tight lips.
“Let’s go cut some cake, then.”
And true to her word, we don’t stay much longer.
Chapter fourteen
Lucia
He’s avoiding me, and that’s not easy to do when we’re back in our hotel suite. We were barely through the door before Antonio was mumbling about needing to do some work and took himself off to his bedroom, closing the door on any possibility of a discussion about the kiss in the loggia.
But what he doesn’t realize is that it’s not the kiss I want to talk about. It’s Bruno. A conversation that’s long overdue and hopefully will put that day behind me forever.
We’ve shared many parts of our lives; he knows me better than any other person. Yet the most traumatic experience I’ve faced is the one thing we’ve never discussed. He basically knows what happened; after all, he witnessed some of it before stepping in and punching Bruno.
A resounding crack, along with Bruno’s high-pitched squeal of pain, barely registered as I ran. My only thought at the time was escape. Not only from Bruno, who still makes my skin crawl, but also from my rescuer and friend. The shame chased me to my room, where I hid, refusing to see anyone until I was summoned by my father.
Memories of that day come flooding back, resurrected by the sight of Bruno. He may be barely recognizable as the eighteen-year-old who assaulted me, but after one look into his dull stare, a chill ran down my spine. It felt like another attack, emotional this time, not physical, though the tightening in my chest was painful.
I hate that I froze like I was one of the ice sculptures decorating the dessert table.
I hate that I cried, more tears to add to the river I’ve already shed over that horrible moment.
