Page 197 of Love Arranged
His kiss is punishing.Brutal. So damn possessive, I’m convinced my lips will carry the evidence of his abuse for days to come.
“I’m feeling extra generous with you today, so I’ll give you one more try.”
“Why are you doing this?” Frustrated tears spring to my eyes.
“Because I want a chance to say it back.”
I feel like he wrapped his hands around my throat rather than my wrists. “You love me?”
He stares at me, his face a blank slate of nothing.
The walls feel as if they’re closing in around me, and my ears start ringing, drowning out whatever Lorenzo is trying to say.
We can both admit how far we’ve fallen, but what if it isn’t enough? Lorenzo could change his mind tomorrow about staying, and?—
He releases my hands so he can cradle my face. “Hey.”
I don’t respond.
“Take a deep breath.”
I follow his command.
His mouth curls. “It’ll be okay, all right?”
“How do you know?”
“Because so long as I love you and you love me, we can get through anything together. That much I can promise.”
A single tear falls down my cheek, and he kisses it away like it never existed. He then kisses my cheeks. The tip of my nose. The corner of my lips, the top of my forehead, and the curve of my jaw.
I’ve never felt so loved in my life. Socherished. Maybe that’s why I finally give Lorenzo the three words he has been waiting to hear.
“I love you,” I say as I fight to keep the tears at bay.
His sharpness melts away, his eyes softening in a way that I’ve never seen happen around anyone else.
“I love you too,” he repeats—first in English, then in Italian—as he sinks inside me.
He says he loves me as he drives into me, his pace going from soft and slow to deliriously unrelenting. He says it while he leaves kisses on every inch of my skin within his reach, and he works the same phrase out of me a few times.
But nothing compares to the way Ifeelloved when we both finally come. He cuddles me first, and then he kisses me until I’m breathless again, which was probably a strategy to keep me in bed while he grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned me up.
When the post-orgasmic haze disappears and the warmth from earlier fades, I’m left feeling cold, pulsing dread because can I really trust what Lorenzo said?
Has our situation changed, or did we only complicate it further with deeper, more complex feelings?
“Don’t,” he says, as if commanding me will stop the mix of guilt and panic brewing in my stomach.
I can’t look at him as he grabs a fresh pair of underwear for me from the dresser. They’re not a pair I purchased, but they’re the same brand he yanked off me earlier.
His attention to detail should make me happy, but it only makes the fear growing inside me worsen.
“Lily. No. You don’t get to doubt us now.” He climbs back onto the bed and cups my cheeks. “And you do not get to regret telling me you love me. Do you hear me?”
“But what if?—”
He slams his mouth over mine, kissing me until I forget about whatever I was protesting about.
