She looked away. “You don’t need to worry about it.”
His finger beneath her chin turned her face back to his, but she kept her eyes averted. She didn’t want to see anxiety in his eyes, and the beginning of the end.
“Look at me, meu coração.”
The way he said that—my heart—dragged her eyes back to his. And what she saw in them had now-familiar hot tears crowding behind hers.
“Though I hope you’re not, just because I would like us to have more time to ourselves before we become parents—there’s nothing I want more than for you to eventually carry my child.”
Her throat closed, emotions a burning coal. “Rafael...”
“Eu te amo, Eliana, my answer to my every prayer.”
She stared at him. Had he really said I love you?
“I believe I loved you at first sight, and even before that. I believe I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, recognized you even before I saw you. Now I know I can’t live without you. Literally.” He sighed deeply. “Today, when I thought I might lose you, I no longer wanted to live. I want you with me forever, meu amor. And I want our forever to start now.” A touch that was worship itself cupped her trembling face. “Tell me you want me forever, too. Tell me you love me.”
She tried to obey his command, blurt out all that was in her heart. But she couldn’t breathe. His words, his confessions... As usual, he was too much.
“You don’t love me?” He rose beneath her, scowling. Then a look of absolute arrogance gripped his face. “You might not love me yet, but you will. I will make you love me.”
That made her splutter, “Are you kidding? Wasn’t it the most blatant thing in existence that I loved you from the first moment, too?” She cupped his face, hands trembling in wonder. “I love you so much it’s been a constant pain and dread.”
His frown was back full scale. “Why pain and dread?”
“Because I thought you’d never feel the same. Because I thought you’d one day walk away and I’d never see you again.”
His scowl deepened. “How could you think such nonsense? Haven’t I been showing you in every minute and in every way how much I feel for you? And I’m never, ever, walking away.”
Knowing it would take her a while, maybe forever, to come to terms with the idea that he felt all that for her, she exhaled raggedly. “Now I have one regret.”
“I can’t have you feeling any such thing.”
“Oh, it’s a benign one. I now wish I didn’t tell you I love you totally. I would have loved to see what lengths you’d go to ‘to make me love you.’”
“No need to wonder or imagine. I will go to all those lengths anyway. To that end, I’ll need to make you my wife.”
She gaped at him.
He dragged her to him, possessed her lips in a kiss that almost extracted her soul before he withdrew, his voice a deep, ragged entreaty. “Marry me, Eliana.”
Nine
Ellie bent to taste the powerful pulse in Rafael’s neck.
Dragging her teeth down his shoulder and chest, she whispered hot, explicit words of desire into his flesh.
Then she came to the scar that was the one thing marring his perfection. It snaked from his back over his left kidney around to his abdomen below his ribs. He’d only told her it was an emergency surgery when he was much younger, and wouldn’t go into specifics. It hurt her, terribly, every time she saw it or touched it. But it didn’t seem to hurt him. And when she touched it, like now, especially with her lips and tongue, it sent him berserk. As she traced it now with both, his great body shuddered beneath her on a long groan of torment.
Feeling all-powerful eliciting such desire from him, she squeezed his steel buttocks as she slid her leg between his muscled, hair-roughened ones, her knee pressing an erection that felt harder and more daunting than ever before.
It never ceased to amaze her, the constantly renewable need they shared. They were both on fire again and it had been only an hour since they’d last made love.
Like always with him, time warped. It had been six weeks already since he’d asked her to marry him. Since she’d said an inordinate number of yeses. And those six weeks felt at once like six hours and six years. So much had happened since. So many experiences, so much delight. So much love.
Love. She still couldn’t believe it sometimes. Rafael loved her. As much as she loved him. Though being the supreme alpha male who had to be superior in everything, he insisted he loved her more. Way more, according to him. She’d only said she had a lifetime to prove him wrong on that front.
She’d moved in with him that same day. Or rather, she’d stayed where she was. He’d assigned her a PA who’d gone to her place to pack everything in meticulously sorted boxes and to get her out of her lease. He wasn’t about to let her keep a place a two-hour drive away, and if he had his way, she wouldn’t drive again. Or be in a car again. He actually assigned her a helicopter to take her to and from her father’s offices.