It stared back at him now out of bright brown eyes. The quality that had kept him awake the past few nights. Even with her warmth wrapped around him like a vine.
She’s innocent, the small part of his conscience that he hadn’t been able to silence kept piping up. She might be hurt.
Not when he was making her a part of his life, he told himself. Not by offering her something he’d never even considered in his entire life. Not if he carefully explained his reasons, not with her innate sense of right and wrong.
“Married?” she repeated, her tongue swiping over that plump lower lip that millions of women over the world tried to emulate with collagen. Her eyes widened in her gamine face. “Don’t mess around with me, V,” she said, with a little laugh at the end. A rough, rasping sound that never failed to arouse him.
A brave little effort to hide her emotions while the madly fluttering pulse at her neck betrayed her. Using that moniker she’d allocated him that first day when they’d met as though it was a kind of shield against him. Against her own feelings.
This was what he liked about being with Alessandra—she was an open book, somehow having retained a genuine quality in a cutthroat world.
He finished his drink and dived headlong into the pool, his heart thundering loudly in his chest. When he reached her, he pulled himself out of the water, and stood, her body flush with his. Her warm breath feathered over his cheekbones.
He pushed a tendril of hair away from her temple, his fingers, as always, itching to touch her. Hold her. Possess her. “You should know by now that I don’t say things I don’t mean, Princess,” he said, pressing his mouth to her cheekbone. He filled his hands with the dips and valleys of her waist, the hitch in her breathing as he touched her pinging over his nerves.
“Yeah?”
“Si, cara mia. The last few weeks have been...” He frowned, trying to locate the elusive word. He’d never lost himself in the sensuality of a woman as he’d done with her. He’d never lost his mind over a woman like this, period.
“Wonderful. Fantastic. Amazing,” she added in a breathless tone, a stark honesty in her voice that he was coming to count on more and more.
He laughed, the sound of it strange to his own ears. “All that. And I find...” He pulled her closer until their breaths melded. Until her arms locked around his neck. Until she sank her long fingers into his hair and pulled his head down. Until their hearts beat against each other in a harmony of need and want. “I’m not ready to let you go, cara. I don’t think I’d ever want to. So why not make it official?”
She let out a gasp. He could feel her trembling against him. “It’s crazy. These entire last few w
eeks have been completely crazy.”
“Crazy bad?” he added, a ball of something he didn’t want to name lodged in his chest. He’d never waited on an answer with such gut-twisting anticipation. All his adulthood, he’d manipulated things into working his way. He’d taken, instead of asking. Because he’d learned early on that it was the only way he could have things. Now he disliked the feeling vehemently. Once he had her, he would never subject himself to it ever again, he promised himself.
“No,” she answered promptly. “Crazy good. Crazy fairy-tale-esque, almost. When I’m with you, I almost feel like the princess you call me. I...”
He waited. On a knife’s edge.
“But then I’ve never been bowled over quite like I’ve been by you. I was just about ready to give up on men, in fact. And the world, even. When I was younger, I heard this story of a girl rescued by a prince. And you...”
“I’m no prince, Alessandra.”
She sighed and burrowed her face into the warmth of his shoulder. Her teeth sank into his skin at the juncture of his neck. And his body reacted instantly, pressing against her soft belly. “It’s been magical. And no, I don’t want it to end. I don’t want to go back to real life.” Big eyes held his, penetrating in their intensity. “Only we don’t know everything about each other yet.”
“Is it enough to know that until I met you I’d never ever considered sharing my life with a woman, ever? Is it enough to know that the last few weeks have truly taken my life in a new direction? Is it enough to know that the future you confided in me you want is the one I want too?”
She looked up and all the hopes and dreams of the world seemed to be shining from her eyes. For an infinitesimal second, the intensity of that scared Vincenzo. Just for a second.
A wide smile turned her face into breathtaking beauty. “It is enough. Yes, V. Let’s do this. Let’s get hitched.”
Any lingering doubts Vincenzo had about whether what he was doing was right or wrong got swallowed up by Alessandra’s kiss. By the sweet taste of her lips, by the honest urgency of her desire as she pressed up against him, as she whispered she wanted him right then and there.
Vincenzo devoured her mouth, his hands reaching for her hips and buttocks. Within seconds, he’d pushed aside her bikini bottom and was inside of her, and that sense of belonging once again filled every inch of his limbs. A feeling of peace that he had never known enveloped him as she took his mouth in a sweet kiss.
And for a man who’d never shared his life with anyone, who’d already spent too many years on a certain strategic path, it felt like a benediction. An invitation to a future he hadn’t known he could have.
* * *
The loud and persistent chirp-chirp of a cell phone somewhere woke Alex out of a dreamless sleep. She stretched her body and found the sweet soreness invade her limbs as a result of the passionate night before.
With a smile, she buried her face in the pillow next to hers. The empty pillow.
Of course, the man she’d married was a workaholic.