The Marriage Surrender

‘I love you so much, Sandro,’ she burst out anxiously. ‘Please don’t give up on me yet. At least let me try to be a proper wife to you!’

Nothing. He came back with nothing. And in the growing tension Joanna waited, exposed, vulnerable, achingly unsure of herself, breath held, heart pounding, soft lips parted and quivering, her whole person quivering like some helpless sacrifice standing there waiting to hear its final fate. His gaze drifted over her one more time, lowering, then lifting, lifting until at last he let his eyes clash with her eyes...

Then he sighed, the sound seeming to come from some deep, dark well inside him. ‘Come here, you crazy mixed-up creature,’ he commanded huskily.

Relief broke from her on a stifled sob, then she was across the room and throwing herself against him, feeling his arms close around her, wrapping her own arms tightly around him.

Their mouths met in a hot fuse of raging hunger. There was no in-between. With typical drama she had let go of all her old prejudices and now she was wild for him. The kiss went on and on, consuming them both, consuming the room and the air inside it until she felt as if there was only herself and Sandro left to hold the whole world together.

His hands were all over her, touching, stroking, learning—claiming what she was offering, accepting it as his for the taking at last.

Eager to learn, desperate to please, she matched him kiss for passionate kiss, caress for each agonisingly arousing caress, which saw the last of the barriers between them collapse as his robe fell from his own broad shoulders. Naked together at last. She leaned against him, pressing herself into the full hard, hot length of him.

It was a revelation: her skin seemed to sizzle in response, her senses coming vibrantly alive to rush hungrily to the surface with a need to grab their share of a new and glorious sensation. Her breasts pushed themselves into the silken whorls of dark hair that covered the rock-solid wall of his wonderful chest; her spine arched her closer to him so her hips could mould themselves to the rigid power of his hips.

She felt the force of his response answer everything she was feeling; felt the heavy pound of his heart against the press of her eager breasts; felt the full, throbbing rise of his passion push against her arching hips; felt his arms tighten round her as if he was afraid she might turn tail and run; felt a groan of impassioned agony roll through him and the sting of his heated breath as he broke their mouths apart so he could mutter something barely distinguishable in shaken reaction to the whole wild experience.

‘Bellisima,’ it sounded like. ‘Bellisima...’

Then their lips were fusing again, with an electric pleasure that had her arms hooking urgently around his neck to keep him locked in a heated embrace so intense that it left no room for the old ghosts to appear.

When he picked her up and carried her to the bed, she clung to him, allowing him no space to move away from her as they fell in a tangle of limbs onto the mattress, where it all continued with barely a pause.

‘Slow down,’ he muttered at one point. ‘We should take this very slowly, step by step. It does not have to be a conflagration, cara mia.’

‘Yes it does,’ she argued, skimming her eager fingers over his tight satin shoulders and into that mat of crisp dark hair on his chest. ‘We took it step by slow step last time and look what happened. You lost something that belonged to you and I lost my way.’

‘You belong to me,’ he murmured. ‘It is all I have ever wanted, cara.’

She nodded. ‘I understand that now. But don’t hold back from me, Sandro, for fear of frightening me,’ she begged him. ‘I need you to overwhelm me, to give me no time to change my mind, because I still have this horrible fear that at the final moment I am going to let you down again!’

She didn’t let him down. She enchanted him. She made him fall in love with her ten times over.

‘You have to stop that,’ he murmured, gently removing her stroking fingers from where they were causing such havoc.

‘Why?’ she asked guilelessly, moving her hands to some other part of him she had already learned gave him pleasure.

‘This is why,’ he laughed softly, and ran his finger into the warm, moist crevice of her body that set her gasping while he lay beside her, watching her catch fire for him, watching her respond in complete abandonment to what he was making her feel.

It moved him—moved him fiercely to see how completely she was giving herself over to him. It was as if someone had opened a box containing all her stifled emotions and now they were out and flying free: no inhibition, just pure sensual freedom.

And it was all for him.

‘Sandro,’ she gasped, and he knew exactly why. But now it was his turn to feel uncertain, his turn to worry that he might just be the one to let her down.

Maybe she sensed that, maybe she knew that there was more at stake here than just her own old feelings of inadequacy. She had treated him too badly, and for too long, for those feelings of rejection to simply melt away.

Her eyes fluttered open and her hands reached up to mould his flushed, dark, passion-intense features. ‘If you don’t do it, I’ll die,’ she warned him softly.

Another laugh broke from him, gruff and rueful, maybe even a little shaken, as he shifted his body over hers, letting her feel his weight, the power of his passion, before he made that vital contact and began to push slowly, slowly inside her.

She was hot and she was tight, the untutored muscles of her pulsing silk sheath closing all around him as her slender body arched on a fierce intake of air, then—nothing.

She simply stopped breathing, her body held in a state of complete suspension that made him pause, his dark eyes fixing on her worriedly because he couldn’t tell why she was responding like this.

‘Cara?’ he murmured in a thick-voiced question. ‘Do I hurt you?’

She couldn’t answer, was too thoroughly lost in the whole new experience. The feel of him, hard and strong and so completely filling her. The heat of him, mingling with her own burning heat, fusing them together as if to make them one entity. The very intimate scent of him, blending so perfectly with the scent of herself. And, most exquisite of all, the clear, sharp, sparkling knowledge that here she was, joined at last with this man she loved so much.