Sliding her hands up to grasp the collar of his shirt, she tilted her face and gently rested her lips on his.
His eyes closed, and as his fingers slowly speared her hair, she felt the tremor in his huge frame.
“Yes,” she whispered into his mouth, before wrapping her arms around his neck.
There was a muffled noise from his throat, and then the air around her moved as she was lifted effortlessly into his arms.
Chapter Thirteen
Maybe they flew upthe stairs because when they reached their bedroom, Gabriella had no recollection of being carried up them. Her eyes refused to look anywhere but at Tommaso. And his eyes looked nowhere but at her.
He lay her down on the bed and kissed her. Kissed her with the tender passion her heart had always ached for, even in the years she’d known it shouldn’t.
“Don’t cry, my heart,” he whispered, wiping away a tear from her cheek she hadn’t felt fall.
Too choked to speak, she palmed his bearded cheek.
He bent his head and kissed her again. His tongue moved softly against hers, his fingers trailing down the gap in her robe until he found the sash. Undoing it with the same effortlessness that he’d lifted her, he parted the robe, sucking in a breath to find her naked beneath it.
Running his hand over her taut, aching peaks, he kissed the tip of her nose and, his voice strained, murmured, “I need to feel your skin on mine.”
With her swollen heart in her throat, Gabriella watched him strip naked, no longer capable of hiding just how insanelybeautiful she found him. No longer capable of hiding just how badly she wanted him. No longer wanting to hide it.
She sat up and lifted a hand out to him.
His beautiful throat moving, he threaded his fingers through hers and knelt in front of her.
Wordlessly, he slid her robe off her arms and discarded it onto the floor with all the clothes he’d just shed.
She cupped his cheeks and savoured the sensation of his beard rubbing against the palms of her hands. “Masino…” She sighed, unable to say anything more than his name.
Tommaso gently took the wrist of Gabriella’s left hand and turned his head to kiss the delicate inner skin. The fragrance he inhaled deep into his lungs was just as delicate. The perfume he so loved was missing, but he didn’t miss it. Now he could smell only Gabriella, and when he put his mouth to hers, could taste only her, too. It was the only taste and scent he needed or wanted.
Lying her down, he stretched himself on top of her, careful not to put too much of his weight on her, and just gazed at her.
“You are so beautiful,” he repeated in a whisper. “So very beautiful.” Without her makeup, her smattering of freckles shone for him. Dipping his head, he kissed the freckles on her nose, then slowly kissed the freckles on the apples of her cheeks. All her beautiful freckles kissed, he brushed away the silky hair by her ear so he could reach the sensitive hollow beneath the lobe, shuddering at the sensation that flickered through him when she sighed and slid her fingers through his hair.
His addiction to Gabriella was more like an unbreakable spell, he thought dimly as he grazed his mouth down the side of her graceful neck. Addiction or spell, there was no cure. No escape. She was in his blood and in his heart, and when he moved his mouth lower, he rested his cheek to her breasts and felt the cantering thud of her heart.
Addiction or spell, his beautiful wife was caught in its web too.
And she was his wife. Not for the piece of paper they’d both signed or because of the ring she wore on her wedding finger, but because his heart and his life belonged to her. Her life already belonged to him, and as he kissed her breasts, he swore to himself that he would prove himself worthy of her heart, too and that he would protect it and keep it safe forever.
Gabriella kept her eyes closed, afraid that if she opened them, the dream she’d fallen into would end. She didn’t want it to end.
The way Tommaso was touching her…
His hand was between her legs, caressing her secret flesh, his mouth kissing her breasts, taking each aroused peak in turn.
All the other times he’d bestowed these sensuous delights on her had been for punishment. He’d been ruthless in his intent to bring her to climax, using her body and the desire that thrummed in her veins for him as a weapon.
The way he was touching her now was how it had been in her dreams.
Lightning was flickering all through her body, her flesh shivering, and she moaned a protest when he finally abandoned her breasts and moved lower, her protest cutting off on her tongue at the trail of fire his tongue made on her ribcage and the plane of her stomach.
When his mouth replaced his caressing hand, she gasped at the thrills that burned through her.
Where before he’d been merciless in his rousing of her most intimate, feminine part, now he was tender. So very tender. His tongue a gentle, flickering flame, he brought her to full, swollen arousal, but instead of increasing the pressure so she came quickly, he reverently drew it out with limitless patience until she was consumed…tormented…by sensation. Deep inside her,the fizzing heat throbbed and burned, building to a crescendo that broke like a giant wave crashing onto the shore, flinging her into a shimmering void of pleasure so raw and undiluted that she cried out his name with no consciousness.
