Chapter Seven
ILOVE YOU.
It started this morning, already there when Chelsea woke, as if the words had been waiting for her on the other side of sleep.
I love you.
She couldn't stop thinking of it.
I love you.
The words were a breathless echo when Olivio rolled her on top of him, his fingers clasping her waist as he taught her to take the lead, and oh, the newness of it, the terrifying thrill of being above him instead of beneath, of seeing his face while he guided her, his jaw clenched and his eyes burning up at her with a hunger that would have frightened her if her body hadn't already decided, without consulting her brain, that it knew exactly what to do.
She moved, and his grip on her waist tightened.
She moved again, and a sound escaped him, low and rough and wrenched from somewhere he hadn't given it permission to leave, and the power of it, the knowledge that she had caused that, undid her so completely that her rhythm faltered and her hands flew to his chest to catch herself.
He didn't let her fall.
His hands were already there, steadying her, and then his body was moving with hers, and Chelsea could not think, could not breathe, could only hold on and bite her lip oh so very hard because the words were right there, pressing against her teeth, demanding to be said—-
I love you.
She couldn't say them. Not yet. Not like this. So she let her body say what her mouth wouldn't, and when the pleasure broke over her and she came apart in his arms, it was those three words that filled her chest like a sob she refused to release, and her husband gritting her name in his own undoing was the closest thing to an answer she was going to get.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
The words continued to linger as he carried her to the bath, and they were still there, glowing and insistent, as he settled behind her in the warm water and his hands moved into her hair. He kneaded her scalp with that impossible thoroughness, and Chelsea's toes curled underwater, and theI love yousat in her throat like something sweet she was saving.
He insisted on bathing and dressing her. It was, he had told her with a straight face on the third morning, his new favorite hobby.
I like seeing you working hard not to blush, not to squirm, and failing anyway.
She hadn't had any answer for him then, could only turn even more pink under his gleaming gaze. But now she knew why his care undid her so completely. It was because of those three words.
I. Love. You.
And because she loved him—-
"Do you believe Plato was real?"
Olivio, who was in the act of taking a sip of his coffee, lowered his cup and gazed at her instead. "Why are you asking me this?"
She fluttered her lashes at him, and just as she hoped, the silly act had her gorgeous husband shaking his head.
"Humor me, please?"
They were having breakfast on their bedroom balcony, and the morning had decided to cooperate. A breeze carried the faint green smell of the terrace garden that Chelsea had discovered on her second day here and had immediately fallen in love with, mostly because someone, she suspected one of the housekeeping staff, had planted a row of herbs between the ornamental grasses, and the scent of rosemary and basil drifting up to the balcony at this hour made the penthouse feel less like a showpiece and more like a place where someone actually lived.
Chelsea had set the table herself this morning, the way she did every morning now, over the initial bafflement of staff who could not understand why Mrs. Cannizzaro wanted to do things that people were being paid to do for her. But she liked it. She liked choosing which mugs to use (hers was white with a chip on the handle that she'd grown attached to; his was black and immaculate and twice the size of hers, because apparently even his coffee consumption operated at a different scale). She liked arranging the fruit and the pastries on the blue ceramic plate she'd found in the back of a cabinet, the one that didn't match anything else in the kitchen and was probably there by accident, which was exactly why she loved it. She had briefly considered arranging the strawberries into a heart shape and then had given herself a very firm talking-to about maintaining some semblance of dignity.
She liked that when Olivio came to the table each morning, he never commented on any of this. He simply sat down and drank from whatever mug she'd chosen for him and ate what she'd arranged and let her fuss, and the not-commenting was its own kind of tenderness, though Chelsea doubted he would ever describe it that way.
Since she was by now familiar with her schedule, she knew she had about thirty minutes to make her case.
"Very well. I do, yes."
