by Tara Pammi
She knew how much he hated tears so she buried her face in his neck. The scent of him, the taste of his skin finally calmed her.
“Shh, moru mou. No more tears. I would rather cut out my heart then be apart from you ever again. I was a fool not to understand how much you love me. How much I already loved you. A coward to believe that you would take it away on a whim.
“I was so afraid of hurt that I didn’t even realize how long I have loved you.
“I think it started the first time even. You wore an emerald green dress that bared your entire back and you had been standing amidst your admirers and when Leandro called for you, there had been such unconditional love in your eyes, such open affection... I think I was struck immediately.” His words made her gasp and she fought for her breath.
They didn’t come easily to him, she knew. And she loved him all the more for it.
His palm stroked up and down her back tenderly, a torrent of endearments rushing out of him amidst a million apologies.
She felt his kiss at her temple, his shallow breaths as if, just like her, he was still unsure that she was here in his arms. “Valentina?”
“Si?”
“I should like to hear you say it, pethi mou. I am dying inside with the fear that I might have pushed you away one too many times, that finally you have realized that—”
She placed her finger on his lips.
“I love you, Kairos. I always will. I love you, knowing that you are stubborn, and ruthless and reserved. But I also love you knowing that you’re kind, wonderful and extremely generous when it comes to orgasms. I recently read in some magazine that very few men actually go down on a woman whereas they expect the return all the time?”
Only his wife could insert the statistics about blow jobs into the conversation while he was pouring his heart out.
Kairos laughed, picked her up and followed her down to her bed.
He tugged her to him and kissed her some more. A lot more. Hard, consuming kisses. Soft, needy kisses. Tongues and teeth, they clung to each other until the need for air forced them apart.
He stripped her clothes and his with an urgency that devoured him.
And then she was naked for him. Long, sleek limbs toned with muscle. Small pouty breasts with lush nipples. She was perfect and she was his.
She reached out her hand to him, no shadows in her eyes. Nothing but abiding love and sultry temptation. “Come to me, please. I have missed you.”
“Not more than I missed you.” He growled against her mouth. “I can’t be slow, pethi mou. Not today. I... I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t, Kairos. Trust me. Trust this thing between us, si?”
“Si.” But there was nothing he could do to stem his urgent need.
He kissed her breasts, her belly, her legs, every inch of her perfect skin. When she scratched his back, just as frantic as him, he pushed his fingers into her wet heat. As deep as she could take him.
The need riding her, her body arching off the bed when he massaged her clit, the sheen of her skin...that calmed his need.
The scent of her arousal, that she had always wanted him, that she had again chosen him to love...it calmed the furor in his blood.
He sucked on her nipples, relentlessly pushing her to the edge until she fractured around his fingers. Until tremors built and ebbed in her slender body.
And then when the edge of their hunger for each other had been taken off, when she had calmed enough to believe that he wasn’t going anywhere, he sat up, pulled her into his embrace until she was straddling him and then he thrust into her snug heat.
Arms around his back, mouths glued to each other’s, they made slow, lazy love. All he wanted was to be inside her. To be surrounded by her warmth. To love her for as long as there was breath in his body.
“I love you, Valentina,” he whispered, before he increased his thrusts, before release claimed his soul.
* * *
Hours later, Kairos emerged from deep sleep. His hand shot out instantly searching for his wife.
When he found her, his heartbeat returned to normal.
After he had toppled them both off the edge and into exhaustion for the third time, she had snuck down to the kitchen and had assured her family that he hadn’t killed her, for she had heard them outside the door, muttering and arguing,
They had devoured the cheese and fruit plate she had brought upstairs. The white wine—he had lapped it off her breasts, her tummy and her soft folds. Whatever he did, however many times release clashed through him, it wasn’t enough.
He pulled her down to lie alongside him. Her back to his chest, she cozily nuzzled into him. “I’m never going to get enough of you, I’m never going to let you go,” he said, unable to cover the fierceness of his tone.
“Nor will I you,” she said in a low, sleep-mussed voice. “We will have a big family, maybe four, five kids...boisterous, dramatic, noisy kids like me and we will drive you up the wall.”
“That sounds like paradise.”
“Kairos?”
The uncertainty still in her voice gutted him. “Yes?”
“Are you still looking for a job?”
He laughed and turned her over until she was facing him. Propping himself up on an elbow, he placed a lazy kiss on her mouth. “I am. I have offers from a few MNCs to do some house cleaning but nothing I’m interested in. We can live wherever you want. Do whatever we want. I’m not in a particular hurry to return to work.”
“No. I know you’re busy and that’s fine but I just want to spend time with you. Have those four or five kids after a couple of years maybe?”
“Si. I...told Maria that we would spend Christmas with them.” He frowned. “I’m sorry. I should have realized that you might want to spend it with your family.”
“How about New Year with the Contis instead?”
This time, she rose up and claimed him for a soft kiss. “Hopefully by then Luca and I will be able to tolerate being in the same room.”
She laughed, and then sobered. “You and Maria talked?”
“She told Theseus everything.”
Her tight hug said so many things words could not. He let himself bask in the warmth of it. A hundred years together and he wouldn’t have enough of Valentina.
She combed her fingers through his hair and sighed. “I have a proposal for you. But you don’t have to accept it.”
“Sounds important,” he said trying to sound encouraging.
“I would like to live in Milan for a bit, with the boutique taking off it seems like a perfect fit.”
“Valentina, we can live wherever you want, as long as we’re together.”
“Leandro is still looking for a CEO. He’s—”
“Oxhi!”
“Kairos, please listen to me. He told me you’ve always been the perfect candidate. He trusts you. And I think...as the Conti heiress’s loving husband, it is your right.”
“I never wanted to do anything that would make you doubt my love for you.”
“You won’t. This doesn’t. Ti amo, Kairos, and no job you take, no woman who wants you, will change that.”
Joy suffusing his very soul, Kairos said yes to his wife.
And he meant to say yes for a very long time—to everything she asked.
* * * * *
Coming next month
THE BRIDE’S BABY OF SHAME
Caitlin Crews
“I can see you are not asleep,” came a familiar voice from much too close. “It is best to stop pretending, Sophie.”
It was a voice that should not have been anywhere near her, not here.
Not in Langston House where, in a few short hours, she would become the latest in a long line of unenthused countesses.
Sophie took her time turning over in her bed. And still, no matter how long she stared or blinked, she couldn’t make Renzo disappear.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“It tur
ns out we have more to discuss.”
She didn’t like the way he said that, dark and something like lethal.
And Renzo was here.
Right here, in this bedroom Sophie had been installed in as the future Countess of Langston. It was all tapestries, priceless art, and frothy antique chairs that looked too fragile to sit in.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, her lips too dry and her throat not much better.
“I think you do.” Renzo stood at the foot of her bed, one hand looped around one of the posts in a lazy, easy sort of grip that did absolutely nothing to calm Sophie’s nerves. “I think you came to tell me something last night but let my temper scare you off. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say you used my temper as an excuse to keep from telling me, would it not?”
Sophie found her hands covering her belly again, there beneath her comforter. Worse, Renzo’s dark gaze followed the movement, as if he could see straight through the pile of soft linen to the truth.
“I would like you to leave,” she told him, fighting to keep her voice calm. “I don’t know what showing up here, hours before I’m meant to marry, could possibly accomplish. Or is this a punishment?”
Renzo’s lips quirked into something no sane person would call a smile. He didn’t move and yet he seemed to loom there, growing larger by the second and consuming all the air in the bedchamber.
He made it hard to breathe. Or see straight.
“We will get to punishments in a moment,” Renzo said. His dark amber gaze raked over her, bold and harsh. His sensual mouth, the one she’d felt on every inch of her skin and woke in the night yearning for again, flattened. His gaze bored into her, so hard and deep she was sure he left marks. “Are you with child, Sophie?”
Continue reading
THE BRIDE’S BABY OF SHAME
Caitlin Crews
Available next month
Copyright ©2018 by Caitlin Crews
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, ON, M5H 4E3, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201 301, India
http://www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com