by Dani Collins
“Oh, good luck with that,” she sputtered.
“You’re right.” His teeth flashed in a grin of humor. “As if we’ll read when we could put our time to better use.” He winked. His irises shone with the warmth of a summer sky and he was so blindingly handsome in that moment that she caught her breath and thought, Oh.
This was why they called it falling. Her head swam and her feet couldn’t feel the floor. The world tilted and her heart flipped and wind rushed in her ears. When his mouth touched hers, such a soaring joy gripped her, she thought she would burst.
* * *
That lightness carried her into her wedding day, putting secretive smiles on her sisters-in-law’s faces as they fussed around her with the rest of the bridal party. Her stylist kept going on about the romance of the day and how there was so much “love in the air.”
They know, Pia thought, desperately trying to hide her tender new feelings because the sense of exposure was so intense. And she didn’t know how Angelo felt. Was he growing to care for her, too? Or was his support of her all part of a play they were enacting for the benefit of their child?
She dearly wished for a moment of privacy to collect herself, but solitude was the only luxury this wedding didn’t afford her. She had to hide her insecurities behind a calm smile as she was harnessed into her mikado silk A-line gown and took the weight of her veil, covered in thousands of seed pearls, as it was draped over her hair.
Pia wasn’t convinced she was worthy of romantic love anyway. Sorcha and Poppy, yes. They were warm and outgoing, witty and quick to laugh. They were so easy to adore—it was no wonder Pia’s staid brothers had fallen head over heels.
Pia didn’t even know where to start in making herself emotionally appealing. Whatever good qualities she had cultivated had never swayed her parents toward words or demonstrations of love. Even loving friendships were built on confidences, something she found difficult because the things she valued had rarely been valued by others. Her niece and nephews loved her, which felt like a miracle, but Pia didn’t let it go to her head. Such well-loved children were factories for the recycling of it, pouring out adoration for anyone who brought them a toy or took them into the garden for an hour.
As for Angelo, she had shared more with him than anyone in her life, quite possibly revealing as many reasons not to love her. Who wanted a wife who fought tears because her wedding day felt like too big an ordeal to face? One who would rather wear woolen socks and rubber rain gear than a gown worth a quarter million euros?
The moment arrived and her father appeared to escort her. He looked flawless and handsome and said a polite, “You look lovely.”
Pia waited an extra, agonizing second, hoping for something... Maybe that clichéd remark that he didn’t want to lose her? That he was proud of her? That he forgave her for getting pregnant and forcing this wedding to the wrong man?
“Are you ready?”
The urge to cry lurched harder in her throat.
Love was impossible to force; she knew that. She also knew that longing for it made the lack of it even more painful. She couldn’t pin her dreams on Angelo falling for her. Couldn’t do that to herself and continue to suffer this ache the rest of her life.
She swallowed back her tears and let her father guide her to the top of the aisle.
The music changed and the guests stood and turned to watch her procession. She wanted to cling to her father’s arm, but forced herself to hold to the pace he set and smile and breathe.
Her gaze snagged on Angelo’s as she moved toward him. His attention flickered to her bouquet and she could practically hear his voice in her head. Nice clipboard.
She wanted to laugh, then. Laugh and cry and run up to hug him. The rest of the congregation fell away and no one existed in this cavernous church but the two of them as she came to a halt before him.
She was lucky, so lucky, to have him. Lucky to have passion and a devoted father for her child. It was all she truly needed.
It would have to be, because it was all they had.
* * *
Their special day was paved with rice and rose petals, but Angelo felt like the fraud he was.
His first dalliance with Pia had been just that, a pleasurable encounter that had been as pure as something that earthy and erotic could be. It had been free of ulterior motives, at least.
Then, when her pregnancy pulled them into a forced engagement, he hadn’t cared what sort of uproar his appearance in her life might cause. In fact, he had embraced making waves in her patrician pond.
He hadn’t cared because he hadn’t cared. Now he was realizing how much his presence in her life was costing her. The greater the stakes became, the more it bothered him. He sure as hell wouldn’t have allowed Darius anywhere near her if he could have avoided it.
He kept trying to forget that night even as moments from it flashed into his memory—the snubbing at the door, Darius’s punishing truth that Angelo would never be anything but the ill-begotten bastard he was.
Pia’s revelation that she was putting herself through this trial for him. Yes, their end goal was the best life for their child, but he could spirit her and their baby to America and skip all this nonsense if they had to. He’d been ready to quit Europe altogether that evening. He was neither beholden nor sentimentally attached to his birthplace. He lived on the island in the Med because the climate suited him.
Pia, antisocial science nerd that she was, had an inner badass, though. One who came to the fore when she decided she wanted something. She had kept him at the party until midnight when he would have happily left minutes after his confrontation with Darius. She had circulated with her hand tucked firmly into his, smoothing any lasting rough edges, cementing their position as a power couple well above whatever basement level of hell his brothers might have slithered back into.
Much as Angelo was loath to care about such a puerile victory, it meant something to him that Pia had refused to give up on getting it for him. He was still stunned. Moved.
But somehow, in the crashing of his old world into his new one, his shell of anger had been shaken, crumbling enough to expose the shame beneath. Shame that leaked into a bigger stain as he realized he was pulling an innocent—no, two innocents—into the mire of his origin story.
He had gone to bed that night convinced he should break things off with her. Of course, he’d made love to her the very next morning, before they were properly awake. Her soft, questing hands and receptive scent had got to him the way she always did.
Trying to leave after that would have been the height of callousness. He couldn’t bring himself to do it anyway. Every time he tried to set some boundaries between them, she did some small thing he found charming and disarming or revealed a hidden tidbit about herself that roused the protector in him. He kept wondering who would keep the vagaries of life from knocking her around if he wasn’t there to shield her?
He was becoming dependent on her in his own way, which was equally concerning. He liked her. She made him laugh and made him feel strong and necessary and powerful. She made him think and believe he was a better man than he was.
His palms were sweating as she walked down the aisle toward him, conscience heavy with the knowledge he was binding her to disgrace purely to feed this craving in him to have her by his side. Always.
The churn of cement in his gut didn’t stop until they were pronounced husband and wife. Even then, he had to wonder how long it would take such a brilliant mind to realize she’d made a terrible mistake.
CHAPTER TEN
GIVEN THEIR RUSHED SCHEDULE, they had held their wedding midweek, the day before Pia’s twelve-week scan. Her specialist appointment was the last thing on her calendar before she had two solid weeks of nothing to do, but she would have given up a kidney to stay in bed this morning.
“I should have canceled it,” Angelo said when she yawned again, s
hivering with the force of it. “Or moved it to a later time.”
“No.” She fought another yawn. “Let’s get this done and start our honeymoon. I’m looking forward to it.”
He left a beat of silence for her to hear her own words. “Again, I wanted to stay in bed.”
Now she was blushing, but she was pleased he was the teasing lover she saw so rarely these days. The car pulled into the underground entrance to the clinic and the interior of the car went into shadow. Seconds later Angelo slid out. He reached to help her, all humor gone from his expression as they hurried inside, hoping not to be spotted.
Speculation was rife that this was the reason for their rushed wedding, so she wasn’t sure why they bothered. Twenty minutes later, they were reassured everything was fine. They could make their announcement and end all this secrecy.
She barely heard, too awestruck by the grayscale image with the fluttering heartbeat. She felt her hand grasped and squeezed. She dragged her gaze away and saw Angelo’s eyes were damp as he fixated on the screen.
He met her gaze and his expression turned indescribably tender. He used his knuckle to brush away a tear on her cheek that she hadn’t realized had brimmed and spilled over.
“I don’t know why I’m so overcome,” she said with a crooked smile. “It’s biology. This is how reproduction happens.”
“You’re making us a little miracle.” He caressed her jaw and looked back at the screen.
She looked back as well, hoping he was right.
* * *
Angelo rarely took vacations and knew this one would be a memory he would recall as one of the best times in his life. In fact, he was hoarding as many small moments as he could, making a point of enjoying the simplicity of his wife feeling for a dry bathing suit, failing to find one and seeking a new one from a drawer. She wore only a sarong, hair loose so she was an exotic island maiden. They were castaways in paradise and he never wanted to be rescued.
She stepped her bare feet into black bikini bottoms, pulled them up then loosened and dropped her sarong. She closed a strapless, neon pink top across her breasts, ran a finger around the edges, gave a jiggle and a wiggle and moved to the mirror. Frowned.
“I’m gaining weight!”
If she had gained a full kilo since telling him she was pregnant, he would be shocked, but there was a lovely ripeness to her figure that made his palms itch. The tug in the flesh between his thighs shouldn’t have happened. They’d been in that bed only minutes ago. This entire vacation was nothing but combing beaches, snorkeling and making love. Lather, rinse, repeat. Quite literally, he thought with a private smirk, thinking of the shower they’d taken before their most recent nap.
“I believe you’re supposed to gain weight.” He went across to stand behind her, hands finding the waist that might be a fraction thicker, but the changes were happening so gradually, he couldn’t see it. He kissed her shoulder. “You’re beautiful.”
She turned in profile, eyed her abdomen. “The baby won’t care if I’m fat.”
He bit back agreeing or mentioning that he wouldn’t, either. Only a very stupid man offered an opinion on weight.
“I want to hold our baby,” she murmured, settling a hand beneath her navel. “It’s what I’m looking forward to the most. The comfort and affection of holding someone.”
“Hello?” he teased, pulling her arms around him before wrapping his arms around her.
She made a face as she came into contact with the damp bathing suit he hadn’t been afraid to pull on. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. Explain it.”
“My parents weren’t demonstrative. I’ve always felt... I don’t know. Lonesome, I guess. Needing affection.”
“Even now?”
“Maybe not right now,” she murmured, leaning against him, cheek nestling into his shoulder. “I wish we could stay here forever. Everything will change in a few days.”
He couldn’t refute that. He had the same sense of being in a bubble with thinning walls. It couldn’t sustain this height of positive pressure and would burst any second.
His hands moved on her, trying to hold as much of her as possible against him. It was desire, the passion that always gripped him when he touched her, but it was more. He wanted to seal this connection they’d found, clamp it so tightly it became a part of him and could never be torn apart.
The need put urgency into the kiss he dropped on her mouth, but something else twined through him. A determination to hold on to what they had. Play it out. Make it last.
So even though the luscious sound in her throat told him she was instantly receptive and eager, he gentled the stroke of his hands. She ran her open mouth up his neck and caught hungrily at him, and even though he was hard and ready and so desperate to be joined with her he might have begged if she commanded it, he took his time. He cupped her face and slowed their kiss and let it deepen until she was trembling against him.
He pressed soft kisses to soft skin, soothed her with long plays of his hands across her bare skin, giving both of them ample opportunity to enjoy the sizzle, allowing anticipation to build to a screaming pitch before he found the next plane of silken skin to worship.
He melted his beautiful ice princess inch by inch, waiting until her arms were heavy around his neck, her knees weak, before he eased her onto the mattress and stripped their minuscule bits of clothing.
Then he joined her. Kissed her. Cruised his mouth everywhere, tasting strawberry nipples and vanilla skin and the honey between her thighs. Her fist gripped his hair and her knee curled up and, because giving her pleasure gave him so much pleasure, he lazily swept her over the cliff into the smashing waves of orgasm.
Her cries of release sent the demons of desire into a frenzy within him, but he lashed them down, forced himself to patience, not allowing himself to rise over and thrust into her no matter how damp he was with perspiration or how badly he shook with craving.
He pressed kisses against her thighs and her calves and rolled her onto her stomach so he could lick the indent of her spine and pool his breath between her shoulder blades.
She shivered and squirmed and gasped, “What are you doing to me?”
“I’m making love to you.” He wasn’t sure if he said it or thought it, but it was all that was in his head. Sexual desire, but also a yearning to caress and please, explore and taste. Possess and give.
He combed his fingers into her hair, lifting it away from her neck so he could suck delicately against her nape. He bit lightly against her dampened skin so gooseflesh peppered her and she shuddered and groaned and lifted her hips with invitation.
He caressed her with his whole body, loving the feel of her beneath him like this. His erection nestled in the crease of her buttocks. Her thighs parted at his lightest touch, allowing him to stray his touch into her damp center where she called to him so inexorably.
Her movements beneath him drove him mad and still he only gathered her beneath him, stilling her so he could keep her right here. His. Forever.
“I want to touch you,” she pleaded.
He drew back and she rolled into his arms, making him shake with relief and desire as her breasts, soft and supple, were crushed against his chest. Her nipples were hard points, her thigh downy as she stroked it against his hip. Her scent was all over him, clouding like an aphrodisiac, leaving him drugged and high.
“I love touching you like this,” she confessed, hands roaming across the naked planes of his chest and hips, his thighs and buttocks and then—her confidence in bed had come a long way—to cup between his thighs. She purred as she weighed and shaped him, making him grit his teeth to hold on to his control.
As she guided him to the place he most wanted to be, he almost mourned the foreplay, wanting more time to claim every glorious cell of her body, but he was taken over by the animal that needed its mate. He settled atop h
er and sank into her with a ragged groan. The world opened before him. Pia was his world. All of her was his.
And this, the slow pump of his hips, stoking more pleasure than any man had a right to, was everything he ever needed.
* * *
As Pia’s heart rate slowed, she reminded herself that climax released a host of chemicals in the brain. This sense of security and eye-dampening closeness was as biologically normal as her sensitive nipples and weight gain.
Love also caused those same symptoms. Or so she’d heard.
Was that what this was? This emotional dependence and sensation that she would split in half from the joy wanting to burst from within her, just because his weight pinned her and his skin was still damp with perspiration?
She was beginning to fear it was, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Tell him? What if he didn’t care? What if he didn’t return her feelings?
Her haze of satisfaction and rumination was broken by his ringtone.
“I told you we had to get out of here before that happened.” His sexy rasp tickled her ear.
“Mmm... My fault for falling under you.”
His smile flashed as his heavy arm left off caressing her shoulder and the blanketing warmth of him rolled away.
Definitely love, she thought, as that brief smile struck like sunshine in her heart.
He was maintaining a light work schedule, all but a few key ringtones set to ignore.
“Killian,” he said as he frowned at the screen. “I have to take it.”
Roman Killian was the husband of their engagement photographer, Melodie, but he also owned and ran the global company that provided all of Angelo’s security needs.
Pia heard Killian’s voice as clearly as Angelo’s.
“Arson,” Killian stated bluntly. “Brazen and designed for maximum damage. All the staff had gone to their own homes so there are no injuries. They have the suspect. Darius Gomez. He claims to be your brother.”