My breath caught. “Are you saying—?”
“I’m saying...” She moved into me, let go of my hand, and trailed her fingertips up my chest until tingles and heat were all I felt. “I realized halfway to Milan that loving you isn’t a choice. It’s my life. And if I don’t have you, I don’t have a life. You swept into my world like a hurricane and completely upended everything, and I can’t go back to the way things were before you. I don’t want to. I want you and me and this crazy marriage for however long it lasts. I’m willing to risk everything for it. Just as long as you feel the same way.”
“Ah, Dio.” The power of her words encircled my fractured heart, gathered all the shattered pieces, and fused them back together. Lifting my hands to her face, I lowered my head toward hers and whispered, “Lo voglio. I love you, Natalie. Only you.”
She pushed to her toes and brushed her lips against mine. And, unable to hold back, I opened at the first touch, tasting her sweetness, drawing her into my heat, kissing her again and again as I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer, frantic to consume her, to climb inside her, to never ever let her go again.
“You’re mine, angioletto,” I whispered between kisses. “All mine, and I’m yours.”
“Prove it.”
I groaned and grew instantly hard, aching with the need to prove just how much I did love her, right this very second.
“Prove it by marrying me.”
I drew back a breath from her lips, sure I’d heard her wrong—again. But when I looked down, the challenging sparkle in her eyes brought everything to a standstill.
Slowly, with her gaze locked on mine in the moonlight, she dropped to her knees in front of me on the dock and tugged something shiny from the pocket of her white sweater. “I know that technically we’re already married, but I don’t remember the ceremony or the vows. And I want to. I want to stand up in front of a priest or a minister or a judge or a rabbi—I don’t care which—and I want to remember saying in front of anyone who will listen, that I choose you. That I choose us.”
She lifted the object in her hand, and when it sparkled, I realized it was a ring. The ring I’d bought for her that she’d left sitting on my dresser.
“Would you marry me again, Luciano Salvatici? I promise this time, I won’t try to run away.”
I could barely breathe. This woman had brought me to my knees once before. In Venice, after I’d been a complete and utter jackass and tried to push her out of my life. Then she’d given me her body. But tonight...
Tonight she was giving me everything. Not just her body, but her unfailing trust. And the power of that trust—the love that fueled it—buckled my legs and dropped me to my knees in front of her.
“Natalie...” I reached for her, cupping her face again, tugging her gently toward me, pressing my forehead to hers as her love spun around me like a vortex, so pure, so warm, so perfect, exactly like her.
“Oh, angioletto.” I kissed her, holding her so close, she became part of me. Part of everything I was and ever would be. “Ti amo di più.”
I kissed her again, trembling from the love I felt for her, from the raw certainty that this was meant to last. And that I would prove that to her until my dying breath.
I brushed the hair back from her face with both hands and looked down at her. “I should be asking you that question.”
“Well, you kind of skipped that part last time, so I figured one of us should ask it.”
The smile I heard in her voice tugged one side of my lips up. “I did, didn’t I?”
When she nodded, I pressed my lips to hers, very gently, then tilted her face up so her eyes met mine. “I didn’t know what love was until you came into my life. I thought it was a fairy tale. Something intangible found only in books. I certainly never learned it from my parents. But you changed all that. You changed everything with your mesmerizing smile and your sweet, unfailing compassion. You taught me how to love, and you saved me. You saved me from something I never wanted to be. Every single day you make me want to be better than I am. I’m nothing without you, Natalie.”
I pressed my forehead to hers. “Marry me, angioletto. Be my wife, for real this time. Say yes, and I will spend eternity proving to you that this love—you and me—is all that matters. Say you’ll be only mine forever.”
“Oh, Luc.” She lifted her soft fingers to my face and skimmed them over the stubble on my jaw. “Everything I am, everything inside me, it’s already yours. I gave you my heart long before I ever realized I had. And I don’t want it back. I want you. I want us. It might have taken my head a while to catch up with my heart, but I already know our love is the only thing in this world that matters. And everything I’ve always dreamt of.”
Her lips lifted to mine, and as she wrapped her arms around my neck and drew me into the heat and life of her warm, wet mouth, I lost myself in her. I lost everything in her, never needing to be found again.
This woman, this amazing, strong, beautiful woman who had captivated me from the very start, wore her courage like a crown, and tonight—finally—she’d become my queen. My queen, my life, my soul... The very heart of me.
“Is that a yes?” I mumbled against her lips, not wanting to let her go even for a second, even to answer, but suddenly needing—aching—to hear that one little word.
“Sì.” She laughed, the sound tickling my mouth and sending a rush of warmth straight into my chest. “Yes. Forever and ever, yes.”
“Grazie a Dio.” I took the ring from her hand, slid it over her tattoo—right back where it belonged—then pushed to my feet and lifted her in my arms. “Hold on to me, angioletto. I need to get you off this dock and into a bed.”
“I’m on a dock?” Her fingernails dug into my shoulders, and her body tensed as she wrapped her legs around me.
I turned toward the shore with a chuckle. “You love me so much you didn’t even realize you were out over water?”
“I clearly lost my mind.”
Smiling, I stepped off the dock and onto the grass. “Clearly. If you chose me.”
She tightened her arms around my shoulders and slid one hand up into my hair, flexing her body against mine as I walked. “I’ll always choose you, polpetto.”
A laugh erupted from my chest at her word choice, and I pressed my fingers against her ribs as she kissed me. “I’m a meatball now, huh?”
She giggled and squirmed in my arms. “Did I call you a meatball? My Italian needs work. I meant to say patatino.”
“Little potato isn’t an improvement.” I tickled her again.
She shrieked and twisted, shifting her center off balance, causing my hold on her to slip. Realizing she was going down, I quickly twisted and grabbed her so I fell back in the grass and she landed on top of me.
She shifted her weight to her knees. “Are you all right?”
Was I all right? I’d never been better. I lifted one hand to her cheek, then slid my fingers into her hair and tugged her mouth down to mine. “I will be when you kiss me.”
She sighed and pressed her mouth to mine, and I opened, sliding my tongue between her lips to taste her all over again.