“Did the doctors say anything about... Are there concerns about future pregnancies?” he asked apprehensively. “I don’t want to put you through that if—”
“No.” She bit her lips together. She had asked those questions herself and found cold comfort in the answers. “They didn’t identify any serious health issue and said my chances of a successful pregnancy next time were exactly the same as any other woman’s.”
He nodded in distant understanding, hand caressing her knee. “That’s something to think about, then. Isn’t it? Trying again, when we’re ready?”
She didn’t need to think about it. She knew that much with unshaken certainty deep in her core. Pushing the dress off her lap, she scooted backward onto the bed.
“Can we try right now?”
“Freja.” He closed his eyes, expression twisting with agony. “We need time.”
“I need hope,” she argued raggedly. “I need to feel something that isn’t emptiness and agony and self-doubt.”
“Tisoru, you know that’s all this would be. Hope.” His voice was tortured, his hands in fists on his thighs. “A thin one! I can’t make it happen every time. You know that. If you’re sure about wanting a family, then let’s do this properly. We’ll renew our vows and see a specialist and find a way. It will be a journey we take with intention, together, every step of the way.”
“A chance is enough for now.” Was it? Not really, but, “If it’s meant to be, if we are meant to be, like you said yesterday, then it will happen for us again.”
“Don’t do that, Freja.” His expression turned grave. “That is far too much pressure to put on a relationship as fragile as ours is right now. Don’t do that to us.”
“I need something, Giovanni! A sign. A message from the universe to convince me that I should stay with you, because my head is telling me I should be in New York by now, forgetting I ever knew you.”
His breath hissed and he swore at the ceiling.
“This morning used up my lifetime’s allotment of good intentions.” He threw away the clothes in his lap and his biceps flexed as he joined her on the bed. “If you want to make love, I will make love with you. Always. But understand that I view this as a resumption of our marriage. You will not get rid of me so easily next time.”
“I didn’t get rid of you the first time, you idiot!”
“Call me names if you have to.” He dragged himself to loom over her. “Pinch and bite me. Get all that anger out because I don’t want it between us anymore.”
“You put it there! You did this.”
“I did.” He sounded gruff, his good leg was crushing her thigh, but his lips were tantalizingly sweet as he pressed airy kisses along her jawline.
“You said I was overreacting. That I was smothering you and acting like a jealous shrew.”
“I did.” He set those tender kisses over her eyes, closing them, and rubbed his lips against her brow. “I was worried. I wanted you away from me, off the street so no one would guess who you were. And you tried to protect me afterward anyway. I don’t deserve you, Freja. I know that.”
So many soft, soft kisses that stirred more than sensual excitement. They crept close to the heart she’d been guarding so very carefully since the beginning. Oh, she had been falling in love as fast as she’d fallen into bed with him. Too fast even to recognize what was happening and put words to it. Then they had been married and all the small secrets began piling up, eating at her, causing her to hold back her tenuous new feelings.
She had fought and fought and fought not to love him, but stunted as his disappearance had left her emotionally, she had continued to yearn for him. For the only man who made her heart lift and race.
She loved him. She had known that when she chased him to Dubrovnik, desperate to know where they stood.
She was still desperate, wanting to fill herself with him. She skated her hands across the ripple of his muscled chest and drank in the rumbling hum of his pleasured noise.
His lips seductively touched one corner of her mouth then the other, finally giving her a tiny peck that was nowhere near enough.
“Why do you always tease?” she scolded, cupping the side of his smooth cheek and urging him to kiss her properly.
He did. Slow and thorough until she moaned in the agonized ecstasy of having him here with her. But for how long this time?
“I’m not teasing, bidduzza. I’m savoring.” He released the first button on her dress and kissed the inch of breastbone he exposed. “I’m reacquainting myself the way I should have this morning. Why are you always in such a hurry? We have time.”
“Do we?” she asked baldly. “Because I have never believed that.”
He frowned.
“You only married me because I was pregnant. You were shutting me out. I thought you resented me.”
“Ah, Freja. No.” He rested his forehead against her chin.
On that fateful last day, she’d asked him, Do you love me? Do you even want to be married? She couldn’t bear to ask it again, fearful of how he would respond.
“I didn’t see how we could last when things were so tense and awful,” she admitted painfully. “When you were disappearing and keeping secrets. I followed you that day to end the suspense of when.”
He made a noise of defeat.
“I wanted that to be over so I could be here.” He slipped another button free. “I won’t shut you out again.” His lips went down as he opened more and more of her dress. “We have time. I promise you.”
She wanted to believe him. She did.
His hand slid beneath the edge of her dress and cupped her bare breast. She gasped, arching as he plumped the swell, exposing it to his pleased gaze.
“My beautiful rebel,” he said with affection for her braless state. He dipped his head and sucked her nipple.
How many times had she dreamed of this? Imagined him in the bed beside her, making love with her again.
“I missed you,” she confessed in a whisper and ran her hands into his hair, savoring him, too. Because they might last or they might not, but she had him now and she wanted to love him with every part of her.
Everything slowed then. Each caress was drawn out, each kiss achingly tender. Each layer of clothing peeled away bit by bit until they were naked with nothing between them but desire that scorched their skin as they moved against one another.
He spoke to her in his beautiful language, kissing every inch of her until she was weak with longing. She did the same, holding back her pleasure so they would experience it together when she was sprawled upon him, taking him in. Joined with him again in the most intimate way. Finally.