Chapter 15 #3
There was no denying them anymore.
“I could forgive myself for my complicated, protective feelings for you as a child, but then you blossomed into the beautiful, sexy woman you are today and voluntarily threw away your innocence and demanded entry into the shadowed world.”
“But I was already living in it,” she argued softly.
“Until I forced my way into my father’s circle, I was subjected to all the rules of our world but with no say in the making of them.
The only reason I had to force my way in is because I’m female.
My mother was powerful, but she let my father be the public face of their partnership.
I was expected to be his princess and behave in the same way.
If I’d been born with a penis, my place and my voice would never have been in question. ”
“I think I always knew that, but I needed to find a reason to hate you to stop myself from falling in love with you.”
Her red, tear-stained eyes widened.
He smiled ruefully. “In one way or another, I’ve loved you all your life, but it was when you put that gun to your heart that the depth of it hit me.
” His smile dropped. “I’ve never been so frightened.
Not in all my life. And it was that fear that made me push you away, because I didn’t want to feel it.
I didn’t want to feel any of it, because to admit the truth of my feelings for you would have meant admitting to myself that I can’t live without you.
You’re the last person in the world I should have fallen in love with, but you’re the only woman I could have fallen in love with.
It’s always been you, Siena, and I’m more sorry than words could ever say for everything I’ve done to you and everything I’ve put you through. ”
Siena gazed into the vampiric silver eyes as Elio’s words and the truth laced in them soaked into her swelling heart.
“I didn’t want to fall in love with you either,” she whispered, palming his bristly cheek. “I tried so hard to keep the hate alive in my heart, but it was impossible.”
“Then what do you say we stop fighting something neither of us can win?”
Her heart thumped, but she didn’t dare assume. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I want you to trust me in life and give our marriage another chance. A real chance.”
Her chest filled with a longing so acute she could taste it.
“You don’t want it?” he asked heavily when she didn’t respond.
“I want it more than I have ever wanted anything, but Elio, when we wake up in the morning, I'll still be an Esposito. I'll still be Lorenzo and Valeria's daughter.”
His gorgeous features relaxed. “You’ll be who you’ve always been.
Siena Esposito, the smartest, toughest, most beautiful woman in Italy.
” He dipped his head and kissed the tip of her nose.
“And a woman with a heart as soft as her lips. I’ve always known it.
It’s how I knew you would never let Francesca marry me, and if you come back to me, I swear on my parents’ souls that I will love and protect you for the rest of my life. ”
The longing grew even stronger, hope pounding like a pulse in her ear. “But what if Mattia rescues my mother?” she whispered.
“If that ever happens – which it won’t – then we walk away. We get a flight to a Caribbean island and live out our days there, you, me and all the children we’re going to have together.”
“Children…”
Without any warning, Siena’s chest opened, the hope and longing flying free, pushed out by the swell of intoxicating joy pumping from her heart.
Lifting her neck, she pressed her lips to Elio’s and held them there, every cell in her body singing with delight as the breath and scent of the man she loved more than life itself wove into her senses.
“I love you,” she breathed, moving her legs to straddle him.
“More than anything. And I want you to trust me in life too.”
Elio’s mouth moved with hers. “I already do, my beautiful wife.”
He trusted her with his life.
She pulled back. The wonder in her eyes…
His heart tightened and pulsed to know that wonder was for him.
“You’re hurt,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly clouding as she touched a dried spot of blood on his cheek.
“That’s not mine,” he assured her, stroking her hair.
“Then whose is it?”
“The man who hurt you all those years ago.” He cupped her cheeks and dropped his voice. “He will never hurt you or anyone again. For as long as there is breath in my body, no one will ever hurt you again.”
After a long, long moment, the wonder returned to her eyes, and suddenly she was kissing him so deeply and passionately it felt like she was devouring him. “I love you,” she breathed heavily into his mouth. “So, so much.”
Elio’s last thought before she sank onto his length was that his wife’s heart was as stubborn as her brain. When Siena loved someone, she loved them forever. She’d never been able to stop loving her mother. Never able to stop loving Gabriella.
And now she loved him, and he would protect her heart as fiercely as he would protect her life.