Chapter Eleven
Micha hoped that Maria couldn’t feel how his hands were shaking.
Shaking! He wasn’t some naive uncouth boy, but she made him feel like that, in the sense that she took him back through time, to how it could have been.
Would have been if Gio hadn’t sent him away and she’d not failed to come looking for him.
He thrust those thoughts aside, ruthlessly.
The past might have come to haunt him, but he couldn’t bring that into this place. Not now, not here.
He laid Maria gently on the bed, her hair fanning out and around her shoulders, the olive-green silk dress cast in light and shade as it draped against the dips and hollows of her body, her breasts, her chest, her hips, her thighs…
He couldn’t stop looking. As if he couldn’t quite believe she was here.
There’d been so much chaos in his mind in Paris, a little bit of confusion, a lot of surprise and a sense of completely overwhelming heady desire.
But this? This felt different. This felt intentional, careful, considered and he was at peace with that.
He was at peace with her. And that felt… more than it probably should.
Maria bit her lip, the nervous gesture bringing him back to the present. He didn’t want her to feel a second’s hesitation or doubt. Or was that actually true? Did he want her to think this through and still want to be here? With him? Wearing his ring? Carrying their child?
The thought melted the barriers he’d built around his heart, brick by brick in the days, weeks and months that had followed his first move to Paris all those years ago.
As he’d waited for her to come to him. Because he could see now that they were here, she had eventually come to him.
And that would have to be enough. Because he could no longer deny his feelings for her. Feelings that had never once gone away.
He picked up her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm, before coming to lie beside her on the bed, half content just to be there with her.
He allowed himself the luxury of taking in the changes that the years had made.
The lean lines her face had become, the startling light honeyed brown gaze watching him watch her.
‘You have always been, and always will be, the most beautiful woman I ever know.’
Her mouth parted, as if in surprise at the softness of his words, but no sound came out. He gently pushed back a corkscrew curl from her forehead, and traced the curve of her cheek, the side of her neck, the hollow of her throat and across her collarbone.
Her body came alive beneath his, as if his touch were the strings of a puppeteer and he wanted to gather her to him and just inhale her.
As if he could consume her, possess her, until they became one.
He’d never wanted anyone like this. He’d been half terrified of his feelings eleven years ago, and was still half scared of them now.
But he had to move past that fear if they were going to have any hope of the relationship he sometimes caught glimpses of in the deepest parts of his soul.
A knowing of what they could be. Something so good and so pure, he wasn’t sure he was worthy of it.
She looked at him then, something like sympathy in her gaze.
She raised her hand and mirrored the tour his fingers had taken, as she traced a fingertip over his hairline and skin. But her hand swept to his neck and pulled him towards her, and he swore he heard her whisper again, before his lips closed over hers.
He was hers to command.
Again and again and again he kissed her.
Chaste. Worshipful. Adoring. Enlightening.
Sighs not of surrender, but of yearning and want fell between them as he indulged them both, not in fast greedy grabs, but in easy, unhurried strokes and lingering tastes.
Slowly, one by one, he unbuttoned her dress, slipping the silk tie around her waist and tossing it aside, even as it put erotic thoughts into his mind for the future.
This, tonight, was something special. It was how that first time should have been between them.
He placed his hand over the silk of the skirt and stroked it up her legs, the satiny glide of the material over her smooth skin a delight to them both.
Micha placed kisses to the stomach he bared to his gaze and touch and smiled as she squirmed in delight, breathy half laughs that were innocent and expectant, and lingering over the gentle swell of the child they had created together.
Their eyes met as softness sank into something more.
Something serious. As if they both knew how much this moment meant to the other, how important it was.
His hand rested over her abdomen, as her hand came up to cup his jaw, and he knew in that moment that he’d found it again. The heart he’d given her all those years ago, lost to him until now.
‘Let me make love to you.’
To anyone else it would sound arrogant, commanding. But he knew she’d understand it as a request, because she was the one who held all the power in this moment.
‘Please,’ she replied, and he dropped his head in relief and thanks, before slipping his hands beneath her to gather her to him.
He buried his head in her, inhaling her scent, giving himself to her as she wrapped her arms around him, holding him to her.
And in that instant, he surrendered to her and she let him.
She took everything that he offered, unquestioning and without judgement.
His lips found her chest, her breasts, her mouth, her shoulder, his hands finding her hips, her curves, palming firm muscles and lithe grace, until they were both panting and desperate.
He released her only to reach towards the nightstand, when she stayed his hand. He looked at her questioningly.
‘We don’t need to use protection,’ she said, her voice husky, eyes sparkling.
‘Are you sure?’ he hesitated.
She smiled, shyly. ‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been tested. You have nothing to worry about.’
‘I know you would never put me at risk,’ she said with a solemn gaze, before pulling him back to her and into a kiss that reached his very soul. The trust she was giving him, letting him into her in such a way, humbled him.
Maria looked into his gaze, so serious it was as if he were almost sad. And she felt it. A kind of grief for all they had been through, all the hurts and the years apart, all the painful ways they had been thrust into adulthood, the innocence that had once been between them long since lost.
She kissed him in a way hoping to heal, in a way that promised to do better, be better, for him, for their child, for herself.
A kiss that started off slow, reverent, but stoked the fires of need until flames licked at her skin where he touched her.
Restless with need, her legs shifted to make room for him, as he pressed open-mouthed kisses to her collarbone, her chest, as he palmed her breast and nipped at her nipple, licking, stroking, urging those flames higher.
Damp heat pooled between her legs, pulse points throbbing incessantly, needing his touch or tongue to soothe them. Need became sighs that fell from her lips, as her body undulated against him, desperate for friction, for release, for him.
‘I could watch you forever,’ he said, his gaze on hers as he parted her thighs with one hand, his fingers delving between her legs and finding her core. Her back arched away from the bed as he tested her readiness with his fingers, his thumb pressing gently, but firmly against her clitoris.
‘Move for me?’ he all but begged, and she understood that he wanted her to move against his thumb.
That he wanted her to please herself. Heart thumping wildly in her chest, emotion thick in her throat, her entire body flushed, nipples tightening under his voyeurism as she moved against his hand, the moan of pleasure filling the air between them; hers, his, it didn’t matter.
‘Micha,’ she begged.
‘Not yet.’
‘But I want you with me,’ she all but pleaded.
‘But I want this more,’ he replied, forcing her to a pleasure that was near indecent.
Her gasps filled the room, the rose petals crushed beneath her, and his other hand came to rest across her abdomen, comforting, protective. Red slashes appeared on his cheeks as she drew closer and closer to an orgasm she half feared.
‘Micha.’
Her hands reached for his, needing that connection, that anchor, as if without it she might just fly away and lose herself completely.
The orgasm built with a kind of slow intensity she’d never experienced, with a tide that started at her feet, creeping higher and higher up her body until she crested a wave so big she thought she might drown beneath the pleasure he brought her.
Her entire self was lost, boneless, weightless, thoughtless, lost not to nothingness but to him. Micha. Who held her and soothed her as she came back to herself in shivers and lightning strikes that threatened to change the very fabric of her being.
She opened her eyes to find his gaze on hers, wonder in his eyes…the same wonder that she felt. Micha. It was the gaze of a boy she’d not seen for eleven years and ridiculously she felt tears well in her eyes, and blinked, hoping to stop the flow before it started.
‘Mi amore,’ he said, but she wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to hear the rest of what he had to say. She felt so raw and vulnerable, she knew instinctively that he could break her, not with savage words or rejection, but with his love.
She took his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. Used that same hand to draw him to her, and kissed away the hurt and the fear that she felt, willingly losing herself to him and his body. And if he knew what she was doing, he had the kindness not to stop her.