Chapter Eight #4
In a sudden movement, she clambered out of bed again, snatched up a robe in the dressing room and set off for Orazio’s room.
Even though he was probably angry with her, it felt wrong to her that they should be apart after such a rupture between them.
She raised a brow when she thought of the adjoining principal bedrooms at the country house where they had spent several very happy and relaxed weekends together.
In the royal castle, heading to Orazio’s bedroom meant traversing three corridors, two stone staircases and then mounting the many steps to the King’s Tower.
No greater sign of his parents’ unhappy marriage could have been found than the sheer distance between their respective bedrooms.
She didn’t knock because she wasn’t sure that he was even in his room.
Simply walking in, she stilled when she saw him sprawled across the rumpled bed, sitting up with his back braced against the carved headboard.
His shirt hung open on his bronzed, muscular torso and he was still wearing his jeans.
‘I blew the proposal…’ Raz said with a bitter edge as he studied her.
‘Yes,’ Zia conceded in the smouldering silence. ‘It was a car crash because I wasn’t prepared for it and you simply assumed that I would agree—’
‘And then I said all the wrong things,’ Raz contributed with a frustrated wave of an eloquent lean brown hand.
‘And even as I voiced them, I knew it was the wrong stuff, but I’m very wary about sharing private feelings.
’ And then, in an abrupt movement, he sat up and vaulted off the bed, long powerful legs settling onto solid ground again.
‘No, that’s a lie. I could’ve told you the truth but I didn’t want to expose myself to that extent—’
‘Why not?’ she interrupted.
Orazio sucked in oxygen and his broad chest expanded. ‘I haven’t told a woman that I loved her since my mother laughed in my face and told me I’d soon grow out of thinking that I loved her. And, you know, she was right. In the end, you do stop loving people who don’t love you back.’
‘I’m sorry she said that to you,’ Zia whispered in a pained undertone. ‘I’m sorry that you grew up with that.’
‘I was only six years old. She told me that because she was a queen she had to give birth to a child who could be the heir to the throne and that I was that child. Conceived out of necessity alone. I still recall returning to my room and trying to figure out the spelling of necessity to look it up in the dictionary.’
‘Oh, Raz…’ Releasing her breath in a pained sigh, Zia crossed the depth of rich Persian rug beneath her feet and closed her arms round him as he stood there looking grim, with his expressive green eyes awash with sorrow from that old wound.
He was rigid in her hold, every muscle tightly clenched with tension.
‘Don’t even think about it any more,’ she urged, soft fingers stretching up to soothingly caress his long, lean back.
‘I’m different. We’re different. That’s not our story. ’
‘But you still don’t want to marry me,’ Orazio bit out rawly.
‘Because I need more than fondness,’ she muttered fiercely.
Orazio clenched his even white teeth and bit out a curse.
‘How can you be so blind? I loved you before I even understood what love for a woman was. I loved you virtually from the beginning because I would never have plunged us into a sexual relationship without that connection. We were always meant to be. To be something more, to be a true couple in love…and that was absolutely my dream. Not to marry for the sake of it, for having a queen or children or any of that…to have a woman whom I loved and who might love me back, something real and lasting and for ever—’
‘You want what I want,’ she exclaimed in shocked appreciation at what she hadn’t grasped and what he had always intended. ‘And I love you too…so much.’
Orazio froze and then just as suddenly relaxed as he tasted her heartfelt words and luxuriated in them. He drew her fully into his arms, still stunned by her whispered admission. ‘You love me? Then why—?’
‘I turned down the proposal because I thought you didn’t love me,’ she confided in a rush. ‘I couldn’t agree to marry you without love—’
‘But I do love you—’
‘Only you didn’t tell me that,’ she pointed out helplessly.
‘So, I totally messed up?’
‘Yes,’ Zia sighed. ‘You didn’t give me a proposal that any woman would want.’
Orazio threw back his shoulders and breathed in deep and long at that statement. ‘So, I need to do it again the right way—’
‘No, no…that would be overkill,’ Zia objected afresh, shaking her hand in front of his face, wanting the weight of her ring back on it. ‘Where’s my ring gone?’
‘You took it off. You didn’t want it—’
‘If I had known that you loved me, it would never have come off my finger again,’ she admitted ruefully.
A sudden grin illuminated Orazio’s lean bronzed features. He freed her and strode across the room to retrieve the small item from a dresser. As she hovered, he returned and grasped her hand to show her the ring that she had rejected. ‘So?’
‘Yes, I want to marry you. Yes, I love you and want us to be together,’ she murmured feverishly and he slid the ring back onto her finger.
‘I do truly love you,’ he breathed, green eyes glowing with intensity, and a little quiver ran through her, starting in her tummy to flutter like butterflies before sliding up to make her heart race and then down into her pelvis where it lit up her body in a sensual response.
‘And I love you so much,’ she confessed, half under her breath.
‘I felt sick at the very idea of losing you. I couldn’t bear that,’ Orazio admitted in a raw undertone.
‘You’re everything I ever wanted in a woman…
and you appeared before I even knew what I wanted,’ he explained remorsefully.
‘And then suddenly there you were, the whole package I didn’t believe I could ever find and a true partner. ’
Her hands, the diamond glittering on her slender finger even in the shadowy room, smoothed slowly up over his lean torso in an appreciative surge. ‘It never occurred to me that you could be serious about me.’
‘Really? You didn’t think I’d know a good thing when I found it?
’ he scoffed. ‘You’re beautiful and sexy, charming, loyal and truthful, friendly, unspoiled, caring.
You’re everything I didn’t even know I was dreaming of in my future wife.
I would’ve been a very stupid guy if I hadn’t realised what a catch you were, but you were like quicksilver in my fingers…
always on the brink of running away if I seemed to be too serious or I seemed to want too much from you—’
‘I was scared of getting serious with anyone—’
‘Therefore when you said stuff about us being casual, I listened and I couldn’t argue because I didn’t want to risk frightening you off.
You were so stubborn and independent. I didn’t want you to worry that I was one of those men who try to clip a woman’s wings or restrict her, so I had to back off and not say the things I wanted to and tie strings to you.
But I didn’t want just strings attached, I wanted freaking chains!
’ he gritted in a driven admission, welding her to every line of his lean, hard body with possessive hands.
‘I’ve learned a lot about myself since I met you. ’
‘What did you learn?’
‘That I’m possessive and territorial and jealous when it comes to the woman I love. Every time Giancarlo Marone oiled up to you, I wanted to plant a fist in his smirking face and tell him to back off! But you hadn’t given me that right…’ he completed gruffly. ‘Have I got the right now?’
Hugging her new awareness of his strong feelings for her, Zia was able to laugh for the first time that evening. ‘I should think the ring will warn him that I’m a lost cause and a waste of his time now,’ she contended. ‘When do you think we’ll get married?’
‘As soon as it can be arranged,’ Orazio declared, lifting her slight body up against him and dropping a hungry kiss on her lush lips as she wriggled responsively against him.
‘I want you tied to me by every device available because I’m terrified of you changing your mind and deciding you can do better than me. ’
‘I’m not about to do that,’ she told him warmly. ‘But from now on, we talk about feelings even though you don’t like doing it, so that we don’t get crossed wires between us again.’
He came down over her, brilliant eyes dancing with amusement as he got caught up in her voluminous silky robe before he could strip it off and discard it.
‘There is a small, very sexy, curvy body under here somewhere,’ he teased as he came up against an equally flowy and flouncy nightie. ‘It’s just a matter of finding it.’
Zia pushed at his shoulder until he leant back from her and she sat up, whipped off her last garment and lay back against the pillows, grinning up at him as his heated gaze roamed over her bare, bountiful curves. ‘Now do your worst.’
‘My very best, piccola mia,’ he contradicted huskily, looping her hair back to trace a fevered path down the length of her slender neck to her delicate collarbone, making her shiver with intense awareness.
‘I love you more than I ever loved anyone or anything in my life and I can’t believe that you’re finally mine. ’
‘And I can’t believe that you’re mine,’ she whispered, hauling him down to her with eager hands as his own hands roved over every sensitive curve he could reach and the wicked hum of desire began to rise inside her like a tide. ‘I love you.’
He was hers, she thought thankfully, utterly unaccustomed to the warmth of happiness flooding through her.
Nobody had ever made her feel so important, so precious or so necessary.
Afloat on those joyous new feelings, anchored by that overpowering conviction that she was finally home and safe, Zia gave herself up to the passion and the sheer delight of being with the male she loved.