Chapter Eleven #2
Slowly, the rhythm of their lovemaking began to change.
The tempered restraint slipped away as the strokes inside her lengthened and deepened.
His cheek tight against hers, his breath hot on her skin, the groans coming from his throat became more ragged and drawn, and then a hand was reaching for hers, fingers entwining, every inch of them fusing together in a sensation that had white light flickering behind her eyes.
She’d never known such pleasure existed, and when her climax came, she buried her face in his neck and held him tightly, spasming as pulsating flames of bliss rippled through her entire being like an inferno.
Somehow, Domenico’s throaty groans deepened further, and then he was driving himself so deeply inside her that another climax rippled through her.
As the rapture recaptured her, the beautiful body making such glorious love to her went rigid, and the fingers laced with hers tightened, and when he finally let go, it was with a hoarse cry of her name.
Domenico held Marnie close to him. They were nestled together, legs entwined, her cheek resting in the crook of his shoulder.
His heart was still racing. He still couldn’t breathe properly. He could barely gather his thoughts.
He’d never lain after making love feeling like this before. Only one night had come close to it. The night he and Marnie had conceived their child.
He’d let her kick him out the next morning without a fight because everything he’d felt that night and everything he’d felt when he’d woken had been too much.
Everything he’d felt then and everything he was feeling now was everything he’d spent their marriage fighting, and all because he’d been afraid.
Afraid of letting her get too close, afraid of making love with more than his body, and all because he’d been afraid of feeling like this.
All that fight and all that fear, never realising it was too late.
It had always been too late. The fight to preserve his heart had been lost long ago.
He swallowed air into his lungs and pushed it out through his nose. Finally, he was able to ask, ‘Are you okay?’
The arm around him tightened in assent.
He pressed his mouth to the top of her head and held it there. The memories of what they’d just shared floated before him.
But even as his mind and heart raced at the beauty of what they’d shared, guilt sharpened in his guts that he’d never allowed it to be like that for them before.
The hand gently stroking his back slipped away and gripped his forearm, tugging it to make it move. Wordlessly, she brushed down to take hold of his hand and guided it to her belly. ‘Press there,’ she whispered.
Closing his eyes, he pressed his flattened hand as hard as he dared to the small bump.
After a long time had passed, she quietly asked, ‘Can you feel it?’
He shook his head and kissed her forehead.
She tilted her head to capture his stare and smiled ruefully. ‘The flutters felt a little stronger than last time.’
He leaned his face down to kiss her mouth. ‘It will happen soon,’ he promised.
Palming his cheek, she sighed and moved her body even tighter against his and extended her neck in search of another kiss.
There was something incredibly romantic about sharing a bath, Marnie thought dreamily.
Especially when it was a sunken bath in a bathroom that wouldn’t have looked out of place in ancient Rome.
And especially when you were leaning back against a man as dreamily gorgeous as Domenico with your cheek pressed tight against his, and one of his hands was kneading your breasts, the other dipped between your legs, masturbating you to a climax.
She felt no inhibitions in moaning her pleasure.
On the contrary. She felt free. As light as a bird.
And, just like a bird, she was soaring as Domenico’s pleasuring fingers worked their magic, and when she came, it was with an unrestrained cry that had barely echoed away when he lifted her by the hips and then pulled her back down to sink onto his hard length.
His mouth hot on the side of her neck, he held her securely as he thrust up into her with rapid strokes that brought him to his own rapid climax with an unrestrained cry of his own.
Only when she felt the tension of his orgasm loosen did she laugh and turn her face to kiss him. Grinning, he returned the kiss before lifting her enough to slide his deflating erection out of her.
Once she’d resettled back between his legs, he gave a contented sigh and wrapped his arms back around her…back around her because that’s how they’d started.
With the solid comfort of Domenico’s body behind her, his arms covering her stomach and the warmth of the bathwater cocooning her, Marnie closed her eyes. She felt like she could finally fall asleep. She’d come close a few times, but a switch in her brain had refused to turn off.
Her dream had finally come true. It had come better than true.
The man she’d worshipped for the whole of her adult life had made love to her, not through furious, pride-induced anger but through genuine, heartfelt emotion.
Falling asleep meant waking back to reality, and she hadn’t been ready for that.
Not when she didn’t know what the reality of tomorrow would look like.
Maybe it had been the same for Domenico because he’d shown no sign of wanting to fall asleep either.
Instead, they’d made love again, and then again.
And still neither had fallen asleep, but by the time he’d lazily suggested a bath, the reality of what tomorrow would bring no longer frightened her.
It was already tomorrow. The sun would soon be rising, and the birds she felt as free and as light as would awaken.
‘Tell me something,’ he said softly, breaking through her contented thoughts.
She stretched her legs and stroked his arms. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Why you didn’t fight me over the settlement. It wouldn’t have taken much fight. I offered it out of spite, you must have known that. And you must have known I never expected you to agree to it.’
‘I wanted a clean break, and besides, your money belongs to you, not me. You earned it.’
‘But you were my wife and entitled to a decent settlement, and you knew that too. You didn’t have to be greedy, just smart, and you are smart.
You’re one of the smartest people I know.
One letter from your lawyers and I would have handed over the money for you to buy yourself a decent place to live.
You didn’t have to return to that shithole. ’
‘That shithole is my home,’ she reminded him. ‘It’s the only home I’ve ever known.’
The breath of his sigh danced into her hair. ‘I thought that might be the case. You were born there?’
‘Technically, I was born in a hospital, but yes, I’ve always lived there, and I know it’s gone to the dogs in recent years, but it wasn’t always like that. When I was growing up, there was a real sense of community about the place. Everyone looked out for everyone.’
‘But in your flat, it was just you and your parents?’
‘Only until I was ten, and then it was just me and Mum.’
‘I never did ask you how she died, did I?’ There was a sadness in his voice as he said this.
‘No.’ Until the last week, Marnie’s past had never come up in conversation between them.
‘I’m sorry for that. I should have asked.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve never really liked talking about my parents.’
‘So how did she die? Was it cancer?’
‘No. Cirrhosis of the liver.’ She felt his body tense. ‘My mother was an alcoholic. She basically pickled herself to death.’
He exhaled a drawn-out oath.
‘It’s why my father left. She drank all the time.
I mean, all the time, and she was a mean drunk.
I don’t remember my father being an alcoholic, but his behaviour wasn’t much better.
They were always fighting and screaming at each other.
The neighbours were always banging on the walls for them to shut up. It was a very abusive relationship.’
‘Why didn’t he take you with him when he left?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since he walked out.’
He swore again. ‘He left you with an abusive alcoholic?’
‘She never abused me. Half the time, she didn’t even notice I was there. I think Dad waited until I was old enough to fend for myself before packing his bags.’
‘At ten?’ Disbelief resonated in his voice.
‘I could cook by then—we were taught simple dishes at school. He knew I wouldn’t starve.
I’d also perfected the art of forging Mum’s signature and could access her phone for anything that needed to be done digitally.
Once he’d gone, I ordered food deliveries every week, and when I needed something like a new school uniform, I would just order it online too.
Mum must have known what I was doing, but she never cared.
As long as she had her vodka, she didn’t care what I was doing. ’
‘And where did the money to pay for it all come from? I assume she wasn’t working?’
‘Benefits. The flat was paid off so she had little in the way of overheads.’
‘She owned the flat?’
‘Yes. She inherited it from her father before I was born. Don’t ask me where her mother was.
I never met her. From the little my mother told me about her family, they were a bunch of drunks too.
’ A bunch of drunks who’d had no interest in meeting Marnie.
A whole family she’d never met, as invisible to them as she was to her mother and as forgotten by them as she was by her father.
‘Have you tried to trace any of them? Or trace your father?’ he asked quietly.
‘Why would I? If they wanted me in their lives, I would be in their lives. As for my father, he chose to cut me from his life. I know he only stayed as long as he did for my sake, but he could have taken me with him. He could have checked that I was okay. I’m sure he’s got his reasons for turning his back on me, but I don’t care what they are.
Not now. I feel our baby move inside me, and I feel such love in my heart for it that it hurts to breathe.
I would never abandon it or do anything to harm it. ’
Her father had never felt that love for Marnie. He’d done his duty by her for as long as he could endure and then left with no forwarding address. The only person in her life who’d ever seen her as a whole person and valued her was the man whose arms were wrapped around her.
Domenico kissed the top of her head and tightened the wrap of his arms around her.
With wistfulness rising in her, Marnie quietly continued.
‘I know my mother must have felt a similar love for me when she was pregnant because she managed to cut down on her drinking. I was able to access my health records when I turned eighteen, and I learned I was evaluated for foetal alcohol syndrome when I was a toddler. I’d had no idea…
’ She closed her eyes, trying to capture an image of her mother sober.
Nothing came. ‘That she had me tested means she was already an alcoholic when I was conceived. That I was given the all-clear means she didn’t drink enough to harm me when she was pregnant—it means she managed to control it for my sake.
’ It meant, Marnie suddenly realised, that had mother had loved her.
Had truly loved her. That Marnie hadn’t just been this child living in the same flat as her.
Her mother had loved her as much as her disease would allow.
She’d loved her from conception and had held on to life until Marnie had been old enough to go out into the world as an adult.
She’d never looked at it that way before.
She could feel Domenico’s heart thudding against her back.
Could hear the heaviness of his breathing, and remembered how he’d said he wanted to know her history so he could understand what drove her.
What he would take from her story, she didn’t know, but speaking it aloud for the first time was giving her so much of a fresh perspective on it all that it felt like she’d always looked at her past and recent history through a murky lens that was now suddenly clearing.
Pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was her life were slotting into place, and those pieces were brightly coloured.
Her own heart starting to thud, Marnie twisted her head and kissed his shoulder. ‘The water’s getting cold,’ she said softly.