* * *
‘A miracle—a parking space!’
Carla’s exclamation was heartfelt. To find a free parking space on her narrow street was, indeed, a miracle. Yet there it was.
Is it a sign—can it be a sign?
She almost laughed at herself for the notion, yet knew with a fragment of her mind that she was not joking at all.
As Cesare expertly parallel parked in the confined space, she could feel yet again her emotions soaring within her. For hope was a bird that, once released, could not be imprisoned again.
Throughout the evening, Cesare’s air of particular attentiveness to her had been palpable, that sense of something different about him unmistakable.
Now, as they climbed out of the car and she opened the outer door to let them both into the inner courtyard, his closeness to her was even more palpable.
Upstairs in her apartment she went into the kitchen to set the coffee brewing. Usually when he stayed over with her he settled down on the white sofa, his long legs reaching out, and shrugged off his jacket and tie, happy to lounge with her while drinking coffee, and sometimes a liqueur, before arousal took them both and swept them off to bed.
Tonight, however, he followed her into the kitchen.
‘Do you really want coffee?’
She turned. He was standing there, and in his eyes was an expression that wiped all thought of coffee from her mind—all thought at all. An expression that was all too familiar to her. Slowly she shook her head. For one long, timeless moment she did not move, and nor did he. Something flowed between them. Something that took her back to that very first night they’d spent together.
The villa outside Rome, Cesare’s love nest, had seen much use in the months since then. But at this moment all she could think of was that very first night.
Warmth beat up in her. Suffusing her skin, flaring out from her core. He stepped towards her, curved his long fingers around the nape of her neck, drawing her towards him. But not into his arms. He held her in front of him while his other hand rested lightly around her waist. His dark, lidded eyes held hers, unfathomable, unreadable.
Turning her bones to water.
She felt emotion rise up in her like a sweeping tide, pouring through her. Her lips parted and there was a low, frail noise in her throat.
‘Cesare—’ His name was like a whisper in her mouth...an echo deep within her.
The knowledge of what she now knew she felt for him had ripped across her like a revelation and it trembled within her. It was making her tremble again now as the thumb of the hand at her nape reached forward to graze the cusp of her jaw, stroked the hollow below her ear in a soft, sensual caress that sent a thou
sand feathers fluttering through her veins.
‘You are so, so beautiful,’ he said.
Slowly, infinitely slowly, as if he were savouring every long moment of its descent, he lowered his mouth to hers. For one long, timeless moment, his kiss was nothing more than a velvet graze along her lips. Then, with a rasp in his throat, he tightened his fingers at her nape, his hand at her waist, and hauled her to him hungrily, ravenously.
As though she were the last meal he would ever eat.
Like a sheet of flame she went up in an inferno of sensation, of passion and desire, white-hot and incandescent. With absolute mastery he possessed her mouth and then, feasting his way down, he swept her up, clamping her against him as he strode from the kitchen, pushing open the door of her bedroom, coming down on the bed beside her.
Clothes were shed, bodies were arching, limbs twining, mouths meeting and melding. Bodies fusing.
Fusing with that same white heat, that same incandescence. She cried out over and over again, her body shaking. The ecstasy he wrought on her was unbearable, meeting for the first time the flood of emotion that poured through her, the knowledge of what it was he meant to her...
The man she loved. Cesare—oh, Cesare—the man she loved.
The knowledge of it, the certainty and the rapture of it, was a possession of her heart and of her soul even as she gave him possession of her body, took possession of his, giving to him all that was within her. It was a glory, a dedication of herself to him without measure, without reserve. An absolute oblation of herself...
And at the end, as wave after wave of shuddering ecstasy and love finally ebbed from her, she held him in her arms, crushing him to her. His dampened skin cooled, his hectic breathing calmed, and she wrapped herself around him, half cradled by him, their limbs tangled and exhausted. She knew, with certainty and utter conviction, that she had never known happiness until this moment. Never known until this moment what love truly felt like.
She held him close against her, smoothed the strong contours of his powerful back. Wonder filled her—and a gratitude beyond all things. He had cried out as the moment had possessed him, as if it had been the very first time they had made love. The intensity of it had shaken her, overwhelmed her.
It could mean only one thing—surely only one thing? His passion for her had been greater than he’d ever shown, his response more searing than she had ever known it to be, his fulfilment fiercer, more burning than she had ever seen before. And now, as she lay with him, his arms around her were tighter than she had ever known.