CHAPTER TEN
MARCELO’SHEARTBEATSWEREthe heaviest he’d ever known. They tremored through his bones and skin.
If the world had to end now he would leave it gladly.
He could feel the strength of Clara’s heartbeats through their conjoined bodies. He could hear the raggedness of her breaths.
She held him as tightly as he held her and he knew in his bones she didn’t want to break the spell binding them together any more than he did.
But no enchantment could hold for ever and, as deeply reluctant as he was to move, he knew his weight would soon crush her, and he gently eased his face out of the crook of her neck and lifted his weight from her.
Groins still locked together, he gazed down at her face and into the dark brown eyes filled with more of that wonder.
She swallowed hard. ‘Well...that was something.’
He tried to speak, say something witty, but his brain couldn’t conjure anything and, even if it had, his mouth wouldn’t cooperate.
So he kissed those delectable lips instead.
Her fingers scraped through his hair and then she sighed. And then she gave a flash of that mischievous grin he was coming to adore. ‘Can we do that again?’
Laughing, he kissed her again. ‘Soon,’ he promised. ‘Excuse me a moment—there is something I have to dispose of.’
Carefully withdrawing from her, Marcelo got off the bed and moved on surprisingly weak legs to the bathroom.
When he returned to the bedroom his heart lurched to find Clara gathering her dress from the floor.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
She smiled. ‘Going to my room.’
‘Why?’
Confusion drew her brows together. ‘That’s where my bed is.’
A lump formed in his throat. ‘You can sleep here with me. If you want.’
She breathed in deeply, her lips pulling in and tightening into a straight line. ‘Is that what you want?’
And then he saw it. The latent vulnerability.
Clara was preparing to leave his bed because she assumed that’s what he wanted. She assumed he wanted her to leave because that’s what she was used to. Rejection. It’s what she protected herself from in her solitary life...
How many times could a woman break a man’s heart?
‘Yes. I want you to stay.’
Her smile as she dropped her dress broke his heart all over again.
Back under the sheets together, he gathered her into his arms.
‘I’ve never slept in a bed with anyone before,’ she confided. ‘Apart from my mum. She’d let me sleep with her if I wasn’t feeling well.’
He kissed the top her head and rubbed his nose into her silky hair.
‘How many women have you slept with in here?’
He knew she wasn’t talking specifically about sex. ‘It isn’t a competition.’