Page 68 of The Italian's Pregnant Enemy (A Diamond in the Rough)

She tossed her beautiful bouquet, and right after that he swept her away to the airport. To his private jet. They should’ve stayed an extra night in Rome, but he had been desirous to get her away from everyone and everything. To have her all to himself. So now they had a long flight overnight to the private island.

She was exhausted. And so he helped her out of her gown and did not ravish her as he wanted, but left her sleeping in the bedroom alone while he drank to try and drown the intensity of everything.

Sex helped him make sense of the intensity. When he was inside of her, when he was chasing the peak of need, then they could make all of that about sex.

But now, the ache in his chest felt like it was something else, and he did not care for it at all.

After this, they would return home. A home that they shared. They would have a baby.

A child together.

Their lives were being knit together as yarn becoming something new.

And he had never imagined that would be so.

Not for him.

It was like having a version of his past resurrected. A set of new choices given to him.

And this wild need that he felt for Lyssia terrified him, because it compromised everything that he had ever told himself about connection.

About the decision he had made to marry her. And why it had been important. It had been about his child. Of course it had been. About the need to make sure they were both protected, but it didn’t feel like it now.

It didn’t feel like a decision made coolly with his mind and nothing more.

His feelings for Lyssia felt nothing like logic.

Nothing like himself.

He brooded on that all night, and when they touched down on the island, Lyssia emerged looking fresh, while he felt as if he had run a gauntlet.

“This is beautiful,” she said as they walked up the trail that led to the home they would be staying in. Gorgeous and open to the jungle around them, because there were no other people to disturb them. The house was fully stocked, overlooking the water. There was a private dock with a small boat that they could take out at their leisure.

But he wanted none of that. Not now. He wanted nothing other than to have her. Nothing other than to make her his.

And when they arrived at the house, he did not wait to get inside. He grabbed hold of her on the sundeck and kissed her, deep and hard. Then he laid her down across one of the luxurious outdoor beds and began to strip her of all her clothes.

She was beautiful. Beyond.

Everything he had ever desired.

He had known. From that first moment in his office, he had known.

That whatever she had been to him before, she had become the woman of his dreams.

Dreams he hadn’t even known he possessed.

He stripped her body and as he did, stripped layers of himself away. Of his protections. And he found he did not have the desire to resist. Either her or the need between them.

He sipped desire from between her legs and kissed his way back up her body. Sucking one nipple into his mouth and reveling in the intensity of what bloomed between them.

He had been alone. For so many years, he had been alone. And now he was with her. In a way he had never been. Never been with anyone.

She had gotten underneath his skin. She had gotten down to the very heart of who he was.

Something he wasn’t entirely sure he had known before.

But she made him want to be better.

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