LUCY MONROE - Valentino's Love-Child

“I need more, Tino.”

“Then I will give you more.” He was very good at that.

“I’m not talking about sex.”

He turned her to face him and lowered his head so his lips hovered above hers. “Let’s not talk at all.”

Then he kissed her. He would show her that they were too right together to dismiss their relationship because it wasn’t packaged in orange blossoms and meters of white tulle.

She fought her own response. He could feel the tension in her, knew she wanted to resist, but though she might want to, she was as much a slave to their mutual attraction as he. Her body knew where it belonged. In his arms.

But her brain was too active and she tore her lips from his. “No, Tino.”

“Do not say no. Say rather, ‘Make love to me, Tino.’ This is what I wish to hear.”

“We’re supposed to be exclusive.”

“We are.”

“You were willing to have a blind date with another woman, Tino.” She wrenched herself from his arms. “I cannot be okay with that.”

“It was not a date.”

She glared at him, but it was the light of betrayal in her eyes that cut him to the quick. “As good as.”

“I did not consider it a date.”

“But you knew your son and mother were matchmaking.”

“I had no intention of being matched.”

“But that’s changed. You said so. You said you would do anything for Gio, even give him a second mother— if she’s Sicilian .” The tone Faith spoke the last words with said how little she thought of his stance on the matter.

“I said I was considering it, not that I had decided to date other women. You are all the woman I want right now.”

“And tomorrow?”

“And tomorrow.”

“So, when does my sell-by date come into effect? Next week? Next month? Next year.”

He wanted to grab her and hold on tight, but he laid gentle hands on her shoulders instead. “You do not have a sell-by date. Our relationship is not cut-and-dried like that.”

“I won’t be with you if you’re going to date other women,” she repeated stubbornly.

“I would not ask you to.”

“What does that mean, Tino?”

“It means you can trust me to be faithful while we are together. Just as I trust you.”

Her eyes glistened suspiciously, sending shards of pain spiking through his gut. He did not want to see her cry. He kissed her, just once, oh so carefully, trying to put the tenderness and commitment—as limited as it might be—that he felt into the caress.

“Let me make love to you.” He was pleading and he did not care.

They needed each other tonight, not empty beds where regrets and memories would haunt the hours that should be for sleep. Or making love.

“No more blind dates.”

“It wasn’t—”

But she shushed him with a finger to his lips. “It was. Or would have been. Don’t do it again.”

“You have my word.” Then, because he could not help himself; because he needed it more than breathing or thinking or anything else, he once again kissed her.

He poured his passion and his fear out in that kiss, molding their lips together in a primordial dance.

At first she did not respond. She did not try to push him away, but she did not pull him closer, either. It was the only time in their relationship she had not fallen headfirst into passion with him.

She was still thinking.

He would fix that. Increasing the intensity of their kiss, he stormed her mouth, refusing to allow their mutual desire to remain a prisoner to circumstances that would not…could not…change. Bit by bit her instincts took over.

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