Free The Arranged Marriage by Emma Darcy Page B

covers and I was worried about him smothering.”
    “It’s okay. He does that sometimes. Like a little possum snuggling into a safe pouch.”
    He gestured helpless ignorance. “I thought I’d better check he was breathing and lift him back on the pillow. I didn’t mean to startle him into crying out.”
    She managed an ironic little smile. “Well, you did a good job of soothing him down again.”
    He returned her smile with a wry twist of his own. “At least, he didn’t mind my nursing him. Maybe he remembered me from last week.”
    It was more than that, Gina thought. Marco instinctively responded to him in some elemental way, just as she did. The pain of their earlier encounter tonight suddenly gripped her heart.
    “Why are you here?” she cried, louder than she meant to.
    “Ssh...” he warned, once more glancing back at Marco, his brows lowered in concern.
    Confused, disturbed, she didn’t resist when he proceeded to bundle her back into the nanny’s bedroom, following her in and pushing the door to barely a crack ajar, diminishing any sound they made, yet still allowing them to hear a cry from her son. She ended up against the wall beside the door and he was much closer to her, heart-thumpingly close, his hands lightly, hotly curled over her shoulders, burning through the thin silk.
    She stared at his throat, frightened to look up at the face she found too attractive, the eyes that might see her quivering vulnerability and the wanton desire for him clawing through it.
    “This probably won’t make sense to you but I just wanted to look at him,” he pleaded in a low voice, gravelled with needs she had no way of understanding.
    “What can he mean to you?” she asked, shaking her head in non-comprehension.
    His chest heaved as he drew in a long breath. “I was thinking... of how it might be... to have a son.”
    A curiosity? A yearning? She looked up, compelled to see exactly what he was expressing and he lifted a hand to cup her cheek, holding the tilt of her head while his eyes bored into hers, playing havoc with her own secret yearnings.
    “He is a beautiful child...like his mother.”
    He was wrong. Marco was more like his father. But any thought of correction was swallowed up by the raging need to believe he really did find her beautiful. Her throat was so dry and constricted, she could barely make the protest that her sense of rightness demanded.
    “You shouldn’t say such things to me.”
    “Why not? It’s the truth.”
    She forced herself to say, “What about Michelle?”
    “Forget Michelle. It’s you I want.”
    You I want...you I want... The words pounded through her heart like a drum roll of anticipation that couldn’t be muffled. It was impossible to tear her eyes away from the raw desire in his, impossible to deny her own wanting for him. It surged like a torrent through her bloodstream, screaming for satisfaction this time, needing it with such blind force she couldn’t think of anything else. Michelle was forgotten. Her mind was driven into a wild chant— Make it true then. Make it true...
    Maybe his mind picked it up or the same refrain was beating through him, demanding action. His mouth crashed down on hers and a hunger for knowledge of each other erupted—an intense, intimate knowledge that recognised no barriers at all. There was a barrage of deeply passionate kisses, a craving for every possible sensation, an urgency that feared frustration and fought against giving it any chance to break into what was happening.
    Action...action...action... The tie-belt of her gown wrenched apart, the silk being slid from her shoulders, sleeves pushed down, off, out of the way...hands skimming her curves, clutching them...kisses, trailing down her throat, over the swell of her breasts, his mouth finding her nipples through the thin fabric of her nightie, drawing hotly on them, unbelievably exciting...helping him get rid of his coat, his shirt, her hands greedily exulting in the ripple of