Page 20 of Modern Romance May 2026 Books 1-4
Her presence had stopped being soothing the longer the months of their marriage had passed. It had been such a gradual process he couldn’t pinpoint when he’d had to force his good humour in the meals they shared or when going into her bedroom had become an act of torture second only to leaving it.
The torture had come from the unwanted notion that the more he made love to her, the more he wanted to make love to her and the stronger the sense that she was slipping away from him.
Hehadfelt her slipping away. It had been there in her responses to his lovemaking, the sensation he was making love only to a body, the mind attached to it closed off and locked away from him. He just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, had fought against acknowledging that the perfect marriage he’d created as a means of creating a family was cracking.
He’d been cracking too, he acknowledged painfully. His increasing desperation to impregnate her had come because he’d subconsciously known he was losing her. Get her pregnant and then she’d never be able to leave him, that’s what his subconscious had demanded, and now shewaspregnant and still she would rather live in a flat in one of the most dangerous areas of London than come back to him.
But it had been more than desperation to impregnate her that had seen him go to Marnie night after night, and for the first time, he forced himself to consider the possibility that in the long months of their marriage, he’d fallen for his wife.
It was a notion that brought perspiration to his face.
It was just pregnancy hormones, he valiantly assured himself, because there was no way he could have fallen for her, not when he’d spent their whole damned marriage ensuring that didn’t happen. Sure, he wasn’t the one carrying their child, but he’d spent two months watching Marnie suffer and being unable to do a damned thing to ease it. That had to affect a man. He cared for her and felt protective of her because he wasn’t a monster. That didn’t mean he needed to look back into the past and start seeing things there that didn’t exist.
Closing his eyes even tighter, he filled his lungs again with Marnie’s scent and spooned himself even closer so his knees bent into the back of hers. Only the awareness she’d only so recently stopped feeling nauseous at every little thing stopped him tightening his hold around her.
‘Give me a week,’ he said, breaking the long silence. ‘Let me spend this time proving that I can be the husband you want me to be.’
She took so long to respond that he began to think she really had fallen asleep, and when she did speak, her voice was so faint it was barely audible. ‘But it won’t be real.’
Chapter Seven
IT HAPPENED SOquickly that Marnie didn’t have time to snatch a breath of resistance before she was rolled onto her back with the same swiftness that she’d been scooped into Domenico’s arms and laid on the bed.
Propping himself onto his forearm, he glowered down at her. ‘I’m doing my best to give you everything you want, and all you have to say is that it isn’t real?’
‘But it won’t be, will it?’ As hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop the misery reflecting in her voice. Being spooned into him and listening to his rich voice while his breath had danced through her hair and the sensation of their fused mouths still buzzed so deeply on her lips and in her veins…
If he put his hand to her heart, he would know beyond doubt how deeply he affected her, and she wished desperately for a means to numb both her heart and her body to him, wished too, that the longing to slip back into the pretence that had got her through the early months of their marriage wasn’t so very strong. ‘We’ll both know it’s fake and that you’re just going through the motions and pretending.’
His jaw clenched, nostrils flaring. ‘We spend our lives going through motions, from brushing our teeth to driving a car. Does that make those things any less real?’
She wanted to cry. ‘You know what I mean. I can’t pretend our marriage is some kind of artificial simulation. Not now.’
‘That kiss we just shared felt real. Damned real. That didn’t feel artificial or like going through some motion.’
In the beat of a heart, hot colour flooded her face. She wanted to deny that the kiss had been shared, but they would both know her denials were a lie.
She’d never had control of her physical responses to Domenico any more than she had control of her heart.
The intensity of the light brown eyes staring into hers increased, but his jaw loosened, his mouth and voice softening. ‘Why did you marry me, Marnie?’
Her heart virtually punched its way through her chest. ‘You ask that now, months after we divorced?’
‘Do you know why I thought you said yes?’
The colour on her cheeks now at saturation point, she shook her head.
‘I knew you had a crush on me, and I thought myself such a great catch that I couldn’t see a reason why any woman would say no.’
Taken off guard at such brutal honesty, she gave a small shout of laughter. Oh, that was such a very Domenico thing to say. In all the years she’d known him, he’d never suffered from false modesty. He knew exactly who he was and where he was going, one of the many things that had left her, the girl who’d never dared imagine a future for herself, so awed about him in those early years. She’d never met anyone like him before. Just being in a room with him was intoxicating.
The gorgeously sensual mouth curved into a smile.
Bending his elbow, eyes not breaking the lock between them, he rested his cheek on his palm and gently ran a finger the length of her nose. Quivers of sensation followed his trail.
‘The sun’s made your freckles come back out,’ he murmured. ‘I like your freckles. I like that you don’t try to hide them.’ The smile dimmed. ‘I don’t like that you try to hide what’s on the inside, so tell me, why did you agree to marry me?’
Because I wanted what we are sharing right this very moment, lying on a bed, talking and gazing into each other’s eyes, our bodies so close I can feel the heat emanating from you.
