Page 79 of Righteous Enforcer
"I should have trusted that the woman I fell in love with wouldn't have left without reason. I should have looked harder, fought harder." I turn my head to look at her. "I won't doubt you again, Eva. Whatever comes, whatever truths still need to surface, I'm with you."
She sucks in a breath and looks down. “I don’t deserve?—”
“Of course you do. Like I said, I’m going to fix all of this.” I take her hand, needing to touch her. "Can we just rewind? Go back to before Ivan showed up and ruined our night? Let's pretend we came home after the ballet, put our daughter to bed, and then…" I lift her hand to my lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles.
Her breath catches. "And then?"
"And then I told you how beautiful you looked tonight. How watching you with Mirabella makes parts of me I thought were dead feel alive again."
Something shifts in her expression.
Fear and perhaps guilt turn softer, more vulnerable.
She leans into my touch, eyes closing for a moment.
When they open again, I see the spark that I’d noticed when we first met.
The spark I thought life on the run had extinguished from her.
“I feel it too.”
Her words give me hope that she’s coming around to trusting me. That she wants to take back what my father stole from us.
I press my forehead against Eva's, breathing in the scent of her. “You trust me, don’t you? Trust that I can protect you?”
“I trust that you can protect me.”
A kernel of doubt settles in my stomach. Not that she doesn’t trust me to protect her. It’s that she still doesn’t trust me with her secrets.
I trace my fingertips along her jawline, down the delicate column of her throat, feeling her pulse leap beneath my touch. "I'm sorry I didn't protect you from my father. Sorry you had to run. Sorry you faced it all alone."
Each apology is punctuated with a light kiss on her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
She responds by sliding her hands up my chest, fingers curling into my shirt like she needs something to anchor her.
"Adriano.”
I capture her mouth with mine. There's none of the frantic desperation that usually crackles between us. Just a deep, aching need to memorize every sensation.
I ease her back on the bed. Her hands find their way beneath my shirt, palms flat against my skin, exploring.
I undress her with reverence.
Each newly revealed inch of her is a gift I treasure.
I press my lips to the scar on her shoulder that wasn't there before, silently promising vengeance against whoever marked her.
"I'm here now," I vow, gathering her against me. “You’re safe.”
She arches beneath me as I trail kisses across her ribs, her stomach, her hip.
My hands worship every inch of her.
Her body has changed since I knew it last.
She has new curves probably from pregnancy.
It makes her more beautiful to me.
