Orla felt that she could choke from all the emotion filling her. She pressed her lips to his, needing the closeness, needing to feel his breath and the warmth of his touch like a bee seeking pollen.
Somehow, in the weight of the tender kiss they shared, he slid his trousers off and rested himself between her legs.
Incredible sensations suffused her as he drove slowly inside her.
‘I love you, Orla,’ he whispered raggedly as he withdrew to the tip. ‘I fell in love with you so quickly I didn’t even know it was happening. I tried to forget you, but it was impossible. You were in my head and in my heart, and you have never left it. My love is yours for ever.’
And then he thrust deep inside her.
Orla wrapped her arms tightly around his neck and her legs tightly around his waist and, lips crushed together, succumbed to the heady pulsations growing in intensity in her slavish body and filling into her heart so that when she reached her climax and the pulsations ripped through her very being, her heart opened like a flower in bloom and never closed again.
EPILOGUE
ORLA STOOD OUTSIDE the Bally House church doors and looked up at the blue sky with a smile.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered to whoever was out there listening to these things. Whoever that deity was, she would be for ever grateful for them turning the sun on over her beautiful Emerald Isle for this one day.
Her sister gave her one last critical inspection before a huge smile broke over her face. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said, eyes brimming.
Orla punched her in the arm. ‘Pack it in or you’ll get me going.’
Aislin sniffed and blinked frantically. ‘I’m sorry. Stupid hormones.’
Dante, who was hovering behind the two sisters, coughed loudly.
‘Don’t you make that noise, sir,’ Aislin told him sternly. ‘It’s your fault I’m so hormonal.’
If Dante were a peacock his tail would be in full bloom.
Orla rolled her eyes. Fair enough, he was proud that he was going to be a father again, but the strutting peacock act was wearing pretty thin, especially when her own belly was starting to resemble a watermelon. In this respect fate had proved to have an evil sense of humour, with Orla discovering she was pregnant the day after they’d sent all the wedding invitations out. That would teach them not to use contraception. She didn’t know who’d been happier about the pregnancy—her, Tonino or Finn.
‘Are you going to walk me down the aisle or what?’
Her brother laughed and took her arm. Aislin giggled and helped Finn to his feet. She would hold his hand every step of the walk down the aisle behind his mummy, for which Finn was determined to carry his parents’ wedding rings.
Giulia, Tonino’s sister, and the four children on Tonino’s side old enough to follow Orla down the aisle without trying to make a run for it, took their positions behind the train of her dress.
Inside the church, the organist struck up the wedding march.
The two hundred guests, Sicilians and Irish alike out in force, craned their heads, a buzz of excitement permeating the musty chapel air.
At the top of the aisle stood Tonino, supported by his brother. On the front row to the right were his parents and three surviving grandparents. On the front row to the left were Dante’s mother and his latest stepfather. Strangely, Orla had found herself forging the unlikeliest of bonds with the woman whose marriage Orla’s conception had destroyed. Immacolata had Aislin and Dante’s six-month-old son Sal standing on her lap. Orla bit her cheeks to hide the laughter when she witnessed Sal dribble into an oblivious Immacolata’s immaculately groomed and glossy hair.
The warmth from everyone crammed in the church filled her heart and for a moment she had to blink back tears.
This was it. This was the moment she and Tonino officially pledged their lives together, and, as she looked into the dark chocolate eyes of the man she loved so much and recited the vows that would tie her to him for ever, she knew he was thinking exactly what she was thinking.
That nothing would ever come between them again.
Coming next month
THE SCANDAL BEHIND THE ITALIAN’S WEDDING
Millie Adams
“Why did you do it, Minerva?”
“I am sorry. I really didn’t do it to cause you trouble. But I’m being threatened, and so is Isabella, and in order to protect us both I needed to come up with an alternative paternity story.”
“An alternative paternity story?”
She winced. “Yes. Her father is after her.”
He eyed her with great skepticism. “I didn’t think you knew who her father was.”
She didn’t know whether to be shocked, offended or pleased that he thought her capable of having an anonymous interlude.
For heaven’s sake, she’d only ever been kissed one time in her life. A regrettable evening out with Katie in Rome where she’d tried to enjoy the pulsing music in the club, but had instead felt overheated and on the verge of a seizure.
She’d danced with a man in a shiny shirt—and she even knew his name because she wouldn’t even dance with a man without an introduction—and he’d kissed her on the dance floor. It had been wet and he’d tasted of liquor and she’d feigned a headache after and taken a cab back to the hostel they’d been staying in.
The idea of hooking up with someone, in a circumstance like that, made her want to peel her own skin off.
“Of course I know who he is. Unfortunately… The full implications of who he is did not become clear until later.”
“What does that mean?”
She could tell him the truth now, but something stopped her. Maybe it was admitting Isabella wasn’t her daughter, which always caught her in the chest and made her feel small. Like she’d stolen her and like what they had was potentially fragile, temporary and shaky.
Or maybe it was trust. Dante was a good man. Going off the fact he had rescued her from a fall, and helped her up when her knee was skinned, and bailed her out after her terrible humiliation in high school.
But to trust him with the truth was something she simply wasn’t brave enough to do.
Her life, Isabella’s life, was at risk, and she’d lied on live stream in front of the world.
Her bravery was tapped out.
“Her father is part of an organized crime family. Obviously something unknown to me at the time of her…you know. And he’s after her. He’s after us.”
“Are you telling me that you’re in actual danger?”
“Yes. And really, the only hope I have is convincing him that he isn’t actually the father.”
“And you think that will work?”
“It’s the only choice I have. I need your protection.”
He regarded her with dark, fathomless eyes, and yet again, she felt like he was peering at her as though she were a girl, and not a woman at all. A naughty child, in point of fact. Then something in his expression shifted.
It shamed her a little that this was so like when he’d come to her rescue at the party. That she was manipulating his pity for her. Her own pathetic nature being what called to him, yet again.
But she would lay down any and all pride for Isabella and she’d do it willingly.
“If she were, in fact my child, then we would be family.”
“I… I suppose,” she said.
“There will need to be photographs of us together, as I would not be a neglectful father.”
“No indeed.”
“Of course, you know that if Isabella were really my child there would be only one thing for us to do.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.” He began to pace, like a caged tiger trying to find a weak spot in his cage. And suddenly he stopped, and she had the terrible feeling that the tiger had found what he’d been looking for. “Yes. Of course, there is only one option.”
“And that is?”
“You have to marry me.”
Continue reading
THE SCANDAL BEHIND THE ITALIAN’S WEDDING
Millie Adams
Available next month
Copyright ©2020 by Millie Adams
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Her Sicilian Baby Revelation (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 17
