“Stefan?” she whispered. There was so much pain and hope in it that he ached.
He raised his head and met her beautiful gaze, poured the emotions flowing through him into words. “I’m desperately in love with you. With every breath in my body. With every cell in my being. I come to you today with nothing but my heart in my hands, Clio.
“All I want is to be part of your life, a chance to show you how much I adore you. Every moment of my life, every decision I have ever taken, it…it has made me into this. But it also brought me to you, bella.
“The bastard that I am today, I’m still all yours to do with, Clio.”
Sinking to her knees, she clutched him. “Oh, Stefan…”
And just when Stefan thought he couldn’t fragment anymore, that he could feel no more, the sound of her pain pierced him again.
Wrapping his arms around her gingerly, he pulled her onto his lap. Buried his face in her hair and breathed in a lungful of her scent. Pushed himself to be the man that was worthy of the generous, brave woman that his beautiful wife was.
“Please, Clio. Do not cry, cara. I will not challenge you over our child. I will walk out, I will sign any paper you want me to sign. All I want is your happiness, even if it will kill me to be away from you.”
Meeting his gaze, she rested her forehead against his. “You really want me? Me and not just the mother of your child?”
Hating that she doubted him, hating that he had given her cause to, he hugged her to him.
“I came today because I couldn’t bear to be apart from you anymore, Clio. I couldn’t breathe for the thought of never seeing you smile again.” His hand moved over her stomach, and his breath caught in his throat. “That you…that you carry a part of me inside you…it’s more than I wished for in my wildest dreams, bella. Will you truly be my wife, Clio? Will you help me be the man you deserve again?”
“You’re already everything I could have ever hoped for, Stefan. You know me better than anyone else in the world. And you take care of me, you enable me, you…you love me more than anyone else ever has, even as you shred me to pieces. Loving you—” tears pooled in her eyes and overflowed “—somehow, it has only made me stronger.”
His heart thudded fast in his chest, the back of his eyes prickling with warmth. “I love you so much, bella…I have missed you so much…it felt like a part of me was forever gone. Promise you will never walk away from me, Clio. Even if I make a mistake, promise me you will fight for me.”
Shaking her head, she covered his mouth with her hand. Sank her hands into his hair and tugged him up. Pressed her mouth to his and kissed him so hard and for so long that he came undone.
“All I want is my friend, my lover, my husband back, Stefan. All I want is the man who made me the best I could be. And if we make a mistake, we’ll rail and rage at other, but we will always find our way to each other again.”
Reaching for her mouth, Stefan breathed in her scent, clutched her to him. With Clio by his side, there would be nothing but happiness and joy in the coming days.
Combing his fingers through her hair, he kissed her forehead, a smile curving his mouth. “I want a little girl with hair the color of fire.”
Turning around, Clio tucked her face under his chin, her arms tightly vined around his midriff. “Do you think we will be good parents?”
The thread of anxiety in her tone, that she would show him her fears, made his chest fill up. “We will be the best parents in the world, bella. If we do make any mistakes, he or she will have grandparents and a host of aunts and uncles to complain to,” he said, thinking of Rocco and Christian and Zayed and the wonderful women they had married.
His heart seemed as if it was bursting to the full. Their friends would be over the moon for him, would find so much happiness in his.
“New York or Sicily?” he said, his hands roving restlessly over her lithe curves. With a moan that curled around his senses, she pushed herself into his touch.
Found his mouth with hers and demanded everything. Nipped his lower lip with her teeth until he was rock-hard under her. Splaying her legs wide around him, she rubbed herself over his erection, and let out another long moan.
“New York and Sicily, with regular stops at Milan, Athens and Gazbiyaa,” she breathed, her fingers busy over his belt buckle.
The moment her fingers danced over his rigid shift, Stefan pushed her down to the carpet and covered her with his body.
This time, they both groaned, and joy filled his heart. “That should work, bella,” he finished and kissed his wife’s luscious mouth.
* * * * *
ISBN-13: 9781460381908
The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife
Copyright © 2015 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Tara Pammi for her contribution to the Society Weddings series.
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
Now, read on for a tantalizing excerpt of Tara Pammi’s new release,
HIS DRAKON RUNAWAY BRIDE
The third and final book in her The Drakon Royals trilogy!
For ten years Ariana has hidden from Crown Prince Andreas—until he finds her and announces that they’re still married! He’s determined to claim Ariana for his royal bed. But dark-hearted Andreas quickly realizes desire is even more binding than duty…
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
HIS DRAKON RUNAWAY BRIDE
CHAPTER ONE
“IS THIS A coup to overthrow me?” Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon joked as he walked into his study to find his family staring at him with a spectrum of emotions—concern in his sister Eleni’s eyes, stubborn resolve in Mia’s, something he couldn’t define in his brother Nikandros’s and pure frost in Gabriel’s.
“None of us want your job, your popularity rating or your life, Andreas,” replied Nikandros, the financial genius who had set Drakon on its path of recovery after the mess their father had made in the last decade.