LITMIR.BIZ

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him. Not from anyone. She couldn’t sustain this.

      But she had to go along with this. And she had to remember exactly what it was, all the while smiling and doing nothing to disrupt the facade. Which, he had reminded her, was the most important thing. She could understand it. On a surface level, she could understand. But right now, she felt jumbled up. And she hated it.

      Still, when he took the ring out of the box and then took her hand in his, sliding the piece of jewelry onto her fourth finger, she felt breathless. Felt like it was something more than a show, which proved all the weakness inside her. All the weakness she had long been afraid was there.

      “Will you marry me?” he finished finally, those last words the darkest, the softest of all.

      This was a moment she had never even fantasized about. Ever. She had never seen marriage or relationships as anything to aspire to. But this felt... This felt like nothing she had ever known before. And the question Renzo was asking seemed to be completely different from the one her father had undoubtedly asked her mother more than twenty years ago.

      Of course it was. Because it was a ruse. But more than that, this whole world might as well exist on another planet entirely.

      But that doesn’t make him less dangerous. It doesn’t make him a different creature. He’s still controlling. Still hard.

      And he doesn’t love you.

      Her heart slammed hard against her rib cage. “Yes,” she said, both to him and to the voice inside her.

      She knew Renzo didn’t love her. She didn’t want Renzo to love her. Not like that. Love like that wasn’t freedom. It was oppression.

      She was confused. All messed up because of the doctor’s appointment today. Because of the revelations that had resulted. Because of her hormones and because she was—frankly—in over her head.

      That was the truth of it. She, Esther Abbott, long-cloistered weirdo who knew very little about the outside world and a very definite virgin, had no business being here with a man like Renzo. She had absolutely no business being pregnant at all, and she really shouldn’t be on the receiving end of a proposal.

      It was no great mystery that she felt like a jumble of feelings and pain while her head logically knew exactly what was happening. Her brain wasn’t confused at all. Not at all.

      But there was something weighty about the diamond on her finger. Something substantial about her yes that she couldn’t quite quantify, and didn’t especially want to.

      It was the confusion inside her, tumbling around like clothes in that rickety old dryer at the hostel, that kept her from preparing herself for what happened next. At least, that was what she told herself later.

      Because before she could react, before she could catch her breath, move or prepare herself in any way, Renzo brought his hand up and cupped her cheek, sliding his thumb over her cheekbone. It was like putting a lit match up against a pool of gasoline. It set off a trail of fire from that point of contact down to the center of her body.

      And while she was grappling with that, added to everything else, he closed the distance between them and his mouth met hers.

      Everything burned to ash then, bright white and cleansing. Every concern, every thought, everything gone from her mind in a flash as his lips moved over hers. That was what surprised her the most. The movement.

      She hadn’t imagined there was quite so much activity to being kissed. But there was. The shift of his hand against her face, sliding back to her hair, his lips learning the shape of hers and giving to accommodate that.

      Then, his lips, lips she had never imagined could soften, did. And after that they parted, the shocking, wet slide of his tongue at the seam of her mouth undoing her completely. It set off an earthquake in her midsection that battled through her, leaving her devastated, hollowed out, an aching sense of being unfulfilled making her feel scraped raw.

      She didn’t know what to do. And so, she did the one thing she had always feared she might do when facing down a man like this. She gave. She allowed him to part her lips, allowed him to take it deeper.

      Another tremor shook her, skating down her spine and rattling her frame. She didn’t even fight it. She didn’t even hate it.

      When she had left home, when she had decided that she was going to go out into the world and see everything that was there for her to take. When she had decided finally to sort through what her parents had taught her and what was true, when she had decided to find out who she was, not who she had been commanded to be, this had never factored in.

      She had never imagined herself in a situation like this. In the back of her mind she had imagined that someday she would want to explore physical desire. But it had been shoved way, way to the back of her mind. It had been a priority. Because so much of her life had been about being bound to a group of people. Being underneath the authority of someone else.

      So, she had wanted to remain solitary. And at some point, she had imagined she might make a group of friends. When she decided to settle. At some point, she had imagined she might want to find a man for a romance. But it had been so far out ahead of what she had wanted in the immediate.

      Freedom. A taste of the world that had always been hidden from her. Strange food and strange air. Strange sun on skin that had always been covered before.

      Suddenly, all of that was obscured. Suddenly, all of it paled in comparison to this. Which was hotter than any sun, more powerful than any air she’d ever tasted—from the salted tang of the Mediterranean to the damp grit of London—and brighter than any flavor she’d ever had on her tongue.

      It was Renzo. Pure, undiluted. Everything that gaze had promised her from the moment she had first seen him. The way he had immobilized her with just a glance had been only a hint. Like when a sliver of sun was just barely visible behind a dark cloud.

      The cloud had just moved. Revealing all of the brilliance behind it. Brilliance that, she had a feeling, would be permanently damaging if she allowed herself to linger in it for too long.

      But just a little while longer. Just a moment. One more breath. She could skip one more breath for another taste of Renzo’s mouth.

      He pulled back then, dropping one more kiss on her lips before separating from her completely. And then he curled his fingers around hers, pulling her from her chair and up against his chest. “I think,” he said, a roughness in his voice that had been absent only a moment ago, “that it is time for us to go home, don’t you?”

      “Yes,” she said. Because there was nothing else to say. Because anything more intelligent would require three times the brain cells than she currently possessed.

      And then he took her hand and led her from the restaurant. The car was waiting against the curb when they got back, and she didn’t even ask how he had made sure they wouldn’t have to wait.

      He hadn’t made a phone call. She hadn’t caught any sort of signal between himself and a member of the restaurant staff. It looked like magic. More of the magic that seemed to shimmer from Renzo, that seemed to have a way of obscuring things. At least, as she saw them.

      She had to get herself together. She told herself that, all the way home from the restaurant, and as she stepped into the house. And then she told herself that again when she realized that she had just referred to Renzo’s home as her own in her mind.

      She wanted to look at the ring on her finger. To examine the way the landscape of her own body had changed since he had put it on. She had never owned a piece of jewelry like that. She had bought a few fake, funky pieces when she had left home. Because she liked the way they jingled, and she liked the little bit of flash. Something to remind her of her freedom.

      But diamonds had been a bit outside her purview.

      She stole a quick glance down, the gem glittering in the light.

      Then, it was as though a bucket of water had been dumped over her head. Suddenly, the haze that she had been under diminished. And

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