I laugh, shaking my head, reaching up and grabbing onto his tear-wet hand.
“Never,” I declare passionately. “I’ll never stop wanting to be close to you. Even if I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.”
“You better get used to it,” he says with fire flaring beneath his voice. “It’s not like I’ve got all the time in the world to wait, eh?”
A shiver moves through me, twisting around my belly. “Don’t say that.”
He leans back with a shrug. “It was meant to sound lighthearted, but it did come out a little grim, didn’t it?”
“More than a little,” I tell him. “You’re, what, forty?”
“Forty-two.”
“So you’ve got plenty of time,” I declare. “And look at you. You’re so much fitter and stronger than all the silly boys my age. You’ve got experience and maturity and I…”
I love that, I was about to say, but at the last moment I come to my senses and manage to snatch the phrase back before I overstep the mark and make him question why he’s showing me so much attention, why he’s lavishing me with so much want and praise and need.
I need to be careful here.
“I want that,” I murmur after a pause. “In my man, my partner.”
“So the age gap doesn’t bother you?”
“Does it bother you?” I say, passion sizzling in my voice.
“Not in the slightest,” he growls. “Look at you, my perfect twenty year old virgin, just waiting to be fucked and filled with my seed… waiting for your protector to support you as you grow and flourish. I love how young and fertile and sexy you are, ready to give me the family I didn’t even know I wanted before I met you.”
My belly gives another shiver, my sex tingling with the heat of his words.
He’s sitting up, his whole body tense, his jaw, and neck tight, his tendons standing up so it’s like he could explode at any second.
“You drive me insane,” he says a moment later, sitting back with a visible effort.
“Even when I’ve got a face full of spaghetti, huh?”
I shove some into my mouth, chewing and grinning at him, but with my mouth closed because I’m not a complete animal.
The chef wasn’t lying about the sauce. It’s divine.
He watches me with something like fascination in his eyes, nodding shortly.
“Especially when you’ve got a face full of pasta,” he growls. “Because it means you’re keeping that curvy body nice and healthy for our children. You’re keeping those hips curvy and those big gorgeous breasts good and full and round.”
I swallow, washing it down with some orange juice.
“I never thought a man would like my body,” I admit, glancing down at Lucky.
The little rascal has padded to the other side of the room, as though he’s getting tired of all our human talk. He returns to his position, curled into a ball with his snout buried in his fur, leaving us to our own devices.
“Look at me, Daniella,” Dom growls.
The sharp note in his voice forces my gaze to his.
His expression is brimming with a thousand unreadable things, all of them savage and primal, as though he’s just returned from a hunt with an animal carcass draped over his body. It’s like time has flitted back thousands of years and he’s silently telling me – with his savage features – he’ll always protect me no matter what.
I know how crazy this all is, but it doesn’t change how certain I feel it, how compelled I am to stare back at him.
“You are beautiful,” he says a matter of fact, as though the thought of questioning it is ridiculous. “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, easily. You’re perfect. I don’t want to hear you talking negatively about yourself. I can’t fucking stand it.”
His words pound through me, shivering deep inside of me, triggering defensive impulses that make me want to scream.
He’s lying, the scared little girl inside of me yells. He doesn’t mean it. How can he?
“I’m telling you the truth,” he says, as though reading my mind. “I’d never lie to you about this. About anything. But I can’t say I’m disappointed nobody else has ever seen what I see.”
“What do you mean?” I whisper, barely getting the words out.
He laughs gruffly, reaching across and smoothing hair from my face. That’s fast becoming one of my favorite things for him to do. It makes me feel so close to him, so intimate, so alive with the possibilities of our future.
“If somebody else saw how beautiful you are, how perfect, I wouldn’t be able to claim you like I need to claim you. So even if I’m sorry you’ve had to live all these years not knowing how special you are, I’m relieved too. Because it means I get your perfect voluptuous body all to myself…”