Chapter 9 - The First Kiss|
"I never wanted anyone else, Alina," I rasped out.
I reached out, my large hands cupping her delicate face, my thumbs gently wiping away her falling tears.
"I was terrified," I confessed, my voice breaking for the first time in my adult life. "I was forty years old, a billionaire who knew how to buy companies but had no idea how to hold a woman's heart. I thought you married me out of pity for your father’s company. I thought if I touched you, if I told you I loved you, you would feel trapped by my money."
Alina stared at me, her dark eyes wide with utter shock, her lips parting slightly.
"Dante..." she gasped. "You... you loved me?"
"I fell in love with you the night you brought me a cup of tea in my study six months after our wedding," I whispered, leaning down until my forehead rested against hers. "I sat at that desk, holding that cup, wishing with every fiber of my soul that your hand would never leave my shoulder."
Alina let out a small, ragged sob—a sound born of three years of unspoken pain and sudden, overwhelming relief.
She reached up, her small hands wrapping around my neck, pulling me down to her.
And for the first time in three years, I kissed my wife.
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It wasn't a cold, polite peck on the cheek before a gala. It was a fierce, desperate, deep kiss that consumed every doubt, every lie, and every inch of distance we had built between us.
Her lips were soft, warm, and tasting of salt and tea. I wrapped my arms tightly around her waist, lifting her slightly off the wooden floorboards, holding her against my chest as if she were the only real thing in a world built on paper empires.
