Read Online LusitanianStud by Francesca St. Claire - Free Book Online

you, so very much, though I’m
scared this is another dream like so many I’ve had before…”
    Diogo disentangled himself from me and, closing his large
hands on my upper arms, faced me straight on. “I’m real. We are real,” he said forcefully.
“And I love you!” Then he tipped his head and took my mouth, proving that he
really, really did love me.
     
    “Diogo, what did you mean when you said you’d fight my
family to keep me?”
    We were holding each other in post-coital bliss, my head in
the crook of his shoulder, my hand idle on his hairy chest as he slowly stroked
my arm. His hand stilled for a moment before resuming its caressing.
    “Let bygones be bygones, Sarah, your grandmother is no
longer here to defend herself.”
    Defend herself? From kicking him out of the house and
shipping me back to the States?Surely he understood her reasons for
feeling responsible for me. In her mind I felt sure she believed she’d failed
me, by unknowingly allowing her innocent granddaughter to be seduced by an older,
more experienced man.
    I lifted my head to look at him. “Do you still resent her
for kicking you out of the house when she found us in bed?” Diogo said nothing,
though his silence spoke louder than any words, and right then and there I knew
there was more to the story than I had believed, and I had to get to the bottom
of it.
    “What was it?” I asked, sitting up and tugging the sheet
around me. This was a serious conversation and I didn’t want my nakedness to
distract him from it. “Tell me.”
    Diogo sat up beside me, staring at the ceiling as he ran his
long fingers through his dark mane. “I wrote you some letters,” he said,
turning slowly to me while searching my face for a reaction to the news.
    My eyes widened . What? I hadn’t received any letters.
I opened my mouth to deny receiving them as Diogo’s next words baffled me even
further.
    “I’d already suspected you hadn’t received any of my letters
when you said to my mother I’d forgotten you the minute you left town, and your
reaction just now confirmed I was right… You didn’t, did you?” He took my hand
in his, his expression pensive. “We both assumed wrongly we had forgotten each
other.”
    I couldn’t believe he thought that. I’d been so sure he knew
how deeply I felt for him. “How could you?” I breathed, tears swimming in my
eyes. “I loved you. S o much!” I pulled my hand from his grasp, and when
he reached for me I avoided his touch—I was hurt by his lack of faith in me.
    “Sarah, your grandmother assured me you had gotten a new
boyfriend whom you loved very much. What was I to think?”
    I frowned, confused. “When did she say that?”
    “At Christmas, after I’d been back to her house to ask one
more time how to reach you.”
    Diogo had been back to confront my grandmother in the hope
of getting my address? More than once? And I’d never heard of it? Hurt by her
omission and joyous to learn Diogo had not forgotten me as readily as I’d once
believed, I felt confused and betrayed by my own family. How could she? She,
who knew how I felt about him… So many times I’d demanded she tell me if Diogo
had asked about me and every time she’d said, “No, not a word heard from him.”
My lips curled inward, stopping me from bawling all my sorrows in front of him.
    “I wrote you five letters.”
    My head snapped up and I gawked at him in disbelief. What? He wrote five letters and not one was delivered to me? This was too much
to grasp in one go. My head was spinning with all sorts of questions, and
nobody could answer them now that my grandmother was dead. My shoulders slumped
before I realized the answers to my questions were probably still back at the
house.
    Without a minute to lose I bolted out of the bed, quickly
slid into my clothes and left the room at a run, followed closely by Diogo.
    “Sarah, wait. We’ll take the Jeep, it will be quicker.” He
didn’t have to ask where I was going, he just