Forcing his own feelings down, if anything because he didn't know how to cope with someone else knowing how he felt, Michael moved to Maria and held her close. It was about forty percent his own idea, the other sixty was as if he was willed to do what he was doing.
Yes, Michael was frightened of Maria, but not in the sense that she thought. It was that he was frightened of someone being able to see what he felt, how he thought and everything that made him tick and that was exactly what Maria was doing. Would he admit this to her? Absolutely not, because that would make matters worse and he couldn't deal with that at the moment.