He shrugged, now taking his own turn around the room, trying to see if there was anything of his left. He’d hidden what he wanted most to take with him; now, he’d finally be able to leave this house with it. “Years. My father basically threw me out not long after I came of age. I said I left, and I did, but more dramatically than I’d wanted. I wasn’t able to take everything I wanted with me. I’ve come back to visit but I’ve never visited this room again until now.”
It had been silly of him to want to show her his childhood bedroom. Nanny had made it into an oasis for him in the house, away from everyone else where he could pretend and imagine and play and find some pockets of time to be happy.
There was none of that happiness left now.
She walked over carefully, as if the whole room was covered in a thick slime and she was trying her best not to touch it. “I’m so glad we’re not staying here. There is no way I’d ever sleep on that bed.”
He sighed. “I’m with you on that one, bella.”
She looked around the room, her nose scrunching up in distaste. “I feel dirty just from standing here.”
Her face was adorable like that. Unbidden, an image of a little girl making that same face skirted through his mind. Was it a hallucination, or a premonition of what the future could be like with her, with their children?
He shook his head, dissipating the vision. “I did come up here to show you what my boyhood bedroom was like, in an effort to convince you that I was more normal than the rest of the family. It was silly, I know—”
She put a finger over his lips. “It wasn’t silly at all. But I don’t need to see your boyhood bedroom for that. One second in their company was enough to prove that.”
His bell’angelo. His light in the dark.
They gazed at each other for a few more moments before he turned back to the floor.
She loosely grabbed his lapels. “I’m glad you wanted to show me, share with me.”
He covered, then caressed the back of her hands with his thumbs. He thought of something else, the most important part of his past, that he could share with her. “I’d like to share something else. There’s a spot I’d like to visit on the grounds. I’d like to show you as well, if you’re interested.” He held his breath; he’d never taken anyone there before.
She didn’t hesitate to answer. “Of course I’m interested.”
He let out a breath. “Good. Then let’s take a walk around the grounds before we need to deal with my family. Will you let the agents know where we’re going? It’s the hidden garden I noted on the blueprints.”
Her brows shot up at the ‘hidden’ and she headed for the door; her security should still be outside guarding them. She hadn’t been present while he’d discussed the layout of the house and grounds with her agents, so she wouldn’t have known about it. Soon, she’d know it firsthand.
Now, it was time to get the last piece of him left here. He turned around, re-orienting himself to the room he’d spent years away from. His bed used to be…there, with the edge of it just there.
He stepped over to the spot.
It was seven paces to the left. Yet…those paces were marked off as a boy, years before he’d finally left the house.
He cut his stride, then stepped over.
A rug—not his—covered the spot, but he wasn’t worried. Unless they’d ripped up the floor, they wouldn’t find it. They’d never look closely enough for that.
He shoved the rug aside and felt along the wood underneath. This house, though old, was built chalet-style, like houses in the Alps, with thick, wooden planks. They made a wonderful hiding place.
He found the tiny pin-prick hole. He didn’t have a tool on him to lift it up. Looking around, he saw an errant hairpin. Though he loathed to touch it, he wanted the contents under the board more. He fiddled with the hairpin until it fit inside and worked to catch the slim chain hidden underneath.
Sarah walked back to him and peered over his shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Hopefully getting the last piece of me left behind here. One of the other reasons I wanted to come up here.”
He threaded the pin out carefully, and a small, incredibly thin chain was attached to the end. When the chain had lifted out enough, he grabbed it and tossed the pin away.
One sharp tug and the plank lifted.
He set the wood aside and sat down, carefully rummaging through the items left. A few pictures he’d take with him, a few trinkets, and one flattened, dried rose.
She sat down next to him. “Are these your boyhood treasures?”
“Not what you were expecting to find in my hiding place?”
She shrugged but did it with an amused smile. “I have brothers. I’d expected at least one dirty magazine.”
He chuckled. “You see what this room is like. Imagine growing up in a home where sex was…covered in gaudy black and red, if you catch my meaning. I can’t tell you how many times I walked into a room and saw things I shouldn’t have seen. A magazine of that was the last thing on my mind as a boy.”
“And as a man?”
He gave her his most seductive stare. “As a man, I prefer the real thing to glancing at posed pictures in a magazine. I prefer to feel the heat of a woman on top of me, beside me, beneath me.” He leaned forward, until they were almost nose-to-nose. “I prefer a woman surrounding my cock as I drive into her, or my cock fucking her mouth as she sucks me off.”
She gripped his jacket. “Rio.”
He brushed his lips against hers, gave her time to settle. He loved how quickly she caught fire.
She eventually let out a long breath and cleared her throat. “So, if there’s nothing dirty in there, what did you save?”
He brushed her lips one last time and pulled back. “Photos and trinkets of the woman who was my mother in any way that counts. Come. I’ll show you.” He put everything in his pockets, then replaced the board and rug. No one would be the wiser.
He linked hands with her and led her from that room of depravity, the room that had once been his sanctuary in a house gone wild and corrupt.
They walked back down the hall. As they descended the stairs, he caught the voices of his family in a nearby parlor, then diverted down a servant’s stairwell away from them. They’d never deign to take a servant’s stairwell.
He took her through the kitchens, greeting some of the staff as they went. Most of them were new and, therefore, didn’t realize he wasn’t an asshole like the rest of his family; their servants were always quitting, or his mother was always firing them. Only the few who’d remained through the years, and who remembered him, greeted him warmly.
Once outside, his pace slowed. Her agents followed at a distance as he led her around the corner of the house and into one of the gardens; they wouldn’t be visible here to the parlor in which his family was seated.
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is. Whatever horrors lay inside, they always keep the appearances of the place up from the outside.”
“That’s a metaphor if I ever heard one.”
He nodded. His family was exactly like that: a sheen of beauty on the outside, a pit of crumbling, distasteful everything inside. “That bedroom and the gardens were my sanctuary growing up.”
She glanced at him. “You were able to escape in that room? It seemed like the room that was farthest from everything in the house.”
“It was. My parents put me there on purpose. In the beginning, with Nanny there, I could use that room as an escape. After she was gone, I did begin to feel trapped. A bit like a torturous fairy tale, I suppose, without the fairies to help me escape. Still, I did my best.”
“Where is Nanny now? Did they fire her?”
His gut churned, filled with a slick oil. “She’s dead.”
Her hand squeezed his. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“That’s where I’m taking you. To meet her, so to speak.”
Her step stuttered. “Oh. Is there a graveyard on the property?”
/>
“Yes, the family one. She isn’t buried there. She was cremated, so she isn’t buried anywhere.” He sighed. “This is hard for me, bella, but I’ll tell you the tale. If you decide that you’d prefer our relationship more fake than real at that point, I’ll understand.”
She looked away, towards the fingers of her free hand as they slid over the petals of flowers they passed along the path. “You seem so sure that I can’t handle your family or whatever’s in your past.”
“You’re wrong, bella.”
She turned back to him.
“I know you can handle anything. Whether you should want to, is a different matter entirely.”
“Do you have so little faith in me?”
He stopped underneath a weeping willow; it was his favorite tree because he could hide here.
Yet, he didn’t want to hide from her anymore. He was about to lay himself bare, every dirty secret. No, he didn’t want to hide anymore.
He cupped her face and watched her for a few moments. She was patient, not pressing, not pushing. She was like this tree, he realized. Calm and docile one moment, the next whirling and turning where the wind took her. But her roots never changed.
“No, bella, I have so little faith in myself.”
She pressed her hands against his chest, the lightest touch but he felt it down in his bones. “Rio. Do you know why I really thought of faking it? I didn’t realize my true intentions at first, but on the way over here I realized that I’ve been feeling things for you since we first woke up together. Faking it was a handy ruse I’d concocted to spend more time with you. I know we’d only had one night together, but I didn’t want to lose you. I still don’t.”
She was frowning, as if she were trying to hold back tears. “Goddamn it.”
He jerked back, his hands falling away. “Sarah?”
She gripped his hands tightly, her voice wobbly. “I really fucking wish I could remember that first night we spent together.”
He smiled, just a light tip of the lips. “I know, but I remember, bella. Perhaps my memory will be enough for the both of us. We’re here together. It doesn’t matter how we started. It only matters where we go from here.”
“Why do you have so little faith in yourself? Why don’t you think I’ll stay with you? Is it only because of your family?”
He sighed. “Years of abuse, physical and mental, by the people who were supposed to love me makes me a bad bet.”
She let go of one hand to cup his cheek. “You’re wrong. That’s what makes you the best bet. You know what it means to yearn for love. You’d never take it for granted. If we go the distance, you wouldn’t take me for granted, would you?”
There was some truth in that. “No, bella, I wouldn’t.”
She sniffled. “Something to know about me: my parents have a marriage based on a lot of mutual love and respect. They’re so gooey about each other that, frankly, I can find it a little nauseating at times. But seeing them so in love, after nine kids and forty years, well, that’s what I want. I date around a lot, it’s true, but I’m not flighty and I’m not a perpetual party girl looking for a good time. I’m a woman looking for more. I think it’s too early for us to say if that’s our future but, for now, I’m not going anywhere. Do you believe me?”
God, he desperately wanted that future with her.
Though, nine children may be a bit excessive.
The forty years and more, however, he’d cherish.
“Yes, bella, I believe you.”
She smiled and kissed him gently. “Good.”
“I know we’re new. I know we don’t necessarily make sense together. We barely know each other—”
“That’s not true. We both know a great deal about each other. I know you understand the royal life I lead, and the demands and expectations that come with that. You may not have that on the same level as me, but you understand it.”
He could barely move, could barely breathe as she continued.
She brushed a hand down his chest. “I know you have the hardest armor you wear to protect yourself, and you’ve started to put that armor aside with me. I know that you’re kind and generous. You’ve done nothing but be kind to me.”
He shook his head. “When we woke up—”
“We were both hungover. Since then, we’ve both said some things we didn’t mean. That doesn’t make you less kind. It was an argument. We got over it. With our personalities, we’re bound to have a few more of those.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “At least a few more.”
“You keep trying to protect me and make things easy for my family. Even though your family won’t let you manage the titles and lands, you still do your part. You still play politics and care for your people as if you were in charge. Not to mention the foundation you started. I knew of the Angel Foundation before we even met. You do amazing work with it, Rio.”
Christ. Oh, Christ. She saw too much. No one had ever seen so much of him before.
“Oh, Rio, don’t you see? You’re a giver. You keep giving and giving and giving, and you never expect anything back. I don’t even think you hope for it anymore.”
God, she did understand him, and after so little time together.
Her face went fierce, determined, with that stubborn tilt to her jaw that he loved. “Well, I’m going to take care of you. You’ll learn to expect things from me, and demand things from me, because I’m not going anywhere. We’re together, and that’s that. Are you good with that?”
He swallowed, then opened his mouth to speak, but she spoke again first.
“Good. That’s settled.” She grabbed his lapels and jerked him against her. “Lips. Now.”
His eyes went wide. “Sarah.”
“We’re a couple now. If I tell you to kiss me, you have to do it, damn it. Kiss me.”
He let out a single chuckle. “As you wish.”
It was rough, it was wild, and it was fucking glorious.
When they pulled apart, breathing heavily, he gave her a cocky grin and rubbed a hand over her ass. “I think you might lose the bet, bella.”
She let out a huff, which sent her bangs floating up in the air, then falling to her forehead again. “Worth it.”
He sucked in a breath.
“That kiss was worth it. You’re worth it. And it’d be worth it to lose the bet. I trust you. I—I’ve never done the things that we do with anyone else.”
His mouth popped open. “You’re so responsive. No one ever…”
She shook her head. “I’m not a virgin, neither are you. I’ve had pleasure before, but nothing like what I have with you. God, sometimes you can just look at me and my brain stops functioning.”
An enormous swell of pride bloomed in him.
“I told you about my parents. You heard my Nonna talk about my grandfather and can guess the love they had. I’ve seen the kind of guys my sisters have found, and my friends have found. I know the kind of man I want. I think that could be you.”
Oh, Christ. “Thank you for saying those beautiful words to me, bella. You must know that I adore you.”
Her eyes welled up and she closed them, preventing the flow, exactly as he’d just done.
He kissed each of her eyelids. “I adore you.”
His voice went hard as the vow poured from his lips. “I vow, here and now, that I will do my best to protect you, to honor you, to adore you as you deserve.”
She sniffled. “Vittorio.”
“I vow to make love to you, to worship your body, to torture it, too, until you scream with pleasure.”
Her knees buckled, and he held onto her tight. “Oh God.”
“I vow to make you proud of me, to always be proud to have me at your side.”
The tears were falling now. “Now you’ve done it.”
“Do you accept these vows I have made to you? These aren’t all of them, these are just the start. When it’s time, if we ‘go the distance’ as you put it, you’ll have to put a ring on my finger for the o
thers.”
Her coming sob disappeared with a gasp. “What? You expect me to propose to you?”
He tilted his head to the side and looked up. He thought about how he might be ridiculed for a woman proposing to him, but he wasn’t worried about that. Anyone who said anything could just fuck off.
He thought about her bending down on one knee—preferably naked, or in some kickass lingerie—to propose to him, love in her eyes. Oh, yes, that he liked.
Then he thought about what she might go through, and the ridicule she may face. That gave him pause.
“If you’re worried your reputation will be at risk, I’m more than happy to propose if that time comes for us.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You want me to propose, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “As you’ve said, we’re far from that, so we needn’t decide now.”
She rolled her shoulders back and put her chin up slightly. “Of course, I shall propose if the time comes. I would be honored.”
Jesus. She sounded like she was making a royal proclamation. “Sarah, really.”
She held up a hand. “No. If you’re not worried about what other people will think, then neither do I.”
His voice was tentative. “All right, but you can change your mind at any time. Just say the word.”
She ignored him, her thoughts now elsewhere. “It will be a beautiful proposal. Magnificent. The most amazing, wondrous proposal a woman has ever given her man.”
“Will you be naked?”
She jerked. “Um. No?”
He raked his gaze down her body, remembering the beauty underneath. “Shame.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and clenched her thighs. “No. Fair.”
He smiled broadly, knowing exactly what he’d done to her.
“I’m still going to win tonight.”
He pressed a kiss to her neck and pulled slightly back to rest his forehead against hers. “Keep dreaming. That’s the only way you’ll win.”
His smile faded when he remembered where they were.
Shit.
“What is it?”
She looked worried, a frown marring her lips and brow.
“Nothing, bella. Just time to share.”
Sarah & Vittorio Page 16
