Castelli's Virgin Widow

by Caitlin Crews

  Though he still didn’t say a word.

  Kathryn pulled her arm out of his grasp, aware that he let her do it, and felt a rush of sheer, hot embarrassment wash over her. She couldn’t read that expression on his face, making him look like granite in the light that beamed out from the château’s windows and the moon high above. She couldn’t imagine what she must look like—wrinkled and rumpled, used and altered, like a walking neon advertisement for what she’d just done. Was it written on her face? Would the whole world be able to see what had happened right there—what she’d done? What she’d let him do?

  The notion made her panic.

  She all but ran up the steps and threw open the door, relieved that there was no sign of anyone around as she hurtled herself inside the château’s ornate entry hall like a missile.

  It’s fine, she told herself, though she didn’t believe it. Though she could hear the drumming panic in her own head. Everything is perfectly fine.

  She made herself slow down. She was aware of Luca just behind her, a solid wall of regret at her heels, but she told herself to ignore it. To pretend he wasn’t there. She forced herself to walk, not run. She headed up the stairs and then down the hall that led to the family wing. She made her way all the way to the far end of the château, and then finally, finally, she could see the door to her own room. She couldn’t wait to close herself inside and...breathe.

  She would take another very long bath. She would scrub all of this away. She would curl herself up into a tiny little ball, and she would not permit herself to cry.

  She would not.

  Luca said her name when she’d finally reached her door, when she had her hand out to grab the handle and was this close—

  And Kathryn didn’t want this. She didn’t want whatever cutting, eviscerating, gut punch of a thing he was about to say. Whatever new and inventive way he’d come up with to call her a whore and make her feel like one.

  But she wanted him to know how fragile she was even less, so she turned around and faced him.

  He stood much too close, his dark eyes glittering, an expression she couldn’t place on his beautiful face. She wished he wasn’t so gorgeous, that he didn’t make her ache. She imagined that might make it easier—might make that tugging thing near her heart dissipate more quickly.

  She should say something; she knew she should. But she couldn’t seem to make her mouth work.

  “Where are you going, cucciola mia?” he asked softly.

  She hated him, she told herself. The only thing worse than his insults was this. That softness she couldn’t understand at all.

  “I don’t know what that means. I don’t speak any Italian.”

  His mouth moved into that curve again, and his dark eyes were much too intense. He reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and Kathryn knew he could feel the way that made her shudder. And her breath catch.

  “I suppose it means my pet, more or less,” Luca said, as if he hadn’t considered it until that moment.

  And the true betrayal was the warmth that spread through her at that, as if it was that laugh of his, bottled up, pure liquid sunshine starting deep inside her. Because he was dangerous enough when he was hateful. Kathryn thought that this other side of him—what she might have called affectionate had they been other people—might actually kill her.

  Her throat felt swollen. Scratchy. Because of the noises she’d made in that car that she couldn’t let herself think about? Or because of that brand-new rawness lodged inside her now? She didn’t know. But she forced herself to speak anyway. “I don’t want to be your pet.”

  That curve of his mouth deepened. “I don’t know that it’s up to you.”

  Kathryn felt restless. Edgy. As if she might burst. Or scream. Or simply crumple to the ground—and he seemed perfectly content to stand there forever, seeing things in her face she was quite certain she’d prefer to hide.

  She scowled at him. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  This time, when he reached out, he took her shoulders in his hands and tugged her into his arms, and when he wrapped his arms around her, she melted. God help her, but she simply...fell into him. All that heat and strength, enveloping her like some kind of benediction.

  “Come,” he said quietly, letting her go. “I’ll show you.”

  Kathryn knew what she needed to do. What her mother would expect her to do. One slip was bad enough. One terrible mistake. There was still time to save herself. There was still the possibility that she could call tonight a lost battle and go on to win the war, surely. She needed only to pull away from him, step inside her room and lock him out, so she could set about the Herculean task of putting herself back together.

  But she couldn’t make herself do it.

  And when Luca opened the door to his bedroom and held out his hand as if he knew exactly what battles she was fighting and, more than that, how to win them, Kathryn ignored the great riot and tumult that shook inside her, and took it.

  * * *

  Luca didn’t know how to make sense of any of this.

  And that lost look in her too-dark gray eyes, something too close to broken, was too much for him. He had a thousand questions he didn’t ask. A thousand more stacked behind them. He had the sense that there was something lying in wait for him, just over his shoulder or perhaps deep inside him, that he didn’t care to examine.

  Not tonight, when he’d discovered that she was precisely as innocent as she’d sometimes appeared.

  It didn’t matter how or why. Even the subject of her marriage to his father could wait.

  What mattered—what beat in him like a darkening pulse that only got louder and more insistent with every breath—was that whatever else happened, whatever games she played or was playing even now, whatever the hell was going on here in all this California moonlight, she was his.

  His.

  Luca didn’t wish to question himself on that. On why that surge of sheer possession seared through him, as if she’d branded him somehow with the unexpected gift of her innocence. He only knew that she was his. Only his.

  And Luca wasn’t done with her. Not even close.

  She put her hand in his and let him lead her into his rooms, and there was no particular reason that should feel like trumpets blaring, drums pounding, a whole damned parade. But it did.

  It should horrify him, he knew, that he had so little control where this woman was concerned—but tonight he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He took his time.

  He stood her at the foot of the great platform bed and undressed her slowly, not letting her help. He slid her shoes from her feet. He found the hidden side zipper on the bodice of her dress and eased it down, then tugged the whole of it up and over her head. He unhooked the bra she wore and pulled it from her arms, letting it fall to the floor with the rest.

  When she stood before him in nothing but those panties he’d shoved out of his way in the car and that uncertain look on her face that he thought might kill him, Luca took a moment to ease his fingers through her hair. He pulled out what remained of that upswept knot she’d worn to dinner. He stroked his hands through the thick, straight strands, comforting them both.

  And only when she let out a long breath he didn’t think she knew she’d been holding did he finish undressing her, easing her panties down over her hips and then over the length of her perfectly formed legs.

  Luca let himself look at her for a long time, indulging that possessive streak he’d never known he had. Because he’d never felt anything like it before tonight. He shrugged out of his jacket and kicked off his shoes. Still he gazed at her, letting her exquisite beauty imprint itself deep inside him. Every part of her was lovely, so astonishingly perfect that something moved in him at the sight, equal parts need and alarm.

  He swept h
er up into his arms, enjoying the tiny noise she made, and then he carried her into the bathroom suite. He set her down next to the tub and ran the water, tossing in a handful of bath salts as it began to fill.

  “Are we taking a bath?” Her voice cracked and she flushed, and Luca understood that this was a Kathryn he’d never seen before, this unsteady, uncertain creature who suddenly seemed much younger and far more breakable to him.

  Or this has always been Kathryn, a voice in him suggested, more sharply than was strictly comfortable. And you have been nothing but an ass.

  He shoved that aside, ruthlessly. There would be time enough to address the great mess of things that waited for him with the dawn.

  Tonight was about this. Tonight was about her.

  Instead of answering her, he stripped, watching her color rise the more he revealed. He was fascinated. Mesmerized by that spread of color, from her cheeks down her neck, to turn even her chest a pale pink, a shade or two lighter than the rose of her upturned nipples.

  He wanted to feast on her. All of her.

  When they were both naked he urged her into the hot water, settling her in front of him and between his legs with her back to him. He took the heavy mass of her thick dark hair in his hands and carefully made a new knot of it, high on the top of her head, and then wrapped his arms around her and held her there against him.

  He didn’t let himself think about anything. Just the sheer perfection of her body against his. The silken slide of the salted water, making her skin a smooth caress against his. He waited as she relaxed in increments against him, as she softened and, eventually, sighed. And only then did he begin to wash her.

  He took his time. He touched her everywhere. He put his hands on every inch of her skin, saving that slippery heat between her legs for last, and a hard sort of satisfaction gripped him when she let out a hungry little moan at his touch.

  Only when he’d made sure she was utterly boneless did he finish, standing her up and toweling her off, then carrying her back into the bedroom to put her in his bed at last. Her gaze never left him, wide and nearly green, and he’d learned her tonight. He knew what that faint quiver in her body meant. How she flushed when he crawled over her, a bright red on top of the pink she’d turned in the heat of the bath.

  And when he was fully stretched out above her, skin to skin, he learned her all over again.

  With his hands, his mouth. His tongue and his teeth.

  He explored her. She’d given him something he could hardly get his head around, could barely understand, and this was how he expressed his gratitude. His wonder. All those tangled things inside him that he knew better than to look at too closely. He worked them out against her lovely body, inch by perfect inch.

  She arched up beneath him and he feasted on her breasts. She rocked against him and he held her down, tracing every muscle and every smooth curve, making her his. Making every last part of her inarguably his.

  And this time, when he surged inside her, she was soft and shaking and ready for him.

  She cried out his name.

  Luca set a more demanding pace, gathering her beneath him, lost in the sleek glory of her hips against his. He built her up high. He made her sob. And then he threw her straight off that cliff and into bliss.

  Once, then again.

  And only then, when she was shattered twice over, her eyes slate green and filled with him and nothing else, did he follow her over that edge.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS NOT until the following morning—after Luca had woken up to discover that none of the previous night had been one of the remarkably detailed dreams he’d had about Kathryn over the past couple of years, because she was still there, sprawled out beside him and wholly irresistible—that he allowed himself to think about what the inescapable fact of her innocence meant.

  First, he’d rolled over, instantly awake and aware and as hard for her as if he’d never had her. She’d come awake a moment later, and he’d watched her eyes go from sleepy to pleased to wary in the course of a few blinks.

  He’d found he hadn’t cared much for wary.

  So he’d pinned her hands above her head and settled himself between her thighs. He’d expressed his feelings on her tender breasts until she’d been gasping and arching beneath him, and then he’d driven himself home once again, losing himself in all her molten sweetness.

  And he’d found the sound of her gasping his name as she convulsed around him far, far preferable to any wariness.

  He managed to control himself in the shower they shared—but barely—and maybe the fact that doing so was so much harder than it should have been kicked his brain back into gear.

  Kathryn was dressing, her head bent and a certain set expression on her face that he didn’t like. He stood in the doorway to the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his hips and watched her, aware that he should not be feeling any of the things that stampeded through him then. He knew that expression she wore. He usually liked it when the women he bedded showed him that particular blankness, because it meant they planned to walk away from him with no fuss. And quickly.

  He didn’t want her to walk away.

  He wanted her right here, and he didn’t care how crazy that was. How insane this entire situation was. That no one but him—that no one, especially him—would ever believe that Saint Kate had been a virgin until now.

  “Kathryn.” She didn’t precisely jolt when she heard her name, but that wariness was back in her gaze when she lifted it to his. “Why did you marry him?”

  She pressed her lips together in that way of hers that he should not find so fascinating. She tugged her bra into place and then bent to pick up her crumpled dress, frowning at it in a way that made something in the vicinity of his heart clench. Luca didn’t speak. He swept up his own discarded shirt and prowled over to her, watching the way her eyes widened as he approached. Her lips parted slightly, as if she needed more air, and he couldn’t pretend he didn’t like that.

  He liked entirely too much. Her lush little body, packaged in that lacy bra and matching panties that highlighted parts of her he could never obsess about enough. The faint marks from his mouth, his unshaven jaw. He was a primitive creature, he understood then, though he’d never thought of himself in those terms before. When it came to Kathryn, he was nothing short of a beast.

  Luca liked his mark on her. He liked it hard and deep, so much it very nearly hurt.

  He settled his dress shirt around her shoulders, then tugged her arms through. And then he took his time buttoning it up, fashioning her a dress that was much too big for her frame, but was in its way another mark. Another brand.

  The beast within him roared its approval.

  “Are you going to answer me?” he asked in a low voice as he rolled up one cuff, then the other, to keep the sleeves from hanging nearly to her knees.

  She swallowed, and he saw that her eyes had changed color again, to that slate green that meant she was aroused. Good, he thought. He didn’t imagine he’d ever be anything but aroused in her presence again. He wasn’t sure he ever had been anything else, come to that.

  But she blinked it away and took in a shuddering sort of breath.

  “He said he could help,” she said.

  She moved away from him, and the sight of her in his shirt did things to Luca that he couldn’t explain. He didn’t want to explain them. They simply settled inside him, like light.

  “Why did you need help?”

  Kathryn worried her lower lip with her teeth, which he felt like her mouth against his sex, but he held himself in check.

  “My mother was single when she had me,” she said, and Luca blinked. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. Something so...mundane. “She’d never expected or even wanted to have a baby at all, but there she was, pregnant. Her partn
er made it clear he couldn’t be bothered, and in case she’d any doubts about that, moved out of the country straightaway, so no one could expect him to contribute in any way to the life of a child he didn’t want.”

  “He sounds charming.”

  Kathryn smiled, very slightly. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve never met.”

  Luca watched as she moved to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, settling herself near the foot with her legs crossed beneath her and his shirt billowing around her slender form. It only made her look that much more fragile.

  And made him want to protect her, somehow—even against this story she was telling him.

  “My mother had huge dreams,” she said after a moment. “She’d worked so hard to get where she was. She wanted a whole, rich life, and what she got instead was a daughter to raise right when she really could have made something of herself.”

  Something in the way she said that scraped at him. Luca frowned. “Surely raising a child is merely a different rich life. Not the lack of one altogether.”

  Kathryn’s gaze met his for a moment then dropped.

  “She’d worked so hard to succeed in finance, but couldn’t keep up with the hours required once she had me. And once she left the job she loved, at an investment bank, she couldn’t afford child care, so she had to manage it all on her own.” She threaded her hands together in front of her. “All of my memories of her were of her working. She usually had more than one job, in fact, so I wouldn’t want for anything. She wasn’t too proud to do the things others refused to do. She cleaned houses on her hands and knees, anything to make my life better, and despite all of that, I was a terrible disappointment.”

  Luca had the sense that if he disputed this story, if he questioned it at all—and he couldn’t understand why there was that thing in him that insisted this was a story that needed disputing when until hours ago he’d been Kathryn’s biggest critic—she would stop talking. It was something in the set of her mouth, the line of her jaw. The stormy gray color of her eyes. So he said nothing. He merely exchanged his towel for a pair of exercise trousers and then crossed his arms over his chest. He waited.