He kissed his way across the scar and then pulled up on his elbows, his eyes meeting hers. Her cheeks were pink, flushed, her eyes fevered.
This was madness, utterly and completely, and yet he knew it was also essential. They had unfinished business, and until he’d got her out of his system, he wouldn’t be able to move forward.
Move forward?
And what exactly did that entail?
Fiero Montebello was a man of action, but he was also, always, a man of conviction. He had no idea what he wanted from Elodie.
Apologies?
To what end?
He dropped his mouth lower, his tongue brushing her sex so she bucked her hips, her hands moving lower on autopilot. He ignored them, running his tongue along her sensitive folds so she whimpered his name, just as he’d predicted she would.
Christo, he had no idea what he wanted, but suddenly making her beg for him to take her felt vitally important, as though forcing her to admit how much she wanted him would somehow atone for her sins, in a small way. Or maybe he was just petty. Maybe he wanted to punish her.
He ignored that thought.
It didn’t ultimately matter.
He wanted her. It made no sense. He wasn’t proud of it. But he had no intention of resisting her. Not this night, not now.
* * *
She must have fallen asleep. Her body felt heavy, languid. She stretched, and her back connected with something hard and warm, so she spun in the bed and startled, her eyes wide.
Fiero Montebello was beside her, watching her, his expression guarded, his features tense.
“What time is it?”
“Midnight.”
Her eyes swept shut. “I didn’t mean to sleep.”
His eyes roamed her face and she realised, belatedly, that she was naked.
Oh, God.
Memories of what they’d done flashed through her. His hands on her body, his body melded to hers in every way, her mouth shaping around his name, dragging over his flesh, crying for him, needing him.
“You were exhausted.”
She nodded slowly, pushing the sheet back a little self-conscious and standing. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I have been, since the accident.” She lifted her shoulders. “The doctor said that would fade in time.”
He nodded, but she was distracted, disbelief at what they’d done, at the stupidity of giving into this primal, aching need, making her turn to face him even as she reached for her clothes. They’d been discarded in a hurry, hours earlier. She lifted the dress off the floor and jerked it over her head.
“This shouldn’t have happened.” She spoke without thinking, but as soon as she said the words, she knew two things. She was absolutely right. And she wouldn’t take what they’d done back, not for all the gold in all the world.
“Oh?”
Relief burst inside of her when he didn’t immediately echo her thoughts.
“It’s too complicated.”
He watched her without speaking, so her mouth felt dry. Her body was sensitive all over, her nipples tender from the way he’d tormented them – first between his fingertips and then with his mouth. Her eyes swept shut as that memory seared her soul.
“I disagree.” He shifted in the bed, so the sheet dropped to reveal even more of his toned abdomen and she had to fight herself to keep her gaze on his face. He pushed out of bed completely and she lost the battle, her eyes moving hungrily over his impressive body, her cheeks filling with heat at the sight of him, naked and desirable. “This,” he came to stand before her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her body to his. “Is the only thing in this mess of a situation that is not complicated.”
She swallowed, trying not to see the logic of his statement.
“You want me. You want me as much now as you did then.”
More, she wanted to add, because it was true. Knowing how his body worked, knowing the pleasures it could deliver, she wanted him in a way that was like dynamite in her veins.
“And I want you.” His eyes narrowed as his fingers caught the bottom of the dress she’d just pulled on. His removal of it was clinical and slow, his eyes almost mocking as they held hers. He lifted it over her head and whatever words she might have wished she said remained locked firmly in her throat.
“I cannot say what will happen with us. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make my peace with your decision, if I’ll be able to share Jack with you. I don’t know if we can make anything work. Except this.” His hand dropped to spread her legs a little, and then his fingers were running across her seam.
She juddered despite the words he’d spoken.
“I won’t leave him,” she whispered, but the conversation – though incredibly important – was falling through the cracks of her brain. He slid a finger inside of her and her hips bucked in surprise.
“I’m not asking you to.”
Yet.
He didn’t say the word but she felt it and shivered, even as a wave of pleasure filled her body. And another. And another. She dug her nails into his shoulders, holding on for dear life and she was rocked by the beginning of an explosion.
Then his hand moved, to her hips, and he was lifting her easily, as though she weighed nothing, bringing her back to bed as his lips sought hers. He sat on the edge of the bed and brought her onto his length, filling her completely, so deep, his possession so intense.
“You have no idea what I want to do to you,” he muttered, his fingers on her hips meaning that while she was on top, he maintained control, pulling her down on his body then lifting her up, moving his own hips in the same rhythm, so she was completely enslaved by him and this.
“Tell me,” she arched her back, her eyes hooking to the ceiling, the same feeling that she was surrendering to madness filling her, so she wondered if she should put an end to this even when she knew she wouldn’t.
“I want to make you mine,” he grunted. “I want to make you mine every damned night in every damned way.”
She whimpered as he caught her hips and rolled her backwards onto the bed, his body imprisoning her. Then his hands caught hers, his fingers curling around her wrists, pinning them above her head so she couldn’t touch him. He thrust deep inside of her, his eyes like granite when they met hers. “I want to tie you up and pleasure your body until you are wild with longing and then I want to do this –,” he drove himself into her, deep, hard, his mouth dropping to her breast and flicking one of her nipples with his tongue so she cried out.
“I want to have sex with you until I forget what you’ve done. I want to have sex with you until only this remains in my mind, nothing else.”
And despite the shifting of pleasure through her body, there was intense pain too – mental pain at the hurt in his words, the anger that ran through him even now, as their bodies were coiled together.
He lifted his mouth to kiss her then, his tongue duelling with hers, showing the truth of his meaning, the intensity of this anew.
“I want to make you beg for me, as if begging will make this better.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I want to mark your body like this,” and he moved his mouth to the side of her nipple, drawing her flesh into his mouth until she was crying his name out with the force of her pleasure, and when he lifted his head a moment later, she didn’t need to look down to know he’d left a love bite there.
“I want to mark you so that when you look in the mirror, you know that in this way, you are mine.” Her heart turned over in her chest.
His words were filled with hardness but his body was pure sensual heat. Every shift and move brought a wave of desire so she was lifting her hips to draw him deeper, to make them one.
She pulled at her hands but he kept them where they were, restrained, and while he held them there, he moved his mouth to her other breast, where he tormented the nipple before moving to the soft flesh at the side and leaving another love bite.
It was so animalistic, so primal, but it filled he
r with a rush of heady power.
Not being able to move was intensely erotic, being a prisoner to his sensual exploration was something she’d never imagined, but now, she wanted more. She imagined being tied up by him so that both of his hands were free to explore her body, so that he could touch her all over.
She shivered as the fantasy took hold, as pleasure touched every part of her, and then she fell apart at the very seams of her body, the stitching undoing all at once so she was just a collection of limbs and cells and veins, one throbbing, hungry pulse. He held her and he came with her, his voice echoing hers, his cry deeper, but no less desperate.
And afterwards, before she could breathe, much less speak, his eyes pinned her to the spot. His face was slashed with colour, his features held in a mask of determination. “Do you see, care?”
The softly spoken word rocked something deep inside of her.
“Do you see how easy this, at least, is?”
She swept her eyes shut, because he was right, even when it was wrong.
His body weight on her body was a pleasure she could no longer bear. She lifted her hands to push at him, just a little, but he rolled away pre-emptively, onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.
She studied him, a frown on her face, a kernel of worry growing out of control inside of her belly.
“The sex is easy. Desire is easy. But everything else is an absolute mess, and I think we’re just going to make it worse.”
* * *
A week later, at their grandparents’ estate, Fiero took a swig of beer from the bottle, his expression grim. It was a warm evening. Max was swimming, and Luca was across the table, on the phone to the CEO of their Belgian operation. Yaya, having joined them for dinner, had retired to her room for the night. She tired early these days, going to sleep shortly before eight o’clock each night. An uneasiness had crept over Fiero. He knew she didn’t have long and that knowledge was like a chain about his throat. Life without Yaya was almost impossible to contemplate.
She’d asked about Jack at dinner, a smile tickling her lips. Then, she’d asked about Elodie, and silence had fallen. No one had known what to say, least of all Fiero. How could he explain any of this to Yaya?
How could he explain it to anyone? He couldn’t even get Elodie to comprehend how he felt.
She’d been right.
Sex was easy. Incredibly easy.
He despised her during the day, despised the fact she’d kept him from his own son, despised the fact that if it hadn’t been for the accident, he’d have no idea about Jack. Despised that he was glad, on any level, for what had befallen her because at the same time, fear at the way her body could have been destroyed filled him with an acid that burned through his whole system.
It was a mess, just like she’d said.
He despised her in the day but at night, when he reached for her, everything locked into place once more. His body craved and hers responded. Perhaps it was the other way around. He drew her into his arms and she blinked up at him and there was nothing and no one that could keep them apart.
“So? How’s married life?” Luca disconnected the call, a self-satisfied look on his expression which Fiero took to mean he’d closed the deal over in Brussels.
He stared at his brother blankly.
“Jack’s mother?”
“Elodie,” Fiero supplied without thinking. “We’re not married.”
“But as good as,” he pointed out.
“No.” Fiero’s eyes flashed, his body tightening in rejection of that. “Not now, not ever.”
Luca laughed gruffly. “Sounds like you’ve got something to hide.”
Fiero’s pulse was thready. “Oh?”
“You look like you want to kill someone. You don’t want to be here. All I can presume is that your home life beckons.”
“Because I can pass up the chance of time in your charming company?” Fiero quipped, but a smile crossed his lips despite his mood. Max and Luca were two of his best friends. Along with their cousins, who had been raised with them, so that they were almost like one family.
“Because you’re like a bear with a sore head.”
“Marriage isn’t on the cards, believe me.”
“But you’re sleeping with her?”
Fiero whipped his head around as though it had been snapped, and a laugh sounded from the pool. Max was there, his arms braced on the coping, his teeth white against his tan.
“Think you hit the nail on the head there, bro.”
“Do you mind?” Fiero took another drink from his beer.
“So you’re not?”
“Sleeping with her?” Fiero repeated, then stood, frustrated beyond belief. “That’s none of your goddamned business.”
Max was no longer smiling. “If you’re not, why deny it?”
“Because my sex life is private. Not for you two to speculate on.”
He closed his eyes and thought of Elodie and only certainty filled him. Certainty that he wanted her, certainty that regardless of what anyone else said or thought, he would make love to her in a matter of hours. His body was already anticipating that pleasure, filling with longing and need.
“For the last two months, all we have heard is how you’ll never forgive her, how there’s a special place in hell for women like her.”
Fiero’s face felt hot and he wished, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, that he could draw those words back, could leave them unspoken. “I cannot justify what she did.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Max grunted from the table. “It’s sheer good luck that you even know about Jack now.”
A blade ran the length of his body. “I do not consider that ‘good luck’. She almost died.”
“And if she hadn’t been hit by a van and wound up in hospital, you’d have no idea you had a son out there.”
“I am profoundly aware of that, believe me.” Fiero’s voice whipped around the terrace.
“So what do you want from her?”
“From Elodie? I want nothing.” He spoke the words emphatically, wondering why they tasted strange in his mouth.
“You could offer her a financial settlement,” Max proposed. “In exchange for sole custody.”
“Money?” Fiero disputed with a humourless laugh. “You think she wants money?”
Neither brother spoke.
“If that were the case, don’t you think I would have heard from her before now? She could have begged a fortune in custody demands. A house. A trust fund for Jack. A stipend for herself. She has asked me for nothing, even now.” He swallowed, the reality of that something he hadn’t fully considered until that moment. He frowned. “I’m doing my best to work this out.”
Luca stood up and paced towards the pool, shucking his shirt as he went before diving in. He emerged on the other side, his eyes roaming Fiero thoughtfully.
“Look, Fiero, you’re not thinking straight if you are doing anything other than lining up custody papers and pushing her out of his – and your – life.”
Everything inside of Fiero rejected that. “She’s a good mother.”
“So? A better mother than Emilia is nanny?”
Fiero’s eyes flashed and even in that moment, as his temper was invoked, he wondered at his desire to defend Elodie, to protect her as a bear might a smaller, defenceless creature.
“We are not the best judges of this,” he said through gritted teeth. “Our own mother was hardly a paragon of maternal virtue. Elodie is. She loves Jack. She’d do anything for him.”
“How can you say that when she chose to keep him away from you? She denied him his father – that’s not selfless. It’s not loving. It’s stupid and irresponsible.”
“Basta!” He lifted a hand to silence them, his mind ringing with the accusations, the tirades, the words he himself had thought and even flung at her.
His two brothers watched him without speaking. He was conscious of the effort that took – he knew both were biting back what they were thinking and he appr
eciated that they did that.
“She is Jack’s mother. It is for this reason and this reason alone I paid her hospital bills. You do not think my son deserves that? Do you think I could have looked him in the eye ever again if I hadn’t done everything in my power to save her? We were raised by our grandparents because of our parents’ failings. Because they didn’t know how to stop being selfish children and start looking after us.” He glared at both Luca and Max. “I will never let Jack say that about me. I owe it to him to try to find a way to make this work – with Elodie in my house, with the two of us raising him together.”
“Raise him together, assolutamente, that’s laudable. Noble. Anything more and you are a fool.”
Eight
SHE WATCHED HIM FROM hooded eyes as he made coffee, his expression forbidding, his features imposing. He’d come in late the night before and had gone straight to bed. She’d heard his footsteps on the stairs, and then outside her door, slowing to a pause, and she’d held her breath, waiting for him to knock, and her heart had slammed into her ribs with every second that passed, until his footsteps sounded once more. The next moment, there was the opening and closing of his door.
She hadn’t been able to sleep.
It was hot – unpleasantly sticky and sultry, the evening bringing little relief from the day’s warmth, but that wasn’t why she’d struggled to sleep.
No, it was the questions that had chased each other through her mind all evening.
Where had he been? And who had he been with?
She had no reason to suspect he’d been with a woman and yet once the idea planted itself in her brain, she found it impossible to shake free from its grip. It was horrifying to realise how much she cared. But she did. The idea of Fiero Montebello with anyone else made her insides boil.
So much of this situation had simply got away from her. After the accident, she’d been over the proverbial barrel – Jack was already here in Italy and Fiero had made it abundantly clear he wasn’t going to give up his parental rights without a fight – a fight she instinctively shied away from, regardless of what she’d said. More than that, seeing how badly Fiero had been hurt by her decision to raise Jack on her own had made her want to fix things – as though she ever could.
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