And he wasn’t sure why. He’d never felt obligated to be honest with another person simply because they’d been honest with him. In fact, he’d tried never to feel obligated to anyone at all. He didn’t want to give any more pieces of his soul away than he had already.
He’d been in a foul mood since they’d got back from the doctor’s office and when she’d brought up his family his temper had become even fouler.
Nevertheless, there had been something direct and honest in her gaze that he hadn’t been able to refuse. That had made him want to give her something in return for what she’d given him: her secrets and her pain the night he’d made her hold a blade to his chest. The way she’d clutched onto his hand as they’d seen their baby on the monitor. Her pleasure, every time he touched her at night.
Those had all meant something to him, especially when his mother hadn’t wanted anything at all from him. She’d ignored what he’d tried to do for her, had thrown all his offers to help her back in his face. And when he’d attempted to help anyway she’d told him that he didn’t care. That, if he truly loved her, he’d leave her alone.
Even in dying she’d refused him.
But Stella hadn’t. She’d accepted his help, let him take care of her. Let him give her strength and hold her. Stella had never refused him anything. Which meant he hadn’t been able to refuse telling her about the life he’d had with his mother. But he’d hoped that, once he’d finished, she’d leave the subject alone.
Apparently not.
‘What is it exactly that you’re asking?’ he demanded, trying to sound like his normal, casual self and knowing he’d failed. ‘Because, if you’re wanting me to fall on my knees and tell you that I’m madly in love with you, you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘I know that,’ she said without a flicker, full of a quiet dignity that made an inexplicable sense of shame creep through him. ‘I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about our child.’
Anger burned sullenly inside him, a dull flame that never seemed to go out no matter how many times he tried to ignore it.
He didn’t want to talk about love. He didn’t even want to think about it.
Love was his mother throwing a glass at his head when he’d tried to call a doctor for her after a hard night on the tiles. Love was her threatening him with the police after he’d punched Roberto in the face after the bastard had hurt her.
Love was her telling him that she was done with him and he should leave her alone.
Love was her dying in that hospital bed without ever regaining consciousness, denying him his last opportunity to talk to her.
He’d been there, done that and he wanted no part of it ever again.
‘Our child will have everything in my power to give,’ Dante said, trying to dismiss the subject. ‘Call it what you want.’
Yet there was something in Stella’s gaze that felt like a hand closing around his heart. ‘And if he or she wants to love you?’
The hand squeezed harder. ‘I won’t stop them.’
‘But you won’t give them anything back?’
The words twisted inside him like a barb on a fishhook, tearing and painful. ‘Do I need to?’ He squeezed her gently, flexing his hips, sliding his erection against the softness between her thighs, the delicious ache easing the agony of his memories. ‘When they’ll get all the love they might want from you?’
Stella’s gaze darkened. Gilt curls still damp from her bath stuck to her forehead. She smelled of lavender and musk, and he wanted to bury his face between her breasts, breathe her in. Then maybe lick a long path down between her thighs too, make her scream instead of asking him questions he didn’t want to answer, or make him talk about things that should have been left in the past.
Things such as the knowledge that maybe, if he hadn’t walked away from his mother, he might have been able to save her.
That she wouldn’t have died the way she had.
Because it’s your fault. It’s always been your fault.
‘You don’t mean that,’ Stella said.
‘How would you know? You don’t know a thing about me.’
‘Wrong.’ Her fingertips moved lightly along his cheekbone. ‘I know that you care about this baby, whether you like it or not. And I know you want to do the right thing by it.’ Her touch moved to his jaw. Why he was letting her touch him like this he didn’t have any idea, but he didn’t stop her. ‘I know you’ve done nothing but look after me since you brought me here, despite the fact that I wanted to kill you. And I know you’re angry. You’re very, very angry about your mother and, Dante...’ She touched his mouth gently, meeting his gaze. ‘You have a right to be angry. You needed her and she wasn’t there for you, and there is no excuse for that. None at all.’
Tension crawled through him, tugging at his instinct to pull away violently, to turn and leave, no matter how that would hurt her.
But he couldn’t do that.
Colour had risen in her skin, making her eyes look bluer. A perfect, pale white-and-gold china shepherdess of a woman. Not a woman he’d ever have picked to hold a gun to his head or end up carrying his child. Not a woman he’d have picked to fight him, challenge him on just about every level there was. Yet she’d done all of those things.
A vulnerable woman too—he couldn’t forget that. One who’d been hurt by her past, and whose feelings had been twisted and denied, yet despite that she still had an open heart. She wasn’t like him. She would never not care.
Which made her the most perfect parent for their child.
Unlike you.
But he didn’t want to think about that, still less talk about it. He was done with anger and guilt. He was done with caring. And he was done with love.
Especially now he had Stella, warm and lush and naked under that thin blue silk robe.
‘I think we’ve done the topic of me to death.’ He flexed his hips again, pressing himself against her damp heat. ‘I’m more interested in other things.’
Her fingers gripped his forearms tightly, the expression on her face making that fist around his heart squeeze like a vice. ‘You can trust me, Dante. I know that sounds strange, coming from the person who held you at gunpoint a month or so ago, but you can. I will never turn you away.’
The tight, painful feeling in his chest grew stronger and he had to grit his teeth against it. ‘I don’t want your trust,’ he growled, knowing he was being a bastard and not caring, because not caring was supposed to be what he did. ‘What I want is your body, understand?’
‘Yes.’ Her gaze was too sharp, too knowing. ‘And you can have it. I told you I will never refuse you and I meant it.’
She wasn’t supposed to do that. She wasn’t supposed just to...give in to him.
His heart rate began to climb, adrenaline pouring through him. ‘Bad idea, kitten.’ His voice was low and much rougher than he’d intended. ‘I’m not in a gentle mood.’
‘I don’t care. Do your worst. I’m stronger than I look, remember?’
Oh, yes, he remembered.
He lifted her into his arms, because he wasn’t going to take her on the stone table like an animal, not again. He could at least be an animal in the comfort of the bedroom where there was something soft to ravage her on.
Bending his head, he took her mouth in a hard kiss, letting her know that he most certainly would take whatever he wanted from her. But she only wrapped her legs around his waist and gripped him tightly, opening her mouth, letting him kiss her harder, deeper. Showing him the truth—that she would never turn him away. Never refuse him. She challenged him and pushed him, gave him the fight that he wanted, and then she opened her arms and took him in, giving him the surrender he craved.
His heartbeat was wild and out of control, the familiar, intense desperation winding around his soul. He didn’t know why it was like this with her every time. He coul
dn’t understand it. But he couldn’t stop the feeling that was rising inside him, a desperation, a need. To get close to her, have her warmth and softness all over him, under him.
The feeling pushed at him, battered against his heart, and he couldn’t wait, not even to get to the bedroom. He stopped in the living area and laid her down on the thick, white carpet that wasn’t as soft as he wanted it to be, but her scent and her heat were affecting him so badly that he just couldn’t stop.
Pulling open her robe, he exposed her naked body to the late-afternoon sunlight pouring through the window. She was all golden hair and creamy white skin and soft shell-pink nipples. Her gaze was jewel-bright as she looked up at him, full of desire and need. Need for him.
‘You want me?’ he heard himself growl as he knelt between her thighs and leaned over her, putting his hands on the floor on either side of her head. ‘You want me, Stella Montefiore?’
‘Yes.’ Her chest rose and fell, fast and hard in time with her quickened breathing. ‘I do. So much.’
‘And only me.’ He didn’t know why he was demanding this from her, especially when he was still intending their marriage to be a sexless one. But that didn’t change the roaring need inside him, the hunger for something he didn’t understand. Something only she, with her pride and stubborn determination, with her warmth and her surrender, could give him.
You can’t go anywhere else for this. And you don’t want her to either.
No. He damn well didn’t.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said roughly, deciding right there and then. ‘Once we’re married, you’re mine. There will be no one else for you, understand me?’
Her hands came up, her fingers threading through his hair, her eyes blazing into his. ‘Yes, I understand. And there will be no one else for you either.’
He almost laughed, because of course she would demand the same thing from him. Not that he was going to argue.
‘I don’t need anyone else.’ He let her see the truth in his gaze. ‘Not when you can give me everything I need.’
A fleeting brightness moved through her face, then she was tugging his head down, her lips meeting his, hungry and wanton.
And he was kissing her, a desperate, hot kiss, the heat of her mouth lighting a fire inside him that he didn’t think would ever go out.
That should have been a warning, but he was too far gone to notice. He kissed her, taking what he wanted from her, feverish and desperate, tracking kisses down her neck before lingering in the soft hollow of her throat, tasting her frantic pulse. He wanted to spend more time tasting her, making her even hotter for him, even more desperate, but he couldn’t wait. He’d never been able to wait, not with her.
He clawed open his trousers and spread her thighs, pushed himself deep inside her. She gave a soft cry of delight, lifting her hips to meet his thrusts, and he stared down into her face, into those shattered sky eyes, unable to look away. Her body was slick around him, her inner muscles gripping him as tightly as her thighs around his waist. As if she wanted to hold him close and never let him go.
And he shouldn’t want her to. He shouldn’t like it. It shouldn’t feel as if he was somehow home.
But it did. And the feeling didn’t go away as the pleasure inside him began to get more intense, more demanding. As he watched the same pleasure rise in her too.
So he eased back on his thrusts, pushing into her in a long, lazy glide then sliding out. Deep and slow. As if there was nothing better to do but this. As if he could do it all day. And he wanted to. He wanted it not to end.
Time slowed down to a pinpoint, to this one eternal moment. To her lying beneath him, her hips moving with his, her fingers twined in his hair, her gaze locked with his. Full of desire, full of need.
For him. Just for him.
‘You’re amazing,’ she whispered, her brilliant gaze on his. ‘You’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met.’
It felt like an arrow to the chest, the pain bittersweet and intense.
Because right now, in her arms, for the first time in his life, he felt like he could possibly be that man. The man she thought was amazing instead of the man who’d walked away from a woman he was supposed to be there for. A man who’d let his own mother die, who’d wasted his entire life trying to drown in his own self-loathing, telling himself that he didn’t care, not about anything.
But Stella was right, and that was the problem. He did care. He cared about everything.
And he thought he probably cared about her most of all.
‘Dante,’ she murmured, her hands twisting tighter in his hair. ‘Take me home.’
So he did, reaching down between them, stroking the sensitive place between her thighs as he thrust, watching her eyes turn pure silver as the climax exploded through her.
Crushing his own cry of release against the softness of her mouth.
Knowing that, one way or another, he was going to end up hurting her.
And trying to tell himself it didn’t matter.
CHAPTER NINE
STELLA GAZED AT the magnificent view out of the long, elegant windows of the palazzo, over rolling green lawns and terraced gardens surrounding a lavishly tiled pool area, to the small wood that lay beyond all that green.
It was so very beautiful. The perfect family home.
She and Dante were viewing the property he’d chosen near Milan, an old palazzo near his brother’s, though Enzo and his family spent most of their time on the little island Enzo had bought the year before.
Stella had wanted to know more about Enzo—important, considering the man was going to be uncle to their child—but Dante hadn’t been interested in telling her much about him.
In fact, since that evening on the terrace at the hotel in Rome, he hadn’t seemed interested in talking to her much at all. It had been at least a week since then and he’d spent the majority of it at his computer or on the phone, organising various things. He was having to deal with a few issues with his business interests—or at least that was what he’d told her—as well as preparations for their wedding.
He’d told her he wanted her input on aspects of it, but she found that sitting down and talking about it made her feel...uneasy. All this talk of love and the importance of vows when both of them knew it wouldn’t be a marriage based on anything more than shared parentage. It made her ache. For herself and for their child. For the kind of life that they would have, which sounded so very wonderful on paper, and yet...
Stella stared sightlessly at the lawns that stretched into the distance beyond the windows, trying to ignore the bleakness that gathered inside her.
Dante cared, she knew he did, but he wasn’t going to admit it. And she couldn’t force him to if he didn’t want to. So what would that mean for their baby? What would it mean for their child to grow up with a father who wouldn’t admit to the possibility of love?
She’d grown up without that in her life and it was her need for it that had propelled her to pick up the gun and point it at Dante’s face. Her weakness, her fatal flaw. She would do everything in her own power to make sure her son or daughter grew up knowing they were loved, but would the love of one parent be enough?
Dante’s was a magnetic, charismatic presence. He would have a massive influence on their child, especially given how involved he wanted to be in their life. But how would that child feel to have a father who never told them he loved them?
Pain echoed inside her, a vibration that shuddered through her, reflecting off the empty places in her soul and reverberating like an echo.
She knew how that felt. Never to have someone hold her or tell her that they loved her. That they were proud of her.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
A footstep echoed in the empty room, and then warm arms slid around her waist, drawing her in close to the hot, hard strength of the man behind her.
She should have felt comforted and reassured by those arms, by the power in that body. But right now it didn’t feel enough. Like a perfect fantasy that only half came true, the rest of it out of reach for ever.
Her child would feel like that. Wanting something from its father he was never going to give it. Oh, Dante might, at some point, admit to himself what his refusal to deal with his past was doing to him and to their child—because it was definitely his past that was holding him back.
Or he might not. He might never admit it.
You will have to hope that your love alone will be enough for your baby. Because what other option do you have?
She could leave. That was another option. But then where would she go? How would she provide for their child? And would Dante even let her? He wouldn’t. Of course he wouldn’t.
Can you walk away from him? That’s the real question.
The thought sat inside her, a cold, hard reality she’d been trying to ignore for days now.
‘What do you think?’ Dante murmured, nuzzling against her ear. ‘Do you like it?’
He was talking about the palazzo, of course, but she liked his arms around her, the feeling of his strength at her back, the warmth of his breath against her skin.
He’d changed his mind about marriage in name only. He’d told her that she was his and that they would find physical satisfaction with each other, and every night he proved it to her over and over.
But her doubts weren’t about him and whether a playboy would ever be faithful—she knew he would be. He was a man of determination and he’d promised her that if she wouldn’t get satisfaction elsewhere then neither would he. She believed he meant it.
No, her doubts were about herself. Whether sex would be enough of a stand-in for the hunger that lay in her soul. Whether a child would fill up that need and whether it was fair to expect a child to do that.
‘I do like it,’ she said, staring out the windows, conscious of the warmth of the man at her back and the hunger inside her that would go unsatisfied for ever. ‘Perhaps it would be good to be close to your brother. Our little one will have a cousin to play with.’
Claiming His One-Night Child Page 14
