by Caro LaFever
Her spine straightened, her jaw locked. “You can’t—”
“I can. And I have.”
“The quality of my work—”
“Is not the issue.” He kept his gaze on her and kept his temper in check.
When they’d returned from the honeymoon, he hadn’t objected to her continuing to work. Dio, he had to admit the thought of sitting on a couch for months on end would drive him to distraction also. Plus, she’d recovered much of her health and he’d expected she’d realize she needed to take life a bit easier.
His expectations regarding the Princesse always seemed to be disappointed, didn’t they?
“Then what is the issue?” Her voice cut through his thoughts.
“Your health.”
“My health is perfectly fine.” She jumped from the chair with a jerk.
The wobble of her legs, the wash of white on her cheeks, proved his point better than his words could.
Folding his arms in front of him, he raised a disbelieving brow.
“I’m fine.” The mule of a woman kept fighting. “What right do you have to say any different?”
“The right of a husband? The right of a father?”
“Those are mere titles, not rights.” She waved his claim away. “I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
His temper surged, tugging at the leash of his control. “Eight-hour days at the maximum, Lise.”
“You can’t really believe—”
“No work on the weekends.”
“I will not—”
“You will.” He gritted his teeth, intent on keeping this as calm as possible. This could not be good for her or the baby, this confrontation. It was his duty to keep this as low-key as he could. Which was impossible with her. Still, he would try. “You will take care of yourself if I have to force you.”
“I am taking—”
“You are not. Look at you.” He cut the air with a curt hand of his own. “You look like a wet dishrag.”
“How dare you—”
“You will rest. You will eat. You will do what I tell you to do.”
His wife’s eyes widened, her brows shot up, and her body went taut. With a snap, she broke out of her frozen stand and stormed to his desk. Leaning over it, she spat the words in his face. “Are you for real, Vico? Or did you sprout from some ancient Stonehenge as a primitive philistine?”
Her attack was typical and expected, yet it prodded and poked his pride. “Call me any name you want. But you’re going to rest if I have to chain you to a bed.”
“Chain me to a bed?” She must have realized how the words sounded because a sudden rush of color came to her cheeks and she stepped away from the desk.
He was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. She was thinking of sex and he was happy to oblige. “The thought intrigues you?”
“Not in the least.” Her blush deepened. She took another step back.
A bitter laugh escaped him at her continued rejection of them. Of him. Irritation and annoyance turned and twisted into something else. “Why is it I don’t believe you?”
“You don’t believe anything I say.” She backed away again. “Why should this be any different?”
The twisting inside him screwed tight into a ball of ballooning resentment. Of tortured hurt. Mixed in with his ongoing lust, it ate right through the last line of mastery over his temper. He verbally struck out at her. Struck back at what she did to him inside. “Why should I believe a liar and a cheat?”
She stopped, stiffened. Her mouth twisted. “Let’s get one thing straight—”
“Only one thing?” he snarled, realizing his temper was off its leash and finding it impossible to catch it and tame it. “There are so many things, mia dolce, that we have to straighten out.”
Itching with the heat of his emotions, he prowled around his desk to confront her in the middle of the room. He half expected another retreat, but the woman surprised him.
She stomped right up to him and one of her long, elegant fingers poked him in the chest. “I may have lied to you once or twice, I’ll give you that.”
“Grazie.” He leaned down, sneering in her face.
“I had my reasons.” She held firm under his looming presence. “And those reasons still stand. You will never be a good father.”
Pain ripped a hole the size of Lake Como in his heart. He nearly gasped at the accusation, so unfair.
So true.
“But I never have been a cheat.” She kept going, seemingly oblivious to the blow she’d given him. “Never.”
The pain retreated, leaving only a yawning, gaping fissure. Before he could process his thoughts or emotions any further, his hands were tight around her shoulders and he’d lifted her off her toes. “Another lie.”
She had guts, his wife. Her frosty eyes stared at him with pure clarity. “I wasn’t engaged when we slept together. Robert had split with me earlier that night.”
The words hit him with a solid punch. He dropped her back on her feet because he couldn’t think, could only feel the primitive male inside him howling and screaming for something. Revenge? Forgiveness? He was afraid of what he’d do to her. What he’d do to himself.
Turning, he stalked to the windows and blindly looked down at the traffic.
That night? Split up that night? His brain whizzed over the events. A woman intent on getting drunk. A woman brokenhearted. A woman grabbing for the first man she found in a vain attempt to console herself for what she’d lost.
She hadn’t been lusting for him.
Hadn’t been driven to take him because she couldn’t help herself. Hadn’t dreamed of him for endless nights. Hadn’t ached for him through endless days. Far worse for his ego and his pride then thinking she was only rejecting him because of stubborn spite, she’d merely been using him to ease the pain and didn’t want him for anything more.
“Vico?” Her voice was tentative.
The breath in his lungs held, then gusted out in a near gasp.
That night had not been what he’d thought. Or dreamed.
“You must believe me.”
This woman destroyed him in every way. But it was too late. Too late to run and hide and lick his wounds. He was married. He was soon to be a father. He was doomed to endless regrets exactly as he had been fifteen years ago.
“Vico.”
“Si.” He turned, forcing his face into a stern, cold stare. “I believe you.”
He shrugged as if it meant little to him. When in actuality, her revelation meant the death knell to his hopes for this relationship. If she didn’t even want him, then what was left to build on?
The baby.
His bambino. He would focus on the bambino. Focus on finding a way to somehow not let the child down. Forget about the stupid dreams he’d harbored in his dark soul in Paris.
“Well.” Her hands rose to smooth her hair behind her ears. “That’s at least settled.”
What was it he’d meant to do in this meeting? What had to be settled?
His brain was fogged with bitter anguish.
“Now the only thing we have to agree on is that I’m able to keep working as much as I want.”
His decisive CFO reminded him.
“That’s all we have to agree on?” He chuckled. A hoarse, rough choke.
She looked at him, her head cocked as if she tried to figure him out. There was little to figure out. He was a hollow man.
“What’s wrong?”
Women. With their uncanny senses telling them when a man was vulnerable and needy and sick with despair. He laughed at his stupidity. Watched as his wife eyed him with guarded caution. Why not? He must appear to be a complete madman.
“I thought it was mutual.” The words came from his mouth before his pride had a chance to rebel.
“Mutual?” Her wary gaze narrowed.
Why had he said that? What good would it do him to lay his pride before this woman and hope for any mercy? Yet the foolish confessions kept flowing from h
is damned mouth like an unending emotional river of agony. “The lust that night.”
He didn’t need to look at her to know what he’d see. Contempt mixed with pity.
Aiutarlo a Dio.
God help him, indeed.
Turning his back to her, he squinted his eyes in the sun’s glare and ignored the sting behind them.
Silence descended. A hard, tense silence.
“I won’t lie to you,” she finally muttered. “Not again.”
Her words barely registered over the flow of lost hope gutting the inside of him. Not until he felt her hand on his shoulder did he return to the room, to reality. Her light touch made him shudder, then stiffen. The sexual tie he’d assumed lay between them had been cut. Even now, though, he felt it, felt the strands of lust wrap around his every muscle, tighten around his lungs, jerk him into instant arousal.
But it was only him. Only him who experienced the sticky strands of the connection.
“It was mutual.” Her words were soft, quiet. Halting. As if she had to pull them out from a secret place deep inside her where he’d never been allowed.
Their effect was electric. Jerking around, he stared into her uplifted face. For a moment, he caught something, some emotion…wistfulness? Wanting?
In a flash, though, she dropped her hand from his body, stepped away, lowering her head so her fair hair covered her face.
“No.” Hope bounded forward from despondency and Vico acted with reckless intent. Before she could move any farther away from him, he held her fast in his arms. Her body stiffened, but he still felt the hum between them, the warmth of need and passion lying so close to the surface, only needing one act, one touch to be released.
He hadn’t been wrong. His dreams hadn’t been nightmares.
She’d wanted him then. And Dio, she wanted him now.
His mia dolce lifted her head. “Let me go.”
“Impossible.”
Her mouth was firm in rejection, yet within seconds it slackened under his heated command. She tasted of mint and myrrh, a cool, bitter blending of spices designed to burn into his memory and his body like a brand. Tangling her tongue with his, she let the honey taste of her flood into his soul, a dangerous mix of woman and welcome.
He staggered back, leaning on the hot glass of the window.
“Sognavo di te.” His admission of the endless dreams of her whispered on her cheeks and neck as he tasted the salt of her skin, breathed in the warm scent of lavender wrapping him with her presence.
His woman’s body was plastered so close to his he felt the beat of her heart. The beat matched the drum of his own and melded with the thumping drive of his lust pouring through his veins. Sweat broke out on his skin, sliding down his back and sides.
“Vico.” Her hands sifted through his hair, tugging him closer.
She kissed him.
She kissed him.
She initiated a kiss with him.
His soul swelled into an overflow of hot, turgid, racing sweetness. There was no way he would ever get enough of her mouth on his, her tongue on his lips, her taste on his own.
Touch. He had to touch her. Everywhere.
There was no longer any need to hold her to him. His wife leaned on him, burrowing into him like a fiery missile of need. She gave him what he wanted. The opportunity to sweep his searching hands down her elegant back, across her rounded hips, down to her perfect bottom. He used the chance well. Lifting her, he pressed her into the part of him which yelled and screamed for her every moment of the day and every second of the night.
She groaned. A husky, womanly plea.
For him.
His spirit soared. Over and under and through him. It leapt in delight and reeled in hope.
“Vico.” Her lips moved along his roughened jaw, sipped on his neck, tickled his ears.
Lust growled its approval as he lifted her into his arms. He looked wildly around for a place, any place. The leather couch was the best bet, his scrambled brain said. Too far, his body bellowed.
She landed on the desk. Her hair splayed out around her dazed, glazed face in a fan of blonde and white strands. How had her hair suddenly acquired the beauty and lushness of Paris? Her face was flushed and warm, her skin glowing with Parisian health. Her eyes no longer carried the studied frost of the past two weeks. Instead, they were pure blue, a shining blaze of joy.
Her arms rose, beckoning.
For him.
The heart, the damaged heart inside of him managed to keep pounding, keep pumping. However, it was surely ten times the size it had been mere moments ago. Surely. Vico leaned down and kissed her. Her slender hands moved along his sweating neck and tangled her elegant fingers into the long, dark curls falling around them as they came together.
His own fingers were clumsy and klutzy as he tried to finesse the pearl buttons on her shirt. He needed more skin, more of her to kiss and touch. She chuckled at his attempt, the warmth of her breath caressing his mouth.
“Let me,” she murmured.
Pushing himself off her, he stood, shivering with need as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse, revealing a pretty lace bra by slow, tortuous steps. The primitive male inside him urged him to rip and raid. Yet he managed to stifle it, forced himself to relish the moment she gave herself to him.
Her smile threatened the control.
Her smile sang to him like a siren off the Amalfi coast.
The blouse fell open. The bra unsnapped.
She gazed at him, the last of the ice melting in her eyes, the smile growing on her lips.
Vico swore he heard the snap when his control cracked.
His wife arched into his hands as he lifted her breasts to his mouth. She was lush and full, more womanly than before. But he’d take her thin or plump. Or anything in between. Because the essence was still Lise. Her skin was still a salty pearl of delight to his lips. Her nipples were still tight buds of magic begging for his tongue. The round, plush weight of her breast was still meant to fit in the palm of his hand, made for him since the beginning of eternity.
The Italian words flowed over her body.
He was no longer capable of any speech other than the one he’d been born into. Yet it wasn’t the words, it was him he gave her with his native tongue. All the reckless vitality of his temperament, the restless energy of his character, the emotive nature of his culture.
She took his gift. He felt it move between them.
His lips moved with reverence across the round bump of her belly. Whispered words of his home slipped beyond her skin to touch his bambino. A child he didn’t deserve, but already loved.
A clutch of fear shivered through him.
“Mmm,” she purred as she slid her fingers around his head, holding him to her and the child.
The burn of tears welled, threatening to wet her skin.
His mia dolce was determined to drive him insane with desire, though. She left him no time to wallow in the desperate love and fear he had for his bambino. Her long, lithe legs wrapped around his hips, tugging him into her, shattering his anguish and swamping the remnants of his control with an overwhelming need.
She tugged once more.
The mist of tears in his eyes disappeared under the torrent of primitive lust. He pushed himself between her thighs, fitting his body to hers as she lay on the table watching him. Somehow, her skirt had ratcheted high up her hips, allowing him to look his fill of the pale beauty of her skin. His hands slipped along her thighs, pushing the wool skirt aside, staring down at the lace at the end of her stockings, wrapped lovingly around the soft skin at the top of her legs. The lace was echoed in her panties, the frills edging the silk. The wet silk.
His nostrils flared as her aroused scent drifted to him. Salty, spicy, sexy.
“Vico.”
He tore his gaze from the heart of her with a monumental effort. He breathed in, trying to find some small stitch of sense, yet her fragrant need slipped into his nostrils once more. “Lise,” he croaked.
“I want you.”
Her words cut through the painful need thrumming in his body.
A gift.
Another gift for him.
If he’d been capable of moving, he would have fallen to his knees at her feet. A submissive subject ready and willing to slay any dragon or fight any foe. But he wasn’t capable of doing anything other than stare into her eyes.
The blue was startling. Not a shred of ice or frost. Only a cerulean, brilliant blue. He was sure he’d never seen the purity of a soul as clearly as he did at that moment. She blinked and then smiled as she lifted her hand to slowly trail it down his heaving, hot chest.
Down, down. To the ravening beast she’d unleashed. Willingly asked for.
The groan ripped out of him as he tipped his head back and felt. Felt her clever fingers smooth over the hard, demanding primitive part of him. Within seconds, he was fast at the point of no return.
A raspy huff of breath escaped him as he yanked her hand from his body. “Too much.”
She smiled her siren smile.
He grinned back, suddenly so full of life and happiness and hope it nearly exploded inside of him with a shining joy he hadn’t felt since he’d been a kid. Two could play the seduction game. Grabbing her hips, he pressed the wet silk to his aching groin.
She cried out.
He gasped.
The time for anything other than this, this—
The animal in him took over. With one swift jerk, he unzipped himself, tore the silk off her and plunged into the hot, wet, glorious lips of her sex. With one more thrust, he pushed her into bliss and he forced his need down so he could concentrate on her. The slender paleness of her neck as she arched into her rapture. The sound of her soft cry as she slid deep into the ecstasy he gave her. The clutch of her muscles around his cock, milking him, pleasuring him.
Claiming him.
His body could hold on no longer and the thrust of his hips could not be contained. Lust rode him, drove him into a pounding punch of ache and glorious need. There was no time or meaning to anything except this.
This male body in her female body.
This sense of blind bonding he’d never experienced before.
Except with her.
The orgasm overtook him and he shouted. The painful pleasure drenched him with sweat as he spilled himself into her. Bucking back, thrusting one more time, he found himself unable to breathe or think or do. All of him came into her, into the heart and core of her. He lost himself inside of her, his mia dolce, his wife, his lover.
