by Tara Pammi
The Brunettis had a dark history of abuse and dysfunction. Massimo had changed it by reaching for Natalie and he’d wanted to do the same. Because it would take a woman like Neha to break that cycle, to rewrite a new chapter, a different ending.
Until yesterday, he had wanted that new beginning...but tonight, today...
“I’m not mad,” he finally said, “but I wanted privacy tonight.” He knew he sounded like a petulant boy.
In the blink of an eye, Neha was in front of him, a solemn expression in her eyes.
“I’m sorry about your loss, Leo. I know you didn’t have an easy relationship with him. I know he was a beast of a father but—”
“No. Don’t give me that. Cristo, not you, too, with lame condolences, not when you know how little I care.
“I don’t feel anything at his death, Neha. Don’t you get it? I don’t feel...anything. He was a monster who ruined so many lives. When I got the message that he wanted to see me urgently two days ago, I brushed it off as if he were an annoying ant.
“Even knowing what happened after, I don’t regret that decision.
“That’s how ruthless I’m.
“This is the man you’ve invited into your body, into your life. I don’t feel anything. I can’t feel anything. There? Are you happy now? We’ve talked about it.”
Tears filled her eyes and the concern in them almost undid him. “Is it really that simple? Then why get drunk? Why those shadows in your eyes? Talk to me, Leo. Burying your pain does nothing but damage us irrevocably. Believe me, I’ve done that to myself for so long until nothing but a shadow of me remained. I understand at least some of what you’re going through. I want to—”
“No, you don’t! You can’t.”
Pain burst open in the void of his chest, everything he’d buried his entire life flooding into this moment, this night cloaked in the dark, into the present he wanted with this woman, poison fouling up the very air between them, running unchecked, messing with his head.
He rubbed his hand over his temple. “You can’t imagine what it is to be a five-year-old boy who wakes up one morning to find his mother’s room deserted, who frantically searches her closet, every nook and corner of an eerily empty villa, who rifles through her drawers to find her things are gone, who runs around between the villa and the greenhouse and the grounds, panic beating out of his chest, short legs eating up the distance, terrified that if he stopped looking, she’d really be gone, terrified that if he stopped running, his world would crash down around him...who kept running until the physical pain buried the emotional.
“And today, when I face the question I should have asked him once—a single time, over all these years, the question that haunts me, the question that changes nothing of the past or the future or my present...”
And still the words came, into the stunned silence. As if he couldn’t lock them away now that they’d been released.
“Why did she leave? Did he drive her away with his rages and his abuse? How could she go when it meant leaving her son with the same monster?”
“What is wrong about wanting to know?” Neha said, her palms on his chest, rattling him, rumbling him, still determined to get through to him. Her tears drew wet tracks on his chest, drenching him, crying for him when he couldn’t for himself, her shoulders shaking against him. Grieving for him. Fighting for him, he realized with a strange fascination. “She was your mother! What’s wrong with wanting to think maybe she’d had a horrible reason for deserting her son? With being hurt by their selfish actions—either as a boy or a man?”
He pressed his hands to her shoulders, feeling spent. Feeling that void take over again. Feeling the blessed relief of numbness starting to descend on him.
“Would Silvio’s answer have changed anything? No.
“No little kernel of truth is going to shine a light in the closed-off quarters of my heart. I will never be vulnerable like that again, because I don’t know how to be. This is who I am. Nothing will change the man I’ve become. Nothing will turn me into that boy again, open to hurt.”
Tears poured down her cheeks and even now, when he should walk away from her, Leo reached for her.
“Shh...don’t cry, cara. Don’t waste your tears on me.”
“I’m not crying for you.”
He bared his teeth in a sneering facsimile of a smile. “No? Then do you cry for yourself, cara? That you get a damaged man who will never let himself be vulnerable with you? That you made a commitment before you realized what you were truly getting? Are you thinking of going back on our deal now?”
She wiped her face, a resolve in her eyes that threatened to knock the blessed numbness. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He raised a brow. “No?”
Stepping back from him, she looked up. “No. However, since you’ve made it very clear that you don’t want me here tonight, I’ll go back to my bedroom and you can—” her gaze swept over his face and then dismissed him “—continue your drinking binge or whatever you want to do with yourself. When you’re in a...better mood, come find me.”
His heartbeat kicked up. Even ravaged with the ache she felt for him, her eyes smudged with tears, her mouth pinched and trembling, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
And still, he wanted her.
She grabbed the duvet and wrapped it around herself, covering up the lush beauty of her body. “Good night, Leo.”
“No,” he said, grabbing the edge of the duvet, challenge shimmering in the very air around them. He tugged at it and she came with it, unwilling to give it up, fiery and sexy and every inch his deepest fantasy come true. “I want you to stay.”
“Why?”
He needed anesthetizing from whatever she had made him spill. He needed to bury the overwhelming emotions in his head. He needed to isolate the scab and cauterize it forever.
He threw the bottle in his hand carelessly behind him and it fell with a hard thump against the sofa. “You want to make me feel better, sì? You want to be there for me? That’s why you were here, in my bed?”
She licked her lips, and he tightened painfully at the memory of how she’d licked him up one night. It was a magnificent thing to be with a woman who went after what she wanted.
Sex with Neha wasn’t just sex anymore. It was...something else, something that defied definition. Something he was already addicted to. Nothing, it seemed, was simple or easy anymore. And yet, in this, he couldn’t make himself retreat.
If he’d expected her to flinch away, he’d have been disappointed. Shoulders straight, gaze steady, she was awe-inspiring as she said, “Yes.”
“Then kiss me. Go to bed with me. Give me your body tonight.” Arrogant demand reverberated in his voice and Leo hated himself for what he was saying, the reckless cruelty it seemed he was capable of toward the one woman who’d tried to reach the darkness in him.
Maybe the apple didn’t fall far, after all.
He braced himself for a slap. For stinging words. For the fury that he could see brewing in her eyes.
The duvet fell to the floor in a silky hiss.
Her fingers went to the last three buttons on her shirt. No hesitation in those eyes or her fingers. She wriggled her shoulders in that way of hers that made her full breasts bob up and down, until the shirt fell off, clinging to her wide hips for a few more seconds and then to the floor in a whispered hush.
Desire hummed through his body, not even the alcohol in his blood curbing the anticipation swelling his desire.
Miles of smooth brown skin stretched taut over supple curves. The slopes of her breasts partially covered by strands of silky hair, the sweep of her hips, the soft swell of her belly, the muscled length of her thighs...she was a goddess he didn’t deserve.
But she’d come into his life and he was damned if he’d let her go.
“Sacrificial lamb, bella?” h
e said, even knowing that he’d take her however she came to him.
A soft laugh from that incredibly lush mouth. A fire in her eyes. “I told you. I’m done with living my life for someone else. I came to your bed because I wanted to be here for you, yes. But I also came because I didn’t want to sleep alone.
“I’ve already gotten used to having you next to me—hard and warm and solid and real.” Such naked need in her eyes that it pinned him to the spot. Such vulnerability she exposed that it humbled him. “I want you. Inside me. Over me. Any way I can get you.”
He undid his trousers, pushed them down and stepped out of them. Covering the distance between them, he pulled her to him roughly. One hand around her nape, he held her open for him, while he devoured her lush mouth. Her moans were a balm to his frantic need.
The other hand, he sent it questing—to cup her plump breast, to rub the pert peak, to follow the lush lines of her body, to trace the curve of her hips, to dip into her folds, to stroke and caress her core, to press against the bundle of nerves he loved to taste, to make her ready for his ravenous possession.
And as always, she rewarded him. So quickly, so easily, so generously. Her nails dug into his shoulders, her teeth digging into his bicep, her leg opening around his hip when he slid a finger into her wet warmth.
His heart raced, his body throbbing almost painfully. He kissed her with a bruising need that showed no sign of abating any time soon. He filled his hands with her buttocks, brought her to the edge of his bed. She wrapped her legs around his hips, her skin damp, her eyes drugged with desire.
Leo took one more look at her face, then another and then another. Pushing her thighs indecently wide, he entered her without his usual finesse, his need far too urgent.
Somehow, from somewhere, he gathered enough sense to help her reach climax, moved her back onto the bed. Urged on by her throaty moans he climbed over her and slid inside her again. Fast and hard, he used her body to race toward their climax.
And finally, on the heels of his own thundering release, wrapped in her arms, her breath stroking his damp skin, came the quiet and calm he’d been seeking for forty-eight hours. And with it came the determination to keep the one good thing that had walked into life with him whatever the cost.
* * *
Leo didn’t sleep at all. Neha had slept on and off between his urgent demands for more and more of her, as if he could chase away whatever demons prowled after him tonight.
“We’re pregnant,” Neha said into the quiet, inky depths of the pitch darkness of the dawn, a few hours later.
She was lying on her front, her face to the side, his body covering most of hers. His hand in her hair stilled; his heart might have come to a screeching halt, for all the breathlessness he felt in his chest.
“What did you say?” he said, wondering if he was making the whole thing up.
“I took the test before I left London. And then five more. They were all positive.”
With shaking hands, he turned her, with none of the tenderness his mind was screaming she deserved. The shadows under her eyes were even more significant now. But her eyes were alert, studying him. And wary, too, as if she was unsure of his reaction.
Could he blame her when he’d behaved like a beast? Cristo, did she think he regretted this, her, them?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question shot out of him like a bullet.
But of course, there was no answer she could give.
First, he had avoided her, then when she’d confronted him, he’d mocked her concern and then used her body through the night. Had she come to him hoping to share the news? Needing him to share in the happiness he heard in her tone?
Instead, he’d all but bitten her head off.
Cristo, he was a bastard.
“How do you feel?” he asked now, a hint of wonder he was beginning to feel creeping into his voice.
“Good. Mostly good.” Her voice caught on the last part. Her gaze held his, asking questions he didn’t understand. “You still want this?”
He cursed, instead of giving a straight answer. And still she didn’t flinch. “Of course I do. Nothing has changed between us, cara,” he said, knowing full well that the words were a complete lie.
Something had changed. In him. Between them. He just didn’t know what it was or how to handle it or how to bring everything back to how it had been before.
“This is good, Neha. This is perfecto,” he added with emphasis, and finally the wariness in her eyes receded.
She pulled his palm to her belly and it felt as if he could breathe again. He spread his fingers over the soft, lush swell of it, a sense of wonder and inadequacy surging up inside him.
“This is our future, Leo. All ours. Just ours,” she said with a tremulous smile, before pulling his head down and kissing his mouth. A promise in the kiss, a demand in the thrust of her tongue, an anchor winding around him when he felt as if he was drowning.
Leo nodded, and took over the kiss, needing her, needing this. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he didn’t know a way forward, but he wanted to let her guide him. He wanted to let her hold his hand and pull him along for the ride, but the gnawing in his gut wouldn’t ease.
Tenderness and fear roped together to beat an incessant tattoo in his chest. Gathering her to him, he kissed her temple. Her nose. Her cheek. Her mouth. The crook where her shoulder met her neck. Everything in him shuddered. “Talk to me, cara. Tell me your plans for us, for...our child. Tell me your hopes and your dreams and your wishes. Tell me every single thought that comes into your head about our baby. Please.”
And as she talked about their family and their future, Leo listened, hoping that her voice and words would wash away the vulnerability that threatened to open up within himself again.
Hoped that the future she so clearly envisioned for them and their baby was all in his power to give.
* * *
“Massimo said you’re leaving? Again?”
Leo looked up from his computer to find Neha standing at the entrance to his study, a soft, white nightie falling to below her knees, making her brown skin look strikingly gorgeous against the thin straps. She looked incredibly beautiful and utterly rumpled, though he had left her in their bed not an hour ago, her hair a cloud framing her face, her eyes full of that challenge he adored.
“Sì, I have to.”
“Why? Exactly, do you have to, I mean?” Her question exploded into the silent midnight just as the door banged behind her with a loud thud.
He closed his laptop and sighed. Damn Massimo and his big mouth!
“Why are you up at this time, cara? The OB-GYN asked you to rest as much as possible after your high blood pressure numbers.”
“Resting is all I’ve done the past week, Leo. And please don’t treat me as if I’m a child who would endanger her health. Nothing is more important to me than this baby.”
He nodded, greedily taking in the fierceness of her expression. Dio mio, she got lovelier day by day, fiercer minute by minute, when it came to the child she carried and Leo didn’t know how to stop from wanting that same fierceness for himself, how to stem the desperate need to see the same wonder and adoration in her eyes when she looked at him.
For a few scattered moments here and there, he’d even caught himself being envious of that innocent life they’d created together. Had wondered if his mother had ever loved him like that, for a second. Had wondered if Neha would ever... Basta!
He had more than he’d ever wanted in his life and this fixation had to end.
“Leo?”
He rubbed a finger over his brow. He hated disappointing her but until he found some kind of balance in his head, he had to stay away. “What do you want from me, Neha?”
She flinched as if he’d raised his voice to her. “If you maybe take the time to answer my questions properly, instead of p
laying hide-and-seek with me, I can rest better. It doesn’t help that I have to chase poor Massimo through the villa and the lab for information and that you keep enrolling him to be some sort of bodyguard for me while you go chasing shadows across the world.”
Despite his reservation, he went to her, as if he was pulled by a magnet. “We still haven’t identified who the new stockholder is. Alessandra is still MIA. Mario’s rallying board members behind him, using your retirement announcement as some kind of backstabbing play from me. Until I discover who’ll be coming onto the BFI board in Silvio’s place, every rogue on the board thinks the position of CEO is up for grabs.”
“I know all this. What I don’t know is why you have to be the one to solve it all.” Her fingers tapped at the shadows he’d glanced under his eyes earlier. “Why you have to be the one who shoulders all this. Why can’t Massimo go for once?”
Because I need the distance from you.
“Because Massimo hates dealing with bureaucracy and strategic moves. And if it were up to him, he’d let the whole Brunetti legacy burn to the ground with Vincenzo and Mario and the whole lot...” He saw the question in her eyes and answered it. “As much as I hate my father, I can’t be that reckless, bella. Thousands of people depend on BFI for their livelihoods. I simply can’t let a madman with a thirst for revenge tear it up.”
“Sometimes I hate that you’re so honorable.” She looked up at him then. “If you’re not going to be here, why can’t I just go back to London? I feel like a third wheel with Massimo and Nat, and really, if you’re that busy, we should postpone the wedding. I’m really not sure if we should even be having a wedding this soon after your father’s death.”
He barely kept the bite out of his tone. “It’s a small civil ceremony, bella. And for the thousandth time, I refuse to let his death have any effect on my life.” He sighed, hating the wary look that entered her eyes. “Think of it this way, cara,” he said, lying through his teeth, hating himself for what he was doing, “the sooner I figure out all this, the freer I’ll be when the baby comes.”
