Was it too late to come back from this? What did she want from him now?
A divorce. That was what she wanted. She was only with him now under sufferance in order to secure her brother’s sponsorship.
He wanted her. That hadn’t changed one iota. The desire he felt for her was as strong and powerful as ever—maybe even more so. She’d said she wanted to keep things platonic but he knew she still wanted him as much as he wanted her. He didn’t want her to come back at him when the month was up and accuse him of coercing her into having sex with him. He wanted her to come to him because she owned and accepted her need of him. That she was fully engaged in their ‘affair’ because it was what she wanted.
His conscience gave him a prod about the use of the word affair. An affair was temporary, but that was all he was prepared to offer now. Letting anyone, particularly Ailsa, have that much power over him was anathema to him. He was back to being an affair man again. Short-term and satisfying, that was how he’d liked his relationships in the past and he would learn to like them that way again. His relationships would run to his timetable and be conducted on his terms.
And his relationship with Ailsa would be no different.
* * *
Ailsa tried to settle with a book until Vinn came back from the hospital, but her mind was whirling and her body still restless, aching for the weight of his arms. She was annoyed with herself for not being able to switch off her desire for him. She felt guilty her restlessness came not from her worry over Dom’s condition but for the aching need Vinn had awakened in her body. Every time he touched her it ramped up her desire another notch.
It was strange to admit it, but she knew if they hadn’t got talking about his father’s death so soon after her leaving him, and her confession about the secret she had been keeping all these years, they would have made love again by now. She had been so close to capitulating. She had resigned herself to another quick scratch of the itch. The itch he alone generated in her flesh.
But then he’d told her about his father’s accident. They had actually talked. Not just talked but communicated. He had allowed her to see the difficult situation he’d been in back then. The situation she had placed him in with her childish storming off. For almost two years she had seethed with anger at the way he had simply let her walk out of his life. Her anger had sustained her; it had motivated her to get her own business up and running. She had directed all those negative emotions into creating beauty and elegance in her clients’ homes. Priding herself on how successful she had become in such a short time, not realising her most valuable clients had come her way via Vinn.
And now she had told him what she had told no one about her background. She had shared with him her pain and shame and he hadn’t been revolted by her but rather by the situation. By the crime that was committed and the fact no justice was ever served.
You should have told him two years ago.
Ailsa closed her ears to the nudge of her conscience. She hadn’t been ready two years ago. And anyway, they hadn’t had that sort of relationship. They had communicated with their bodies but not their hearts and minds. She had allowed herself to be rushed into marriage because their lust for each other had been overwhelming. Vinn’s passion for her had taken her by surprise, as had hers for him.
It had been like an explosion the first time they’d made love. Nothing in her experience could have prepared her for it. In the past, sex was something a partner did to her and, while she had sometimes enjoyed the physical closeness, until she’d made love with Vinn, full satisfying pleasure had mostly escaped her. But Vinn’s expertise in bed had put an end to her orgasm drought. She’d become aware of her body’s potential for pleasure and felt proud of the pleasure she brought to him. She liked to think he hadn’t felt such intense pleasure with anyone else, but she knew it was fanciful thinking on her part. As soon as they were officially divorced he would be off with another partner.
It still surprised her he hadn’t already done so.
Was it more fanciful thinking to hope he cared for her? That he had in fact loved her and loved her still and wanted her back in his life? If so, why was he insisting it be a temporary affair? She’d convinced him to cut it down to one month instead of three. Surely if he wanted her back permanently he would have said so? He had enough bargaining power with Isaac’s sponsorship. He knew she would do just about anything for her younger brother.
But what if this was a plan for revenge? What if Vinn wanted her back long enough to make her fall in love with him all over again? What if his plan was to hurt her pride, the way his pride was hurt when she’d walked out of their marriage? He might feel sorry for the circumstances of her background but she knew him well enough to know that wouldn’t be enough to distract him from a goal. If he wanted revenge then what better tool than to have her fall for him, properly fall for him?
Not just in lust but in life-changing, long-lasting love.
* * *
Vinn sat by his grandfather’s bedside in ICU for a couple of hours but, apart from a brief flicker of Nonno’s eyelids and a weak grasp of his hand when he’d first arrived, the old man had been sleeping ever since. The transplant team were cautiously optimistic about his grandfather’s condition but Vinn couldn’t quite quell a lingering sense of impending doom. The hospital sounds scraped at his nerves, bringing back memories he thought he had locked away. Even the squeak of a nurse’s shoes along the corridor was enough to get his heart racing and his skin to break out in beads of sweat.
It wasn’t that he didn’t expect to lose his grandfather at some point. It was normal to outlive both your parents and grandparents, but still... Nonno was the only relative—the only person—Vinn trusted.
The only person he loved.
The only person he allowed himself to love.
What about Ailsa?
Vinn frowned at the thought of how he was fooling his grandfather about his relationship with Ailsa. Nonno had always liked her. He admired her spirit and feistiness and the way she stood up to Vinn. The only reason Vinn had orchestrated this charade was because of his grandfather’s affection for Ailsa.
It had nothing to do with him—with his feelings for her, which right at this point in time were a little confusing, to say the least. For the last twenty-two months he’d been simmering and brooding with anger about the way she’d ended their relationship. He had concentrated on those negative feelings to the point of ignoring the presence of others. Other feelings he had ruthlessly suppressed because allowing himself to love someone exposed him to the potential for hurt.
For loss.
He was fine with the one-month plan. He had cut it down from three because he was not an unreasonable man. He was a business owner himself so he knew the difficulties of running a business at arm’s length. One month with Ailsa gave him enough time to get his grandfather out of danger and stable and well enough to cope with the truth about the state of their marriage.
Vinn didn’t like thinking beyond the month ahead. But he did know one thing—he would be the one to call time because no way was he going to let Ailsa walk out on him again.
* * *
Ailsa was half asleep when she heard Vinn come back from the hospital just after midnight. Keen to find out how his grandfather was doing, she put aside her determination to keep her distance from Vinn and found him standing by the window in his study downstairs. He hadn’t even bothered to turn on the lights and was silhouetted by the moonlight.
‘Vinn?’
He turned from the window, his features cast in shadow giving him an intimidating air. ‘Go back to bed.’
Ailsa stepped further into the room, the floorboards creaking eerily as she moved closer to his tall imposing figure. ‘How is your grandfather? Were you able to speak to him?’
‘Not really.’ He pushed a hand back over his forehead, making his hair even more tousled as if it hadn�
��t been the first time that night he’d done so. ‘He was conscious for a bit but heavily dosed up with painkillers so went straight back to sleep.’
She moved closer so she could touch him on the arm. ‘Are you okay?’
He gave her a vestige of a smile and a crooked one at that. ‘It’s tough...seeing him like that. So...so helpless, hovering between life and death.’
‘Are the doctors happy with his progress so far?’
Vinn took her hand off his arm and, turning it over, began absently stroking the middle of her palm with his thumb. ‘Yes, so far, but who can predict how these things will go? There are risks with any surgery and this is one hell of an operation, especially for a man that age.’
Ailsa began her own absent stroking of his hand, well, maybe it wasn’t so absent for she couldn’t resist the feel of his skin under her touch—the warmth of it, the way his fingers were so long and tanned compared to hers. ‘Carlotta told me a little bit about your mother. How lovely she was and how much she loved you.’
He frowned. ‘When did you see her? I thought she was having the week off.’
‘She came earlier today when you were out,’ Ailsa said. ‘She brought in some shopping but she didn’t stay long. I got the feeling she wanted to see if I was really back or not.’
‘Did you argue with her?’
She tried not to be annoyed by the way he so readily took his housekeeper’s side. ‘No, not really.’
One of his eyebrows lifted. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Ailsa blew out a small breath and pulled her hand out of his hold. ‘Look, I understand your connection with her and I also understand hers to you. She genuinely cares about you and wants you to be happy. I guess she realises, and did right from the start, that you would not be happy with me in the long-term.’
‘Why would she think that?’
‘Because... I don’t love you.’ Ailsa’s mouth said the words but her heart wasn’t in agreement. Why had it taken her so long to realise the depth of her feelings for him?
Something flickered across his features. ‘Did you tell her that?’
‘I didn’t have to,’ Ailsa said. ‘She figured it out for herself. She thinks I married you to bolster my self-esteem.’
He took her left hand and ran the pad of his thumb over the setting of diamonds of her engagement ring. ‘And is that why you married me, cara?’ His voice was low and deep and with just the right amount of huskiness to make her spine loosen.
Ailsa looked into his dark-as-pitch gaze and wondered that he couldn’t see it for himself. That along with her need to boost her self-esteem there had been another reason she had married him. A reason she had denied and disguised because if she admitted, even to herself, that she loved him it would make her decision to remain childless all the more heartbreaking. ‘This is why I married you.’ She stepped up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
His hands settled on her hips, drawing her closer as he took control of the kiss. His tongue came in search of hers, making her whimper as his body stirred and thickened against hers. His stubble grazed her face as he changed position but she didn’t care. She was hungry for his touch. She was aching in every cell of her body for his possession. No one kissed her the way he did. No one made her senses sing the way he did. No one could trigger this torrent of lust the way he did. Her hands went to the buttons of his shirt, tearing at them with careless disregard for their welfare. She wanted him with a fierce need that clawed at her insides. And if the surging potency of him pressing against her was any indication, he wanted her just as badly. Just as ferociously.
Ailsa was only wearing a silky wrap and a slip of a nightgown and soon it was on the floor in a silken puddle at her feet. His ruined shirt joined it and then his trousers and underwear and socks and shoes. Then she was on the floor on her back without any real memory of how she got there as she was so intent on devouring his mouth and clutching at his hard male flesh.
‘We should slow down or things will get out of—’
‘Don’t you dare slow down.’ Ailsa dug her hands into the taut muscles of his buttocks and held him to her pulsing need. ‘I want you. Now.’
He smiled against her mouth and drove into her with a gasp-inducing thrust that made every intimate muscle in her body weep with relief. He set a fast pace but she was with him all the way, panting and clawing and whimpering as the sensations built like a tornado approaching. She could feel the carpet burning the back of her shoulders but she was beyond caring. The need for release was so overwhelming she thought she might die if it didn’t come soon.
And then she was there when he added that extra friction with his fingers against her swollen clitoris. She came with a cry that sounded so primal and wild she could hardly believe it came from her throat. Her body bucked and thrashed beneath his with the force of her orgasm, waves and waves rolling through her. His release came on the tail-end of hers, the sheer power of it reverberating through her flesh, his deep agonised groan as primal-sounding as hers.
Ailsa lay panting on the floor under the press of his now relaxed body, her hands moving up and down his back and shoulders in the quiet of the afterglow. The moonlight shone in from the window, casting their entwined bodies in a ghostly light. It could well have been two years ago after one of their passionate lovemaking sessions...but this time somehow it felt different. She couldn’t explain it... Perhaps it was because he knew about her background and the sheer relief of not having to hide that from him any more made her feel freer, less weighted. Less abnormal.
Vinn propped himself up on his arms and looked into her eyes. ‘I didn’t rush you too much?’
Ailsa gave him a lopsided smile and brushed some tousled strands of his hair back off his face. ‘I’m fine apart from some mild carpet burn and stubble rash.’
Concern shadowed his gaze and he moved his weight off her and gently turned her so her back was facing him. He brought his mouth down to both of her shoulder blades in turn, pressing soft soothing kisses to the skin. She couldn’t remember a time when he had been so tender, as if she were something precious and fragile and he couldn’t bear to hurt her even if inadvertently. He turned her back over so she was face up and then he softly ran a fingertip over the circle of skin on her chin. ‘I keep forgetting how sensitive you are.’
‘My skin might be but I’m certainly not.’ It was a lie and she was sure he knew it.
His finger circled her still tingling mouth, his gaze thoughtful as it held hers. ‘I’m not so sure you’re as tough as you make everyone think.’
Ailsa worried he might see more than she wanted him to see, like how she was falling back in love with him. But maybe a part of her had always been in love with him. Now that part was growing, expanding, swelling inside her until there was no room for the hate she had claimed to feel for him.
She averted her gaze from his and focused her attention instead on the dip at the base of his neck between his clavicles, tracing her finger down from there to his sternum. ‘Are we going to lie here on the floor all night or go up to bed?’
Vinn tipped up her chin so her gaze had to meet his. ‘Which bed are you thinking of occupying? Mine or the spare bedroom?’
Ailsa gave him a rueful twist of her mouth. ‘Do I have a choice?’
‘That depends.’ He brushed her lips with his, once, twice, three times.
She ran her tongue over her tingling lips and tasted his salt. ‘On what?’
He wound a strand of her hair around one of his fingertips, his eyes still holding hers with quiet intensity. ‘On whether we’re talking about my willpower or yours?’
Ailsa sent her fingertip down his abdomen to the hardened length of him, circling him with her fingers, moving the pad of her thumb over the moist tip where his body was signalling its readiness to mate. ‘How’s yours doing so far?’
His dark eyes glinted. ‘It’s
toast,’ he said and his mouth came down on hers.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FOLLOWING EVENING on their way back from visiting his grandfather at the hospital, Vinn suggested a night out. ‘Just like old times.’
Ailsa wasn’t so sure she wanted to go back to the ‘old times’. It had been fun going out for dinner at amazing restaurants were they were waited on like royalty and to nightclubs or exclusive bars, but when had they talked to each other on those occasions? She wanted to know more about his mother’s death and how it had impacted on him. And even though it intensified her guilt over leaving him the way she had, she wanted to know more about his father’s accident and how he’d juggled everything in the aftermath.
She waited until they were seated in one of the restaurants where they’d dined in the past, with drinks in front of them and their meals ordered, before she brought up the subject. ‘Vinn... I’ve been wondering how you managed everything when your father died. Your work, your grandfather’s grief. The other accident victims.’
His expression flickered like he was masking deep physical pain. He seemed to waver for a moment, as if he was torn between wanting to change the subject and offloading some of the burden he’d gone through. ‘It was difficult...’ He paused for a beat. ‘Different from when my mother died. I felt guilty about that, actually. That I wasn’t grieving for my father the way I had for my mother. I don’t miss him even now and yet not a day goes past without me thinking of her.’
Ailsa reached across the table and laid her hand on the top of his, her voice choking up as if it were her own mother she had lost. ‘Oh, Vinn. You must have loved her so much and you were so terribly young.’
He turned over her hand and covered it with his. ‘Even though I was young, I remember everything about her. Her smile, her hugs, the way she lit up a room when she walked into it.’ His fingers began playing with hers. ‘When my father injured those other innocent people I couldn’t get them out of my mind. The kids, I mean, not just the parents, although that was bad enough. I couldn’t bear the thought of those little kids growing up without their mother.’
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