The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge

by Kate Walker

  If he touched her then he would not be able to stop at just that.

  ‘Mark,’ he said in answer to her puzzled frown. ‘Do you miss your husband…?’

  ‘Miss him…’

  The words were punctuated by a hiccup and another of those sniffs, Emily’s voice quavering as her lips trembled, fighting against the control she was clearly struggling to impose. Her neat jaw had tightened, but her shoulders were shaking and those blue eyes, bleached colourless by the moon, swam with more unshed tears.

  ‘Oh, dear God, no! I don’t miss him at all.’

  Was she laughing or weeping—or some weird combination of the two? Whatever it was, she sounded as if she was about to break, to shatter into tiny pieces.

  ‘But…Emilia, what is it?’

  That name was the last straw, Emily told herself. The soft, shaken sound of Vito’s own private name for her was the thing that finally shattered her precarious grip on her self-control. She couldn’t hold back any longer, couldn’t keep a grip on the wild combination of tears and laughter that threatened to make her splinter into tiny pieces.

  Vito had thought that she was weeping because she missed Mark. He had taken the tears that she had shed for him to be for the other man instead. She couldn’t take it; couldn’t cope with the idea. It made her feel as if her heart was actually breaking apart, ripping to pieces inside her chest.

  ‘Oh, Vito…’

  The tears were pouring down her cheeks, drenching her skin, and she couldn’t see him from behind the curtain of water that blurred her vision. Perhaps that was what finally broke through the restraint she had been imposing on herself, gave her the strength to finally speak, finally admit the truth.

  ‘Vito, you obviously never knew my husband, otherwise you wouldn’t even ask such a question. You wouldn’t need to…’

  ‘And why is that, tesoro?’

  Vito had come to sit on the bed, his closeness and the intimate scent of his exposed skin making Emily’s heart kick sharply in her chest, and she snatched in an unwary breath as her pulse started to race.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it? Tell me about Mark—tell me the truth.’

  ‘The—the truth is that Mark—wasn’t a man who was easy to love—though I tried—I really tried.’

  Her tongue was tangling up in the words, stumbling awkwardly as they fell over one another as she tried to get them out. She had held on to her secrets for so long and now, at last, she wanted the truth out in the open and spoken once and for all.

  ‘I loved him at the start when he asked me to marry him, and I was happy then—just for a while—but then things changed…he changed…’

  And now there was no holding back. It was as if the darkness and the stillness of the night had released the lock she had kept on her tongue, pushed her into speech so that everything came tumbling out without plan or order, Emily just letting them fall.

  She told of the drinking, the petty tyrannies that had got worse as Mark’s alcohol intake had spiralled, the verbal bullying that had swiftly become physical.

  ‘He hit you!’ Vito’s fury was evident in the way that the words hissed from between clenched teeth, the tight curl of his strong hands into powerful fists on the cream bedcoverings. ‘And still you stayed?’

  ‘No!’

  Emily shook her head so violently that her blonde hair flew out wildly around her head, soft strands of it brushing against Vito’s face, snagging on the late night growth of beard that darkened his chin. Slowly he reached up a hand to ease it away then froze as Emily spoke again.

  ‘No, I didn’t stay—I left him. No one would believe me when I told them what Mark was like, least of all his family. They were sure that I was lying; that I was making it all up. So—so I went. I started divorce proceedings…’

  She’d caught the sudden tension in the powerful body next to hers, heard the muttered curse as Vito registered what she’d said.

  ‘I had it all in hand—or thought I had. But then fate stepped in and ruined everything.’

  The burn in Vito’s dark eyes was almost too much for her. She felt as if it had seared over her skin, scraping off a much-needed protective layer and leaving her shockingly, frighteningly vulnerable. Her own gaze dropped to stare at her hands and so she saw his long bronzed fingers unclench and move, coming to cover hers, curl around them softly.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked and his voice was as raw and rough as the feeling in her nerves.

  ‘Mark had been drinking heavily for years. I didn’t know it because he’d hidden it from me at first, and even when I knew he drank I didn’t know how much. He’d damaged himself terribly—so badly that he had a massive stroke, and then another. He actually died for a few minutes. They managed to bring him round eventually but a part of his brain had been so badly damaged by lack of oxygen that it never recovered.’

  Emily drew in a long, low breath and swallowed hard, fighting for the strength to tell the rest of the story. She felt Vito move even closer, felt his arm come round her to support her and leaned back gratefully against its strength.

  ‘The strokes destroyed large chunks of his memory. When he came round he didn’t know about the years that had passed—the years we were married. They didn’t exist for him. As far as he was concerned, he and I had only just married. We were still in the—in our honeymoon period.’

  ‘And he didn’t recall the divorce proceedings?’

  Vito didn’t need to be told. His voice was as calm and sure as if she’d already told him. Slowly Emily nodded, eyes clouding with more unshed tears.

  ‘He’d never even signed the papers that had been sent to him. I don’t know if he saw them.’

  ‘And you went back to him?’

  ‘I had to—he was the Mark I had married. The Mark I’d once loved—and he was so distressed when I wasn’t there, it might have killed him. I had to be there with him; to take care of him. But it was wearing—exhausting—and there was never any hope of a cure. The damage to his brain was too severe. But one day I just had to have a break. I had to get away, if only for twenty-four hours.’

  ‘The day we met?’

  ‘The day we met.’

  Emily’s echoing of his words was low and despondent and one finger traced out the pattern on the bedspread, her eyes fixed on the small movement.

  ‘I chose that day specially.’

  Ask me why, she pleaded in the privacy of her thoughts. Please ask me why.

  But Vito didn’t even need to ask.

  ‘It was the day you had thought you would be divorced. If your husband had been able to sign the papers…’

  ‘Yes.’

  Emily’s head nodded slowly, her hair brushing against his chest, and she heard his sharp intake of breath at the soft contact with his skin.

  ‘The day I thought I would have—should have had—my freedom. Instead, what I had was a phone call telling me that my husband was asking for me…’

  Vito’s breath hissed in between his teeth once again, but in a very different way this time, and he rested his forehead against hers, his eyes just dark, blurred pools as they looked deep into hers.

  ‘And I hurled abuse at you—threw you out. Mi dispiace—forgive me.’

  ‘You didn’t know the whole truth.’ Honesty forced her to say it. ‘I didn’t tell you.’

  That made him lift his proud head, burning eyes still locked with hers, his hands curving over the fine bones of her shoulders as he held her slightly away from him.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He gave the question more emphasis than she would ever have expected, the low-toned words almost fierce in their demand.

  ‘Why?’

  Emily’s head came up, her face pale, the set of her jaw and chin determined, her blue eyes clouded with memory.

  ‘You didn’t have the right to know. You judged me without thinking—you condemned me without a trial. And I’d vowed never to share my life with any other man.’

  ‘But you shared my bed—shared y
our body with me, but you wouldn’t share your past, your marriage?’

  ‘It wasn’t my secret to share. Mark was ill—dying—and I never told anyone. I never told those who loved me. That isn’t just sharing—that’s intimacy. And we weren’t intimate, except in one particular way.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was a new and very different note in Vito’s voice, one that spoke of distance and withdrawal and the very opposite of that intimacy that she had spoken of. And it was only when she heard it that she realised that something else had been in his tone earlier, something that had now vanished completely, leaving his voice cold and heartless without it. Something twisted cruelly in her heart to hear it, a terrible sense of loss. With her realisation of how much she loved this man so fresh in her mind, she felt that so badly that it made her close her eyes against the pain.

  ‘And that physical intimacy is something you regret.’

  If possible, Vito’s voice was even harder now, making her closed lids fly open in shock and distress.

  ‘Oh, no! No! I don’t regret that. Like you, I’ve never been able to forget our night together. And like you I want that to go on and on until we are sated on each other…’

  Which she could never be. It was impossible, unbelievable; she couldn’t even begin to imagine that happening. She had only to see him, think of him and she was hungry for him.

  ‘So then why are you keeping your distance from me?’

  Why was she? Wasn’t the truth that she was punishing herself as much as him? That she was disturbing her nights and making her days long and wearing with the need for him gnawing at her with every second, by denying the wildly blazing attraction that was there between them every second? Even now his closeness, the heady scent of his skin, the touch of his hands on hers was making her pulse throb and cruel hunger uncoil low down in her body, demanding appeasement.

  She might not be able to accept his marriage ultimatum, but she could accept this for what it was—simple human need and pleasure in both its most basic and most sophisticated forms, that he could give without commitment and she could give…

  …With love.

  That thought almost destroyed her, but then Vito’s hand moved on hers and her heart leapt again, her pulse rate and the hunger spiking with it, and she could no more have prevented herself from acting on the drumming demand of her senses than she could have stopped herself from breathing.

  Leaning forward, she pressed a soft, tentative kiss at the corner of his mouth and knew as soon as the taste of his skin was in her mouth that there was no way she could stop there. Particularly not when she felt and saw that beautifully sensual mouth curl up at the corners before he angled his head towards her and kissed her back.

  ‘I thought you might find me—changed,’ she murmured against his mouth, praying that the belief she was embarrassed would give an explanation for the rush of blood to her cheeks, the sudden catch in her breath. ‘That you might not think me attractive the way I am now.’

  ‘You cannot be serious.’ Vito’s voice had thickened noticeably even on the few words. ‘You think that I would not like what my child has done to your body? Do you not know that it has made you even more beautiful—more feminine in my eyes?’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘But nothing carissima—nothing!’

  He punctuated the words with kisses, soft at first then increasing in pressure along the curve of her mouth, the length of her jaw-line.

  ‘You are all I ever wanted in a woman—and all the more so now that you carry my baby. Can you doubt that?’

  ‘I—I…’ Emily tried to answer him but the effect that his kisses, his touch was having on her was making her head swim so that she couldn’t collect her thoughts, couldn’t make her tongue work.

  It was as if she had been starving for the long months they had been apart, even the long week of distance she had forced on herself, and now she was presented with the most tempting feast imaginable and told to help herself to what she wanted. His skin was like heated satin under her fingers, his touch a delight that woke further, deeper hungers along every nerve path in her body. His kiss seemed to draw out her soul and take possession of it, taking her heart into his keeping, too, where she knew she would never, ever leave.

  ‘Then let me show you, tesoro, let me show you—with my mouth and my hands, with my body—how beautiful you are to me.’

  Vito was pushing her back against the pillows as he spoke, kissing her as they went, smoothing the straps of her nightgown down her arms, baring the swell of her breasts to his touch. When he cupped them in his fingers they felt warmer, heavier than ever before and the darker pout of the nipples, the soft tracery of delicate blue veins under the whiteness of her flesh was an enticement to the caress of his mouth, the stroke of his tongue.

  ‘Just tell me that this is safe,’ he murmured against her skin, inhaling the warm scent of her body as he spoke. ‘Tell me that there is no way that I will harm you or our child…’

  If there was then he would have to stop, though God alone knew how he would manage it. Already his hunger was raging out of control, the need to touch, to kiss, to taste overriding all other considerations but…

  So it was with a rush of wild relief that he heard her soft laughter, felt it ripple along her body, caught it under his mouth at her throat.

  ‘No risk,’ she told him, the warmth of her voice raw-edged with an echo of the hunger he was feeling too. ‘None at all.’

  It was all he needed. Moments later he had lost himself in the treasures of her body, growing both amazed and delighted by the changes that her pregnancy had created in her. Her breasts were fuller, richer, than ever before, and sensitive—dear God, so sensitive to every touch that she cried out at even the faint drift of his breath over her straining nipples.

  Her body too was so much more lush than the form he had caressed and known five months before, the swell of her belly curving into his hands as if it had been made to fit them perfectly. He smoothed his fingers over the peachy skin, the growing shape of his child within her, and felt the burn of tears at the backs of his eyes as his throat closed up with wild, fierce pride.

  He bent his mouth to the precious mound, kissing softly, and could not hold back a cry of pure joy when underneath his lips the baby kicked hard and fast as if in recognition of just who he was and why he was there.

  ‘Mio bambino,’ he muttered thickly, needing his native Italian for the words, the cold alien sound of English not adequate to express the wonder of it. ‘Mio bambino.’

  But then Emily’s hands reached for him, pulling him up to her again, her mouth taking his with a hunger that stunned and dazed him, and from the moment that her delicate fingers moved over his skin he was lost, adrift, all control evaporating in the heat of the flames of desire that drove his senses towards total meltdown. Somehow he managed to find enough strength to control his taking of her, to ease himself into her rather than the fierce, driving possession his body craved. But even as he tried to hold himself above her, his forearms taking most of the weight, even as he fought for restraint, Emily was moving underneath him, rubbing herself against him, destroying any hope of further moderation.

  With a harsh cry of surrender he gave up the struggle, let her lead him, take from him what she wanted. Her arms imprisoned him, the heated slickness of her femininity enclosed him, and their bodies strained and moved together, yearning, seeking, reaching for the ultimate pleasure that was suddenly so near, so very, very close.

  Release came with a ferocity and power that made him feel as if his body was breaking into pieces, shattering like glass. He gathered her up into his arms, enfolded her so tight that he could hardly breathe against her arching form, and with her name on his lips he fell over the top and into the dark abyss of wild, blazing, blinding, total sensual oblivion.

  And it was while he still lay against her, sweat-slicked, eyes closed and breathing hard, that he heard her draw in a deep, uneven sigh and speak.

 
And knew that the words she said were not the ones he wanted to hear at all.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘I’LL marry you.’

  Emily wasn’t even fully aware of having said the words the first time; couldn’t be sure that they hadn’t just sounded in her head. But when she heard them in her thoughts she knew that they were real, and they were right—they were words she couldn’t hold back; words she just had to say. Words that she would never, ever wish undone.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind. I’ll do as you want and I will marry you. I have to marry you. After that, how could I ever marry anyone else?’

  It felt so good to have spoken; to have the words out; to have the declaration made. She might not be brave enough to admit how much she loved him, but she had come just as close as she dared. She had told him that she could never marry anyone else and surely that…

  But there was something wrong.

  It was the silence that got to her first. The silence that had a dark, shadowed quality about it. And that shadow sent a shivering chill crawling its way over her skin, raising goose-pimples as it passed, making her shiver outwardly—and feel like miserable death deep inside.

  ‘Vito?’

  His name was barely a whisper on her lips and she did not dare to open her eyes. His total stillness told her that something was not at all right. And the silence sent out warnings that what she had said was not what he wanted to hear.

  ‘Vito?’ she tried again, still hiding behind the concealing shield of her closed eyelids.

  ‘I said I—’

  ‘I know what you said.’

  Vito’s response was curt, harsh, sounding all the more so because she heard it ‘blind’, unable to see his face.

  ‘I heard you quite clearly.’

  There was a rustle of bedclothes, the sound of movement that told Emily he had slid off the bed, stood up. But still she dared not open her eyes. There was such a terrible, ominous note in his voice that she screwed her eyelids even more tightly shut, suddenly terrified of what she might see if she opened them.