by Dani Collins
She swallowed, weirdly affected by that statement. A sip of wine was in order, to help her digest everything he’d said. Warmth ran down her limbs.
“Believe it or not, I don’t want a spineless wife,” he said. “Yes-men annoy me. That’s why I’m furious to learn that all this time, when I thought you were content, you’ve been miserable and keeping it from me.”
She bit the insides of her lips before she said simply, “It never mattered to anyone how I felt. My parents didn’t care and boarding school—” She shrugged that off. No welcome for whiners there.
Their feuilletés arrived, distracting them for a moment as they broke the delicate puff pastries. They were tiny, only two bites, and shaped like fish. Creamy salmon and asparagus filling oozed out.
“Tell me more about your parents. You said a few days ago that your father didn’t have your best interests at heart, but he was very shrewd in our meetings. He wanted a good marriage for you.”
She dipped her chin, reproving him for thinking her father’s demands had had anything to do with her. “If you are a caretaker of your family fortune, he is a hoarder, one who is frustrated that he can’t take his money with him. He wanted a successor and got a vessel. I told you about my mother’s miscarriages. I didn’t fully appreciate how horrible that must have been for her until now, when I have my own baby, but I’ve always felt...” She shrugged. “Obligated to do what they wanted, otherwise why did she go through all that to have me? But given her delicate pregnancies and bouts of depression when she lost them... I assume she went through spells of refusing to sleep with my father and so he cheated. It didn’t make for a very happy home to grow up in.”
Her fork went under the last minuscule bite of the delicious starter. As she swallowed, she looked up to see him watching her. Was that compassion in his gaze? Concern?
“Please don’t pity me. It is what it is.”
He drew a breath and stood, coming to her side where he held out a hand.
“What—?” She looked up, up, up to muscled shoulders straining the pin-striped fabric of his shirt. His stance was one of invitation, not intimidation, but her heart still skipped in alarm. She caught the faint scent of the aftershave he’d applied this morning. Its spicy fragrance was overlain with the more simple, masculine fragrance of him, heady and drugging.
“The music has started. Let’s dance.”
“I— Here?” She glanced around at the room containing a handful of empty tables, sparks of light glancing off the glass of the framed sketches. “There’s not a lot of room.”
“We don’t need a lot of room. I’m going to hold you very close.”
Little shivers went through her as he picked up her hand and she found herself standing, letting him draw her to him. He’d done this before, on their honeymoon, when she’d been so apprehensive about their wedding night she had bordered on telling him to “just get it over with.”
He had done this, though. Held her. Soothed her. His touch was light, yet confident. He was warm and strong, his arms a place of safety while the brush of their bodies revealed he was aroused.
She wanted to weep with relief that she could still affect him, but anxiety struck at the same time. “You know I can’t—”
“I know. I still want to hold you,” he murmured, lips brushing her brow. “I wish you’d told me about your parents before. You want a better life for Lorenzo, don’t you? We can have one, Octavia. I promise you we can. Give our marriage another try,” he coaxed, more gentle than dictatorial, but it was a command, not a request. “We’ll both give it a proper try.”
Oh, he was smooth, lulling her with the lazy circles of his palm on her back.
“I suppose I should take heart from the fact you’re saying that even though we can’t sleep together,” she muttered, turning her curled fingers on his chest to look at her fingernails.
“We’ll sleep together, cara.” He stopped swaying and tilted up her chin. His strong thumb caressed her skin while he lightly cupped her throat in his wide hand.
She instinctively turned her hand on his chest to press, staying him from making an advance.
Their gazes locked.
He must have felt the way her pulse was kicking. Beneath her palm, she was surprised to feel his heart punching with similar ferocity, making her tingle all over, as if they were caught in a force field that held them joined and motionless, frozen with anticipation.
He was going to kiss her.
“Do you want to?” he asked in a graveled tone. He wasn’t asking about a kiss. He was asking if she wanted to sleep with him.
She wished she could look away from his gray-green eyes. “I just told you I can’t,” she reminded him.
A very faint smile tilted his mouth. “That’s not what I asked.”
And she was transported back to the first time he had kissed her. After spending two hours locked in her father’s office, days after their first meeting at the gala, he had left the room and his tracking gaze had found her and locked in. He’d come across to put a ring on her finger and asked, “Shall we seal the deal?”
She’d already been nervous while he spoke to her father, then terrified as she realized what he meant. It hadn’t been her first kiss, but it had certainly been the first one she’d felt like pure spirits burning down her middle. Heat had poured across her skin and made her fingers and toes tingle. She’d opened her mouth instinctively, accepting the exploration of his tongue. She’d loved it.
A thousand kisses had followed, all of them exquisitely delicious. She loved kissing him. Nothing compared.
But if she kissed him now, it would imply agreement.
Doubts continued to float and burst like rainbow-colored bubbles around her, but her gaze dropped to his mouth. She was giving in. She could feel herself surrendering the fight...
Because she really, really wanted him to kiss her.
His head lowered.
She expected a crush of ownership. Triumph even.
He kissed her like he had that first time. Lightly. Sweetly. Gradually coaxing her to part her lips and let the heat and dampness spread.
She was the one who slid her arms around his neck and leaned in and encouraged him to increase the pressure. She opened her mouth and fisted her hand in his hair and punished him for making her wait so long to feel alive. She had missed the sexual energy, the rush of excitement, the provocative differences in their bodies that stimulated her in ways she couldn’t even explain. She kissed him hard and drove her tongue into his mouth and made a noise of anger and relief.
He locked hard arms around her, holding her tight, just short of squeezing her. His hands moved with possessive familiarity, one splaying under her bottom and angling her hips into his groin.
She rubbed against him, inciting him with the grind of her hips and the scrape of her teeth against his lips. She wanted to bite him. Hurt him.
He grunted, kissing her harder as he took control, holding her with restrained power just short of crushing her while he pulled at her lips and ravaged her mouth.
To hell with her recovery and the tenderness across her belly. She wanted him. Her body went weak, signaling her willingness to be taken.
She felt the reaction in him, the gather of his muscles as if he would pick her up and carry her to the nearest surface. The floor. He had in the past.
He tore his mouth from hers instead, one hand moving to the back of her head to tuck her crown under his chin where he held her as though protecting her from the fireball that had exploded into flames between them. They panted, hearts slamming.
To her eternal shock, she realized they were in a restaurant. Voices drifted over the music from the other rooms.
She closed her eyes, needing this moment to collect herself. That had been raw and voracious. Alarming. They’d never been like that before. It
made her a little frightened for when they could make love again. They might shred each other to pieces.
“It hurts,” he said gruffly. The hand low on her spine pressed just enough to make her aware of the iron-hard muscle digging into her tender abdomen. “It hurts to touch you and not have you. To smell your hair and feel you against me and kiss without having the rest. It damned well hurts, Octavia. That’s why I stayed away. But I’m not letting you leave me.”
Fine trembles gripped her as she tried to think and couldn’t. She just wanted to feel. She wanted him. She wanted to believe this was something they could build on.
“You haven’t even said you’re sorry,” she managed to say, forcing herself to pull back enough to see him. Pathetic as she was, she needed his support to stand, even as her voice cracked with suffering.
Remorse convulsed his features.
“I am sorry.” It wasn’t an apology. He wasn’t trying to convince her. It was a statement. “Deeply sorry. I took you for granted and underestimated my cousin. But how can I ask your forgiveness when I’ll never forgive myself?”
She’d never heard that particular scrape in his voice before. Never seen such a bleak, devastating anguish leech out all the green to completely gray his eyes. His fingers on her arms were gentle, but she felt pain from them. His pain.
An urge to comfort pressed her heart toward him, giving her a flat, aching sensation against the inner wall of her chest. She wanted to tell him it was all right, but it wasn’t. And he knew it. He felt it. He wasn’t as oblivious as she feared, which filled her with that wretched, misguided hope that kept sparkling before her like a lure.
He very tenderly caressed her cheek, fingertips smoothing her hair back and tracing a line down her jaw. The backs of his knuckles grazed under her chin and down the delicate, pulsing cords in her throat.
“We’ll save sleeping together for when we reach Italy. I want you to rest as much as you can while we’re here. Heal.” His touch, the look in his eyes, made it sound as though he wanted more than physical repair for her. As though he understood her heart was fractured and needed time.
The first tendrils of mending began as she glimpsed the man who’d turned her inside out on a three-week honeymoon, concerned and focused and with a touch like magic, thumb grazing her bottom lip so it felt puffy and incapable of anything but kissing.
Their next course came, but they just stood there, looking into each other’s eyes. After a long moment, he dropped one more very, very gentle kiss on her mouth and slowly released her, leaving her burning as he drew her back to their table.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE WENT TO Naples with him. They landed three weeks later and went straight to see his grandfather at the Castello di Ferrante.
The castello would be Alessandro’s one day, but all of his extended family came and went, treating it as a hotel. A few members were more or less permanent, something Octavia privately viewed as squatting. Alessandro’s youngest sister had been one of them until recently, before her modeling career took off. Now she might have a room here, but she spent most of her time in Milan, Paris and New York.
From the few times they’d spoken, Octavia had liked all of her husband’s sisters, but the older two had families of their own and lived in other parts of the country so she didn’t see them often. Alessandro had far more cousins than she did and was close with many of them. It was an odd dynamic for her to have been thrust into since most of her father’s siblings had emigrated to America and Australia before she was born and her mother was standoffish with her side. Octavia had grown up in a familial void made worse by being an only child. It had made her feel like an anomaly in her own country, where big dinners and frequent reunions were the norm.
She’d always wanted to feel a part of a warm, gregarious family and suspected she would turn into the clichéd Italian mother doting on her son into his forties, but for now she was still daunted by the many-stranded web of Alessandro’s blood ties.
And she had never been able to see herself as the matriarch of that network and this house. Whenever she came here to the castello, she felt like a very temporary, barely tolerated guest.
She loved the place all the same.
As they began the climb that wound through the lower portion of the vineyard, she took in the beauty of the estate. Even in winter it was covered in the lush confusion of the estate manager’s intensive farming techniques. With the land so fertile, Alessandro’s grandfather put every speck of dirt to work. Olive trees bordered the rows of grapes. Beneath the orange trees, the lavender had been cut back for winter. Garlic and runner beans would soon spring up in the lemon grove. Strawberries, their leaves faded by winter, surrounded the fig trees and the stacked plots where the tomatoes and basil would grow were freshly turned and ready.
Then the house rose to its full glory. Its yellow stone and red-tiled roof held a matte finish in the weak sunlight, but its sprawling wings and elegant balconies were as aristocratic as ever. It was gracefully aged, never old.
The driver pulled the SUV to a stop in a crunch of gravel between the fountain and the wide front steps. They were keeping the protection of a security team as a precaution, but Bree was quick to leap from the front seat and scan the layered balconies and small terraces across the upper levels of the castello. She was only four years younger than Octavia, but made her feel ancient.
Octavia bumped knuckles with Alessandro as they both tried to release the baby from the straps of his car seat.
“I’ll do it,” Alessandro said, but caught her hand. “Rings still don’t fit?”
“I didn’t try them this morning. Too tired,” she said truthfully, disturbed as he gave her fingers a gentle massage, trickling warmth through her.
She knew what he was doing with all these seemingly absent caresses; he’d done the same thing in the weeks leading up to their wedding night. It was a type of calculated seduction and she wished she didn’t respond to it, but she did. He was gorgeous in a three-piece suit and tie, while she felt dowdy in a wrap dress and low heels, her makeup applied hastily on the plane to try to disguise the circles under her eyes.
“Things will be calmer now we’re home,” he promised.
Except they weren’t home. They were staying here at the castello, through his grandfather’s birthday, before they would finally return to the town house in a week or so to properly start their life afresh.
She wished she had as much confidence in their marriage now as she’d had going into it nearly a year ago. Ignorance was bliss, she supposed, because today she held a lot of trepidation for the gauntlet that had to be endured here and the return to the life she’d failed to master the first time around.
But Alessandro meant that being away from his mother would be more peaceful.
Octavia missed her already and hadn’t wanted to leave London, but Ysabelle had been leaving to see her count anyway. Besides, every time Octavia had decided she didn’t want to come to Italy with Alessandro, he’d done something considerate like take Lorenzo when he was fussing or brought her something to eat or drink when she sat down to nurse. It had been a lot easier to resent him when they’d been apart. When he was near, handsome and attentive, dropping little kisses and caresses on her, she slipped back into blind adoration.
More important, even though he happily handed off diaper duty to the nanny, she had observed him showing a sincere attachment to their son. This morning she’d overheard their man-to-man chat about world markets and which investments to avoid for the next year. It amused her all over again thinking of it. He’d sounded so serious, asking Lorenzo for his opinion on the matter.
So there was one fact she couldn’t deny in all of this: Lorenzo deserved to have his father in his life.
Which meant she had to find her place in Alessandro’s.
No matter how daunting the prospect.
She drew a long, subtle breath as the maggiordomo came out the open doors of the castello and down the stairs. He greeted her with one of his polite nods. “The family is eager to meet the new arrival, Signora. They’re waiting in the front parlor.”
Wonderful. Octavia found a smile.
Alessandro came around the car with Lorenzo bundled in one arm. He held out his free hand to her, sparing a moment to offer her a steady look. Gratitude? Pride? She wasn’t sure how to interpret it.
She swallowed, unsteady as they climbed the stairs and entered together.
The first time they’d come here, fresh off their honeymoon, Primo’s sister had taunted Alessandro for not carrying her over the threshold. Alessandro had dismissed the remark, stating it was his grandfather’s house and not appropriate.
Octavia hadn’t said anything, but Alessandro hadn’t performed the whimsical ceremony at the town house, either, and his overlooking of the gesture had felt like a put-down. It had been the first hard landing into reality after the giddy spell of lovemaking and basking in his attention. She’d never been able to walk through this door without thinking of his dismissive tone and how harshly it reminded her that their marriage was a business transaction, not something based on sentiment or affection.
And here she was again. Not Octavia, the woman he loved and carried into his family home, but the consigned wife he’d pressured to accompany him. If that wasn’t lukewarm enough, she nearly caught frostbite from the group that greeted them. She nervously scanned the faces, so many of them Primo’s closest relations, including Primo’s parents.
Was it paranoid, now that Primo’s subterfuges were exposed, to see all this occupancy of the castello in a new light? She took a half step closer to her husband, disturbed.
One of Alessandro’s spinster aunts, a flighty wisp of a woman who preferred her paints over just about anything else and usually took no interest in enigmatic things like children, was the first to speak.
“Handsome. Like his father,” she pronounced after a brief look at Lorenzo.