Buying His Bride of Convenience

by Michelle Smart

  As if he recognised what was happening to her, Daniele stilled, breathing heavily into her ear, allowing her to cling to him and ride the waves until they lessened, and then, with a groan, he started again, this time harder, as if he’d been waiting for her release of pleasure before taking his own.

  His thrusts became more frenzied, his groans deeper and then, with one last long, forceful drive, he shuddered wildly and then collapsed on top of her.

  With the echoes of her own climax still pulsing through her, Eva held him tightly in her arms, welcoming his weight and his hot breath dancing on the skin of her neck.

  Drums beat loudly through her, in her head, in her ears, so loudly he must be able to feel it too.

  It seemed to take for ever for all the sensations to evaporate but even when the throbs in her core had stopped she could still feel the remnants of what they’d just shared, a newness in her veins that she’d never known before.

  Brushing her lips against his damp cheek, a feeling of blissful contentment settled in her chest and she took a long breath.

  ‘Am I hurting you?’ he asked hoarsely, his voice muffled against her neck.

  ‘No.’ She stroked her fingers over his back and breathed again. Her throat was closing and her lungs tightening but it wasn’t Daniele’s weight causing it. She swallowed and felt her chest hitch, felt hot tears burn in her eyes that she blinked back frantically.

  She was going to cry.

  She mustn’t cry.

  But as soon as she thought it, a tear leaked out and landed with a soft plop on the pillow.

  There was a delicious languidness in Daniele’s limbs. Sleep was snaking its way in his brain but he resisted the need to switch off, certain he must be crushing Eva with his weight. Reluctantly, he moved off her and rested his head on the pillow beside hers, and hooked an arm around her waist.

  He’d never experienced before in his life anything like what they’d just shared.

  It had been more than just sex, although he couldn’t have said why, just knew that it had been incredible. He felt different...

  As he was trying to pinpoint what felt so different inside him he saw with a start that Eva’s eyes were shining with tears.

  ‘What’s wrong, tesoro?’ Instinctively he gathered her to him so she was draped against him with her face resting on his chest.

  He felt her swallow and heard the choke of held-back tears.

  ‘Was my lovemaking so bad it’s made you want to cry?’ He strove for a lightness in tone but the fresh thuds of his heart made him fail.

  It worked, though. She gave a tiny, shuddering laugh and groped for his hand. Entwining their fingers together, she squeezed.

  ‘I didn’t know it could be like that,’ she whispered.

  Making circular motions over her back with his free hand, he rested his cheek on the top of her head. ‘Are you saying it like a good thing or a bad thing?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘How can it be both?’

  ‘It just is.’ She was silent for a moment before saying, ‘I wasn’t taught anything about sex when I was growing up. Johann and I were both virgins when we married. Neither of us really knew what we were doing. Johann knew the basics but I was clueless.’ Her voice dropped even lower. ‘I didn’t know it could feel so good.’

  She didn’t have to say anything more. She’d already confessed that she’d never felt desire for the boy she’d married when she’d been only eighteen, a marriage he’d now formed a solid impression of that had been more of a friendly affection than that of true lovers.

  He knew without her having to say that what they’d just shared had conjured up a wealth of mixed emotions in her. He guessed guilt played a part in it that she had found something with him that had been missing from the boy she’d had a genuine, if friendly, love for. It should make him preen but it didn’t. All it did was make him feel sad for the young life that had been taken away too soon, which was actually quite disconcerting. Empathy had never been one of his traits.

  ‘Eva...’ He hesitated. He no longer felt sleepy. ‘Eva, you’re Dutch. Your country is famous for its adult approach to sex education. How could you have not been taught about it?’

  ‘The word was forbidden in my house,’ she said softly. ‘I knew it was how babies were made but not how or why.’

  ‘But what about school? Did you not learn it there?’

  ‘My sisters and I were all withdrawn from those lessons.’

  He hadn’t heard her mention sisters before.

  ‘Did your friends not tell you about it?’ He thought of his own school friends. As soon as any of them had discovered something to do with women and sex they would immediately relate it to the others like the revealing of some grand secret.

  It was a long time before she answered. ‘I didn’t have any friends.’

  His mind reeled. No friends?

  All children had friends. They would roam in groups, like attracting like, the popular kids together, the trendy kids together, the cool kids together, the geeks together, the misfits who didn’t fit into any particular group coming together like stray cats to form their own pack.

  ‘The other children avoided us.’

  ‘Children can be cruel.’

  She nuzzled into his chest and squeezed harder on his hands. ‘I look back and I understand why. Compared to them we were strange.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well... We had no television for a start, which immediately made us freaks. Our mother cut our hair, always in the same pudding basin style; she made our uniforms and our other clothes too and they were always plain and ugly clothes, which made us plain and ugly. I didn’t know how to speak to people. I didn’t know how to make friends. I had nothing to share or give to make the other children like me and could never have invited them home if I had made friends. Strangers were not welcome in our home. We lived a very controlled, very sparse life.’

  Hearing her speak now, Daniele wondered how he could have thought her English. There was a true musical lilt to her voice that he would have heard before if he’d only opened his ears to listen. It was the most beautiful and seductive of voices.

  ‘Did Johann go to your school?’

  ‘We went to an all-girls school. He lived on the same road as us. I thought he was strange because he always smiled at me.’

  ‘How did you become friends?’

  She was silent as she thought about it. ‘I don’t remember. It evolved over many years. Just secret smiles, you know? We didn’t actually talk to each other until we went to high school. His finished before mine and he’d wait for me at my school gate and walk me home. Tessel covered for me so Angela and Kika didn’t see. They would have told our parents and I would have been punished.’

  ‘They’re your sisters?’ he asked, his brain hurting to hear the word ‘punished’ and not yet ready to ask what she meant by it, his heart thumping as if beating down the heavy hands of impending doom.

  What had been the most fulfilling and, yes, he could admit it, emotional experience was turning on its head and dragging him to a place he didn’t want to go.

  No pillow talk. No confidences exchanged. That’s what they’d agreed on.

  ‘Yes. Angela was the oldest, then Kika, then Tessel, then me.’

  ‘Was?’ he queried, picking up on the past tense she’d used, his burning curiosity to uncover her secrets overriding the clanging sirens in his head to stop this conversation and go to sleep.

  ‘Are. Is. I haven’t seen them in ten years.’

  ‘Since you ran away?’

  ‘Yes. I reached out to Tessel a year after I left and she told me our parents had disowned me. They’d forced the truth out of her and then confronted Johann’s parents—they knew my home situation and had given us a little money to help us—and learned we’d got married. Tessel said they burned all the pictures of me and cut me out of all family group photos.’

  ‘So you’re still in contact with her? With Tessel?’

&nbs
p; ‘Not any more. I haven’t spoken to her since before Johann died.’ She raised her head and rested her chin on his chest. ‘The last time we spoke she told me about this group she’d joined. When my emails to her started bouncing back I looked into it. It’s a cult, a harmless one, I think, if there can be such a thing as a harmless cult, but one that insists on no contact with outsiders. So she ran away too. It just took her longer that me.’

  Resting her cheek back on his chest, she sighed. ‘It’s strange how life turns out, isn’t it? Tessel was always the rebellious one. Angela and Kika were very subservient and always obeyed our parents’ rules. And there were a lot of rules. So damn many of them. It was so easy to break one and not know you were doing it, and Tessel seemed to break them all. You would think she’d have been the one to run away as soon as she could but she didn’t, and when she finally did it was escaping one form of imprisonment for another.’

  ‘You think of your parents as jailers?’

  ‘We were their property. You have to understand, we were indoctrinated from birth to obey them. We were terrified of them and for good reason. We knew the consequences for disobedience.’

  He swallowed and closed his eyes before asking, ‘What were they?’

  ‘It depended on the offence and their mood. If they were in a good mood you might just be forced to sleep in the garden shed for the night. If they were in a bad mood...well.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Tessel was once whipped across her back with a belt for bringing mud into the house.’ Her fingers tightened on his. ‘My mother once stamped on my fingers when I couldn’t finish a meal and tried to sneak the scraps into a bin.’

  Daniele swore quietly. His stomach was churning so violently he feared he would be sick. ‘How did people not know? Your neighbours?’

  ‘My father was the local doctor. He fixed our injuries when they went too far. Adults thought him eccentric but they respected him. And I think adults tend to be blind. It was the children who knew something was wrong but they didn’t know what they were seeing. They just saw a family of freaks.’

  Nothing more was said for a long time. Daniele’s mind was in a whirl.

  He fingered the long strands of her hair. The vibrant colour that he’d always admired suddenly gained in significance. ‘When did you start colouring your hair?’

  ‘It was the first thing I did when we got to Amsterdam.’ She gave the lightest of laughs but it warmed his blood that had slowly chilled to thick ice while he’d listened to her. ‘You should have seen the bathroom when I’d finished. It looked like there’d been a murder.’

  And then, before he could react to the quip that had lightened the heavy atmosphere that had enveloped them, she suddenly moved so her thighs straddled him and her face hovered above his.

  Her nipples brushed against his chest and, despite everything she’d just revealed and despite having been replete such a short time before, his loins flickered back to life.

  She stared intently into his eyes, loaded meaning firing from hers. ‘Do you understand why I could never have agreed to this marriage if it had meant I was to be your possession? Us making love doesn’t change anything, okay?’

  His blood warmed a little more, relief pushing through his veins, yet, strangely, his heart tightened.

  The rules they’d established from the outset were still in place.

  Their pillow talk hadn’t altered that.

  But as her mouth closed around his, his last coherent thought before the desire reignited between them was to wonder if the colour she’d chosen to dye her hair had been a deliberate imitation of the colour of deadly creatures warning others that to come too close meant danger.

  He wondered if it had been a subconscious signal to the world to keep its distance from her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE NEXT WEEK passed in a flash. With all the work being done in their wing of the castello, they spent much of their time together exploring Florence and Pisa, visiting museums and eating long lunches, the nights spent making love with abandon.

  They got to know more about each other, practical things, Daniele’s architecture, his quest to create homes and buildings that were works of art, sympathetic to the location’s heritage yet modern, the perfect blend of old and new. They discussed how Eva could start a not-for-profit consultancy business advising the rich and famous how best to help those in need. It was something they both agreed should be put on the back burner until the castello had been transferred into Daniele’s name and they knew where they’d make their main home. They talked about so many things but never anything that could be construed as intimate.

  It was safer that way.

  Eva hadn’t planned to tell him about her childhood but now it was done she didn’t regret it. It wasn’t something she had spoken about since Johann had died and in many ways it had been cathartic. Daniele was her husband. He should know about her past even if it was something he’d prefer not to know. It had also been a reminder to herself of her need to keep possession of herself. She would never belong to Daniele or anyone. She would not give him the tools to hurt her.

  She was not a fool. Things were great between them at the moment but it was early days. Sooner or later Daniele would get bored and seek new adventures. She would learn when it happened if she was capable of turning a blind eye. If she couldn’t she would pack her bags and leave.

  She hoped he didn’t stray too soon. She hoped he was capable of being faithful until their first anniversary so the charity could get its next huge injection of cash from him.

  That’s what she told herself. Only in the early hours when she’d wake in the safety of his arms did she hear the voice in her head telling her she was fooling herself if she believed any of that.

  None of this stopped her wishing this wonderful honeymoon-like phase didn’t have to end, but nothing lasted for ever and six days after they’d become lovers they returned from a matinee performance at the Teatro di Pisa to find Daniele’s new office, created by knocking two bedrooms into one, finished.

  ‘It’s incredible they did it so quickly and so well,’ Eva observed, staring at the teal-painted walls and rows of beautifully carved walnut cabinets and shelves. All that needed to be done was for it to be filled with his stuff.

  ‘That’s what you get when you pay your workforce triple time,’ he said with the grin she’d come to adore. ‘Most of them worked on the hospital in Caballeros and got used to the long hours and the extra cash at the end of the month.’

  ‘It should be completed soon, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘The grand opening is in a month.’ He pulled a face as he said this, making her laugh.

  ‘Are we going?’

  ‘If we don’t, my sister will kill us.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Nothing would keep her away from her favourite son’s memorial.’

  He spoke lightly but something made her think he wasn’t jesting.

  A swelling in Eva’s chest erupted, propelling her to reach out a hand to gently stroke his face. ‘I wouldn’t know if he was her favourite or not, but I know she adores you.’

  His jaw tightened but the smile stayed intact. ‘I’ve never doubted my mother’s love.’

  Then he took the hand still resting on his cheek and kissed the palm. ‘I need to check back into the real world. I need to check with my PA that my business is still in one piece, call my lawyer for progress on the deeds being transferred into my name, and call my accountant to make sure my fortune’s still intact.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’

  He scrutinised her for a moment, a musing look crossing his face. ‘Do you realise it’s going to be Christmas in eight days?’

  ‘That hadn’t even occurred to me.’ Christmas was something she’d only celebrated with Johann. It had been considered a worthless pagan festival by her parents, who had refused to even celebrate their children’s birthdays. She and Johann had tried to create their own Christmases on their limi
ted budget and she remembered how childlike their attitude had been towards it. Since he’d died there had been no one to celebrate it with so she’d learned to blank out the month of December, had perfected the art of walking without seeing, so the houses aglow with fairy lights and the stores gleaming with decorations didn’t register in her consciousness. She’d even learned to tune out the Christmas songs that belted out of all the stores.

  ‘I’m putting you in charge of decorating our quarters. We’ll need a tree—something at least twelve feet tall—and whatever else you think is needed to make the place look festive.’

  ‘I’ve not had much experience at that,’ she warned, although Daniele detected a flash of excitement in the blue eyes he couldn’t believe he’d once imagined were cold. Eva’s eyes were as warm as her curvy body and her musical voice when she looked at him now.

  ‘Serena can help if you need her.’

  ‘Okay. That could be fun.’ Then she asked in a more hesitant voice, ‘What do you normally do on Christmas Day?’

  ‘It’s the one day of the year I’m nagged to spend with my family,’ he said ruefully.

  ‘Will I be coming this year?’ There was the same hesitancy in her question.

  Daniele look at her closely. He thought back to their talk the first night they’d made love. He would bet the castello that Eva had never celebrated Christmas in her childhood.

  Who would she have celebrated it with since her first husband had died? He’d been forced to the conclusion that it hadn’t been shame at their reasons for marrying that had stopped Eva from inviting anyone to it, but that there had been no one she’d felt close enough with to invite.

  She’d had no friends growing up. There were no signs she’d had any since. Not real friends.

  Enveloping her into his arms, he held her tightly. ‘You’re my wife. My mother and sister both adore you and would lynch me if you didn’t join us. I’ll make some calls and find out what’s happening.’