Ellen had hung all her clothes in the closet, including the things Saks had delivered this afternoon. Tally dumped her old stuff in her suitcase and ignored the rest. Let Dante give it away. Let him burn it, for all she gave a damn.
She didn’t want anything his money had bought.
He was a heartless, manipulative, controlling son of a bitch and it made her sick to think she’d ever imagined that she loved him. Anybody could be guilty of a bit of self-deception, but once you knew it you had to do something about it.
She’d spent years in the city, though maybe she was still a small-town girl at heart, unable or unwilling to think she’d slept with a man, borne his child without loving him.
But no woman could love a man who thought he owned you. Who believed you capable of lies and deceit and—
The bedroom door flew open, the sound of it sharp as a gunshot in the quiet night. Tally whirled around.
Dante stood in the doorway, and her heart leaped into her throat.
This was a Dante she’d never seen before.
His suit jacket was gone, as was his tie. His shirt was open at the neck, the sleeves rolled to the elbows, exposing forearms knotted with muscle.
But it was what she saw in the way he held himself that terrified her. The tall, powerful body poised like a big cat’s. The dark intensity of his eyes as they fixed on hers. The cruel little smile that tilted across his mouth.
Tally wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. She had to face the enemy.
“What are you doing here, Dante?”
He answered by stepping inside the room and shutting the door behind him.
“It’s late,” she said.
“I agree. It’s very late. I’m here to remedy that.”
“And—and Samantha is sleeping. I don’t want to wake her.”
“Samantha is with Mrs. Tipton.” He took another step forward. “Taylor.”
He was back to using her given name. How could he make it seem menacing?
“Dante.” Her voice quavered. “Dante, please. You want to talk. So do I. But it can wait until morning.”
“I don’t want to talk, Taylor.”
A sob burst from Tally’s throat. To hell with facing the enemy. She turned and ran. Sam’s bedroom was empty. If she could get there before he reached her—
Two quick steps, and his powerful hands closed on her shoulders; he spun her toward him and she looked up into eyes that glittered with the desolate cold of a polar night.
“No! Don’t. Dante—”
He captured her mouth with his, forced her lips apart and penetrated her with his tongue. He tasted of anger and of whiskey, and of a primitive domination that terrified her.
“No,” she cried, and struggled to free herself from his grasp, but he laughed, pushed her back against the wall and yanked her hands high above her head.
“Fight me,” he growled. “Go on. Fight! It’ll make taking you even more pleasurable.”
“Please,” she panted. “Dante, please. Don’t do this. I beg you—”
“All those months I made love to you and it wasn’t enough. Is that why you went to him? Did he do things I didn’t?”
“Dante. I never—”
He ripped the robe apart, tore her nightgown from the vee between her breasts straight down to her belly.
“Tell me what you wanted that I didn’t give you.”
“You’re wrong. Wrong! It wasn’t the way you make it sound. I didn’t—”
She cried out as he captured one breast in his hand and rubbed his thumb across the nipple, his cold eyes locked to hers.
“Was it the way he touched your breasts?”
Tears were streaming down her face. Good, he thought. Let her weep. It wouldn’t stop him. He would do this. Pierce her flesh with his and banish her from his life, forever.
“Was it the way he touched you here?”
He thrust his hand between her thighs, searching, even in his madness, for the welcoming heat, the sweet moisture he had never forgotten…
And found, instead, the cold, dry flesh of a woman who was unready and unwilling. A woman who was sobbing as if her heart were breaking…
As she had broken his.
Dante went still. He looked at Tally’s face and felt the coldness inside him melting.
“Tally.”
His arms went around her; he gathered her to him, his hands stroking her back, her hair. He kissed her forehead, her wet eyes, and as she wept he whispered to her, soft words in his native language, but she stood rigid within his embrace, still quietly crying as if the world were about to end.
“Tally.” Dante framed her face between his hands. “Inamorata. Forgive me. Please. Don’t cry. I won’t hurt you. I could never hurt you.” He raised her chin, looked into her eyes and saw a darkness and despair that chilled his soul.
He dragged in a deep breath, hating himself, hating what he had almost done, knowing that what was driving him was not hate or anger but something else. Something foreign to his life and to him.
A fear he’d never known gripped him.
He’d fought toughs on the streets of Palermo. Faced down CEOs in hostile boardrooms. Made believers of financial analysts who’d looked him in the eye and assured him he couldn’t do any of the things he’d ended up doing.
He was a warrior. Each battle he survived made him stronger.
But he wasn’t a warrior now. He was a man, holding in his arms a woman he’d already lost once before. She had run from him and he knew, in his heart of hearts, that she’d run because he had somehow failed her.
She’d turned to another man for the same reason.
If she ran again, if he lost her again…
“Tally.”
He held her closer. Rained kisses over her hair. Said her name over and over, and finally, finally when he’d almost given up hope, she lifted her face to his.
“I wasn’t with anyone,” she whispered. “I never wanted anyone but you, Dante. Never. Never. Nev—”
He kissed her. With all his heart, his soul, with all he had ever been or ever hoped to be, and Tally wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back. They had kissed a thousand times. A million times…but never like this, as if their lives hung in the balance.
Mouths fused, Dante swept Tally into his arms and carried her to the bed.
At first, it was enough. The taste of her mouth. The warmth of his breath. Her sighs. His whispers. The stroke of her hand on his face, of his hand on her throat…
It was enough.
Inevitably, it changed.
Dante could feel the tension growing inside him. The need to take more. To give more. To suck Tally’s nipples, put his mouth between her thighs and inhale her exquisite scent.
It was the same for Tally. She needed Dante’s mouth on her flesh. His hands on her breasts. Needed to lift her hips to him, impale herself on his rock-hard erection so that she could fly with him to the stars.
“Dante,” she whispered.
Everything a man could dream was in the way she spoke his name.
He eased the robe and tattered nightgown from her shoulders, kissing the hollow in her throat, the delicate skin over her collarbone.
She was lovely. As beautiful as he’d remembered.
There was a new fullness to her breasts now. The child, Dante thought, and felt a swift pain at the realization that someone else had given that child to her, but it left him quickly because there was so much more to the woman in his arms than that one moment of infidelity.
He bent his head, kissed the slope of each breast. Brushed a finger lightly over a pale-pink nipple.
Watched her face as he played the nub of flesh delicately between thumb and forefinger, and felt the fierce tightening low in his belly when she sobbed his name as he drew the nub into his mouth.
She tasted like cream and honey; she tasted like the Tally he’d never forgotten, never wanted to forget, and when she tugged impatiently at his shirt he sat up, tried unbuttonin
g it, cursed and tore it off. Peeled off the rest of his clothing and took her in his arms again.
The hot feel of her breasts against his chest almost undid him. Dante groaned, clenched his teeth, warned himself to hang onto his control.
But she was moving beneath him, rubbing herself against his engorged flesh. She was slick and hot, and the exciting scent of her arousal was more precious to him than all the perfumes in the world.
“Please,” she said, kissing his shoulder. “Please, please, please…”
“Soon,” he whispered, but she arched against him and he was lost. Nothing mattered but this. This, he thought, and entered her on one long, hard thrust.
Tally screamed. Her hands dug into his hair; she wrapped her legs around his hips and bit his shoulder and he let go. Of himself, of his past, of the restraints that had always defined his life.
Together, they soared over the edge of the earth, two hearts, two souls, two bodies merged as one.
AFTERWARD, they lay in each other’s arms and shared soft kisses. They touched and sighed, and then Tally’s breathing slowed.
“Go to sleep, inamorata,” Dante whispered.
“What does that mean? Inamorata?”
He kissed her. “It means beloved.”
Tally smiled and he kissed her again.
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” she murmured.
And slept.
Dante gathered her closer against him. How had he endured three long years without this woman in his life?
Except, he had never really let her into his life. They’d been lovers for six months back then but he’d kept his distance. He always did. Dinners out at the city’s best restaurants instead of pasta and vino by the fire. Center row seats at the newest Broadway show instead of an evening of old movies on the DVD. Dancing at the latest club instead of swaying in each other’s arms to a Billy Joel CD.
How come?
And how come he didn’t even know if she liked old movies? If she liked Billy Joel or maybe newer stuff?
Because he’d never let her into his life. That was how come. It was the same reason he’d called her Taylor, when any fool could see that under all the urban glamour, she was really a girl named Tally.
And he—and he felt something special for her.
His arms tightened around her. He wanted to make love to her again but she was sleeping so soundly…
Okay. He’d kiss her closed eyes. Gently. Like that. Kiss her mouth. Tenderly. Yes, that way. Kiss it again and if she sighed, as she was sighing now, if her lips parted so that he could taste her sweetness, yes, like that…If her lashes fluttered and she looked up at him and smiled and linked her hands behind his neck the way she was doing now, would it be wrong to kiss her again? To run his hand gently down her body? To groan as she lifted herself to him, cradled his body between her thighs?
“Make love to me,” Tally whispered.
And he would. He would—but first, he lifted her in his arms and rose from the bed.
“Where are we going?”
“To my room,” he said huskily. “To my bed. It’s where you belong, inamorata, where you always should have been.” He kissed her. “Where you will be, from this night on.”
HIS ROOM WAS SHADOWED, his bed high and wide.
They made love again, slowly, tenderly, until passion swept them up and Dante brought Tally down on him, impaled her on him, and watched her face as she rode him to fulfillment. They slept in each other’s arms and awakened again at dawn, Tally wordlessly drawing Dante to her, sighing his name against his throat as he rocked into her and took her with him to the stars.
When she awoke next, it was to the kiss of the morning sun. Dante lay next to her, head propped on his fist, watching her with a soft smile on his lips.
Tally smiled, too. “Hello,” she whispered.
He leaned over and kissed her mouth. “Hello, bellissima.”
She stretched with lazy abandon. The sheet dropped to her waist. Dante seized the moment and kissed her breasts.
“Sweet,” he murmured.
She smiled again. She might never stop smiling, she thought, clasping his face between her hands and pressing a light kiss to his lips.
“I love it when you kiss me,” he said softly.
She loved it, too. She could spend the morning like this, just kissing, touching, locked away from reality.…
Oh, God. Locked away from Samantha.
“Tally. What’s wrong?”
Everything, Tally thought, and it was all her fault. She moved out of Dante’s arms and sat up, suddenly conscious of her nudity.
Dante sat up, too, and caught her in his arms. “Talk to me. What’s the matter?”
“Sam’s an early riser.”
“Is that what’s worrying you?” Smiling, he drew her to him. “So is Mrs. Tipton.”
“Sam is my daughter. My responsibility. Not your housekeeper’s.”
“Damn it, Tally, don’t look away from me.” He clasped her face, forced her eyes to meet his. “Moments ago you were in my arms. Now you’re looking at me as if we’re strangers. Talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Tell him what? That the long, wonderful night had been a mistake? Because it had been. Yes, he’d brought her to his bed, but nothing had changed. She loved him. Why lie to herself? She loved him, she always would…
And all he felt for her was desire.
It hadn’t been enough three years ago. It was why she’d decided to leave him, even before she’d known she was carrying his baby. She’d loved him so much that hearing him say he’d tired of her would have killed her.
Now she’d put herself in the same position. He wanted her because she’d defied him, but the novelty would wear thin. He’d tire of her as he had in the past and they’d be right back where they started, with one enormous difference.
This time, she wouldn’t be the only one who’d pay the price for her foolishness.
Samantha would pay, as well.
Her daughter. Dante’s daughter. God, oh God, oh God…
“Tally?”
She pulled free of his embrace, plucked his robe from the chair beside the bed and slipped it on.
“Dante.” Tally got to her feet. “This was—it was a mistake.”
He sat up, the comforter dropping to his waist. “What are you talking about?” he said, his voice sharp.
“I shouldn’t have slept with you.” She tried not to look at him as he rose from the bed, naked and beautifully masculine. “I—I enjoyed last night.” The look on his face made her take a quick step back. “But it shouldn’t have happened. I have a daughter. That makes everything different. I can’t just live for the moment anymore, I have to think of her. Of how much what I do affects her.”
“You’re a fine mother, bellissima. Anyone can see that.”
“I try to be. And that means I can’t—I can’t sleep with you and then go about my life as if nothing’s happened. I can’t—” Tally caught her breath as he reached for her. “You’re not listening.”
“I am,” he said softly. Gently, he brushed his lips over hers. “You don’t want your little girl to see her mother take a lover.”
“That’s part of it.”
“To live a life with her, and a separate one with him.”
Tally nodded. He was more perceptive than she’d given him credit for. “She won’t understand. And I can’t do something that will confuse her. Do you see?”
“Better than you think, cara.” He hesitated. “I only wish my own mother had thought the same way.”
The words were simple but they caught her by surprise. He had never mentioned anything about his past before.
“She took lover after lover,” he said, his mouth twisting, “if that’s what you want to call them. Sometimes she brought them home. ‘This is Guiseppe,’ she’d say. Or Angelo or Giovanni or whoever he was, the man of the hour. Then she’d tell me to be a good boy and go out and play.”
“
Oh, Dante. That must have been—”
“When I was six, seven—I’m not certain. All I know is that one day, she took me to my nonna’s—my grandmother’s. ‘Be a good boy, Dante,’ she said. And—”
“And?” Tally said softly.
He shrugged. “And I never saw her again.”
Tally wanted to take him in her arms and hold him close, but she didn’t. She sensed that the moment was fragile, that it would take little to tear it apart.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “That must have been—it must have been hard.”
Another shrug, as if it didn’t matter, but when he spoke, the tension in his voice told her that it did.
“I survived.”
“And grew into a strong, wonderful man.”
Dante looked at her. “Not so wonderful,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have left me three years ago.”
This time, she did reach out, even if it was only to touch her hand to his cheek.
“I grew up living with my grandmother, too,” she said quietly.
“In that little house in Vermont?”
She nodded. “My mother was—Grandma called her flighty.” She managed a quick smile. “What it really means is that she took off when I was little and never came back. My father had already done the same thing, even before I was born.”
Dante gathered her into his arms.
“What a pair we make,” he said gently.
Tally nodded again. “All the more reason that I can’t—why we can’t—”
“Yes. I agree,” he murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “and I have the perfect solution.”
“There is no solution. I have to protect Sam.” Sam and me.
“Of course there is.” Dante tilted her face to his. “You’ll move out of the guest suite.”
One night? Was that all he’d wanted? Tally forced herself to nod in agreement.
“Of course. I’ll find an apartment and—”
“And,” he said softly, “you’ll move in with me. We’ll let Sam see that we are—that we are together. That we are part of each other’s lives, and that she is, too.”
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