“So the dreams of your mother being alive—are they good dreams?” His voice was low and calming, like balm on a wound.
She nodded, her eyes unfocused again. Her voice became a whisper. “She talks to me in them. I love going to bed, love falling asleep because I know it won’t be long until I’m with her. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s the only time I ever feel wanted.”
Pippa bit her lip, hating the self-pity in her voice. She didn’t want his pity. Anything but that.
Looking at his strong, bronzed neck, she could see his jugular, that marvel of life. Her heart skipped a beat. He was so very human—cut him and he shall bleed, touch him and feel his warmth.
His arms tightened around her. How she wished she could stay in them forever.
“I promise you, cara, I would never let anyone hurt you.”
His husky voice penetrated her brain and made her belly constrict. For all the danger she was in lying next to him, she had never felt so safe. At that moment she could have happily laid in his arms for eternity. And that scared her.
Allowing her safety to be dependent on another—to feel any dependency upon another—made her close in herself.
But not this time.
This time it felt too sweet.
“I know,” she whispered, her nose now touching his. She held her breath and slowly closed her eyes as his lips pressed against hers, as soft and delicate as the caress of a feather, a kiss so tender it stole her breath.
The chaste kiss ended and, breathing deeply, she opened her eyes. The raw desire blazing on his face, the slight flare of his nostrils, the darkening of his pupils, all sent a bolt of need racing through her veins and plunging into her core.
She raised a tentative hand to his cheek, savoring the smoothness of his skin under the roughness of his stubble. He rubbed his cheek against it and pressed a kiss to her palm before his hand tightened on the nape of her neck. Threading his fingers through her hair, he brought his mouth back down and slowly, oh so slowly, kissed her again, the tip of his tongue nudging the barrier of her closed lips.
With a whimper of pleasure she opened her mouth and his tongue slipped inside. She could taste the rich darkness of him, and then all coherent thought deserted her.
It was as if someone had sparked an inferno within her. She drank in his kisses, possessed with a fervor she had never known existed within her, raking her fingers through his hair, tracing the contours of his ears, his neck, his skull, wanting—no, needing—to feel every part of him.
Marco rolled them together so he was on top of her. She savored the feel of his incredible body, running her hand down his satin-smooth back, feeling the muscles bunch under his hot skin as he shuddered beneath her touch. His mouth broke away and burrowed into her neck, raining kisses down her throat and into the sensitive hollow, leaving a trail of fire that left her moaning with pleasure.
She lay in a hazy land of sensation. His touch ignited flames that coursed through her, nestling into her most feminine core, making her toes curl as she writhed in his arms, barely able to comprehend that this was happening. This was what she had desired, yearned for so many years ago, and it was so much more than she had ever allowed herself to imagine.
He slipped down her camisole vest, exposing breasts that were alive with desire to his hooded eyes.
“You are so beautiful.” His voice rang with wonder as he brushed his lips over her tingling nipples. His breathing became ragged as he suckled and nipped at them, his rough jawline grazing the sensitive skin.
She shuddered as he traced a hand down her ribs, down the concave flatness of her belly to the lining of her pajama shorts. Teasingly, he rubbed a finger against the edge of the cotton while his mouth made the ascent back up her throat and back to her eager mouth.
Tongues dueling, her legs parted and she raised her hips, desperate for his touch, for the elusive release only he could provide. When he tugged at her shorts, she moaned and pressed against him, gasping as he slipped his hand under the cotton barrier and brushed the silky apex of her pubis.
But then she heard him suck in a breath.
And it all went wrong.
Chapter Eight
Marco froze.
She could almost hear his brain click.
Slowly he lifted himself onto his elbows, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his eyes narrowing. All she could do was stare at him mutely, too stunned at the speed and strength of her lustful reaction to speak.
“This is a mistake.” He sat up, leaving her cold and exposed.
The shiver that ran through her was enough to bring her to her own senses.
She hastily tugged the straps of her vest over her shoulder and sat up. He had already swung his legs over the side of the bed.
“You’re absolutely correct,” she muttered. “A big mistake.”
“Yes. A big…” His eyes flew to hers. “You agree?”
She nodded, swallowing a lump that had stuck in her throat.
“Do you wish to share your reasons with me?”
“Only if you’re prepared to share yours.” She laughed humorlessly. “Mine are for all the usual reasons—things are complicated enough without screwing it up further by adding screwing to the mix.” And I am not going to give you the satisfaction of thinking I give a damn.
His gaze was fixed on the wall in front of him. When he spoke, his voice was flat. “You almost ruined me.”
“How? Because I threw myself on you when I was eighteen?” Thank God it was dark and he couldn’t see the hot flush spreading across her cheeks, as it always did whenever she recalled that fateful night.
He twisted to face her, his eyes a mixture of contempt and pained desire. “Do you really not know?”
“No. I really do not know. I have no idea how a drunken teenager could have adversely impacted your life.” She hadn’t even intended to get drunk that night. She’d finally realized that if Marco was ever going to look at her with anything other than annoyance, she would have to change. And she’d been so tired of rebeling.
She’d imagined every minute of her party. She would ditch the tarty clothes she usually favored and wear a chic black dress. She would keep her makeup classically elegant instead of her usual bold colors. She would let her hair revert to its natural white-blond. When he saw her, he would be so taken with this vision of beauty before his eyes that he would forget about family ties, forget what a brat she’d been, and fall madly in love with the woman she’d become. They would marry and live Happily Ever After. That had been the dream.
His lips curved. “Do you remember when I formed Capello Software?”
She nodded.
“I had been working for a software firm in London and had achieved director level. But I wasn’t happy there. I didn’t like their ethics. I knew I could form a company that performed better without using components made from child labor. So I took out a second mortgage on my home and set up on my own, but what I really needed was a big injection of capital. I found a backer with the same ethics as my own. All the contracts were ready to sign, the champagne was on ice, as the saying goes, but…”
Pippa’s heart was thumping erratically but with a totally different beat to the excited, lusty drum of a few minutes earlier. These were thumps of dread.
“But then I went to your damned birthday party.”
It was as if he had tipped a bucket of burning flames over her. Heat licked at her every pore.
She closed her eyes, wishing she could close her ears off, too.
Was this why she hadn’t pursued him over his claims of her ruining him? Deep down, had she known there was validity to it? Had she been burying her head in the sand, unable to face up to yet another monstrous wrong?
“The next day, those pictures of the pair of us were plastered all over the tabloids. The paparazzi began stalking me and Angiolina—do you remember her, my then fiancée?”
Only too well, she thought. Far from falling madly in love with her, Pippa, at her birthday party, Marco h
ad brought along a gorgeous brunette and announced they were to be married.
Pippa had been saving her virginity for him in the utterly deluded belief that he was waiting for her. To learn he was engaged… She recalled, so clearly, the blackness that had subsumed her, the pain so acute that all she could do was try and numb it the only way she knew how. Through the bottom of a bottle.
“The press accused us of having a sleazy affair,” he said, breaking through her still-vivid memories. “They accused me of being a two-timing scumbag.”
“I remember.”
An inflection of anger stole into his voice. “Then why didn’t you deny it?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I never spoke to the press. Never complain and never explain, that was—is—my motto. Scandals always blow over. And this one did blow over.”
“Did it not bother you that my name was dragged through the mud?”
“If I had known it was affecting you on a personal level, then of course I would have issued a denial.”
“You did know,” he roared, the strength and venom in his voice making her rear back. “I left message after message asking you to deny it and you ignored every one of them.”
She closed her eyes, wincing. “I deleted them without listening.”
“All of them?”
“I couldn’t face it.” The understatement of the century. “The same evening you introduced me to your fiancée… All you did was drag me off to the kitchen to sober me up and make me a coffee, and I threw myself at you half-naked. I was so ashamed I just couldn’t face you.”
The look of disgust that had flittered across his face when she had drunkenly stripped the top half of her dress down and stood before him, her lacy black bra revealing everything yet nothing. “See this, Marco?” she’d slurred. “This is what you’re missing. It was for you. All of it.”
He’d rammed her arms back into the sleeves so quickly she’d had no time to catch her breath, much less protest.
“What is wrong with you?” he’d demanded, rigidly pacing the room, his voice rising. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is, stripping your clothes off like that? Most other men would take advantage of what you’re offering and say to hell with the consequences.”
His words had bitten into her, the contempt in his voice palpable even through her alcohol-addled brain.
“You’re not any man,” she’d tried to protest, her voice sounding weak as the room started to spin. “You’re the only man.”
He’d snorted. “I saw you on the dance floor, draping yourself all over that boy, practically fornicating in full view of your guests! Why do you think I dragged you away? You were making a complete spectacle of yourself and your family.”
“I want to f-f-f-fornicate,” she’d spat the word out with another drunken giggle, “With you. It’s my birthday! Oh Marco, please make love to me.”
“Have you no shame?” he’d said, his voice like ice. “No self-respect? Do you really think I would take advantage of a drunken…”
He’d never finished the sentence.
The world had spun in an intoxicated axis and all she remembered from that point was being carried to a bathroom to vomit and someone holding her hair back before carrying her to her bed and placing her in the recovery position with a bucket on the floor by her head.
That was so long ago.
Now he was silent. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel the weight of his stare.
She wiped her hands over her face and looked at him. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t just you. I was screwed up. My head was all over the place then.”
When he spoke, his tone was surprisingly gentle. “My backer was Angiolina’s father.”
Uh-oh.
“Not only did he pull out of the contract, but he made damned sure no other investor would touch me.”
No, please, not that. Red-hot color suffused her entire being, burning her brain.
“My life was under siege, my name mud, and my reputation in tatters. I had no choice but to take what little capital I had and leave the UK. And so I went to America, to Silicon Valley, and started again. And in the process I broke my parents’ hearts.” He shook his head, bitterness now lacing his voice. “I had no choice—the opportunities available in America were not available in Rome or anywhere else in Europe.”
Pippa swallowed. Her heartbeat had slowed to a dull thud, her blood no longer roaring but slow, thick like treacle. “And you blamed me for this?”
His mouth tightened. “How many times did I warn you of the danger you were putting yourself in? I warned you, Pippa, I warned you so many times that you were in danger of screwing up your life. And I was right, wasn’t I? Except it wasn’t you who paid the price. It was me.”
“You have to believe me, I knew nothing of this.”
“How could you not know?” His disbelief was all too apparent. “I get that you couldn’t face me in the days after your party but you can read the papers, you were still living under the family roof.”
She pressed her fingers to her forehead, attempting to knead the tension headache that was forming. “After my party, I spent the next two years drunk pretty much all of the time. I’ve already told you what my attitude was to the press. When they used to fire questions at me I would tune them out as if they didn’t exist.” She shook her head and sighed. “My life was one big party. No one could get through to me. In all that time Dad and Amelia barely exchanged two words with me.”
“Understandable.”
Her heart unclenched a tiny fraction to hear dryness rather than bitterness in his voice.
“I am sorry, Marco. If you had sought me out and told me personally what was going on with Angiolina’s father, I would have issued a statement denying any involvement with you.”
He rubbed his chin and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “It probably wouldn’t have made any difference.”
“I guess we’ll never know.” She emitted a mirthless laugh. “At least you must take consolation from making Capello Software such a massive success.”
“It’s taken seven years of damned hard work,” he said, his jaw clenching. “I had to start over with nothing, without even my reputation to fall back on.”
“But you did it,” she pointed out. “Look at you now—the sole owner of one of the world’s most powerful companies.”
“Yes, look at me now,” he agreed. He got to his feet and stared at her, the dim light from the hallway illuminating his handsome face, giving it a haunted look. He turned away and reached for the door.
“I really am sorry,” she called out to him softly.
His back went rigid. “You should be. Not just for me, but for what you’ve done to yourself.”
He shut the door behind him, leaving her with nothing but her thoughts.
Now she understood.
But understanding brought no relief. It brought only pain. Deep down, her subconscious had always known it would.
How she wished she could turn back the clock.
She had been so used to living her life splayed out all over the tabloids that not once had she considered the effect the same would have on a man like Marco, a man of integrity, a man who guarded his privacy fiercely.
For the first time she understood why he despised her so much.
The only way she’d known how to cope with pain was through the bottom of a bottle and so she had hit it with a vengeance.
But now that she knew the truth, the aftereffects of that dreadful night were even graver. While she had blocked out the world and her pain through copious amounts of drink and well-publicized dalliances, she had been oblivious to the very real damage she’d caused to Marco’s reputation.
And her own.
If only she had stayed sober and stopped being so selfish and self-absorbed, she would have known what was happening with him. She could have helped. If she had known, she would have been able to assure Angiolina and her father, the press, everyone, that the only thing Marco had been guilty of that
night was helping to stop her make an even bigger fool of herself and her family. The way he had always tried to help her.
What he could have shrugged off as a night of teenage insobriety had become the manifest of something much deeper, something that had been allowed to take root and fester in his soul.
Yet still he tried to help her. Of all the people who had cause to wash their hands of her, it was Marco trying to help keep her out of prison.
And, she realized despondently, they hadn’t even touched upon Angiolina. She could only pray the scandal hadn’t been the reason they split up.
…
Marco let himself into the house, still unsure what had propelled him to abandon yet another meeting with his lawyers and send them out for an impromptu lunch with an extremely put-out Marnie.
All that mattered was Pippa, the woman swirling in his blood, possessing his senses. Possessing his soul.
He had thought his home-truths would be cathartic. Instead, all he could see when he closed his eyes was the misery on her face. She truly hadn’t known what she had done.
Then there was the matter of the weighted guilt that had taken residence inside him.
Pippa’s nightmare… He had never seen such a fragile side to her, not even when she had been describing her assault. Witnessing her fear and pain—feeling —he’d known in that moment he would have walked on burning embers to keep her from harm.
Not that she would thank him, he acknowledged wryly.
In her own fashion, she had always taken care of herself. He had just never properly appreciated it.
Perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps she had learned to care for herself at too young of an age. When she should have been enjoying her childhood, her life had been ripped apart. She had been left to cope alone. James, her father, was aristocratic and very British in his outlook: one must never show weakness. Even with a prison sentence hanging over her head, she refused help.
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