‘Emmeline.’
The sound of her name had her pausing, turning, a blank smile on her face as her eyes scanned the crowd. She didn’t see anyone she knew at first, and was about to resume her progress towards the door when a beautiful redhead came into view.
And then she knew instantly who was looking back at her.
‘Bianca.’
The woman’s smile was bone-chilling. ‘You know who I am? Good. That saves me the trouble of introductions.’
‘I saw you pawing my husband at our wedding,’ Emmeline heard herself say, and instantly wished she could pull the words back. They were rude and unnecessary, and the last thing she wanted was to make a scene.
‘Being pawed by your husband is a more accurate description,’ Bianca commented, with a purr in the words.
‘Yes, well... That’s ancient history,’ Emmeline said, lifting her slender shoulders in what she hoped looked like an unaffected shrug.
‘If that’s what you want to believe,’ Bianca said, her smile tight, her lips bright red. ‘You know, I could never put up with a husband who was so easily tempted away. But then, yours is hardly a conventional marriage, is it?’
Emmeline’s doubts, already so close to the surface, began to wrap around her anew. Her brain—logical, calm, cool—knew that Bianca had every reason to be unkind. That her gloating attitude was probably just a cruel manipulation aimed at hurting Emmeline. But the muddiness of what she actually was to Pietro, and the truth of what she wanted to be, made her heart ache.
‘I almost wish I had married him,’ Bianca said, tapping a fingertip along the side of her lips. ‘But this way I get to have my cake and eat it too.’ Her laugh was a soft cackle.
‘I don’t understand...’
‘I get the best parts of Pietro—without the press intrusion and the expectations of being Mrs Pietro Morelli... You’re good cover for him and me.’
Emmeline felt as if she was drowning.
She stared at Bianca and shook her head. ‘I don’t know if you’re telling me the truth, or just trying to upset me, but either way it’s time for me to go.’ She blinked her enormous eyes, the hurt in them impossible to conceal. ‘Please don’t come near me again.’
‘It’s not you I want to be near,’ Bianca purred as a parting shot.
Emmeline spun and made a beeline for the door, bursting through it and into the night air with an overwhelming sense of relief.
Pietro was only seconds behind her, his breath loud, as though he’d just run a marathon. ‘Was that Bianca I saw talking to you?’
Emmeline didn’t have time to hide the hurt in her eyes. She nodded bleakly, then looked around for their car.
A muscle jerked in Pietro’s cheek just as a camera flash went off. He swore angrily and put a hand in the small of Emmeline’s back, guiding her away from the nightclub towards his car. He opened her door without saying a word, then moved to the driver’s side.
He revved the engine as soon as she was buckled in, and pulled out into the empty street. The silence prickled between them, angry and accusatory.
‘What did she say to you?’ he asked finally, as they cleared the more built-up streets of the city and went on their way to his villa.
‘Nothing.’ She frowned, then closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know if it matters.’
Pietro gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles glowed white. ‘Tell me what she said.’
Emmeline swallowed, her mind reeling. She had gone from the euphoria of being with Pietro to feeling as if everything was a sinister ruse.
‘She told me our marriage was a convenient cover for your relationship with her. She implied that you and she are still very much a thing.’ Emmeline shook her head. ‘She knows that our marriage isn’t conventional.’
The words were a sharp accusation and Pietro swore.
‘That last part is true,’ he said thickly. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything to her but I was...angry. I was wrong to expose you to that kind of gossip.’
‘Yes, you were,’ Emmeline muttered, her heart plummeting. ‘I’m sure she’s told anyone who cares to listen,’ she added, mortified.
‘I don’t care. It’s not true any more. You know how much everything has changed between us.’
He reached down and put a hand on her knee but she jerked away. Her eyes lifted to his and the pain and uncertainty in them had him swearing and veering the car off the road, pulling to a rapid halt in a space marked for buses.
‘Please listen, cara. You know the truth about Bianca and me because I have told you. She has always wanted more from me than I have to give. She is very jealous of you.’
‘I know that,’ Emmeline said quietly. ‘And I know she wanted to hurt me tonight and obviously cares very much for you. But it makes me wonder... What do I know about you?’
‘You know everything about me.’ He groaned. ‘Please believe me, Emmeline. I have never had with any woman what I have with you. This is special, and different, and you and I are both finding our way with it. Don’t let outsiders—someone like Bianca—cause problems for us.’ He pressed a finger beneath her chin, lifting her face to his. ‘I won’t let you. I won’t let her.’
‘I wish you didn’t have such a long list of ex-lovers,’ she muttered.
‘None of them matters to me. Not a bit.’
Her eyes clashed with his; she wanted to believe him so badly. ‘Have you been with her since we married?’
He shook his head.
‘In that first month?’ she persisted, holding his gaze. ‘When we weren’t sleeping together? I hardly saw you, and you were home late almost every night.’
He shook his head. ‘I had dinner with her once. But that’s all. I think I wanted to sleep with her. To prove to myself that our wedding hadn’t changed anything. But the truth is I’d kissed you by then and I no longer wanted any other woman.’
Her heart turned over in her chest. Was it true? Did she believe him? It took such a leap of faith for her to trust anyone—especially given the strange circumstances. But gradually she found herself relenting.
‘Why were you always so late?’
‘You need to ask?’
His smile was like sunshine on a rainy afternoon. She felt its warmth penetrating the storm and could have wept with relief.
‘I didn’t trust myself not to touch you,’ he said thickly. ‘It was bad enough on our wedding night, when I kissed you and touched you and tasted your sweetness for myself. But after the night you wore that dress...’ He groaned. ‘I knew I was in serious trouble.’
The truth in his words filled her. ‘Why couldn’t you touch me?’
His smile was lopsided. And sexy as hell.
‘Because you were meant to be a bride of convenience. Ours was an arranged marriage. I wasn’t supposed to be craving you. To be dreaming about you...obsessing over you.’ His sigh was exaggerated. ‘And yet I was. I am. I suppose initially I resented that. I wanted to prove to myself that I could resist you. Spoiler alert: I couldn’t.’
She expelled a soft sigh, but the memory of Bianca was still too fresh for her to relax completely.
‘I don’t want to see her again,’ Emmeline muttered.
His eyes glinted with a heated emotion she couldn’t interpret.
‘Believe me, you will never see that woman again.’
‘Can we go home now?’
He nodded, and inside he felt as though he’d been spared from Death Row with a minute left on the clock.
He dropped his head and kissed her slowly, gently. ‘Don’t let anyone come between us, cara. I cannot change the man I was, but you are changing everything about the man I am. The man I want to be.’
Her stomach squeezed with happiness. Because she knew he was telling the truth.
She trusted him implicitly.
* * *
It wasn’t long before they found their way back to each other’s bodies, exploring every inch available and sating their appetites.
‘You are c
rying,’ he whispered, chasing a tear up her cheek, depositing it back in the corner of her eye.
She laughed through a sob, shaking her head, wrapping her hands around his waist. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so perfect. I don’t know what happened—what I did to deserve this—but it’s just...’
He smiled—a smile that tipped her world off its axis—and then he thrust deeper, and she moaned into the cool night air, her body moving with his. They were completely in sync, completely together.
He kissed her as he ground into her and she wrapped her legs around his back, holding him close, needing him in her core. His tongue lashed hers and together they spiralled off the edge of the earth in a tangle of limbs, sheets, sweat and cries.
Afterwards he stroked her hair, his eyes smiling down into hers. He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, holding her tight, and she listened to the beating of his heart for a long time. She thought for a moment that he’d fallen asleep, but after a long time he spoke.
His voice was a gravelled husk in the night. ‘Have you spoken to your father lately?’
‘No.’
She shook her head and her hair tickled his nose. He patted it down flat and then stroked her naked back, feeling every bone of her spine, knotting down to the curve of her rear.
Tell her. Tell her.
But the moment was so perfect. Some time he might find a way to be honest with his wife. But on this night, with the sound of their lovemaking still heavy in the air, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. To ruin what they’d just shared.
‘You don’t speak often? That’s interesting. I would have thought you’d find being apart from him more of an adjustment.’
Emmeline shrugged. ‘I lived on the plantation but my father was often away. I did try to call him a few days ago and he emailed back. Something about house guests.’ She shrugged. ‘That will mean he’s out showing off the horses, the cattle, his shooting prowess.’ She wiggled her brows—he felt the movement against his chest. ‘Knowing Daddy, he’s never been happier.’
Pietro groaned inwardly. The lie was tightening around his chest.
‘My father speaks of you often, you know,’ she murmured, apparently having no clue that her husband was in a self-induced hell of sorts. ‘He adores you.’
Pietro’s smile was tight. ‘It’s mutual.’
‘Why?’ She pushed up on her elbows to study him. ‘Why are you so close?’
That bleak time from his past sat like a weight on his chest. ‘I’ve always admired him.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Years ago, I was in negotiations with your father. I was buying some commercial real estate of his—just off the Champs Elysées. I was devastated by my father’s death—I got the call about it while we were in a meeting—and your father... Col...supported me. Not just that day, but afterwards too. I’d always admired him as a businessman, a politician, but as a friend he was irreplaceable.’ He shrugged. ‘He was a rock when I badly needed one.’
As Pietro spoke the words they reverberated around his soul. Col had been his rock when there’d been no imperative on him to be any such thing. He had been strength and resilience, and he had imparted those qualities to Pietro.
How could he be anything but loyal to the statesman now, in his own time of need? Pietro owed Col his allegiance, even though lying to Emmeline was beginning to poison him.
‘That’s just like him.’ Emmeline smiled. ‘He’s so selfless...’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘GOOD MORNING, MRS MORELLI.’
He dragged a finger down her body, finding her womanhood and brushing against it possessively. She writhed beneath him, remembering the way they’d made love the night before. Her body still throbbed from the strength of that pleasure.
‘Buongiorno.’ She blinked up at him.
‘Do you know what today is?’
Her smile was irrepressible. ‘My first day at university.’ She grinned. ‘Yay!’
He laughed. ‘“Yay”?’
‘Uh-huh. Yay. Just...yay.’
He dropped his head and kissed her gently. ‘Which means we have been married two months.’
‘And it feels like two weeks.’ She stretched her arms over her head. ‘Time really does fly when you’re having fun.’
His wife—his beautiful wife—stared up at him with all the goodness in her soul and he felt as though the sun was beaming right through his chest.
‘Are you nervous?’
‘Nervous? God, no. I’m excited. I have been wanting to study for so long, Pietro. I can’t believe I’ve put this off. I feel like there’s a whole world out there—a world of learning and knowing—and finally it’s going to be mine.’
She sat up excitedly, pushing the covers off her naked body and stepping out of the bed. He watched as she strolled across the room, uncaring of her nakedness. She pulled a pair of jeans off a hanger, and then a cream blouse, and took his favourite pair of briefs from her underwear drawer.
He groaned across the room. ‘Not those.’
The smile she threw over her shoulder was pure impish cheek. ‘Oh, yes. You can imagine me in them all day.’
‘I’ll imagine stripping them off you all day,’ he corrected.
‘That too.’ She winked, sashaying into the adjoining bathroom and switching the fan on with the light.
The noise droned in the background and Pietro fell back against the mattress, staring up at the ceiling fan that was spinning lazily overhead.
The sense that he was betraying her had lessened. So, too, the feeling that he was living on borrowed time. After several more attempts at getting Col to tell the truth to his daughter Pietro had been forced to accept that the secret was there and that it existed beyond Pietro’s control. They would deal with the fallout when it happened.
It never once occurred to him that there might be a fallout bigger than they could handle, because he and Emmeline had become a single, unified force. The idea of anything happening to them that they couldn’t handle was impossible to contemplate.
He listened to the running of the shower and the soft singing that she did without even realising. Smiled wider when he caught the tone-deaf notes she seemed always to miss.
He stepped out of bed, strode across the room and pushed the door inwards. Steam swirled around him. She had her eyes closed, her face lifted towards the showerhead, and water was raining over her face and down her back. She hummed now, quietly, and he grinned as he pulled the shower door open and brought his mouth down on hers without warning.
Her eyes flew open and then she surrendered to the kiss, moaning as he pushed her back against the cold tiles, groaning as his body pinned hers and water ran over them both, down their faces and into their mouths.
‘Remember what I said the night you were talking to those two professors?’
He asked the question as he brought his mouth down to take a nipple between his teeth and roll it gently, as he moved his hand lower, brushing over her feminine core, before he transferred his mouth to her other breast.
‘No...’ she moaned, rolling her hips, inviting him in. Needing him again.
How was it always like this for them? Would it ever not be? She felt as if an explosion had caught her in its midst, powerful and fierce.
‘I will bring you to my bed every night, so that no other man ever, ever interests you.’
The passion in his words was wrapping around her, squeezing her, filling her with all the love in the world. ‘You already do that,’ she said huskily.
‘It never hurts to take precautions, though, does it?’
She laughed, but any hint of amusement died inside her as he dragged his lips lower, falling to his knees so that he could kiss her in her most sensitive, private place. His tongue ran along her seam and her knees quivered as sensations began to drown her, to make thought impossible.
‘I can’t believe there was a time when you were not mine,’ he said against her flesh, and she
moaned, running her fingers through his hair as pleasure spiralled in her belly, driving through her, making her blood heat and her heart pound.
‘I need you!’ she cried out as an orgasm began to unfurl, spreading through her limbs, making them weak and aching.
‘I’m glad.’
He didn’t stop, though. His fingers dug into her hips and he held her where he needed her, his tongue dictating the speed of her release, and the intensity too. She cried out into the shower as the orgasm unfolded, her mind exploding, every conscious thought obliterated by the havoc he wreaked on her body.
He kissed her quivering flesh as he stood, but didn’t give her even a moment to recover. His hands spun her easily—she was weakened by the total meltdown of her bodily awareness—and he bent her at the hips. Holding her steady, he drove into her from behind and felt her tremble as his possession was complete—the ultimate coming together.
He throbbed inside her, his fingers massaging her wet, soapy breasts, his arousal rubbing against her sensitive nerve-endings, squeezed by her tight, wet muscles. He spoke in Italian—words that meant nothing and everything. He bent forward, kissing her back as he moved, stroking her, touching her, and finally, when her muscles squeezed him with all their need, he emptied himself into her, the feeling of ownership more complete than ever before. She owned him, and she was his.
Emmeline pressed her flushed face against the shower tiles, her mind reeling.
‘I am going to find it very hard to concentrate today,’ she said thickly, rolling her hips as he continued to pulse inside her, his length experiencing the aftershocks of the earthquake of their coming together.
‘That makes two of us.’
He ran a finger down her back before easing himself out of her, away from her, releasing them from the agony and ecstasy of what they had been. She stood and turned to face him, and her eyes were so vibrant and her smile so broad that a dull ache spread through his chest.
He’d been fooling himself in pretending the lie didn’t matter.
It did. Of course it did.
Her Wedding Night Surrender (Harlequin Presents) Page 13