Sex was fine, he reassured himself, as he looked at her sleeping face and felt a kernel of guilt for the way they’d made love. Sex was fine, but he definitely shouldn’t wake her the way he wanted to. He shouldn’t move his body over hers and kiss her until she was begging him to take her.
No.
She was exhausted, and while she was in the first flush of sexual awakening, he was far from a horny school boy. He could control his desire. He would control his desire.
With an intense feeling of regret, he stepped out of bed, and strode into the walk in wardrobe. He grabbed out some running gear and, with one last look at the bed, telling himself that only if she woke up of her own accord would he go back and kiss her, he waited for several seconds and then shook his head, moving from the room.
He showered in a guest ensuite, knowing making as much noise as he could in the bathroom that adjoined his – their – bedroom would have been a sign of weakness, and dressed quickly.
He ran often – to relieve tension, to keep fit, to think through problems at work. He ran as a form of discipline and strength. And he pushed himself that morning to run harder, faster, further, tracking east along the beach, the morning sun warm as he went, its light bouncing off the ocean with a golden glow.
He ran, but he couldn’t outrun the thoughts that were – at last – demanding his attention.
Because marrying Andrew and Kat’s daughter was anything but simple, and sooner or later, he’d have to work out how to break the news to Kat. Somehow, he’d have to explain how he knew Arabella’s parents.
He’d have to remind her that they’d met before, years earlier, when she’d been about eleven years old.
He’d have to remind her that he came to stay at their homestead. She’d only been a girl, and she’d spent most of the time playing tennis or scrambling up trees reading books. She’d been blonde then, like her mother, with hair that fell halfway down her back. She’d been quiet and serious, whereas Sophia, her younger sister, had been precocious and perspicacious.
Without realizing it, he smiled now, remembering Sophia arguing with him one morning, when he’d made a coffee, over the environmental impacts of wealthy people using private jets. She’d told him how she’d implored Andrew only to fly commercial, and to lobby for the abolition of first class seats. “Wouldn’t it be better for all the airplanes to fit as many people as possible on board?” She’d demanded. But he hadn’t really been giving the child his full attention.
He’d been distracted by Kat. Kat who did her level best to catch him on his own at any moment of the day. Kat who was ten years his senior and the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Kat who made him laugh and who he felt an ache to protect. Kat who was lonely and thought her husband was losing interest in her.
Kat who begged him to make love to her, to make her feel like a desirable woman once more.
Would Bella remember him, when he reminded her? Would she wonder about the man who’d come to stay? Had she seen anything of him and Kat together?
They’d never been together, he reminded himself, stopping running, his breath burning in his lungs, thrusting his hands onto his hips as he stared back at the mansion.
God, thank heavens for small mercies, they’d never slept together. He never would have, of course. It was out of the question. No matter how much he’d wanted Kat, she’d been married to his mentor and friend, a man who’d taken Vitalo under his wing when Vitalo had been fleeing his father and his life. A man who’d been almost like a father to Vitalo.
A thick sense of dread drugged his senses but he ignored it.
For now, he didn’t need to think about Kat. He didn’t need to worry about telling her, nor about telling Bella. She was pregnant with his child; they were married. The rest would fall into place.
Besides, Bella would never know that Kat had fallen in love with him. A muscle jerked in his jaw. And that he’d loved Kat? Because he had, hadn’t he?
A sense of unease clawed at him, and he saw Bella as she’d been hours earlier, when she’d climbed on top of him; so trusting, so beautiful, so honest.
She’d been hurt before, he could see that. No matter how she tried to gloss over the details of her first marriage, he heard the pain in her words, he saw the effort it cost her to produce a voice of lightness, and he understood – she was hurting in some way.
He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want their marriage to cause her pain.
So he had to manage that. He would speak to Kat. He would explain. He would be firmer than he’d ever been – there was no hope for them. Whatever dance they’d been doing for over a decade was over. Kat was married, and now, so was he.
The resolution was firm, and yet his sense of unease didn’t lift, and he wondered if this, then, was how he was going to live his life from now on – always looking over his shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for a dark cloud to thunder on the horizon of his life, his marriage, his future with Bella and his baby.
Resolution or not, there was no way to blot out the outside world.
When he returned home, Bella was still asleep. Regret punctuated his gut but he told himself he needed to let her sleep – still – and showered once more, this time changing into a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, heading into his office. He’d left his phone charging in there overnight; he looked at the screen now and saw Kat’s name emblazoned across the screen and his gut clenched.
He abhorred cheating, lying, infidelity, and yet he felt now as though he was engaged in just that. His eyes shifted to the door and he swiped his screen open, his heartrate charged as he read her message.
Came to you in Athens – housekeepers said you’re on the island. Unplanned visit? K. xxx
He dropped the phone onto his desk, his expression taut. He cursed then, under his breath, but it felt damned good to issue the harsh invective, so he let another rip.
“Problem?” The voice at the door was still thick with sleep and his eyes slammed to the doorway.
Heaven help him.
Bella.
Young. Beautiful. Trusting. Innocent.
She’d pulled on a t-shirt of his, and it was enormous on her, swimming to just above her knees, and dropping down one shoulder to show her creamy, soft flesh.
He stared at her, and her cheeks heated pink. Her dark hair was all tousled, from the way he’d driven his fingers through it that night, and he found his throat too thick to speak now.
“You’re awake,” he managed, finally, the observation stupid and vapid.
But she was paying as little attention to his words as he was to making them.
“You weren’t there,” she said, padding into his office and casting a quick glance around before returning her attention to him.
“Did you miss me, agape?” he asked, intending it to be teasing.
But there was a ferocity to her expression then, as she came around behind his desk and pushed at his chest. She was tiny, and he was huge, but he sat into his chair on her command, and she moved onto his lap, straddling him, facing him, and she kissed him and rolled her body, seeking the friction of his movement, his hard cock pressing against her – she was naked beneath his shirt, he realized now, and he groaned at her need.
“We shouldn’t,” he said, more to himself than her. “The pregnancy…”
“Sex is fine,” she said, reaching for his button and undoing it, lifting up on her knees so she could push his zipper down next. Her lips moved over his and his tongue dueled with hers. “I saw a doctor,” she said, as if he needed more convincing. “And asked specifically.”
He wasn’t sure he shouldn’t demur anyway, but hell, she was curling her hands around his length, freeing him from his jeans with an impatience that took his breath away and then she was lifting up, taking him deep inside her, and he could think of nothing but this.
“Who am I to argue with a doctor?” He groaned, pushing his shirt higher up her body so he could bury his head between her sweet breasts, breas
ts that already felt rounder and heavier than the first night they’d made love.
But she wasn’t listening; she was riding a wave of pleasure, cresting to the top, her head tilted back, dark hair spilling down her back.
“I’m addicted to this,” she said, her voice throbbing with passion as she dug her fingernails into his shoulders. Her skin was pink, her face flushed; she brought her head forward, and she kissed him urgently as she moved up and down his length, as though wild fires raged at their feet, as though a lion chased her across a desert, as though she would cease to exist if he wasn’t with her.
And he swore then, he swore out of pleasure, and he surrendered to this, to pleasure, to her, to everything; he surrendered to this madness even as he knew it was madness, even as he knew there were forces outside, beyond this passion and their marriage, forces that would threaten this, forces he wished didn’t exist.
But for now, there was only Bella and their chemistry; there was the island and their marriage, their baby. As she cried out, her pleasure loud and intense, he wondered if he could simply keep Bella here forever – his sexual prisoner, estranged from the world beyond, like a princess in a tower.
He wondered if she’d even mind.
Madness was upon him, and he’d never expected madness to feel so damned good.
Chapter 6
“HOW DID YOU FIND out?” She lifted some yoghurt to her mouth, tasting its piquancy gratefully.
She’d woken ravenous, and jumping on Vitalo as soon as she’d seen him in his office hadn’t been part of the plan. At all. But he’d looked so devilish and dark, standing over his desk as though the world was about to come falling down around him, and she’d felt a visceral surge of need, a rush of desire that was as real as electric shock.
He reclined in his chair, the morning sun slicing across him, making his skin glow and her stomach flip-flopped anew, another surge of desire spiraling through her.
“About the baby,” she prompted, the words breathy to her own ears.
Was she imagining a guardedness in his expression? A wariness in his eyes?
The longer the silence stretched, the more anxiety surged inside of her. “Vitalo?”
“Your mother,” he said, immediately afterwards, bringing a frown to Bella’s face.
“My mom?”
He dipped his head in silent agreement. But that didn’t answer a question so much as birth a thousand more.
“My mom?” she repeated, still trying to put the pieces together.
He pierced her with his dark, mysterious eyes.
“I was friends with your father,” he said simply.
Her eyes flew wide. “I met you!” She settled back in her own seat, staring at a point past his shoulder, trying to grab all the threads together, trying to remember everything about the handsome man who’d come to their home. It had been a long time ago, but she’d been enough on the brink of adolescence to remember feeling in awe of how handsome he was. “It’s been driving me crazy, there’s something so familiar about you,” she said, her memory still evasive. “You came to the homestead one year?”
Another small nod, just a tight jerk of his head.
But Bella was running all these facts together, making sense of the picture that was forming. “You were friends with daddy?”
Now, his smile was wistful, touched with the same grief that was an ever-fixed mark of Bella’s spirit.
“He was… a mentor to me.” Which made sense, given Vitalo must have been fifteen years her father’s junior. “And friends, too. Yes. Your father was a great man. I admired him very much.”
Bella smiled then and tears pricked at her lashes. It was absurd, but somehow knowing that the father of her baby had known her father brought their marriage full circle. It made sense of all of this, even when it shouldn’t have made sense. Andrew Howard had died more than a decade earlier, but her husband had known him. They had a shared memory of Bella’s father, and that meant the world to her.
“He was a great man,” she whispered her agreement. “That’s how you came to be invited to the wedding?” She pushed, filling in the details. “You’re friends with mom, too? I mean, you must be, for her to have told you about the baby?”
A beat passed, a heavy silence, but Bella barely noticed. “Was she still furious when she spoke to you?”
“Furious?” He frowned, his eyes running over Bella’s face. “Not at all. Why?”
“She’s too young to be a grandmother,” Bella said wryly. “And she is young,” she hastened to add. “Nonetheless, I had other things on my mind when I told her – I wasn’t prepared to have to break it to her sensitively.”
“We did not discuss it in detail. She mentioned it in passing but I knew, immediately, what the significance of your pregnancy was.”
“You must have been shocked.”
His laugh was humourless. “Blindsided, in fact. I cannot remember ever feeling more surprised. Nor more angry with myself.”
“Angry?” She prompted curiously.
“For not giving you a proper hearing, the day you came to my office. I knew as soon as Kat mentioned the baby why you must have come to me, that day. What courage it must have taken.”
Her smile was wry. “It would have been more courageous if I’d stuck to my plan and told you.”
“When I pretended I did not even remember you?” He asked, arching a dark brow and smiling, ruefully.
Something like pleasure trembled in Bella’s heart. “Why did you pretend?” she murmured, leaning forward, hunger forgotten, breakfast no longer needed.
He sipped his coffee, replacing the cup in the saucer, then returning his gaze to her face. Her stomach squeezed when their eyes met and, as if for the first time, she felt his handsomeness wrap around her, his sexual appeal like a dagger sliding over her nerve endings.
“Your father was a hero of mine,” he said, the words quiet, the confession drawn from him heavily. “He welcomed me into his family, his life. He was a friend to me, yes, but more than that, he was a father-figure, of sorts. On the night of your mother’s wedding, when we slept together, I had no idea who you were. If I had, I would never have approached you. Not like that. Not for what was meant to be a meaningless one-night stand. Cristo, if I’d known you were a virgin I would have absolutely walked in the opposite direction as fast as I could. Realising not only that I had slept with Andrew Howard’s daughter, but that I had taken something as precious as your innocence…”
“You regretted it,” she said quietly, her eyes running over his face, wishing he hadn’t carried that burden of guilt. “You wished it hadn’t happened.”
“Yes,” he said, frankly. “I did. Back then, I did. When you came to my office, I wanted you to go away again, I wanted to forget what I had done.”
Bella’s eyes dropped to the tabletop. His feelings made sense, but that didn’t stop them from hurting. “It was my decision, too.”
“You did not know who I was. You knew nothing about my connection to him, or your mother.”
“I just knew that I wanted to have sex,” she said, lifting her eyes to his and piercing him with the strength of her conviction. “Honestly, Vitalo, if it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.”
Something dark flickered in his gaze, and his jaw tightened visibly. “It is best we do not speak of that alternative.”
“I’m saying it to alleviate any misplaced sense of guilt. You didn’t corrupt an innocent little virgin. I knew what I was doing.”
“Nonetheless,” he drawled, the word stiffened with resolve. “I would prefer not to think of you finding some other man to sleep with.”
“Then be thankful I didn’t,” she suggested, waggling her brows, smiling at him slowly. “Don’t waste your energy feeling guilty.”
Silence spread between them, and eventually, he nodded – a curt shift of his dark head.
Satisfied, she settled back in her chair. “Speaking of my mom, I am going to have to tell her about this. Our marria
ge. The fact you’re the father.”
His eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “There’s no rush,” he said, his smile changing his handsome face, making warmth pool in the pit of her stomach. “Let it be just the two of us for a little while longer.”
“Sophia will murder me,” she said, biting down on her lip. “But I do kind of like the idea of keeping all the outside world at bay…”
“Then it’s settled.” He kissed her hand. “Would you like to see more of the island?”
There wasn’t much she could say she wanted more, in that moment, and so she nodded, falling into step beside him.
A white, graveled path led away from the house, towards one of the citrus groves. “It’s so beautiful here,” she couldn’t help admiring, as they weaved beneath bows of trees, laden with fruit.
He reached up so he could hold a branch back for her. “My mother had this grove planted,” he said, quite matter-of-factly. “She loved to make jams – it was something her mother had taught her to do as a child. Some of my strongest childhood memories are of my mother peeling oranges for hours, patiently chopping them and discarding the pips, then stirring them as the sweet, sticky smell filled the house.”
His words created such a strong image in Bella’s mind that her heart ached for the loss of his mother, and the void it must have left in his life. She knew what that emptiness was like, what a battle it was to cope with. “Did she teach you to make it?”
“She tried,” he said, his smile laced with memories. “I wasn’t a particularly willing pupil. There was always too much else to do,” he added, reaching up and plucking a blossom from a tree as they passed, bringing it to his nose and smelling it.
“Such as?” She teased, trying to lighten the mood.
“Exploring,” he responded in kind. “The whole island was my oyster.”
“It must have been like catnip to a curious kid. I would have loved it.”
“The homestead was hardly small. I imagine you did plenty of exploring of your own?”
“Not as much as you’d think. Not as much as Sophia,” she added. “She was always the adventurer. One time, mom locked us in our bedroom – I can’t even remember what we’d done now. Something she obviously didn’t approve of, though for the life of me, I can’t imagine what. We were pretty good kids. Anyway, she’d locked us in our rooms. I went to the bookshelf and pulled out The Secret Garden – one of my favourites, as a child – and curled up in bed, determined to wait it out. Mom’s tempers never lasted long. But not Sophia! She wasn’t going to be punished for something we hadn’t done – Sophia abhors injustice and always has done. So she climbed out of the windows and onto the roof.”
The Evermore Series II: Books 4, 5 and 6 Page 7