Harlequin Presents: Once Upon A Temptation June 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Dani Collins

  Benedetto tasted innocence and possibility, and beneath that, the sheer punch that was all Angelina.

  He anchored her with an arm around her back, and bent her over, deepening the kiss. Taking more and more, until he couldn’t be sure any longer which one of them was more likely to break.

  She was intoxicating.

  Despite all the times he’d done this, there had never been a time that he had wanted a wife like this. Or at all. But then, in all the ways that mattered, she was his first.

  That thought made a kind of bitterness well in him, and he pulled away. And then took his time looking at her. Her lips parted. Her eyes dark with passion.

  This from the woman who claimed she didn’t want him at all. That she had been forced into this.

  He rather thought not.

  He liked to think he had been, though that wasn’t quite true either. He’d had his choices, too.

  “Not yet,” he murmured, as much to himself as to her.

  Because one choice he did have was to treat her the way he’d treated the others. He had already tasted her more than the rest of them, save Sylvia. He had already betrayed himself a thousand times over while in the thrall of her piano.

  But she didn’t have to know that. And he didn’t have to succumb to it here.

  And now that they were married, he could get this back on track.

  Benedetto let go of her, pleased despite himself when she had to grip the bed beside her to stay on her feet. He picked up the hand she’d been pressing against the bed and could see the indentation of the coverlet’s stone on her palm.

  He was savage enough to like it.

  “What do you mean, not yet?” she demanded. “I thought that once we were married—”

  “So impatient,” he taunted her. “Especially for one forced to the altar as you have been.”

  If she dared, he could tell, she would have cursed him to his face.

  Instead, she glared at him.

  “Don’t you worry about consummating our marriage.” He laughed, though the lie of it caught a little in his chest. “I will take you in hand, never fear. But first, I wish to show you something.”

  Benedetto turned and headed for the door without taking her hand to bring her with him. And he smiled when he heard her follow him.

  He didn’t have to turn around and study her face to understand her reluctance. It was entirely possible she didn’t know why she was following him. That she was simply as compelled as he was. He hoped so.

  It was a good match for this mad yearning he felt inside, when he knew better. A yearning that he was terribly afraid would be the end of him. This innocent, untrained girl could bring him to his knees.

  But then, that was a power he had no intention of handing over to her. If she didn’t know, she couldn’t use it.

  He led her out into the master suite, then through a door that led to a separate tower from one of the salons.

  Angelina balked at the door, looking around a little bit wildly.

  “This is your tower,” he told her, sounding almost formal. “You can enter whenever you wish.”

  “That seems like a lot of towers to remember,” she said, a little solemnly, from behind him. “I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”

  He looked over his shoulder as they climbed the stairs.

  “Don’t,” he warned her, and meant it more than he usually did. More than he wanted to mean it. “Whatever else you do here, do not imagine that the warning I gave you was a joke, Angelina.”

  He saw her swallow, hard, but then they were at the top of the stairs. He threw open the door, then waited for her to follow him inside.

  And then Benedetto watched as she tried to contain her gasp of joy.

  “A piano,” she whispered, as if she couldn’t believe it. “You really did get me a piano. A Steinway.”

  “I am assured it is the finest piano on the Continent,” he told her, feeling…uncertain, for once. Unlike himself. Did he crave her approval so badly? When he didn’t care in the least if the entire world thought him a monster? It should have shamed him, but all he could do was drink in the wonder all over her. “It is yours. You can play it whenever you wish, night or day. And I will give instructions to my staff that you are to be left to it.”

  There was a look of hushed awe on her face. She aimed it his way, for a moment, then looked back at the piano that sat in the center of the room. When he inclined his head, she let out a breath. Then she ran to the piano to put her hands on it. To slide back the cover, and touch the keys.

  Soft, easy, reverent. Like a lover might.

  And for a deeply disturbing moment, Benedetto found himself actually questioning whether he was, in fact, jealous of an inanimate object.

  Surely not.

  He shoved that aside, because he’d been called a monster most of his life and he could live with the consequences of that. He had. It was smallness and pettiness he could not abide, in himself or anyone else. Benedetto hated it in the men who auctioned off their daughters to pay their debts; he despised even the faintest hint of it in himself.

  “Play, Angelina,” he urged her. And if his voice was darker than it should have been, rougher and wilder, he told himself it was no more than to be expected. “Play for me.”

  He was married. Again. Every time he imagined he might be finished at last. That it would be the end of this long, strange road. That finally, this curse would be lifted and he would be freed.

  Finally, he could bury his grandfather’s dark prophecies in the grave where the old man lay.

  And every time, Benedetto was proved wrong. He’d almost become inured to it, he thought as Angelina spread her fingers, smiled in that inward, mysterious manner that he found intoxicating, and began to coax something stormy and dark from the keys.

  As the music filled the tower he admitted to himself that this time he wanted, desperately, to be right.

  He wanted to be done.

  He wanted her.

  It was the way she played, as if she was not the one producing the notes, the melodies, the whole songs and symphonies. Instead, it was as if she was a conduit, standing fast somewhere between the music in her head and what poured out of her fingers.

  Benedetto had never seen or heard anything so beautiful.

  And he couldn’t help but imagine that she could do the same for him and the dark destiny he had chosen to make his own.

  Outside, the afternoon wore on, easing its way into another perfect Italian evening.

  And his bride played as if she was enchanted, her fingers like liquid magic over the keys. Half-bent, eyes half-closed, as if she was caught in the grip of the same madness that roared in him.

  Or perhaps Benedetto only wished it so.

  When wishing was another thing he had given up long ago.

  Or should have.

  But everything had changed when he’d walked into that dining room in her father’s house and seen an angel where he’d expected nothing more than a collection of wan socialites. He stood against the wall in the tower room, his back against the stones that had defined him as long as he’d drawn breath.

  It was easy to pretend that he had been disconnected from this place, shuttled off to boarding school the way he had been, but Castello Nero lived inside him and always had. As a child he’d loved coming home to this place. Endless halls, secret passages, and his beloved grandmother. His parents had always been away, but what did that matter when he could play mad siege games on the rocks or race the tide?

  There was a part of him that would always long for those untroubled times. That wished he could somehow recreate them, if not for himself, for a child like the one he’d been too briefly. Maybe that was nothing more than a fantasy. Then again, maybe it was all he had.

  He had to take his fantasies where he could.

 
Because it wasn’t long after those dreamy days that he’d understood different truths about this place. These ancient walls and the terrible price those who lived here had paid, and would pay. Some would call it a privilege. Some would see only the trappings, the art and the antiques, the marble gleaming in all directions. Some would assume it was the shine of such things that made the difference.

  They never saw any blood on their hands. They never heard the screams from the now defunct dungeons. They walked the halls and thought only of glory, never noticing the ghosts that lurked around every corner.

  Or the ghosts that lived in him.

  But as Angelina played, Benedetto imagined that she could see him.

  The real him.

  The music crashed and soared, whispered then shouted. The hardest part of him stood at attention, aching for her touch—and yet feeling it, all the same, in the music she played, here in the tower he had made a music room, just for her.

  She played and played, while outside the tide rose, the waves swelled, and the moon began to rise before the sun was down.

  That, too, felt like a sign.

  And when she stopped playing, it took Benedetto too long to realize it. Because the storm was inside him, then. She was. Her music filled every part of him, making him imagine for a moment that he was free.

  That he could ever be free.

  That this little slip of a woman, sheltered and sold off, held the key that could unlock the chains that had held him all his life.

  It was a farce. He knew it was a farce.

  And still, when she turned to look at him, her blue eyes dark with passion and need and all that same madness he felt inside him, he…forgot.

  He forgot everything but her.

  “Benedetto…” she began, her voice a harsh croak against the sudden, bruised silence.

  “I know,” he heard himself say, as if from a distance. As if he was the man he’d imagined he’d become, so many years ago, instead of the man he became instead. The man he doubted his grandmother would recognize. “I know, little one.”

  He pushed himself off from the wall and had the same sensation he always did, that the castello itself tried to hold on to him. Tried to tug him back, grip him hard, smother him, until he became one more stone statue.

  Some years he felt more like stone than others, but not today.

  But Angelina sat on the piano bench, her wedding gown flowing in all directions, and her chest heaving with the force of all the emotions she’d let sing through her fingers.

  And she was so obviously, inarguably alive that he could not be stone. She was so vibrant, so filled with color and heat, that he could not possibly look down and find himself made into marble, no matter how the walls seemed to cling to him.

  Benedetto crossed the floor, his gaze on hers as if the heat between them was a lifeline. As if she was saving him, here in this tower where no one was safe. And then he was touching her, his hands against her flushed cheeks, his fingers finding their way into the heavy, silvery mass of her blond hair.

  At last, something in him cried.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, though there was heat in her gaze.

  “Surely you know,” Benedetto said as he swept her up into his arms. “Surely your mother—or the internet—should have prepared you.”

  “Neither are as useful as advertised,” she said, her head against his shoulder. And that dry note in her voice gone husky.

  He had not planned to take her, as he had not taken the rest. They were offerings to fate, not to him. They were meant to worry over the bed that made his chamber look blooded, like so much stage dressing. They were never meant to share it with him. Not like this, dressed like a bride and at the beginning of this bizarre journey.

  But Angelina was nothing like the others.

  She never had been.

  She was music, and she was light. She was every dream he’d told himself wasn’t for him, could never be for him.

  And every time he tasted her, he felt the chains that bound him weaken, somehow.

  So Benedetto carried her, not down the tower stairs to the master suite, but to the chaise he’d set beneath the windows in this tower room. Because it had amused him to make this tower look as much like the conservatory in her father’s shambles of the house as possible, he’d assured himself.

  Or perhaps he’d done it because he wanted her to feel at home here, however unlikely that was—but he shied away from admitting that, even to himself. Even now.

  He laid her down before him, admiring the way her hair tangled all about her. Like it, too, was a part of the same magic spell that held him in its thrall.

  The same spell that made this feel like a real marriage after all.

  “Welcome to your wedding night,” Benedetto said as he lowered himself over her, and then he took her mouth with his.

  Claiming Angelina, here in this castle that took more than it gave.

  At last.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ANGELINA FELT TORN apart in the most glorious way and all he was doing was kissing her.

  It was the music. The sheer excellence of the piano he’d found for her, and had set up in perfect tune.

  She had only meant to play for a moment, but the keys had felt so alive beneath her fingers, as if each note was an embrace, that too soon, she’d lost herself completely.

  She still felt lost.

  And yet, somehow, she’d been aware of Benedetto the whole time. Her husband and perhaps her killer—though she couldn’t quite believe that, not from a man who could give a piano like this as a gift—standing in the corner of the room with his gaze fixed on her.

  She would not say that she was used to him, because how could anyone become used to a hurricane?

  But she craved that electric charge. The darkness in his gaze, the sensual promise etched over his beautiful face, his clever mouth.

  She’d played and played. And she could not have explained it if her life depended on it, as she supposed it might, but the longer she played, the more it was as if her own hands moved over her body. As if she was making love to herself, there before him, the way she had in the car.

  Exposed and needy and at his command.

  Right where she’d wanted to be since that very first night.

  Angelina could hardly contain herself. All she could think of were the many times in this last, red-hot month of waiting and worrying and wondering, when her legs had been spread wide and he had been between them. His mouth. His fingers.

  She’d played because her body felt like his already and there was no part of her that disliked that sensation.

  She’d played because playing for him felt like his possession. Irrevocable. Glorious. And as immovable as the stone walls of the tower that sang the notes she played back to her, no matter the piece, as sweet and sensual songs.

  Benedetto lowered himself over her on the chaise, and she forgot about playing, because he kissed her like a starving man.

  Angelina kissed him back, because his shoulders were as wide as mountains and behind him she could see only the darkening sky. And her ears were filled with the rushing sound of the sea waiting and whispering far below.

  He was hard and heavy, and this time, he did not crawl his way down her body to bury his head between her legs. This time he let her feel the weight of him, pressing her down like a sweet, hot stone.

  And all the while he kissed her, again and again, rough and deep and filled with the same madness that clamored inside her.

  Angelina could no longer tell if she was still playing the piano, or if he was playing her, and either way, the notes rose and fell, sang and wept, and she could do nothing about it.

  She didn’t want to do anything about it but savor it.

  Because whatever song this was, it made her burn.

  Again and again, s
he burned.

  Only for him, something in her whispered. And that made her burn all the more.

  Benedetto tore his mouth from hers and began to move down her body, then, but only far enough to tug on the bodice of her dress. Hard.

  He glanced at her, his dark eyes bright and gleaming, and tugged on her dress until it tore. Then he tore it even more, baring her breasts to his view.

  And when she gasped at the ferocity, or at the surge of liquid heat that bloomed in her because of it, he laughed.

  Benedetto looked at her, his face dark with passion and set fierce like a wolf’s, as he shaped her breasts with those calloused palms of his and then took one aching nipple into his mouth.

  And then she was a crescendo.

  Angelina arched up, not sure if she was fighting him or finding him, or both at the same time. His mouth was a torture and treat, and she pressed herself even more firmly into his mouth. Whatever he wanted to give her, she wanted to take. As much as possible.

  His hands moved south, continuing their destruction. He tore her white dress to ribbons, baring her to him. And she thrilled to every last bit of sensation that charged through her from the air on her flesh, or better still, his wicked mouth.

  And when he thrust his heavy thigh between hers even as he continued to hold her down and take his fill of her, she found that gave her something to rock the center of her need against.

  Over and over again, because it felt like soaring high into the night.

  And when she shattered, tossed over a steep edge as if from the window of this tower to the brooding sea far below, he laughed that same dark, delighted laugh that had thrilled her from the first.

  Angelina could feel the laugh inside her, and it only made her shudder more.

  When she came back to herself, rising from the depths somehow, he had rolled off of her. Her wedding dress was torn to pieces, baring her to his view completely. That he could see all of her was new, and faintly terrifying. No one had seen Angelina fully naked since she was a small child.

  But far more overwhelming was the fact that as Benedetto stood beside her, looking down at the chaise from his great height, he was shrugging out of his own wedding clothes.