Forbidden Until Midnight

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

New Year’s Eve last year, Venice

I N HER MIND she was distantly aware that Santo had gathered her into his arms and gently pulled her from the countertop, carrying her over to the large, soft leather sofa that looked out at the Venetian night sky, where stars vied with fireworks above waterways that reflected it all over again on shifting silken waves.

He lay back against the head of the sofa, pulling her onto him, keeping her in his arms.

‘Did we miss New Year?’ she asked when she found her voice again. He shook his head, his lips resting against the top of her head, ruffling her hair a little, and she didn’t mind it a single bit. ‘We’ve never done that.’

‘ That? No, I’d most definitely remember if we’d done that before,’ he insisted.

‘No,’ she said, laughing and slapping the hand that was secured around her waist as if he never wanted to let her go. ‘Seen the New Year in together.’

They’d either been with other people or they’d been pulled apart by other people. Even this moment felt stolen. As if, at some point, reality would come crashing down to take it away from her, just like everything else she’d thought she’d had in her life.

Eleanor turned her head to burrow against his chest as if he could ward off her fears. Her hand slipped beneath his shirt, where it had come open at his neck, and relished the hot skin, the texture of the swirls of hair that dusted his chest. And just like that, her curiosity was ignited, desire curling up like a flame from the ashes. She twisted in his lap, unbuttoning his shirt with curious fingers, before his hand came down around them.

‘Cara,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘we can stop here. We can take it as slow as you want or need.’

But they couldn’t. She didn’t know what it was, waiting there on the horizon, she didn’t know how it would happen, but she felt that this was it for them. That they didn’t have all the time in the world. Whether it was because of the past or because of how it always was between her and Santo, something would happen to take this from her, and she wouldn’t waste a single moment she had with him.

‘This is what I want, Santo,’ she said and meant it truly. ‘You. I want you so much that I...’ She stopped herself, but saw the questions in his eyes. ‘I can’t explain it...words don’t explain it...’ She shrugged. So she crawled up to take his lips in hers and poured every inexplicable, complicated, messy, passionate, desperate feeling she had for him into her kiss.

She wound her fingers into his hair and rose onto her knees, straddling his hips, before pressing herself down into his lap. He lurched forward to meet her, feeding off her passion, increasing it, multiplying it exponentially, his arms around her waist, holding her in the way that only he ever had, as if she were both incredibly precious and strong enough to take it—to take him .

This was what had been missing from her life, this was who she could love with unrestrained abandon, not without fear, and not without caution, but with those things, making it so much greater than anything she could have imagined. And it scared her witless.

He shifted her around him and she felt the hard length of him beneath her and she let the sensations draw her back into the sensual bliss he offered her.

His hands were full of her and it would still never be enough. Stomach muscles taut, he held himself and her upright as she pulled at the buttons on his shirt, shucking it from his shoulders, her palms smoothing over his skin as if learning the feel of it.

Cristo , her skin was like silk. Her tongue tangled with his as his hands swept across her body to find the fastening that held the dress together. As if sensing his impatience, she smiled against his lips and guided his hands to the buttons at her back, to tiny buttons that, when undone, unwrapped the dress like a present.

Before she could be revealed, his hands slipped beneath the gold layers of stiff silk and tugged the material from her body. And there she was, naked, and he nearly lost his mind.

Was this how it would be—that she would push him to the edge of his sanity? Was it something that someone like him could risk?

Her gaze beckoned him back to her, but a part of him edged away, inch by inch, seeking a self-protection that was never coming back. He was done for—a lost cause.

But that didn’t mean he should stop protecting her .

‘Santo?’

Like a siren song, she called and he went to her as if she were his redemption rather than his damnation. He rocked beneath her and relished the shiver that ran up her body. Thrusting upward as she pressed down against him, goosebumps broke over his skin as she moaned in pleasure.

Unable to wait any longer, Eleanor’s hands went to the fastening of his trousers, slipping the eye from the hook and releasing the zip. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she studied him, slowly pulling him free from his briefs, her hands around his length enough to make him come like some untried youth. He barely repressed the growl forming in the back of his throat but, from the knowing smile pulling at her lips, she’d heard him anyway. And liked it.

She looked up at him, the humour passing from her eyes. ‘I don’t want anything between us,’ she said solemnly as she stroked the length of him again.

He bit his lip, trying not to be seduced by her desire.

‘You should always use protection, cara ,’ he warned, aware of the irony of him lecturing her on protection when the thought of her being with anyone but him was untenable. ‘For health, for contraception,’ he bit out through the waves of pleasure her inexperienced hands teased from him. He was barely holding on and she was offering him everything he could ever want, whilst risking his worst nightmare—the continuation of his line. Of his genes. Of his father’s .

He held his forehead against hers and tried to keep himself from thrusting into her caress.

‘I’m on contraception.’

Her words pressed against his lips, and this time he was unable to hold back the groan that she swallowed as she opened her mouth to his in a kiss.

This woman was his undoing.

And then he cursed for a different reason.

‘Bedroom,’ he said against her mouth.

‘No time,’ Eleanor replied, pulling his waist between her legs.

‘We will make time,’ he commanded as he stepped back, plucked her from the sofa, hauled her into his arms, smiled when she squeaked, and stalked towards the bedroom. He was damned if he’d let her first time be some desperate scramble on a sofa.

He carried her down the corridor, almost disbelieving that he had her in his arms. That this time was theirs, finally. He toed the bedroom door open and, in the gentle upward lighting, made his way to place her gently on the bed.

She was utterly beautiful to him. It was a rush of knowledge, of blood, of conviction, of want, and he wasn’t ashamed that he shook from the power of it. In that moment, he nearly turned back. He wasn’t worthy of her, of this. There were things that Eleanor didn’t know. But, just as his conscience began to stir, she sat forward, a frown between her eyes, a thread of concern that he never wanted to see passing across her exquisite features, and in his rush to reassure her, his thoughts fled.

He kneeled on the edge of the bed, coming for her, relishing the delight that now filled her gaze.

‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she accused, as if in a sulk.

He cocked his head to the side, testing the game she wanted to play.

‘What are you going to do about it, Princess?’

She rose to her knees, meeting him much closer on the bed than he’d expected. His entire body reacted, the hairs on his skin raising, the tightening of his muscles, ready for action, bound by restraint. A little smirk pulled at her lips and it was almost adorable. But the humour dropped beneath sharp need, when her hands went to the waistband of his trousers and pushed the material from his hips.

His jaw ached with the tension running through his body, holding him back, letting her explore as she wanted to. He pulled back enough to remove the loose trousers from his legs, to find her frowning at his briefs.

‘Those too,’ she commanded imperiously.

And he barked out a laugh. ‘As you wish,’ he said, his thumbs hooking into the band and drawing them slowly from his legs, delighting in Eleanor’s fascination.

Her sharp inhale when she saw all of him pulled him back to her innocence, to why he hadn’t just taken her up against the wall, as he’d wanted, the moment they’d crossed the threshold.

He was about to reassure her, remind her that they didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want, when she came to the edge of the bed, still on her knees, her cool little hands pressing into his body, his skin, his torso, around his hips and finally, exquisitely, around the length of him.

His head fell back as she explored him, as she felt her way around him, learning while she mystified him. But when he felt her mouth close around him, he nearly yelled out loud. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to, but he was drowning in a sea of such pure bliss it was near pain.

‘Eleanor...’ Her name was a plea and a prayer on his lips. ‘Cristo.’

Her response was a moan of delight around the hard length of him. Her tongue, the wet heat, the vibration of her pleasure was too much, and with a resolution that took more strength than he liked, he gently drew her away from him and pulled her up to face him.

‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked, eyes wide, worried.

‘Absolutely not,’ he managed through the pounding in his chest. ‘But if you want me capable of anything more we have to stop there. For now,’ he said, more to reassure her than expecting more.

Realisation dawned in her gaze, a slight flush rose on her cheeks, and in that moment he thought that the crack in his heart began to close just a little. He kissed her then, covering the little fissures shifting like tectonic plates in his soul. He kissed her gently back against the bed, her arms sweeping up around his head, enfolding him, protecting their kiss against the outside world. He kissed the inside of her upper arm and just relished the heat of her body, the scent of her driving him wild. She opened for him, her legs gently wrapping around him, unconsciously guiding him to where they both wanted to be.

‘Remember, cara , talk to me. Tell me what you feel, what makes you feel good, what doesn’t, when you want me to stop,’ he said in between kisses.

‘If. If I want you to stop,’ she insisted.

He smiled, but the seriousness remained in his gaze. ‘It might hurt.’

She nodded, understanding and expectation serious in her eyes as he nudged himself at her entrance. The slick wet heat of her was urging him on, but he controlled himself with a ruthlessness that bordered on pain. Slowly, he leaned into her, inch by inch, filling her, joining with her, hating that the pure ecstasy of it for him caused her pain, the price she was paying indecent in that light. And in that moment he knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

The feeling of intrusion was almost overwhelming.

‘Breathe, cara .’

Eleanor did as he asked, relaxing her body into it. Slowly, just like before, pleasure emerged from the pain, breath by breath, inch by inch, and her body, as if it knew him, as if it recognised him, began to unfurl for him.

As she adjusted to the size of him, she began to feel other things—the satisfaction of him inside her, the sense of completeness that began to fill her. The more she wanted him, the deeper she wanted him. The way that when he moved, he pressed against the bundle of nerves that snapped intense pleasure through her body.

A gasp fell from her lips and Santo responded by moving exactly the same way again.

‘Good?’

‘Amazing,’ she hissed on an exhale.

‘In what way?’ he asked, and she could tell that he was struggling. Struggling to hold himself back, struggling to care for her, to protect this for her. To make it special for her.

‘I never knew it could feel this way,’ she admitted as he slowly filled her again, her head falling back on the pillow, her body rising to meet his. ‘As if I had been empty until now,’ she said as he drew back, the slide so delicious, and once again the gentle tide of her orgasm began to build. ‘As if I had always missed you and never known it.’

He pushed into her slowly, deeply, as if he was that tide, gently covering her with a pleasure that was as strong as a life force. Not terrifying, not plunging towards the edge of a cliff, but, once again, accepting that inevitable conclusion where he would join her as they willingly stepped into the abyss together.

She started to shiver under the weight of that pleasure.

‘ Cara? ’

‘It’s so much, what you do to me. It’s everything,’ she said in wonder as she breathed through a bigger wave of pleasure, as if they were wading into deeper and deeper waters.

Santo’s head dropped to her chest, her hands coming to wrap around him, holding him to her breast as he teased her nipples. His movements became less smooth, and she knew that he was as affected as she was. His skin, slick with the same sweat as her own, the gentle slap of his body against hers, the gasps and moans no longer distinguishable between them as they came closer and closer towards this inescapable and undefinable thing .

Eleanor lost her breath, lost her sense of self, only knowing him, only knowing this. Her orgasm swept over her, over Santo, drawing him with her as they fell together...always together.

Eleanor woke, realising that the bed was empty. Smoothing circles on the cool sheets where Santo had been, she shook away the heavy sleep she had fallen into and sat up in the bed. Frowning, she pulled the silk throw from the bed and, wrapping it around her, she went in search of him.

He wasn’t in the en suite bathroom, so she passed through the open bedroom door and, barefoot, made her way back towards the main part of the suite.

‘No, it’s not like that,’ Santo insisted, his voice low.

Eleanor hung back at the threshold of the sitting room, reluctant to intrude on something that was clearly deeply personal. Santo was on the phone, wearing nothing but his black trousers. For a moment, she allowed herself to indulge in the planes of his muscled torso, remembering the feel of his skin against her palm, her lips...and deep within her. She cast her gaze back to where he’d placed her on the countertop, a fierce blush rising to her cheeks, purely from the memory of the pleasure he’d brought her there.

‘No, absolutely not,’ Santo whisper-hissed again, drawing her attention back to him, his hand slashing through the air like punctuation.

Frowning, curiosity drew her a step forward into the room when his next words stopped her dead.

‘She might be your daughter, Pietro, but you sent me to look after her,’ he bit out angrily.

Pietro.

The name sounded like a bell in her mind, casting ripples across her thoughts, her memories... Pietro. The name of the man who was her father, her mother had confided. The father who she had put from her mind because he hadn’t come for her. Because he hadn’t wanted her.

‘I don’t care what you think, I’m going to—’

Eleanor’s head snapped up as Santo’s words cut off, to see him staring at her reflection in the window.

‘I have to go,’ Santo said, ending the call without taking his eyes off her.

Neither moved for what felt like an eternity. And then they both moved at once, Eleanor away from him and Santo towards her.

Nausea hit her so hard, so fast, she was nearly sick.

Pietro.

He knew her father.

He had lied to her.

He had been lying to her the whole time.

‘You sent me to look after her.’

‘What’s going on?’ she asked with numb lips, as a stranger stared back at her from the other side of the room.

‘Eleanor, I...’ Santo’s mouth shut, opened and shut again.

Start, stop, start, stop—it had always been like that for them. So much so it made her dizzy.

‘You know my...my father,’ she said, her voice breaking on the last word.

‘Yes.’

Her head swam and the sands shifted beneath her feet all over again.

‘You knew he was my father the whole time,’ she stated, trying to pull all the threads together.

‘Yes,’ Santo confirmed, the words like bullets getting closer and closer to their mark.

Her hand pressed against her lips to stop the shock from overwhelming her. From escaping. From betraying her. He knew her father, he’d known. He’d known when...

‘I asked you not to lie to me,’ she said, remembering that night, remembering the desperate need she’d felt then, and now, never to experience this kind of truly life-altering devastation. Her breath shuddered in her lungs.

‘Eleanor, it’s not what you think,’ Santo said, a plea in his gaze as he approached her.

She threw up a hand to ward him off.

The buzzing that she heard in her ears grew louder and louder. ‘You promised. You promised you wouldn’t lie to me.’

Something happened to him then. She saw it distantly through the haze that was slowly wrapping itself around her.

‘Yes, I did,’ he said, pulling himself to his full height. As if he were shedding the person that she had known only moments ago, the person she had given herself to. ‘I did, because I made a promise long before the one I made to you, and I believe that those two promises weren’t mutually exclusive.’

‘Mutually exclusive?’ she just about managed to repeat. ‘This is my life , Santo.’

‘And it is mine. I owe a debt to your father.’

A knee-jerk reaction had her thinking of Edward, instead of the name of the man who Santo knew more than she did. Enough to make a promise, enough to pay a debt.

She shook her head as he made another step towards her.

‘I meant everything that we shared tonight, Eleanor. Everything I said, everything I did.’

‘You lied to me,’ she cried, the outburst shocking them both. ‘You lied to me, and that’s not even the worst of it. Because what is , Santo, is that you knew then , when you made that promise, what it would do to me if I found out. You made that promise, knowing what breaking it would do to me.’

The betrayal was devastating. Her heart tore apart as she reimagined the last eight years under a new lens. One from Santo’s perspective, of knowing more about her than she knew about her own life. Each successive New Year’s Eve overlaying the next, seeing things differently, remembering little oddities—a vague recollection of Santo talking to her mother. Of Edward interrupting her and Santo.

‘Does my mother know? That you know my father?’

The muscle in his jaw flexed. ‘Yes.’

‘Does Edward?’

‘I think he may have suspected,’ Santo admitted.

‘What else did you lie to me about?’

Something flickered in his gaze. Not a lie as such, she was beginning to see, but something else. ‘How else have you interfered with my life?’ she demanded, thinking through all the possibilities. She came to the realisation almost as he opened his mouth to speak.

‘I spoke to Mads before you...’

Eleanor’s legs nearly gave way, the hand she thrust out to the wall the only thing keeping her up.

Her job. The one thing she’d had. The one thing she’d thought she’d achieved herself. And everything that had followed from that job, fruit of the poisoned tree. Lies.

Everything.

Could she even trust him? Could she trust anyone in her life? Every single person had lied to her, kept secrets from her. Everyone.

‘I need you to leave,’ she whispered, wrapping the last thread of determination she had left around her heart like a bandage. She didn’t care that it was his hotel room. He could wait out in the hall naked for all she cared. But she needed to gather her things, herself , and she couldn’t stand him watching her while she did.

‘No, Eleanor. I’m not leaving until we talk this out.’

‘There is nothing to talk about,’ she spat.

Santo wrestled with control, anger, frustration, fear. She was slipping through his fingers, he could feel it, and it terrified him. But fear had never been a friend to him and it wasn’t going to start now.

‘Of course there is—this is worth fighting for, Eleanor.’

‘Fighting for? Worth it?’ she demanded, glaring at him from where she stood. ‘You ruined this before it even had a chance, Santo. You knew what lying to me would do.’

‘They were lies to keep you safe, Eleanor,’ he ground out, frustration and fear pushing him to a point he knew was wrong. Pushing him into a corner that he knew he’d fight his way out of.

‘Lying to yourself now? That must be a new experience for you,’ she threw at him.

‘Oh, don’t be such a child, Eleanor. Things aren’t so black and white,’ he lashed out.

Fury whipped into her gaze. ‘You don’t get to accuse me of being a child, while saying all this was to protect me,’ she bit back. ‘You don’t think that keeping these secrets has cost you too—kept you isolated, separate from forming proper relationships based on trust, on understanding?’

‘Secrets have kept the people I love safe,’ he growled, closing the distance between them, anger making them both rash.

‘Now who’s being the child?’ she accused. ‘Secrets kept me from making a choice, of doing things by myself, without you, without being dependent on you, on my mother, on whoever my father is. Secrets are just a way of manipulating people when you can’t, or won’t, trust the decisions they will make on their own. It’s your way of manipulating people because you don’t trust anyone enough to let them in.’

Injustice tore through him that she would so wilfully refuse to see what he did for her, what it cost him to do for her.

‘Me not letting anyone in? Me not trusting enough?’ he demanded, his hurt running away with him. ‘You wanted me to know you, all of you,’ he said, using her words against her. ‘But you don’t want to know me. All of me. Once again, you’re going to run away the very first chance you get. What is it going to take for you to stand your ground and fight for what you want, Eleanor? Because, apparently, it’s damn well not me,’ he finished, his words a devastating crack in the already fragile bond between them.

‘You have never shown me all of you!’ she cried out, the tears in her eyes dissolving his resolve like acid rain. ‘Whether you’re lying to me or lying to yourself, the man I thought...’ she clamped her lips together and he could see her struggle to find a word that wouldn’t betray them both ‘...the man I thought you were was a fabrication. You know everything about me, every single secret I have, but I only know what you let me know. I would have stood my ground for you if you had been willing to show me who you truly are,’ she finished on a whisper, defeated.

He shook his head, her confession slipping through the cracks of his hurt, and leaving only what he had expected to see, what he needed to see. She didn’t want him. He wasn’t enough. For her. For his mother. He’d never been enough. His heart broke under the weight of her words.

‘I don’t believe you. You, me, this—’ he gestured between them ‘—it was nothing more than a distraction for you. It was you wanting to play with a boy who Daddy didn’t approve of. Because, deep down, Eleanor, no matter what happened between you, you’re still that same little girl looking for Edward Carson’s approval and I would certainly never meet that.’

‘How can you say that?’ she demanded, her cheeks suddenly pale, her deep brown eyes wounded.

‘Because you’re still there!’ he yelled. ‘You’re still playing by his rules, you’re still bowing to his commands.’

‘He has my family,’ she bit back.

‘Your mother is an adult, and your brother is barely a year away from being one. They can make their own decisions, so why haven’t you?’ he demanded. ‘Maybe you should ask yourself that as you sit in your ivory tower where you look down upon us mere mortals and cast your judgement,’ he growled.

Cristo .

He shook his head, the crack in his heart widening with every beat. He had to get out of here. Distant thuds exploded beyond the window as the crowds in the Venetian streets shouted their countdown to midnight.

Ten, nine, eight...

He grabbed his keys, his phone and his shirt from the back of the sofa.

Seven, six, five...

The horrible words they’d hurled at each other echoed in his mind as he made his way to the door.

Four, three, two...

And as the silence rained down, more deafening than any explosion, he pulled the door to the suite open and didn’t look back as he left.

One .