Chapter Four
Antonio
I fucked up.
Usually, I’m a lot smoother with women. I don't blow hot and cold or get jealous when I imagine them with other men, but there is just something about Emilia. I never seem to know what to do when I’m around her.
I must have pushed her to her limits last night, and I don’t blame her one bit for avoiding me and instead sending Silvia to help change my dressing at the crack of dawn.
Fucking hell!
It’s not a question of whether I am attracted to Emilia Conti.
I’ve wanted her since the second I saw her at Matteo’s wedding.
It would be so fucking easy if I only wanted to have sex with her and bring us both pleasure, then move on.
But what fucks with me the most is the fact that my feelings for her run deeper than lust.
The thing is…I can’t fall in love.
Not with her. Not with anyone.
And if I were a better man, I would leave her the fuck alone.
I am fucked because I can’t have her, but I can’t fucking stay away.
Hell, though, the thought of another man touching her drives me into a jealous rage.
Tempts me into grabbing my gun and hunting down every man who dares to want her, to look at her.
Fuck, I want her so much, but I can't have her.
I should give her space. It's clear she wants nothing to do with me. I manage to talk myself into staying out of her way until about noon when I look for her in the one place I know she’d be holed up in.
The library.
I use the cane to navigate around the house and hesitate when I stop outside the library door.
I don’t need to look to tell she’s in there.
Even as a child, she gravitated to this room.
Sometimes, Silvia would search the house looking for her, and they’d always find her in some corner of the library, seated on the floor with her head buried in a book.
This is, and has always been, her safe haven, and I’m about to interrupt that too.
With a sigh, I push open the door and limp inside, careful not to disturb my injury or make too much noise.
My mother loved this room, though her true sanctuary was the butterfly atrium my father built for her in the gardens.
A rural girl from south of Italy who was brought in to marry a New York City businessman.
Antonia Rossi was only eighteen when her father pushed her into an arranged marriage, but my father never held her back from anything she wanted.
She could have gone to college here—he would have supported it—but Mama preferred to educate herself in her own way.
She devoured books like they were oxygen, and my father indulged her, filling these shelves with everything he could find.
Philosophy, history, literature, medicine—she read it all.
He loved her.
Her death broke him. It broke all of us.
“Antonio?” Emilia's voice shakes me from my thoughts, and I follow it to find her pretty face peering at me from between a row of bookshelves. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to find a book to read,” I say, walking toward her.
“You don’t read. You can’t sit still long enough,” she points out, her face a mask, which is understandable. I have been blowing hot and cold since she came back to New York. I deserve it.
"Today is as good as any to start, don't you think?" I ask, picking a random book off the shelf, my brows furrowing when I realize it's a quilting guide, so I put it away. "So, do you mind showing a guy where to start?"
Her head tilts to the side as she studies me, and she must feel some pity for the invalid because she nods. “What do you want to read?”
Okay, so she hasn’t kicked me out yet. That’s a good sign. “What were you reading?”
"Techniques of Trauma Therapy Following Critical Care and Surgery."
“I see. And what is it about?”
Her brows wing up at my question. “It’s about the latest approaches to treating trauma in surgical care patients." Emilia places her hand on her waist, and her eyes narrow on mine. "What are you doing here, Antonio? I've never seen you come into this library before."
That’s because it holds too many memories of someone I loved and will never see again, but I don’t say that. “I was bored in the room all alone and needed a distraction. I would go out, but a strict dottoressa banned me from leaving.”
“I also remember telling you to stay in bed.”
“It barely hurts anymore.”
“Should we put that theory to the test?” The mask on her face falls a little, and I spy a smile as she steps closer. “Maybe I should trip you. Or grab your cane and run off, see how far you get without it.”
I gulp audibly, “That would be so mean, Dr. Conti,” I say, holding tightly to my cane in case she's not joking at all. Heaven knows I deserve to be tripped for how I’ve been acting around her. “If you tripped me, then you’d have to treat me, and that’s just more work for you.”
“Maybe then you’d learn to stay in bed,” she says, spinning around and walking to the large couch at the center of the room. She drops down on it with her book and flips through the pages. I don't miss the way her skirt hugs those porcelain thighs or the way my cock reacts to it.
Fuck.
“They never tell you what to do with bored patients, do they?” I ask, following her to the couch and settling down next to her. “Do you ever hire clowns at the hospital, something to keep the patients entertained?”
“Clowns?” she laughs, and fuck, it does something to me to see her smile, as radiant as the rest of her. “Who the hell would want clowns at a hospital where the patients are already scared and in pain. Only you would think clowns are funny.”
I lean closer because fuck, I just can’t resist. “So, what else do you do to keep the patients from going out of their minds?” Damn, she smells amazing. Like a fucking field of roses with sweet undertones.
“They didn’t teach us that in med school,” she whispers, clearly affected by our closeness. Suddenly, I'm painfully aware of how large this place is. Barely anyone ever comes in here unless it's to clean, which means we have it to ourselves for the next several hours.
There is plenty of privacy in here to do more than reading, but I should know better than to touch her. Not when there are so many unresolved things between us. Not after last night.
Still, I want her.
Desperately.
“So, what do they teach you in med school, other than the usual?”
She doesn’t turn to look at me, flipping through the pages anxiously. “You’re not really interested in any of that, are you?"
“No,” I rasp, my throat thick with need. “I’m hoping to keep you talking so I don’t do something crazy like touch you, dottoressa.”
She sucks in a sharp breath but doesn’t say anything.
A part of me hoped she’d be annoyed by my words, shove me away, and storm off, creating a clear line between us.
But she doesn’t move, not even when I slide my hand up her leg.
She shivers when I nudge her legs open. She bites her lip and hesitates for a second, but then slowly parts her thighs for my hand, moaning when my fingers crawl up underneath her skirt.
“I’m so fucking lucky that I have you to treat me, even the aching parts of me that don’t usually act up around other doctors.”
Her breath catches, and her eyes flutter when I touch her underwear, rubbing my index finger over the center of her heat. “I…they don’t teach this in medical school either.”
“What? That some patients can get aroused when you’re near?"
Her head drops back against the couch when I ease aside her drenched panties and slide my finger along her seam.
My cock jumps when she starts rocking her hips against my finger, slowly at first, a dance that drives me fucking insane.
“Do they teach you about how it’s supposed to feel when a man driven to insanity touches your wet little pussy? "
“Not in those words,” she moans. Her hands tighten on the book as I slide my finger down to her entrance, sliding inside ever so slightly. I don’t even get the tip in before she clenches tightly around me, unwilling to let me press any deeper into her.
My eyes flash open and move to hers in shock, but her eyes are closed and her lips open, gasps puffing out. Her cheeks are flushed, and Christ, she looks so perfect and…
Her eyes fly open and lock on mine. I see the hesitation, followed by a wave of embarrassment. She looks away quickly. I wonder why until it dawns on me…
She’s a virgin.
I never expected this of her. I figured she barely had time to have a social life as a medical student, but I never expected that she’d have waited this long. That no man was able to seduce her into giving this part of her to them.
She waited.
Why?
Fuck, I sensed her innocence in the kiss we shared last night, but I didn't think…
Hell, why is she letting a flawed man like me touch her?
How can she surrender so beautifully to a dangerous man like myself?
Selfish. Rogue. Unworthy. One who wants to take and take it all.
Give her pleasure and take everything. Possess every inch of her perfection until mine are the only hands she'll ever want on her body.
There are so many questions rocketing through my head, but I recover fast from the shock of my discovery.
“I want to taste you,” I say, hooking my finger into the waistband of her panties and tugging them down.
Her eyes snap open, and she’s still for a moment before she lifts her hips so I can pull them completely off her, tossing the flimsy material to the floor.
The need to claim this girl and mark her as mine is fierce.
Her eyes find mine, and I read the need in them, assuring me that she needs this just as much as I do. “Whatever it is I made you feel last night, I can make you feel it a hundred times more.”
That sexy mouth parts with a gasp when I wrap my hands around her waist and pull her onto my lap to straddle me. She drops the book onto the floor, and the thud is the last thing I hear before my mouth crashes down on hers.