Chapter Nineteen
Caterina
HIS HANDS CUPPING my face are warm and his mouth making its way down the side of my neck is hot. The kisses he presses against my skin burn and my body is starving for him.
After he walked away from our breakfast yesterday morning, I heard the helicopter come and go, and realised he had left the villa. I checked with Maria and indeed, he’d apparently gone to Naples for the day on business. And no, she didn’t know when he was coming back.
My disappointment that he’d gone seemed out of all proportion, so I tried to tell myself that I was glad. He’d left in a huff after I hadn’t liked his rings, and he’d taken them with him, and if he gave them to his stupid mistress, who cared? Certainly I didn’t.
But as the day progressed and I couldn’t seem to settle, wandering around the villa restlessly with a pressure in my chest that was starting to turn into pain, I was forced to admit to myself that actually I cared.
I cared that I’d upset him. I cared that his father had been such a terrible person, that he’d lost his mother, that he was clearly still grieving her. I cared that he’d been turned into a killer because of an accident of birth, and I was starting to suspect that it wasn’t in his nature.
I went in search of Maria in the end, and had a conversation with her about Vincenzo as a boy, since she’d been their housekeeper since he’d been a child.
He’d been a kind little boy, she’d told me.
He’d rescued a kitten once, and loved his mother.
He’d had a puppy for a while until his father took it away to train it into a ‘proper’ dog, and it came back and killed one of the cats he’d rescued. He’d been inconsolable.
The only time his mother had been happy, Maria told me, was when she was with him, and he was the only one who could make her laugh.
It hurt to hear those stories. It hurt to hear what his father had taken from him and his mother, and it made me so angry too. It was lucky that Stefano Argenti was already dead, because if I’d had a weapon, I’d certainly have taken it, found him and shot him myself.
After that I’d put on a swimming costume and gone down to the pool, swimming laps and then floating on my back the way I remembered from long ago. I kept waiting for his voice to follow me, to see him coming down the steps from the villa, but there were only his guards, keeping watch.
I was disappointed. I was so bitterly disappointed and I didn’t know why.
Eventually, after realising he wasn’t coming back here anytime soon, I let Maria cook me dinner and I watched TV until late, trying to distract myself. Then I’d gone to bed. I didn’t use his bedroom, but the one I’d been given.
My dreams were full of darkness and I was running down a shadowed hallway, trying to escape from something or someone.
And then the dream changed so that I was the one doing the chasing.
I’d woken just before dawn, feeling unrested and groggy, so I’d gone down the stone path to visit the beach, needing some fresh air to clear my head.
It was such a beautiful beach that I’d stayed to watch the sunrise, trying to ignore the guards that stood on the stone path, looking down at my every move.
And just when I was thinking about going back up to the villa, out of the corner of my eye I could see a man walking towards me. Tall and powerful, moving with that familiar lithe grace.
My heart had jumped in my chest and when he came to stand beside me, I’d been filled with the inexplicable urge to turn and throw myself into his arms. But I’d forced the urge away. I didn’t want him to think anything had changed from when he’d walked away the day before.
Then he’d told me about his mother and how they’d used to go walking on this beach, and in my head I could see him, a little boy running beside her as they found treasures in the sand. Then watching in delight as she drew him maps and told him of all the places they would visit.
A little boy’s dream. But only a dream, because his mother had been held prisoner here and all because of his father.
My chest had tightened and it’s still tight now as he presses another kiss at the base of my throat.
His body is so hard and hot, a delicious contrast to the cold wind blowing around me.
I can smell the smoke and cedar of his scent surrounding me, in the jacket he placed around my shoulders and on his skin, and all I want is to melt into his arms. All I want is to believe the promises he’s murmuring, because right now the thought of leaving him is not one I want to contemplate.
But then I smell another scent, a feminine one, and a surprisingly sharp knife of jealousy slides between my ribs. ‘So,’ I whisper as he presses another kiss to my throat. ‘You really meant it when you said you were going to give the emeralds to your mistress.’
He goes still for a moment and lifts his head. ‘Is that jealousy I hear, gattina?’ He’s amused, but I am most definitely not, though I wish I could be.
‘I know I said you weren’t to sleep with anyone else on our wedding night, but even two days later it’s—’
He lays a finger across my mouth, silencing me. ‘I was approached, little wolf. And while I didn’t encourage her, I didn’t exactly push her away either. At least, not until she made her intentions known and then I decided to come home.’ His gaze turns intense. ‘To you.’
The jealousy eases, but I’m angry that I even felt it. I’m angry that it even matters to me, but I’m starting to realise there’s a reason for that.
A reason my heart leapt when he came across the sand to me.
A reason I was disappointed he’d left yesterday.
A reason all I wanted was to throw myself into his arms today.
You are falling for him. You idiot.
I want to deny it. I want to deny it with all my heart, but I know the truth deep inside me.
He’s made me love him with his acceptance of me as I am, with his unexpected gentleness and tenderness, with his ability to join me in ridiculous arguments, and with his wicked hands and his beautiful mouth.
He’s made me love him and I don’t know what I can do to escape it. In fact, I have a horrible feeling I can’t do anything about it at all.
His black brows draw together, and I know a moment’s intense fear that he’s guessed what I’m feeling right now. And he can’t know, he just can’t, because he promised me love wouldn’t be a part of our marriage, and I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out. For once, I don’t want to push.
So I open my mouth and nip at the fingers across my lips and I watch his gaze flare with desire.
‘I’ve had no sleep in the last twelve hours and I’m probably still half-drunk,’ he says.
‘But all I can think about is you naked in my bed, so you’d better take me back up to the villa or else you’ll find yourself flat on your back in the sand. ’
‘That sounds uncomfortable,’ I murmur.
He smiles and takes my hand. ‘Maybe later we’ll test the theory, but not now.’
Then he leads me back up to the villa.
In the privacy of his bedroom, he pulls me into the shower, washing the sand from my feet, while I squeeze shower gel in my hands and run it all over his body.
Stroking the hard planes of his chest and stomach, then his muscled arms before turning him around and washing his powerful back.
The scars from his father’s belt are deep and I touch them lightly, caressing them, and he doesn’t stop me.
And he doesn’t resist when I put my mouth to them, kissing them, because even though they’re marks of pain and punishment, they are part of him and so I think I love them too.
I turn him around again, so he’s facing me, his silver eyes blazing.
‘I like it when you stay where I put you,’ I say, teasing him.
He smiles, that one I particularly like, sexy and hot and just for me. ‘And I like it when you do what I say. Get down on your knees for me, my wife. It’s time for you to service your husband.’
A thrill of pleasure goes through me and I drop to my knees, because I have no trouble at all obeying his every sensual command. No, I like it. It turns me on and since my pleasure is his, he delights in it.
I take his hard cock in my hand and guide it to my mouth and draw him in, loving the way his features tense as I wrap my lips around him. His skin is smooth and velvety in my mouth, tasting of crisp salt and his own special masculine flavour.
I use my tongue and my teeth to tease him, watching him as I do, and when he slides his hands into my hair to guide me, I lean in.
I grip his powerful thighs, taking him deeper, loving the way he growls in response.
Then I lick and suck him, working him over, until he suddenly pulls away.
His hands are hauling me up from my knees, before turning me and pushing me hard against the tiled wall of the shower.
Then he lifts me straight up so I can wind my legs around his waist, and he pins me to the wall, his thick, hard cock pushing deep inside me.
I gasp in pleasure, clenching around him, loving the feeling of him inside me. His eyes are dark silver now and inches from mine, and all I can see is pleasure in them. The pleasure I give him.
‘Let’s see,’ he whispers fiercely. ‘Let’s see if we can’t create the most beautiful child right here, right now.’
And I’m so lost in the pleasure, lost in him, that all I can do is lean forward and kiss him hungrily, my thighs holding him to me as he thrusts in, deep and hard.
His mouth on mine is urgent, like that first time in the pool, and I’m meeting him hunger for hunger.
There’s a beautiful madness in the way he fucks me, the pleasure building and building, making my nails claw at his back, catching on those terrible scars, yet he doesn’t flinch.
‘Harder,’ he growls against my mouth. ‘Scratch me, little wolf. Mark me. Give me your pain, not his.’
And I want to take that pain away from him, give him something else in return, something better, so I do. Then the orgasm comes, smashing us both into oblivion as I clutch him and whisper his name.