CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SIX
He couldn’t believe that he had actually asked that question. When he’d promised himself, time and again, that he would not. That it didn’t matter.
That why was a fool’s game and he had never been much for games. He’d never had the time to indulge himself in such frivolous pastimes.
And in any case, she hadn’t married him. She had left him.
Those were the only facts that mattered.
But Irinka looked…winded. She sank back a little farther on her heels, as if she’d deflated, there before his eyes.
“That had nothing to do with it,” she said after a moment. “I wouldn’t say I was aware of all the ghosts here that summer. There was only you. And this. I’m not sure I thought about anything else until afterward.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
Meaning, he did not believe it at all. There were so many scandals and tragedies in Venice. Every ruined palazzo was a treasure trove of loss and pain, family secrets and shame. Sometimes he thought he’d like to make a map of the sorrows here that marked this city through the ages.
But he had only ever been intimately acquainted with this family and this palace.
And the woman who had run from him as if he was the ghost here, all along.
“Zago. You and I…” Irinka shook her head, her blue eyes clouded, then. “It wasn’t healthy. Nothing that happened between us was healthy . It was overwhelming. It blotted out the sun. It was unsustainable and I don’t understand why you don’t see that.”
“Anything is sustainable if you try to sustain it,” he said, darkly.
She blew out a breath that sounded far too much like a sob. And he hated seeing anything but brightness in her gaze. “Imagine if you considered the possibility that everything I do or say is not designed to hurt you, Zago. What then?”
And he opened his mouth to immediately refute that, like some kind of knee-jerk reaction that wasn’t his to countermand—
But he stopped himself.
A memory teased at the edges of his thoughts, then seemed to bloom into being. Some deathly-dull meal with his parents, long ago. He had only been a boy, though he had considered himself a man, and he had viewed these forced family moments as a torture designed deliberately to plague him.
As was his custom, he had tuned his parents out completely, since they were given to their tedious discussions of the things he was certain he would never lower himself to care about, like politics and the weather and the opera.
But something in their tones caught at him and he’d lifted his head from his daydreams, focusing on the two of them for a change. There had been a shift.
His mother had sighed. His father had been frowning.
If it was something that could be fixed, I know you would fix it, his mother had said. Like you do every other broken thing in this house.
Zago had looked away again, assuming they were talking about the usual repairs or floods. It wasn’t until many, many years later that the memory had come back to him and he’d thought to wonder if it had been a very different sort of conversation after all.
And then he’d had to wonder if his father’s obsession with the family’s history was his way of coping with what couldn’t be cured in the present.
Even after his mother had died, his father had hidden himself away in the libraries, chasing down arcane little bits of fact and fable and painstakingly piecing it all together, as if a finely researched mosaic of the Baldissera past would redeem what had happened to him.
To all of them.
Was what he was doing here—to Irinka—really all that different?
She had offered him hope, that summer. That he could do this differently. That he could navigate this life better than his parents had done if she was with him. That they could find their way, together.
Then she had taken that hope with her when she’d gone.
And so he had hunted her down. He had—happily—arranged for her to be bodily removed from London and brought here. He had insisted that it was all about Nicolosa and yet, behold—here was Irinka, naked in his bed.
Was he any less obsessed than his father, in the end?
Or any less sad than his mother?
That settled on him like the weight of a new palazzo, with all its history and legend, bills and renovations.
And Zago had always considered himself the most rational of men. He hadn’t had any other choice, had he? Growing up in a house where his mother was so fragile, so often ill, and forever victim to the voices in her head, and his father retreated further and further into the past while leaving it to Zago to take charge of things.
Which he had.
How could he have done that if he was not all that was reasonable and rational?
But he was staring down at Irinka now. This woman who, little as he wished to admit it, had been haunting him for years now.
This woman who he had imagined was a terrible party princess and an entitled brat. He’d been certain he could bring her here, put pressure on her, and expect her to crumble.
Instead, she had taken on her so-called Cinderella role with good humor and a surprising work ethic.
He could admit, now, that she’d shocked him.
And then there was what had happened between them since.
Zago couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t entertained the thought of what might happen between them if they were ever together again. But he hadn’t truly believed that would happen. He had imagined that he would confront her here. Perhaps rake over the past. That he would find some grim satisfaction in that, or better still, find himself indifferent.
And instead, there was this.
There was Irinka in his bed again and the taste of her in his mouth. There was Irinka, kneeling there before him with her blue eyes wide, her hair a mess, and a distraught look on her face.
Not the expression of the shallow, selfish girl he’d imagined she was these past three years—and certainly this past month.
But then, did he really believe that she was the woman he’d decided she was in her absence? The woman he’d pretended she was, because that made it easy to dismiss what had happened between them, or cast himself the victim, or otherwise excuse himself from what had happened that summer?
When, as she had just said, it had been all-consuming between them, but it had not been healthy .
Zago wasn’t sure he knew what healthy was.
Thinking these things made him feel a bit too much as if he was standing on shaky foundations. The same way her question had done.
What if you considered the possibility that everything I do or say is not designed to hurt you, Zago?
Maybe he was afraid that if he admitted any of that, if he allowed that question to alter him in any way, it would be worse.
But Zago had not lived a life that had ever allowed him to worry over much about the things that made him afraid. Whether he was afraid or not of something had very little to do with his actions.
He’d learned that here, too.
“Are you going to answer me?” she asked, and he realized he’d been standing there too long, all these things racing through his head.
So he blew out a breath and told himself that might clear his mind. He moved closer to her and really took in how she reacted. She didn’t move. She didn’t brace and she didn’t flinch, which was, perhaps, a low bar.
Her eyes widened even more, however, and he wondered how he’d never noticed that she really seemed not to know that nothing on this earth could compel him to hurt her.
Not with his hands, anyway.
He climbed onto the bed next to her, then shifted them both around until they were lying on their sides, looking at each other.
Though he noticed that she was holding her breath.
“All right, then,” Zago said, trying this out. This new consideration she’d suggested. “You are not trying to hurt me. What happens now?”
Irinka looked startled. She blinked, and then, slowly, a smile began to take over her face. A benediction Zago had not realized he needed.
“I…don’t know what happens now. I don’t think I imagined it was possible that you would listen to me.”
He reached over and pushed a hank of her black hair back, then tucked it behind her ear. “Am I really so overbearing?”
“Intense,” she said. Still smiling. “Always so very intense.”
“And you think that this intensity is inhibiting me in some way?”
She laughed, and then changed her expression, frowning thunderously. Then she made her voice deep when she spoke. “Of course not. Because here in this palazzo that has been in the Baldissera family from time immemorial, intensity alone keeps the stones from sinking beneath the waterline.”
It took Zago a long, stunned moment to understand that she was mocking him. Teasing him, he amended. He didn’t like it—
But in the next moment, when she smiled at him again, he decided that it was not so bad. It was not terrible to be the reason she smiled like that.
So he moved forward, and she did too, and it was so different to kiss like this. The sun beaming in. laughter between them, and none of that dark, driving need and desperation that colored every memory of every moment he’d ever had with her.
He felt like it was some kind of gift, that laughter. This moment. This kiss.
So he took his time moving his way down her body, spreading that heat. Losing himself in that fire.
Until he could settle himself between her legs, lick his way into her core, and set them to gleaming bright like the sun.
He was too conscious of the way they’d shifted. The magic of it, dancing within him, and he wanted to give that back to her. He dedicated himself to casting that spell.
Zago pressed incantations into her most tender places, encouraging her with the sounds he made low in his throat as he lifted her up toward the pinnacle, then backed away. Once. Again.
“I will kill you,” she managed to cry out, her back arched and her arms over her head. “If you don’t kill me first.”
“No need to fling yourself into the abyss so quickly, Irinka,” he murmured, smiling as he traced her soft heat with his fingers. “Martyrdom is so messy.”
Then he bent his head to her once more.
And only when she was sobbing with pleasure did he crawl his way back up her body. He memorized her as he went, etching her into his bones.
Tattooing her every response, her every scent and taste, deep into his skin.
Exploring this light they made together with her, while he could.
She pushed him onto his back and he let her, sprawling out on the bed while she took a turn at making spells, letting her hair brush over him as she slid her way over his chest, his abdomen, then lower still to take the length of him deep into her mouth.
And he let her play with him, for a time. It was exquisite. It was too much.
It was Irinka. The agony and the longing and the glory. All her.
But he did not intend to end this in her mouth. Not this time.
When he could take no more, Zago pulled her back and laughed at the half crestfallen, half outraged look on her face.
“I wanted to—” she began, hotly.
“You can bear the tragedy, I promise,” he told her.
And then he crawled over her and thrust deep within her, smiling as she broke into pieces. He held her as she shook and sobbed, and then, as she came back to him, he began to move.
Slow and steady, until she broke apart again. Then faster the next time.
Until she was moaning his name and he was something like feral, incapable of anything like control until he lost himself, too.
Only with her, he thought as he spun out into eternity, holding her tight. Only Irinka.
For a long while afterward, they lay there together, holding on to each other while their breath stayed wild.
Later, they sat together on the balcony and looked out at the vaporettos and gondolas going by on Grand Canal. He called down for food and Irinka seemed entertained to greet the friends she’d made among his staff when they served her.
“Bit of an upgrade,” she murmured to them as the meal was laid out. “I rather think it’s because of my excellent scrubbing of that front step.”
And when the staff were unable to muffle their laughter, something that would have been unthinkable in any other circumstance, Zago reminded himself that it was not necessary for him to be quite so intense all the time, and allowed it.
He found it a particular pleasure to break bread with this woman. To talk of things that were not so emotional, or so personal. To share an anecdote or two, and not look for land mines in every sentence.
It reminded him of all those conversations he’d thought were boring when he was a child. Were they simply a bit of plaster over the cracks, smoothing out the bones of the place, a way to keep things humming along like this—all sunshine and a smile?
That felt like another revelation.
And so he was unprepared for it when Irinka turned to him at the end of the meal, the afternoon sun bathing her in a golden glow, and smiled ruefully. “You know I can’t stay here,” she said.
Zago was unprepared, and his first reaction was the searing shock of betrayal.
But there was something wise and knowing in those blue eyes of hers, as if she could see his reaction all over him. As if she was waiting for him to backtrack and start hurling accusations at her again, as if he hadn’t learned a thing today.
He would obviously rather tear off his own head.
“This is gorgeous. Venice is like a dream and I’ll even admit I didn’t mind the hard labor.” She smiled at that, inviting him to find the housework she’d called hard labor as amusing as she clearly did. “But I do have a life in London. I have commitments.”
“That tasteless job of yours,” he said, before he could think better of it.
“You and I will have to disagree about what it is I do,” Irinka said, but not as if she was taking offense. “And I cannot compromise a client’s privacy, of course, but I can tell you that there are no repeat clients on our roster who I would recommend as a love interest for anyone. Much less your sister.”
There were a thousand things Zago wanted to say to that. He said none of them.
She nodded, though. As if he’d said enough. “I have been here for weeks now. Surely there can be no more reckoning required.”
He wanted to tell her to apologize to Nicolosa, but he remembered something she had said at the start. When she’d pointed out that he wasn’t off pounding down Felipe De Osma’s door, demanding apologies from him .
And the truth that was sitting on him strangely today, despite how rational he believed himself to be, was that the moment he’d seen Irinka’s name he had thought of nothing else. Nothing and no one. “I will certainly point out to my sister that a man who would hire someone like you was never the man she thought he was in the first place.”
“And never will be,” Irinka said in soft agreement.
Then she sat there before him, an odd sort of look on her beautiful face, and it took him a moment to realize that she was waiting.
She was waiting for him to decide what it was that he would do now. She was giving him that space and he didn’t know what to make of it.
Or, something in him whispered, you do know.
He thought of his poor, lost mother, who had never been able to get past her own broken heart and the twisting paths in her brain. He thought of his father, who had lost himself completely in his fantasy over what the past might have been, if only he could prove it.
He thought of his sister, who could not let go of a man she never should have dated in the first place.
And here he was, once again trying to hold on tight to someone who didn’t want to stay.
Did it really matter why?
He already knew that if he dragged her back here, they would end up the same place. The way they had this time. And he liked this place more than he should, but it was no different from that summer they’d shared.
Fleeting. Temporary.
Because he wanted things she either did not wish to give, or couldn’t.
Maybe what he was having trouble with here was nothing more or less than the oldest story there was. A person, no matter their strength and power, will, or determination, could not make another do anything they did not wish to do.
Not really.
And did Zago truly want something he had to force?
He already knew the answer. Which was, he was certain, the reason he had never asked himself that question before.
And so, even though it made him feel as if he was cracking wide open and shattering in half, burning down like the front part of this palazzo once had and with less hope that there could be any kind of reconstruction, Zago Baldissera did the one thing he had never done in all his days.
He surrendered.
“Very well, then,” he made himself say, perhaps more gravely than necessary, but it was all he was capable of when her smile was too knowing and the sun seemed to taunt him. “When will you leave?”