Chapter Six #4
‘But we won’t be having sex again,’ she pointed out unevenly, knocked wildly off balance by his statement that he could no longer be her friend. In fact that announcement made her feel as if the roof had fallen in on her and the very ground below her feet were vanishing even faster.
‘I could have sex again with you right now,’ Raz admitted, struggling to hang onto his temper. ‘And probably tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. I still want you now as much as I wanted you before you got into this bed.’
Zia frowned in bewilderment. ‘But that wasn’t the deal we made—’
‘What deal?’ Raz demanded, shimmering emerald eyes clinging to her flushed porcelain face in grudging fascination.
Exasperation flashed into her stormy blue eyes. ‘We agreed on one night together and then that would be that—’
Raz flung his head back, tousled caramel hair gleaming in the low lights against his bronzed, chiselled features.
‘I didn’t agree to any such thing! I agreed to sharing what you referred to as a joyful moment.
Evidently, that was no exaggeration because you’ve barely been with me an hour and you’re already leaving. ’
Taken aback by the smouldering vibes of sarcasm he now emanated, Zia swallowed hard. ‘I thought that’s what we both wanted—’
‘When did you decide that you knew better than me about what I want?’ he shot at her wrathfully.
The flash of unhidden anger in his bright green eyes froze her feet to the faded rug she stood on and startled her because, as a rule, Orazio appeared to be the calmest guy on the planet.
Just at that instant she wouldn’t have been surprised had white-hot lightning flashed through his gaze and she immediately lost ground inside herself, and felt destabilised.
For years she had kept the peace for herself and Alina by avoiding conflict with Sandrine.
That outlook, that lowering truth, had not equipped her very well to deal with anyone’s anger.
Her mouth ran dry. ‘I didn’t. I assumed we both understood what this…’ with a vague hand she indicated the mussed bed sheets ‘…would entail and the limits.’
‘But you took the limits off last night in that storage room we were in. You told me to step away from you or step up to the plate,’ Orazio reminded her very drily.
‘Well, here I am and I’m doing it, I’m stepping up.
I want a relationship with you. I’m not sneaking around anywhere…
that is not me. We’re both single. We can be together openly if we want to be and you still haven’t explained why we can’t be. ’
Shock was reverberating through Zia like a giant bell suddenly clanging above her head, drowning out her own hopelessly confused inner voices.
Yes, she had said that to him, she recalled dimly, throwing down the challenge but never expecting him to pick it up.
She had never been in a relationship with a male before and the very prospect, she registered belatedly, terrified her.
She didn’t let anyone in. She didn’t let anyone get close.
Her circle of trust extended to only herself.
That was how she kept herself safe and it had been like that for many more years than she cared to recall.
Her mother had first broken her trust by disappearing and Sandrine had soon followed and then, more sadly, Alina, when she had finally grasped that Alina might be an adult but that she was a powerless one without a voice.
Nobody had come to save that battered and bruised little girl when she’d cried in her bed at night, nobody had intervened or cared, and that lesson still lingered with Zia even now that she was grown up.
In the present, determined not to expose her vulnerability to that extent, Zia forced her spine straight and stood tall.
‘I genuinely believed we were agreeing to just one night together and I was fine with that but, obviously, you’re not.
I’m sorry we’ve had this misunderstanding,’ she continued glibly on the way to the door back to her own room.
‘Zia!’ Orazio growled raw and low. ‘Don’t you dare walk away from me without explaining yourself.’
Zia half turned her head, stinging tears washing the backs of her eyes. ‘Raz, I—’
‘Is there someone else back in London?’ he cut in.
‘No… I wouldn’t have been with you tonight if there were,’ she muttered.
‘But you don’t trust me…right?’
‘It’s no reflection on you,’ she murmured with perceptible regret. ‘I just don’t trust anybody. It’s best we return to being hands-off with each other, healthier for both of us to accept that this just can’t work out.’
‘You don’t know me well enough yet, but I assure you,’ Raz breathed in a driven undertone, ‘I could make it work—’
But she still ran like a rabbit with a fox on its tail, Raz thought furiously, back into her own room, lock immediately snapped shut again.
She wouldn’t even fight with him and the surprise of that, with her combative character, held him still for long moments while he tried to work out what had gone wrong, what he had said or done that had roused her to that attitude.