Chapter Seven #4
As she settled down on the bed beside him, he closed an arm round her in a sudden show of greater intimacy and for a split second she froze in denial before her tension gave.
She would let herself enjoy Orazio for as long as their relationship lasted, she told herself fiercely.
She needed to be all in, not half out with him, because he was too intense, too driven to do anything by halves.
Zia cuddled into him for the first time and Orazio smiled above her down-bent head, tousled black silken waves of her stunning mane of hair spread across his bare chest. He felt remarkably like a male who had conquered Everest, he conceded wryly, closing a second arm round her, breathing in the familiar fruity scent of her skin.
‘And now you can tell me what we need to talk about,’ he suggested.
Zia tried very hard not to freeze, not to feel challenged, in short to copy his frank ability to disclose personal stuff that she had always held onto as if it were her secret store of gold nuggets.
‘I find it hard to trust,’ she muttered in a nervous rush.
‘The first guy I was with had a camera in his wardrobe to capture our…er…intimacy. He worked at the hotel with me and he’d heard a rumour that I was born a princess.
He thought if he did a film of us in bed, he could sell it for a lot of money somewhere. ’
‘Disgusting,’ Raz remarked without hesitation. ‘What age were you?’
‘Seventeen but he wasn’t much older. I turned my head because he was hurting me and glimpsed the camera.
I snatched it off the tripod and threatened him with the police.
I didn’t know my rights then, though, or the law.
I panicked, took the camera with me so that he couldn’t use anything he had captured.
He was begging and pleading with me not to go to the police.
I had no intention of going to the police,’ she acknowledged.
‘I was too humiliated and embarrassed by the whole set-up.’
‘And that was that, you did nothing?’ Orazio pressed.
‘What could I do without drawing the kind of attention to my identity that I most feared? When I was younger, I was afraid that someone hurt or killed by my father’s regime might come after me for revenge,’ she confessed ruefully.
‘I learned very young that I’m the only person that I can depend on.
I have to protect myself because there’s nobody else to do it. ’
‘No, I’ll protect you now,’ Orazio declared with assurance.
‘You don’t need to say impressive stuff like that to me. I’m not expecting it. We’re just having a…a moment, a fling, whatever you want to call it,’ she reasoned bravely.
‘Neither of those,’ Raz slotted in, contradicting her assumption calmly, his arms tightening round her. ‘Any other bad experiences to share?’
‘No, I didn’t trust guys after that one and I didn’t get close enough to anyone again,’ she admitted with a wince. ‘It felt like too much of a risk and a time-waster. Just surviving to make a future I could face felt like a big enough challenge.’
‘I can understand that,’ Raz conceded. ‘But you also have to understand and eventually accept that I will never fall into the unreliable category.’
‘Nobody can say that about themselves,’ she argued.
‘I’m very consistent in temperament and attitude. If I say that you can trust me, I genuinely will never let you down,’ he insisted.
Unnerved by that certainty of his, Zia took a deep breath before saying apprehensively, ‘So, what next?’
‘We’ll go downstairs for dinner and you can reunite with that very poorly trained dog of yours, who is currently scratching against our bedroom door,’ Orazio murmured smoothly.
And she was out of his arms within a split second, hurtling naked across the room to open the door and let Sausage in.
Raz was grateful that he had judged that reunion correctly, deeming such gestures the building blocks of a successful relationship.
His rare relaxed smile flashed out and as she glanced back at him, she was shaken by the vision of Orazio sprawled across the bed, naked but for the sheet across his lower body, incredibly relaxed and at ease with himself.
That smile of his, however, could just light up her world and make her feel breathless and brainless.
‘About us,’ she began to specify cautiously, clutching Sausage under one arm as she clambered back into bed with him.
He deemed it not the time to tell her that he wasn’t intending to share his bed with his dogs or hers.
When Orazio saw a challenge, he moved with infinite care towards his goal and embraced patience and tolerance.
Only that had been in business, he had never had to do it with a woman in mind before, he acknowledged a shade worriedly.
He suspected that both negotiations and compromises lay ahead on his path.
‘Us? Oh, that’s simple,’ Orazio stated. ‘We stop hiding. We admit we’re in a relationship. We become an official couple. It’ll cause a fuss for a week and then we’ll be left pretty much in peace.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of us going that far,’ Zia confided uncomfortably. ‘Not so soon.’
‘I don’t think it’s too soon. If we’re honest, we can then control the narrative, which is much wiser,’ he declared confidently.