Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Emilio opened the door to the grand house that sat at the very top of the estate. The heavy wood swung inwards with barely a creak. He loved this place and now he would be sharing it with Jasmine.
Jasmine, who stood behind him. Jasmine, whose kiss had brought him out of the spiral he’d been falling into at the vineyard. Whose body called out to his.
He turned around and carried her bridal style over the threshold and into the grand foyer.
‘What are you doing?’ She laughed.
‘Something that was a little overdue, don’t you think?
’ He set her on her feet and watched her look around.
Nothing had changed. The large wooden console table still bore a huge bouquet of flowers to greet all who entered.
The same herringbone wooden floors covered the expanse of the entire house.
The same chandelier hung above—the one his mother had wanted to change, but his father had always overruled her.
The one his mother had preferred had eventually found a home in Emilio’s bedroom in Perlano.
‘After you.’ He urged Jasmine into the rest of the house, still watching as she looked up at the vaulted ceiling and ran her hand over the venetian plaster that covered the walls.
‘It’s quiet here,’ she said.
‘That’s because we’re alone.’ Enzo couldn’t keep his distance any longer so he walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing the side of her neck.
‘No staff?’ He loved how her voice changed when he touched her. It became breathy and soft. As if she was allowing him past that assertive barrier she always held in place.
‘No. I’ve instructed them to take the week off. The staff quarters are down by the lake anyway,’ he said against her skin.
‘There’s a lake?’
‘Mmm-hmm. So it’s just us, belleza .’ A proposition that both excited him and terrified him. Especially when he felt as desperate for her as he had after their very first kiss.
‘Alone in this big house…’ She breathed.
Her head was thrown against his shoulder.
He could feel her pulse flutter, her chest heave as he dragged his hands up the front of her blouse.
How easy it would be to unbutton her shirt.
To slide his hands over her bare skin and see the goose bumps rise in their wake.
‘Do it, Emilio.’ He halted his roving touch. ‘I can hear what you’re thinking.’
‘Are my thoughts that loud?’ he asked as she turned in his arms.
‘Only because they match mine,’ she admitted.
Joy.
It overwhelmed him, pure and consuming, at the knowledge that she was as affected as he was.
That she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
The spell was woven and he couldn’t break it.
Not when she looked at him like that: begging…
pleading for him to kiss her. It was what he wanted too, so he did.
Not softly or gently, or in any way slowly to savour her, but hard and desperate.
As if she was the first breath of air after he’d spent so long suffocating.
He grabbed her beneath her thighs and lifted her onto him. Jasmine wrapped her legs around his waist, anchoring herself to him, the curtain of her curls falling in a golden waterfall over his shoulder as she bent down to kiss him.
Dio! She’s intoxicating.
He walked them over to the large couch that stood before a behemoth of a fireplace. It was magical in the winter; he wished he could transport them in time so he could lay her on the fur rug, with a crackling fire warming them both as he took her.
‘Emilio, don’t make me beg.’
He wanted her to. He wanted her to beg for him and only him. Wanted her to look at him as though he was worth something.
She did look at you like that. In the vineyard .
It was true. And here he was, laying her on a couch, about to have his way when she deserved so much more.
This rush to pleasure…it was what a hook-up was like.
Jasmine was far from that. There was something morphing between them.
She had been out there supporting him today.
What would happen after they had sex? Would they go back to separate rooms?
Live separate lives? Would she need to re-establish her boundaries?
I don’t want that.
He wanted to nurture whatever this change was. He wanted to feel the way he did around her all the time. This drunken spell… it was how they had behaved that first night. Impulsively. That wasn’t the man he’d vowed to be with Jasmine.
He didn’t want to ruin this…whatever this was.
He cradled her face and broke the kiss.
‘ Belleza , it’s been a long day. You must be tired.’
‘Are you?’ Her breath came in little pants that puffed over his lips and he wanted to kiss her again.
Don’t ruin this, Emilio.
He brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek and over her hair. ‘I’m going to run you a bath and, when you get out, I’ll have dinner waiting.’
‘That sounds nice.’
Not quite ready to let Jasmine go, Emilio carried her up the wide flight of stairs. She hadn’t argued once. Whether she meant to or not, she was letting him see the softer, more laid-back side of her, and that felt momentous.
He took her through the master suite and into the bathroom, a marvel of marble and antique luxury with a chequerboard floor, and sat her down while he filled the tub large enough for two of him.
Once the water was deep enough, he held out a hand.
Jasmine took it and let him draw her to her feet.
There, he slowly undressed her. Her gaze never strayed from his face.
Instead of surrendering to the lust within him, he kissed her gently on the lips, then picked her up and placed her in the hot water.
‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said and turned to leave, but she caught his hand.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Join me.’ It was a soft command.
‘Jasmine…’ Emilio looked down at her naked body. Being in that water would drive him insane.
‘Please.’
One word was all it took to convince him. He shed his clothes and stepped into the bath, settling behind Jasmine and pulling her against his chest.
Jasmine placed her hand over his, linked their fingers and moved his hand over her skin, over her breast, then let go: silent permission for him to touch her.
And he did, up her chest and over her throat.
When he tightened his fingers ever so gently, Jasmine leaned her head back against his shoulder, lengthening her neck.
‘Dove sei stato tutta la mia vita?’ he said in a low voice against her skin. Where have you been all my life? Because this, right here—he and Jasmine, skin to skin—felt right in ways he couldn’t express.
He moved his hand down, down, down over her ever so slightly swollen belly. Only recently had she started showing. He had noticed in the two weeks leading up to the wedding and every day since. Jasmine was growing his child. His flesh and blood.
His miracle.
He walked around with the sonograph picture in his wallet, a constant reminder to make the right choices. A reminder that the vineyards were not just for him, but their future. His wife and child’s.
With each day he felt more drawn, more connected to Jasmine. But it felt like the most intimate they had ever been, lying in this tub together. Even more intimate than the physical release of sex. This calmed his soul. This was spiritual.
She placed her hand on his. ‘You’ve gotten quiet.’
‘Don’t worry about it, belleza , I’m just thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘Our baby.’
‘Do you think we could bring him here?’
‘Him?’
‘Just a hunch.’
‘We can bring her here as often as you’d like.’
Jasmine laughed. ‘Do you have to disagree with me?’
‘I just think that she will be like her mother.’ He didn’t want to curse his child to be anything like him. They would be sweet and good and pure, like Jasmine. ‘And she will love running around this place.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes…and no.’
‘Tell me, Emilio.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything. Tell me what it was like growing up here and in Perlano.’
Emilio wanted to brush off the question, but he remembered how much she valued honesty. Hadn’t he just decided he would make the right choices for his child? But it was more than that—he wanted to tell her.
‘It was wonderful and it was terrible,’ he admitted. ‘Since I was little, my father had almost no interest in me. It didn’t matter what I did or what I tried to achieve, it meant nothing to him. So I acted out. I partied.’
‘With lots of women,’ Jasmine added.
‘Guilty.’ He chuckled briefly. ‘And still he didn’t care.
My mother had a rule—that we would have dinner together every night, and if both my parents were around it happened without fail.
During those meals my father wouldn’t speak unless he spoke to my mother.
If he had a word to spare, it went to Enzo. Never to me.’
Jasmine’s hand tightened over his own, but she said nothing.
‘That didn’t sit well with my mother.’ Emilio smiled then, his cold heart warming with happier memories ‘While Enzo was taken to work and on trips by our father, she would take me with her into the garden and the vineyards. It didn’t matter what happened inside these houses because outside we could be happy. ’
‘What was she like?’
‘Valentina De Luca was a fierce woman. People listened when she spoke. When she went away on business or to come here, she would bring me and my tutors along. Enzo may have learned all he knows from my father; I learned from my mother. She raised me alone. Clothed me. Educated me. Loved me. I may as well have had no father.’
‘We’re the same,’ Jasmine said. ‘We owe a lot to our mothers. Women who had to be far stronger than it was fair to expect.’ She toyed with the ring on his finger. ‘What about Enzo?’
‘What about him?’
‘What was your relationship like?’
‘Prickly,’ Emilio answered in a matter-of-fact way.
He regretted hurting his brother. He should never have betrayed Enzo the way he had, and he still hated himself for it, but there’d never really been any love between them, no brotherly bond.
Enzo had had everything Emilio wished he had: two parents who’d loved him; memories of both of them; his father’s approval.
Emilio would have settled for simply an acknowledgement of his existence.
‘My father could do no wrong to Enzo, and Enzo saw nothing wrong in how I was treated. Or maybe he didn’t care.
Either way, he said nothing and, seeing as he was away with my father so much there really was no point in pursuing a relationship.
And, as we grew, he looked down at me and how I lived with contempt. ’
‘And the resentment grew into hatred.’
‘Something like that.’ Emilio couldn’t tell her the rest. She would leave and take this peace, this feeling, she nurtured within him. He would lose his baby. He would lose everything.
‘Why was Enzo so favoured over you? Why were you treated so badly?’
‘Because Enzo was his heir. I was an insurance policy in case anything happened to Enzo. Beyond that, I don’t know.’
She kissed his hand and he felt something new—treasured, comforted. He had never felt that with Gia. She had never taken care of him. He’d always been the one offering her comfort.
‘I’m sorry you went through that,’ Jasmine said. ‘Your father was a fool.’
Emilio said nothing. No words could change the past.
‘It sounds to me like he didn’t love either of you. Enzo seems more like an investment than a son, and you deserved none of that neglect.’ Jasmine turned round in the water, holding Emilio’s gaze, her green and gold eyes alight with indignation. ‘You deserved so much more.’
He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘You did too, belleza .’
She smiled. ‘I know.’ She turned back round and leaned against Emilio’s chest once more. ‘Have you considered…that perhaps you want the vineyards not just for our child, or what they meant to your mother, but also to have Enzo back in your life in some way?’
‘No,’ Emilio replied instantly. There was no way that was true. Enzo had his life and Emilio had his.
But, once you have the vineyards, the two of you will be bound permanently.
No , he told himself. No, it couldn’t be. Too much had happened between them…hadn’t it?
No. He was done thinking about this.
‘I think that’s enough talking.’ He removed his hands from her hold, moving one up to her hair to turn her face towards him; the other slid down her body, his fingers parting her core.
When she gasped, he kissed her. And kept kissing her until she clearly forgot all thought, became lost in pleasure. Consumed by him alone.