Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Nyra stared through the glass walls of the sunroom, rendered still by terror, as the storm painted the sky with furious lightning. The booming thunder that followed seconds later seemed to shake the very foundations of the high-rise building.
She should probably go in and hide under the duvet. But storms had always terrified her, and the last thing she wanted was to feel trapped inside the four walls.
Where there was nothing but silence. Where she would only wonder what this storm, this day might bring. Where she would miss Adriano even worse than before.
Here, she could witness it and know that it was nothing but a passing phenomenon. Here, the plants she’d tended to with love and care for months would keep her company.
On her return, she’d been surprised to discover that someone had cared for them in the six weeks that she’d been gone. Had it been him? Had he regretted his cruel impulse? Because she was already regretting her grandiose declarations to him about needing distance.
Once, this painful loneliness was all she’d known. Living alone in a city like Vegas with its relentless crowds had been a constant reminder that she was alone in the world. Now, in the aftermath of her relationship with Adriano and how he’d become the center of her universe, the loneliness pricked that much harder.
She wanted to be angry with him that he had taken that too from her, but her anger was like that showy flash of lightning. Burning through her one moment and then fizzing out into nothing after.
It had been mere days since he’d brought her back to this apartment—and not returned per her request—but already, she was losing her grip on the anger. All that remained was hurt and the helplessness he’d made her feel, like a tiny trench he’d gouged in her flesh and left open.
Another stroke of lightning and thunder followed.
Nyra flinched but stood still, unable to step back. Sweat poured down the back of her neck and she blinked back tears. Her fear had no rationale, no grip on her except that it reminded her of the worst day of her life.
Nadia and she running up the stairs to her parents’ bedroom, to find her mother cold on the bed.
Shivers coursed through her, as the past held her in its ugly thrall.
“Nyra?”
Only his deep voice calling her name as if from some great distance could shake her out of the stupor.
When she turned, it was to find Adriano standing at the entrance to the sunroom, as dark and potent and beautiful as the storm outside.
Drenched to the skin in his white shirt and black trousers. His jet-black hair was plastered to his scalp, drawing his angular features into sharp relief. Gray-green eyes swept over her, some unnamed emotion whispering there.
Nyra didn’t think. Just acted on pure instinct and threw herself at him.
He grunted but caught her, his arms coming around her like steel manacles. Holding her as she needed to be held, all the while murmuring in Italian. Words she didn’t understand but had soothed her just like this once before.
In his arms, the last thread of control she held over her fear unraveled. Violent tremors wracked her. A sob fought to be released but if she let it go…there would be no stopping it. She would unravel too and she couldn’t. Not in front of him. Not ever.
“Shh… cara mia . You’re safe,” he said, his mouth at her temple, his free hand clasped around her. “I’m here, Nyra. You aren’t alone.”
Her silent tears soaked into his wet shirt, but at least she held back the sob.
She’d let him hold her just for a minute more, she told herself. Dampness seeped through her sweater and her linen pants, but she didn’t care.
Just one more minute.
She didn’t look up when he lifted her and carried her out into the living room. Like a squid using its tentacles, she clung to him as he barked orders at the staff.
“I’m getting you wet through, bella ,” he said gruffly, when she refused to dislodge her arms. Settling into an armchair, he brought her into his lap. “I’m not going anywhere, Nyra. Let me get us out of these damp clothes.”
She tightened her fingers around his neck. The corded column of his neck smelled like bergamot and rain, with a layer of clean sweat beneath. She breathed in a greedy lungful, the scent filling her with warm tendrils of comfort. If she simply held on to him, without thinking, without talking, it wasn’t weak, was it? After all she was pregnant and needed touch.
His large hand stroked down between her shoulders, down her back. “Won’t you tell me why the storm terrifies you like this?”
She stiffened and swallowed the answer that begged to be let out. Like a lazy cat, all she wanted was to bask in the warmth of his body.
Her fear had left her the moment he had arrived. Something deep within her that she couldn’t shake still associated him with safety. A part of her wanted to demand that he join her in bed at night and give her touch—simple or sexual, that it was his duty to do so.
And he would give it, she knew.
Duty was everything to Adriano.
But even the simplest of touches—not even counting sex between them, was a live flame. And now, a slippery slope. She couldn’t risk getting attached to him so deeply again. Not when he might just cut her out of his life at a moment’s notice.
Finally, after what felt like a surprisingly long time for them to respond, the staff arrived with a tea tray and a heap of towels. Without looking at him, she took the towel he offered and buried her face in it. Sliding out of his lap, she patted the front of her top and her pants with it, feeling bereft without his touch.
Adriano unfolded from the armchair and rubbed the towel vigorously over his hair. For a second, she nearly grabbed the towel from him so that she could see to the task.
Instead, she poured hot tea into a cup, just to give her hands something to do. She didn’t like tea, but since she was trying to cut back to one cup of coffee per day, she didn’t have a choice. She didn’t pour any for him, giving in to the peevish urge.
The hot tea nearly burned her tongue and the roof of her mouth when she took a too-big sip.
All because Adriano had stripped out of his wet shirt and was wiping down his chest. A sight almost worth burning her tongue for.
Thick-ridged pectorals and an equally hard slab of his abdomen dusted generously with hair. His black trousers hung low on his hips as he unbuckled the belt and pulled it off.
The soft whoosh of it filled the room and blistering heat rushed to her cheeks at the memory of that same belt around her wrists and the raw pleasure that had followed.
Her breasts felt heavy and achy, but she put that down to the sudden damp.
When he moved toward their bedroom—with their bed covered in his shirts and sweatshirts that she used to drape herself in come night, she waylaid him.
“Your clothes are in the second bedroom,” she said, looking into her teacup. The last thing she wanted was for him to see how weak her resolve was around him.
God, there were months, maybe years of this ahead. How was she supposed to sustain this I don’t need you act?
Hands on his hips, he turned to face her fully. The definition of his bicep made her want to lick him up.
“I asked the staff to move everything out,” she said, responding to his thunderous frown.
“Why?”
“I wasn’t sure if you might come by in the middle of the night looking for one of your documents. I prefer not to be disturbed.”
He would drop by in the evening—admitting to social exhaustion after a party or a dinner—would drive them both to mindless delirium, and then when she fell asleep, would sit there on the bed for hours into the night, working away on his laptop or reading through documents. His fingers would absently sift through her messy, postsex hair or trail over her bare belly or thighs. Sometimes, he would trace his knuckles over her cheek as she snuggled into his lap sleepily.
Always touching her, even when the sex was over.
As if he couldn’t help himself , the needy part of her whispered.
Then he would wake her up around dawn with kisses and caresses and filthy promises, ruin her thoroughly with his mouth or his fingers or his cock as he made her say it, then shower and leave before she was even up.
She’d spend her days painting in the sunroom, venture down to the pretty canal district when she got stuck or bored, drink too many delicious coffees and then venture back into her apartment by nightfall, hoping he would show up.
When he traveled, she would stay at the villa with his parents and siblings with the utmost reluctance—the one condition he wouldn’t back down on—counting down every minute to when he would return.
That had constituted their marriage.
With hindsight now, Nyra could see it hadn’t really been a marriage in the true sense of the word. But it had felt right. And it had been theirs. A cocoon made of touches and kisses and raw intimacy, hidden away from the world. Not a surprise that it had fallen apart, like a castle made of cards at the first puff of air.
“Or you were making sure that I didn’t accidentally crawl into the bed with you, purely out of habit?”
There was such…caustic heat to those words that she jerked around. Tea spilled over her fingers at the sudden movement.
With a pithy curse, he grabbed the wet towel and dabbed at her fingers in gentle movements. A ribbon of longing whipped through her as she stared down at his bent head.
Adriano was a master at controlling his emotions, always leaving her to wonder what he would say or do next. When he’d asked her to come to Italy with him, as his wife, she’d nearly fainted out of shock. The fact that they were in the middle of a high-stakes game was the only thing that had kept her moving through the day.
Ten tomorrow morning at the chapel , he’d whispered before walking out near dawn.
They’d known each other for three weeks by then and she’d slept with him the previous night. Which had been a revelation in itself. She’d showed up at the chapel, gotten married and then found herself underneath him in the rear cabin of his private jet, before comprehending fully that it hadn’t been a daydream.
She stared at him now as he raised his head, at the vein pulsing in his forehead, at the tight set of his mouth. This was more than he had betrayed in that moment with those photos of her twin splashed across his desk. Did this distance between them cause him as much ache as it did in her?
Her heart gave a thud against her breast, greedily lapping up the fracture in his control. Suddenly, the deep grooves around his mouth, the strain around his eyes became more pronounced to her eyes. “That’s not what I…”
“No, bella ?” A scornful laugh twisted his pretty lips. “I guess you were right that we barely know each other. Because the last thing I expected from you was…this passive-aggressive cold frost.”
She went to him then, some foolish emotion urging her feet on. “It’s been a week since you brought me back. I still wake up and wonder where I am. What is it that you expected of me, Adriano?”
“I sent my chauffeur to pick you up thrice for dinner. You refused.”
“I’m not in the mood for company.”
“Just mine, si ? Because I know Bruno and Fabi have been here a few times in the last week.”
“Bruno and Fabi didn’t throw me out without a second glance.” She regretted the words the moment she said them.
“Nyra—”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, rubbing her temple. “It’s hardly fair that I keep throwing that at you but refuse to discuss it.”
She was aware of him moving closer by how his delicious body heat swamped her. “We’ve left ‘fair’ behind us a while ago, Nyra.” His words were full of an aching regret.
She nodded, because he was right. Neither could she forget that she had begun it with her lies.
He tilted her chin up until she met his gaze. “I can withstand this frost of yours, however long it lasts. But I’m not letting you go. If that’s what you think this retreat of yours will lead to, no. I will wait you out. You, and our babies, belong with me.”
“If it were any other man than you, I would consider that a threat.” She laughed. Even to her own ears, the sound lacked any warmth. “See, that’s how I think of you. That you aren’t any other man, that you’re…you. The one man who would never, in a million years, hurt me.”
He thrust a hand roughly through his hair, a pained growl escaping his throat.
“It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Some of the things we tell ourselves to get through the day.”
He sighed. “All I can say is that it’s not easy for me.”
“And you think the last few weeks have been easy for me?”
“Tell me, bella . Per favore. ”
“I wake up cold in the middle of the night and look for you to tuck myself up against. I…miss you so much that it’s an ache here,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest. “And then, when I wake up, I come out of this trance and a knot fists my stomach. Like I have to chase the sensation to figure out what it is and then… I remember what happened between us. All the anger, the hurt and the fear rush back into me. And it’s all viciously fresh again.”
His hand cupped her shoulder but he didn’t pull her closer.
“And seeing you is a hundred times worse. Because a part of me craves the safety you meant to me before all this. Another part hates that I’m so weak with you.”
His Adam’s apple moved on a hard swallow. “What can I do to fix it? To make us go back to what we were? This isn’t good for you or them.”
“I don’t think there’s any going back,” she said, pressing her head to his chest with a helplessness she couldn’t fight. Because he would always be both the storm and shelter for her. “And I can’t find a path forward yet.”
* * *
Adriano wrapped his fingers around his wife’s neck and held her as she trembled from head to toe.
Her hurt, her fear, her helplessness, written so clearly on her face as if he’d etched it into those sharp features with his own hands. It was a humbling point to face over and over for a man like him.
He even acknowledged the fact that a small part of him wanted to walk out on her and her unrelenting stubbornness. Like she pointed out recently, he was a powerful man used to getting his own way.
No, he had to treat this as a test of his own fiber. A series of tests even, the first of which he’d failed abysmally.
He was to be a father in a few months, and the last thing he could afford was to throw a tantrum like he’d done that horrible night. It hadn’t been simply tasteless to declare that his marriage was over in front of his vulture-like family. While he hadn’t known the extent to which his parents had taunted her, he had known that they hadn’t approved of her. And he’d simply served her up into their hostile clutches.
Worse was that that evening had smacked of the very same drama his parents had indulged in, over and over again, in their eternal battle against each other.
He’d meant to hurt her and the admission was galling. To learn that he’d behaved exactly like them was a bitter pill.
So he swallowed his anger—mostly directed at himself—his frustration, of the plain and sexual kind, and stroked his fingers down her neck and her shoulders, wanting to soothe her as much as himself.
There was a strength in her stubbornness, in her refusal to give in, in how she communicated her fear even when she had nothing to fight him with.
She would be a wonderful mother to his children. The thought dispersed his gloomy mood like a ray of sunshine. It was a foothold when he had no control over anything else in his life.
“I apologize for forcing this…confrontation. That wasn’t my intention. I hate upsetting you, Nyra. Especially now.”
She laughed. “That’s not how this works, Adriano. I might be extra emotional because of the hormonal roller coaster, yes, but it doesn’t mean you have to treat me with kid gloves.”
“No gloves on, cara mia . You know how much I like it raw and bare.”
She gasped and smacked his chest. “That’s exactly what got us here.”
“What do you mean?” he quipped, loving the glint of humor back in her eyes.
“I mean it was that time—” she pointed behind him to the exquisite velvet chaise longue “—on that very couch that got us here.”
It had been when he’d returned from a work trip.
He smiled, remembering how he’d arranged her on her knees and arms, pert bottom sticking up in the air, panties locking her ankles. How she’d squirmed and gasped when he’d situated his face below her. And then when he’d finished feasting on her, he’d asked if he could have her without a condom.
Boneless and sated, she’d relented easily enough. And he had nearly blacked out from his climax.
“Don’t blame this on me, cara . You were on the pill, si ?”
“Yes, but it’s not 100 percent guaranteed.”
“So this could have happened even if I had gloved up .”
“Fine. The two of us together got us here,” she said, stepping back. Her gaze landed on his chest and skidded away.
Another ray of sunshine then , he thought, his skin prickling with heat at her sneaky perusal. This desire between them was as strong as it had ever been. That, and the pregnancy were more than enough to work with. For now.
“I have something for you,” he said, refusing to put on the shirt she handed him.
The storm had abated outside, bright sunlight now filtering in through the high windows. Strands of it caught the gold in her brown hair and painted golden every inch of her skin left bare by the loose sleeveless sweater. He frowned at the makeshift crop top that had been cut haphazardly at the hem.
And then he understood why it hung loose over her neck and under her arms. It was his sweater that she had ripped beyond recognition. A flicker of warmth came alive in his chest.
Between the hem of the crop top and her linen pants, the swell of her bare belly was such a shocking sight that he stared, arrested. Children had always been such a vague, alien concept to him. And when he’d been confronted by it, all he’d known was shock and pain that she hadn’t told him, that he’d driven her away at such a fragile time.
But this…very physical sight of her made it real in a way he hadn’t understood until now.
His fingers itched to touch her, to feel the swell, to know the wonder even more keenly. Instead, he fisted them by his sides, resolving to do so only when she invited him.
There were certain things he wanted from her, wanted her to need from him, and that would never change.
“And here I thought you had come by because you know I’m terrified of storms,” Nyra said with a self-deprecation that brought his head up.
“Two things could be true, Nyra.” He meant to win this battle between them—for it was one—and he wasn’t going to give away anything for free.
He had rushed here, walked out of a meeting with his board, because of the storm and what it would do to her. “Or three things, actually,” he said, casually consulting his phone.
“What do you mean?” she said, her earlier wariness retreating.
“I saw the storm. I also knew that you had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. And I came to return something that is yours to you.”
A flash of longing swept through her eyes before she chased it off. “You’re a busy man, and there will be a lot of these appointments. You don’t need to attend every single one.”
“Your…consideration is appreciated but not needed. I said I will be there.”
“Okay,” she said, wrapping her arms around her midriff. “What did you want to give me?”
“When you ask it like that, I have to say, a lot of things, bella . But I’ll wait until you ask me for it. No, maybe until you beg me.”
Pink chased up her neck and cheeks, even as she straightened her shoulders. “I will never beg. For anything. From you.”
“We shall see,” he said, covering the gap she kept putting between them.
When he brought out the velvet box, her whimper was so soft that it cut him. She’d picked the smallest of the lot the designer had presented to them, not knowing that its exquisite cut and clarity made it worth tens of thousands of euros.
“I can put it on,” she said, her chest rising and falling. Something danced in her gaze. An eagerness tinged with desperation.
So she was attached to the ring. He hid his smile. It was the only thing she’d ever let him buy her.
“Oh, it looks just like the other one,” she whispered.
“I had it commissioned just so.”
Another soft gasp, this one full of wonder.
He took her slim hand in his. Pulling off the cheap, fake one that had left a green ring around her finger, he slid the new one on. “I have been looking forward to putting it back on you,” he admitted.
She lifted those beautiful eyes to him, a wet sheen making them glow as much as the diamond. “I hated selling it. I… It was precious to me. It felt like cutting off an integral part of me.”
He nodded, not trusting himself to say the right thing.
How insecure he must have been to believe that she had sold it off to finance her clandestine visits to her lover? It sounded so bizarre in his head now, but then…it had taken him out at the knees.
Was it her he hadn’t trusted or his own ability to have a healthy relationship, he wondered now with something close to self-loathing.
She ran her finger over the stone, over and over. “Thank you,” she said, without meeting his eyes.
“There is one other matter to discuss before we leave for the appointment. Something for you to think on while I’m gone.”
“Where are you going?”
He didn’t miss how fast the question shot out of her. “Japan. I should be back in two weeks.”
“Okay.”
“I’m trying to take care of the most critical issues so that my calendar is open later. I plan to keep my workload very light for weeks before the due date and after they’re born.”
She blinked. “I haven’t even thought that far ahead.”
“You don’t have to, Nyra. That’s what I’m here for. Which leads to deciding where we want to live.”
“Here,” she said instantly. When he stared, she added, “Does the company need the apartment back? I mean, I can move into a smaller one.”
Anger whipped through him but he held it back. “You’re full of barbed insults today, bella ,” he said with a grimace.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Not this time.”
He sighed. “I think I understand what you mean by what I did weighing you down.” He went to her then and took her hand in his. Wanting her to know his touch and trust him rather than his word. “This apartment is yours, Nyra. It has been in your name since the day you moved in.”
Eyes wide in her pinched face, she looked around. “I…never asked for it.”
“It was to be a wedding present along with a couple of other things.”
“Oh. Well, it was good enough to keep from me before.”
“Is that a complaint I hear?” he said, pouncing on it. Because he wanted her complaints, her past, her anger. All of it. Only if she addressed it could he fix it.
Her chest rose and fell with a sigh. “No, it isn’t. You’ve never asked me to hide myself away. I made that decision.”
He didn’t probe, as much as he wanted to. “It’s not the greatest location to raise a family. There’s no garden, no easy access to parks or beaches and the nightlife is too raucous.”
“I’m not moving into the villa. Please don’t—”
He pressed his finger to her lips. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
She smiled against his fingers, her lips warm and soft. Every inch of him wanted to bend and capture them with his. He nearly shook with the intensity of the urge. “I remember you saying that once before.” Her tone turned husky as another memory swirled between them.
Lust punched through him, but this too he kept under check. This time, there was more at stake, more than just themselves. He couldn’t simply seduce her into submission.
Before his self-control shattered at her feet, he pulled away. He shrugged on the other shirt she’d brought him, her heated gaze leaving little pockets of want on his skin.
“I will have a real estate agent send you some links. Just…get a sense of what you like. We can tour some of those places once I’m back.”
“I’m not sure I would know it even if the right place smacked me in the face, Adriano. It’s too big a decision to—”
“Then it’s time you learned, Nyra. Learned to tell me what you want and don’t,” he said, leaning down and kissing her cheek.
The scent of her coiled around him, fisting his cock tight. And for just a second, he felt her leaning in too, her mouth fluttering at the edge of his, her breath a sharp rasping pant.
He pulled away, even if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“It’s more than just you and me now. And this time around, I want no lies, no misunderstandings and no hiding.”
“I can’t promise you any of that.”
He stilled at the door. “I know, cara . But you know me. I’m a very patient man when I want something.”
“And you want this…marriage?”
The hesitation in her tone, the doubt in her words…pained him.
“At any cost,” he said, and then he walked out.
And he wondered, for the millionth time, what it was about her that made a mockery of his usual confidence, his smooth rationality.