Chapter Eleven
ALESSANDRO DIDN’T GO into work for two whole weeks. The day after the weekend, his cell phone blew up enough for Sam to know how unprecedented it was.
The first three or four days, she ate and slept and woke to have sex.
For his part, he fed her in bed, drew her rose-scented baths, cajoled her into a game of chess and, when she was in that sleepy, lazy state, played the piano for hours.
Only coming to bed when she dragged him to it, pulling at his stiff fingers.
He was insatiable. She was even more so.
For years, she’d wondered if sex would ever be something she craved.
If her history had somehow inhibited her ability to simply let go, to live in the moment.
She definitely had frustrated Matteo on more than one occasion with her lukewarm responses and halfhearted interest.
But now, she knew the taste of that mindless craving.
Alessandro and his kisses, caresses, lazy lovemaking and sudden bouts of have-to-be-inside-you put paid to any and all doubts she’d ever harbored.
On day four, they ventured into his study through the secret corridor to pick up something to read. Because her body needed a break and he needed a distraction, he’d declared.
She’d discovered she had muscles in places she hadn’t even given a thought to. They’d spent hours lazing in separate recliners, discussing Jane Austen and classical music. Then they played chess while eating cheese and fruit.
On the way back, she’d kissed him in the darkness, feeling that urgency of having wasted too many precious hours.
That itch beneath the skin that wanted to touch him, lose herself in him.
He’d offered token protest, groaned when she’d bit him, picked her up, propped her up against the wall as if she weighed nothing and then thrust into her.
She had been ready. He’d checked. Still, the first thrust had felt raw and rough and painful but oh so glorious.
When she’d been unable to hide her grimace on the second thrust, he’d pulled out, sunk to his knees, whispered apologies and soft kisses into her belly and then made her come again with the featherlight flicks of his tongue.
She’d been sobbing at the end, alternately begging for more and for him to stop.
By the time the next weekend rolled around, he’d thoroughly trounced her at chess, in so few moves that all her competitiveness spilled out.
When she had attacked him on the bed, outraged that he’d pretended to lose to her until now, he’d let her straddle him and then, while he was inside her, he’d confided that she’d beaten him the other times because he’d been far too distracted imagining her in all kinds of positions.
On the eighth day, he worked from home while she painted in the studio he’d arranged for her.
Tongue in cheek, she had said she could bear it if he went in to Milan for work, but he’d insisted on staying near her.
He’d ruined her concentration by coming to his knees in front of her, punishing—or rewarding—her for teasing him.
They were both people used to silence, who craved solitude and yet somehow to find it with each other too.
As if their silences had their own language to communicate with.
They spent hours together not talking, her painting, him working, then coming together in a flash of biting kisses and rough, needy sex.
Sam didn’t understand the magic of their togetherness and decided against trying.
As remote and untouchable he was, Alessandro said hello when she called her cousin Kavi who never coddled or was condescending to her.
He’d been shirtless and looked thoroughly debauched, and when Sam had ambushed him because Kavi begged to see who Sam was tapping, he played along with his arms wrapped around her while Kavi gushed over his good looks and teased Sam with horribly intrusive questions.
Alessandro had then informed Kavi in that deep voice that Sam had seduced him with her stubbornness…
It was the moment Sam knew he had her heart.
Faulty and courageous as it was, it had gone over into his keeping.
And she also knew the inevitability of it shattering into so many pieces soon and of being able to do nothing to stop it.
They were like a newly married couple on their honeymoon, Angelina told a stunned Sam when she’d come down for breakfast on the second weekend. Sam hadn’t been expecting all of the Riccis to be right there in the kitchen having breakfast.
Alessandro still worked from the villa, and Sam had started painting him with oils. They escaped one evening to a museum, which had of course been emptied of people for him. Because he didn’t want the world to intrude on her time with the art, he’d said.
Dismayed, Sam stared down at her short shorts and old T-shirt of Alessandro’s. It wasn’t indecent, but it was an undisputed announcement to a kitchen and backyard full of family, cousins and close friends.
How was she to know that her sudden cravings for carbs would result in all of the Riccis bearing witness to her walk of shame? Was it a walk of shame if she wasn’t ashamed of all the things she’d done with him?
Sam filled her coffee cup blushing beetroot red no doubt and said hello to people Maria insisted on introducing her to. Several male cousins winked at her. A couple of aunts looked her up and down, as if to see what all the fuss was about. One, introduced as Lucia, muttered something about violets.
Looking away, Sam took the picnic basket a beaming Maria handed her, piled with enough food to last them another week, and tried not to run. But even in her haste, she didn’t miss the fact that Alessandro’s aunt had loaded it up with protein bars, the kind she liked, and yogurt cups.
She’d almost teared up on the stairs. Yep, she’d finally reached the stage where her body had been through such a wringer that facing reality felt like a hard crash.
She had half finished a protein bar by the time she returned to his suite.
Alessandro was at the piano. Back bare, spine erect, sweatpants sitting low on his hips, playing another heart-wrenching tune.
Sam stood at the door and listened, loath to disturb him. Even to her untrained ears, it was clear that he was a gifted pianist. It was his one addiction he didn’t smother. The music soared through her, filling her, saying things she knew Alessandro would never put into words.
She loved seeing him like this, knowing him in this moment. More intimate than sex. Knowing without doubt that no one else crossed the barrier he put between himself and the world. Not even his family.
And yet he had let her in.
Despite all his warnings, he’d opened himself to her. He’d made the last few weeks the best time of her life, even when they’d been fighting, even when he’d been rejecting this thing between them.
“Sam?” he said, turning around.
“FYI,” she said, swinging the basket onto the coffee table, “not my fault if people ask you later about planning a wedding.”
The shutter fell down so hard in his eyes that he might as well have slammed a door in her face. “Sameera…”
“It’s a joke, Alessandro.” Her laughter released with a hard edge she couldn’t hide. “I wouldn’t be able to tolerate your controlling personality beyond this tawdry affair.”
Something tightened in his face, giving his features that saturnine cast. “I did not realize this was tawdry to you.”
And she realized, with dawning dismay, that she had just hurt him. Worse, she had done it to see if she could. “Okay, maybe tawdry isn’t the word. But I definitely fit the label of a mistress. You have spent a fortune on just my painting supplies, and we rarely go anywhere.”
“All you had to do was ask to go somewhere, bella. And you’re not my mistress,” he said, looking down his nose. As if the very word was offensive to his entire being. “What put you in such a mood?” he said, his anger already under control. As if she were still that puzzle.
Sam sighed. “Your entire family, extended included, is in the kitchen, overflowing into the patio.” She tugged at the neckline of her T-shirt. “They’re celebrating Matteo’s progress to the wheelchair.”
“He’ll tire himself out.”
“Angelina’s watching him like a hawk.” She gathered her tangled hair and redid her messy bun.
“I wish I hadn’t walked into the kitchen looking like this.
Honestly,” she said and something ugly and hot crawled into her throat and refused to dislodge, “I don’t like attention, and I definitely don’t like being looked at as though I—”
“How do you think you look, Sameera?”
“Disheveled. Like I just crawled out of bed after a week-long sex session. Like I’m not good enough for you.”
“Maybe it’s the other way around, bella. Maybe they think I’m too old, too jaded, too much of an arrogant asshole for someone like you. As for how you look…” his lashes fell and rose “…you’re beautiful.” It wasn’t what he wanted to say. “As to my family, they have no boundaries.”
She shrugged, that angry itchy feeling persisting under her skin. “If you want to join the party, please go ahead. I might catch a nap.”
“Not interested.”
“Won’t they expect you?”
“Not even if I didn’t have you here with me,” he said, a small smile wreathing his lips. “I’m not into parties or crowds either. I don’t go to clubs. I don’t spend hours with friends. I’m…sort of a loner.”
She nodded, struck again by how alike they were. “I met your great-aunt Lucia. It was interesting.”
Sam was sure his aunt had said Sam could never be Violetta. And that was it—the source of her sudden, unnamed distress.
The woman had Alessandro had loved and lost. The one that Angelina had accidentally dropped into their conversations more than once.
The one he clearly still loved after all these years.
“I think she also mumbled Indian, too thin, too American and something else before she turned up her rather beaky nose at me. Apparently, no aspect of me lives up to her standards.”