Chapter Ten
DOMENICO’S HEART WAS beating impossibly hard.
All evening, he’d worked hard to block out the effect Marnie was having on him.
It was an effect he’d been trying to block since he’d left her in the boutique’s changing room, and now, with only his shirt separating her warm cheek from his chest and the softness of her blond hair brushing beneath his chin, it was taking all his control not to squeeze her tightly to him.
She just felt so damned good to hold. Smelt so damned good, too. Better than good. Holding her in his arms at night was torturous, but to feel her hot body swaying against his, the crush of her breasts, the gentle curve of her hips, to know one movement of his leg would lock their groins together…
He clenched his teeth even as he gave into temptation and palmed his hand up the length of her naked back and dove his fingers into her long hair. It all felt like the finest silk.
He could hardly breathe. The hot, thick desire that had been a constant battle to suppress these last few days was unfurling at a speed he couldn’t control, and when Marnie lifted her face and her wide eyes locked on his, he knew she’d felt the ridge of his arousal against her abdomen.
It was impossible to ascertain their colour.
He could only see the pulse he knew must be mirrored in his own stare.
Domenico sustained the torture for three more tracks, until a commotion caused by the hosts’ unruly children being frogmarched back to their rooms provided a natural break, and he released his hold around her and finally took in a breath of air that wasn’t laced with her heady perfume.
The rest of the night passed in a blur, Domenico torn between aching for Marnie to tell him she was ready to call it a night and praying for her not to.
He had to get a grip on himself. Making love to her was out of the question, even if he was finding it impossible to stop himself from touching her, a need that had nothing to do with proving his newfound attentiveness.
He could barely comprehend the depth of his need to just touch her, never mind all the other impossible feelings coursing through him, and for the first time he was forced to acknowledge it wasn’t just fear of hurting her fragile body that was holding him back from making love to her.
All these hot, heady feelings… Dio, his need for her.
He’d needed her that night. Anger and wounded pride hadn’t been the only driving forces taking him to her. He’d needed her. Needed to just see her, and then all those feelings had exploded, and it had turned into the most incredible night of his life.
Dio, his feelings for her were a hot mess and growing messier by the second. And stronger. It felt like he was clinging on by his fingertips without knowing what he was clinging on to.
The internal fight continued on the drive home.
Bodies only inches apart, fingers laced tightly together, the only sound in their cocoon was the roar of blood whooshing in Domenico’s ears, his thoughts all coalesced around how the hell he was going to climb beneath the bed sheets with her and keep his damned hands to himself.
He would keep his damned hands to himself by turning himself into stone. It was the only way. Envisage himself as being made of granite. No. Diamond. Diamonds were impermeable.
Closing the door to her bedroom, he turned his thoughts into diamonds as well, but when he looked at her, he was unable to blur her beautiful face.
Dio, she was so damned ravishing. The ache to breach the distance between them…
He snapped his stare away from her. ‘I’m going to have a nightcap downstairs,’ he said shortly, unable to temper the roughness in his voice. ‘I’m sure you’ll be asleep when I come back up, so I’ll wish you a good night now. Sleep well, cuoricina.’
He’d barely uttered the last of his endearment before he’d closed the door behind him.
Marnie stared at the bedroom door in a form of shell shock at Domenico’s abrupt departure. He hadn’t even given her the usual cursory goodnight kiss.
The heart that had been beating with anticipation the whole drive home had now squeezed into a tight ball that was almost impossible to breathe through. His rejection…
Their whole marriage had been one long, barely subtle rejection. It had never wounded as deeply as this.
Feeling like she could be sick, she unzipped her dress and untied the gold halter neck.
Her beautiful dress fell to her feet. She stepped out of it without looking down.
She couldn’t bear to see it, not when she’d felt sick with the anticipation of Domenico stripping it from her.
The desirable beauty she’d imagined herself to be in his eyes had been nothing but a fantasy.
When would she learn? He didn’t want her; he wanted their baby. All his affection and attention were just performance.
But it hadn’t felt like a performance. Not the look in his eyes or the way he’d held her on the dance floor. Nor the arousal she’d felt as a ridge against her belly. It had all felt so real. Felt like her long-ago dream was blossoming into life.
A flare of anger, not at Domenico but at herself, cut through her misery. Wasn’t this what she’d done before? Let herself be caught up in a fantasy that had no basis in reality?
But the way he’d caressed her naked back on the dance floor had felt real…
Stop it, she furiously admonished herself. Near tears with all the emotions fighting inside of her, she practically threw herself into the shower. If she could wash away his touch from her skin, she’d feel better, she was certain of it.
Her certainty wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Naked, her body clean, her face stripped of the makeup she’d adorned it with for the party, she gazed at her ordinary, plain reflection and blinked back more tears. Any beauty she’d possessed that evening had been illusory.
She’d been chosen by Domenico for her plainness and docility.
He’d experienced hot lust and passion with the vibrant, beautiful Carmela and been burned for it.
Marnie, the wallflower forgotten by her father and barely acknowledged by her mother, was the antithesis of the sexy Italian woman.
He’d married her because she posed zero threat to his equilibrium.
Oh, why had he held her the way he had on the dance floor? Why had he looked at her the way he had the whole evening? She hadn’t imagined it, she hadn’t, so why would he put on an act like that when he didn’t need to?
Fearing her brain could explode from all her despairing thoughts, Marnie shrugged her arms into her robe and tied the sash, and then, barely conscious of what she was doing, walked out of the bathroom and through the bedroom and out of the door.
With Domenico’s admonition of her always bottling her unhappiness ringing in her ears, she padded down the stairs in search of him. By the time she found him, her heart was as ready to explode as her brain was.
He was in the main living room, his feet up, half-reclined on the reclining armchair, his shirt unbuttoned at the throat.
An empty crystal glass in his hand, he was watching a game of football with the sound off.
At least, she thought he was watching it.
There was something distant in his expression that made her feel that whatever was happening on the screen wasn’t penetrating any deeper than the membrane of his eyes, and there was something about the distance of his expression that made her heart catch in her throat.
When her presence in the far corner of the room finally caught his attention, his head jerked, and he blinked as if disbelieving of what his eyes were telling him.
And then his face slipped into the same mask it had worn when he’d wished her a good night.
‘Is something wrong, Marnie?’ he asked steadily.
It took all her courage to force her feet across the floor.
By the time she reached him, her legs were shaking so hard that she perched herself on the sofa facing him.
Her heart thrashing, she managed only a shallow breath before finding the courage to say, ‘Why don’t you want to make love to me?’
Something spasmed over his gorgeous face, but then he moved his stare away from her. His voice, when he finally answered, remained steady. ‘Of course I want to make love to you.’
‘Do you?’
His jaw tightening, the knuckles of the fingers holding his glass whitening, he inclined his head.
Her heart wrenched, blood rushing to her head at the sudden certainty that he was lying. ‘Then why do you keep rejecting me?’
He hung his head and grabbed his skull with his free hand. ‘Marnie…’
She’d shot to her feet before her brain knew what she was doing, and fumbled with the sash of her robe.
‘Look at me, Dom. Look at me and tell me what’s so wrong with me that you can’t bring yourself to make love to me.
Look at me and tell me why you want me to commit the rest of my life to you when you don’t want me. ’
Only because he could no longer deny Marnie anything did Domenico lift his stare to her.
Dio del Cielo. She’d opened her robe. He’d known from the way her breasts had moved when she’d walked across the room that she was naked, but to have it proved right when she stood only feet away from him…
‘How can you doubt that I want you?’ he asked hoarsely, only just managing to successfully blur his eyes to her nakedness.
All his efforts to turn himself back into a diamond were collapsing around him.
‘Now, please, close your robe.’ He swallowed the moisture that had filled his mouth and tried to blur his brain from the searing image of her beautiful naked body. ‘I—’
‘I said look at me,’ she cried, slipping the robe off and stepping towards him.
‘You’ve been with hundreds of women of all different shapes and sizes, so tell me what’s so wrong with me that the only way you can bring yourself to make love to me is when you want to make a baby or when you’re drunk. ’