Chapter Seven #2
He clenched his teeth, intensely uncomfortable with the intimacy of the turn in the conversation.
His liaisons didn’t usually last long enough for them to descend into such territory.
And he’d been fine with that. If the intrusive press hadn’t taught him enough when he’d been younger, one girlfriend selling her story to the tabloids, another wanting an introduction to his older and richer father, and another using him to finance an increasingly out-of-control shopping addiction, had ensured that he’d learned his lesson.
Short-term exchanges with women who understood the finite nature of their relationship was all he wanted. And despite what the papers had to say, he’d vetted those relationships with considerable assiduity.
Until Erin Carter.
‘Nothing that reminds you of your past?’ she asked, dealing him another blow.
Despite himself, he huffed out a bitter laugh. ‘Why on earth would I want that?’
His childhood had been a car crash. A very public, very slow, car crash.
Sympathy pooled in her gaze and he wanted to look away as much as he wanted to draw it in deep. He took a sip of espresso instead, trying to wash away the bitter statement from their conversation.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘It is nothing to me,’ he dismissed, even though now he was the one who was lying, he was the one with the tell in this game that they were playing.
‘There were no family holidays then?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘When my parents were in love, they went away alone, wanting “adult time”. And when they weren’t, they would fight over which one of them got to take me away, but would get so caught up in their arguments, they’d end up forgetting the holiday altogether.’
Those arguments had been furious, violent. Hurled vases and broken china. Staff had been forced to pull him out of the terrifying path of their fury. ‘Outside of that, I was at boarding school.’
And it had been the only stability he had known as a child.
‘How old were you?’ she asked.
‘Seven.’
She frowned, putting her cup back on the saucer and before she could ask any more of the questions that were shining in her eyes, he signalled for the bill and paid.
He spent the entire day showing her everything that Florence had to offer—giving her the holiday that her father had once promised and distracting them both from the earlier emotional trespass.
They scoured jewellery shops on the Ponte Vecchio and sauntered down the Corridoio Vasariano, famous for being used hundreds of years before by the Medici family.
They peered around tourists at statues and paintings in the Uffizi Gallery, they lunched on spaghetti carbonara and dined on Bistecca alla Fiorentina with a red wine so delicious he made a note of the vineyard.
The way that Erin had groaned in delight at the first mouthful of her steak had taken him to the edge of his control, which was laughably thin when it came to this woman. But they walked the still busy streets, Enzo enjoying the bustle of it all.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this.
Usually he’d either be at a party, or in his office, making a deal through a shell company to hide his identity.
And this, he found, was a different kind of anonymity.
Strangers and tourists, so lost in their own adventures that he could have been anyone.
And with the night sky a black velvet, punctured by scattered diamonds, he led her to the entrance of the hotel that had been arranged for the night—happy to give the staff the night off.
They were greeted by the hotel manager who informed them that their personal concierge was waiting for them and would show them around their suite and as the two of them entered the lift, he felt it.
It wasn’t something visible, definable , but he felt it.
The way that tension, the delicious kind, pulled something taut in her.
And it was attached to him. To his gut. Suite, not suites.
She didn’t know that the suite had separate bedrooms and it was perhaps cruel of him not to tell her immediately.
But he relished it, the sensual chemistry fizzing and spitting between them.
He was testing himself against the strength of it and for the first time, he feared it was a game he might not win.
Erin looked anywhere but where she wanted to look. At him . Being in the confined space of the lift with him, his scent sweeping around her, invading her lungs, her breath, her thoughts. Thoughts that were utterly consumed by him.
Of the precious gift he had given her that day.
And of what he’d shared with her too. She was beginning to understand that perhaps the playboy image Enzo had created was a little like the persona of Rin that she had constructed.
A configuration born out of necessity. And in Enzo’s case, the necessity had been self-protection; from the intrusion of the press, from his parents’ difficult relationship.
From the loneliness of being sent away to boarding school at such a horrifically young age.
Oh, she knew he didn’t want her sympathy.
But something had been born in that moment.
The desire to reach out to him. To connect with him.
He had tried to distract her from it. And it had worked.
..for a while. Until now. Now that they would be alone.
Utterly alone. No staff, no interruptions.
No one to witness whatever happened behind closed doors.
He wasn’t looking at her, but she felt his attention. Her body came alive beneath it. Pulse points flaring in time with her heartbeat, breath catching in her lungs, her throat thickening with a want like she’d never known.
The lift arrived at their floor, the doors opening directly onto the beautiful hotel suite, and she followed Enzo out, hoping that neither he nor the uniformed concierge that greeted them, could see the telling blush on her cheeks.
The suite was beautiful, decorated in warm creams and golds and champagnes, but really she barely saw any of it, her hungry gaze stalking Enzo with a keening desperation that she hated herself for.
Frustrated desire coursed through her body, making her skin itch and her heart ache in a strange and unfamiliar way.
When had she become so base ? She thought miserably as Enzo closed the door behind the departing concierge.
She crossed over to the window, looking out at the Florentine nightscape.
‘What is it, cara ? What is wrong?’ Enzo asked from behind her, from the other side of the room, as if knowing that he should keep his distance.
How did she even begin to explain? To tell him. To put into words what it was she wanted when she wasn’t sure herself?
She shrugged, helplessly, rubbing her arms, trying to feel something other than the want clawing at her stomach and filling her lungs.
He closed the distance between them and she let her head hang forward. Submission, surrender? She wanted him to take over, to make the decision, to make the move that she wasn’t sure she should, but wanted more than her next breath.
He stood behind her, like he had done that day in the boutique in Positano when he had kissed her neck. A shiver ran down her spine, not in fear, but from the memory of it. The touch of his lips against her skin...
‘Are you cold?’ he asked, and she shook her head.
‘Do you want to go to bed?’ he asked. She bit her lip and shook her head, her pulse beginning to race from the rough-textured question.
Enzo like this, stubble across his jaw, espresso-rich gaze hot and swirling, meeting hers in the reflection of the window.
I promise to protect your wishes, even if you beg me to change my mind.
Would he break that promise if she asked him to? Did she want him to?
He began to turn away and something horribly like loss sliced into her breath, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d turned and reached for him, her hand around his wrist, pulling him back to her.
As if moving in a dance, his hand slid into her hair just behind her ear as her palm flattened over his heart, a heart that was racing just as fast as hers.
He shook his head, as if he were fighting something too.
As if they were both still trying to deny how strong this need was that spiralled between them.
He opened his mouth and closed it again and when he finally pushed past whatever had been holding him back, she wondered whether it was a mistake. Whether she should have stayed quiet.
‘I can give you what you want, without breaking my promise to you. If that’s what you want.’
She wanted to ask herself how he knew what she wanted when she didn’t even know herself, but that would be a lie. And she already had too many lies in her, she couldn’t bear the weight of one more.
She looked down as the flush built on her cheeks, and nodded.
With one finger on her chin, he lifted her face to his, to the scrutiny of his gaze, and in his eyes she saw passion enflamed, she saw what she felt deep down, twisting and burning her from the inside.
‘You want this?’ he asked again, and even as she wondered how he could do both, she said, ‘Yes’.
Yes, yes, yes.
Christo , he was shaking. Shaking with need for her.
But he held himself back with the fiercest restraint he had ever needed.
Because he wouldn’t break his promise to her.
Because whether or not she was innocent, he couldn’t do that to her.
He couldn’t sleep with her and still leave her at the altar.
Her intentions didn’t matter one bit, his did. And he was a playboy, not a monster.
And while it would be a lie to say that he received no pleasure from what he intended to give her, she would not for one minute be left thinking that this had been about him or his needs, because it wasn’t. It was about her and her needs. And he was only too happy to meet them.