Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
E nzo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He didn’t have to lie? He didn’t?
He didn’t know whether it was audacity that had her saying that or something a little like the opposite.
But he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help but be seduced by the romantic fantasy that they had both woven, of some kind of deeper, more meaningful relationship. And perhaps he could pretend just a little longer that she was there for him. That she did care.
He held out his hand to her, and together they made their way back to the yacht, the stillness of the night punctuated by the clacking of boats’ metal lines slapping in the wind and the occasional bird call.
They gravitated to the upper deck as if by silent agreement and as he poured them both a drink, he thought about where to start.
With her question? Was he really okay?
He crossed to join her where she stood, looking out over the Quay Saint Pierre, and the bustling restaurants and bars that bordered the marina.
It was the first time he didn’t want to be there, losing himself to the bright lights and happy conversations, the easy smiles and sensual distractions.
No. His father was getting married. And he knew what that meant.
That meant his mother calling on the phone, determined to find her own new fiancé. More requests for interviews, more requests for money. It meant the reminder that once again, he was nothing to them but a source of cash, or a pawn to be used on some years-old chess game between his parents.
Erin looked at him with a solemn aquamarine gaze, tendrils of the hair she’d taken down flowing in the gentle breeze. Overhead was one of the most spectacular starscapes in the world, and still she outshone it. She was, he realised, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
His fingers flexed around the glass that he offered out to her.
‘It’s always been like that,’ he confessed, and he wondered whether she would ever understand the shame of it. The raw, guttural shame of knowing that he’d never been wanted by his parents. Never been loved.
‘In part, because my father is almost completely incapable of loving anything but himself. Both my parents, actually. Everything they do is about either feeding their own ego or their own bank account,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders as if he could dismiss it that easily.
‘What about you?’
He looked down at the floor, wondering how much of himself to expose to her, shocked by how much he wanted to show her everything.
‘They love me as a means to an end,’ he said defiantly, lifting the glass to his lips, his eyes on her, watching and waiting for the slightest response to tell him of her thoughts. But her face was nearly ruthlessly blank, waiting for him to continue.
‘I was an accident. That’s what they screamed at each other before their first divorce. How they wouldn’t be tied to each other if not for me.’
‘How old were you?’
He frowned, trying to recall. ‘Five? Six? It dragged on a while, so the divorce came through when I was eight. Not that it changed much. They remarried when I was ten, after their second divorce, and then again at seventeen after their third.’
And then the veil lifted and he saw everything in those expressive eyes. Pity, sadness, hurt for him. She hurt for him.
‘Don’t do that, Erin. Don’t pity me,’ he reproached.
Erin watched the man who was slowly unpicking his deepest hurts in the anonymity of the darkness of the night, wondering if he realised how much she could read on his features.
Her heart ached for him, for the little boy she’d once thought of as Peter Pan so cruelly, because of that. ..that lack of emotional insecurity...
‘Why not?’ she asked, heartsore and angry for him.
Why had no one stepped in? Why had Gio Gallo chosen now and not then to interfere in Enzo’s life, when it felt like far too much and far too late?
‘I am sorry for you,’ she pressed on. ‘I am sorry for what you experienced at the hands of the two people who should have protected you most. Who should have considered your needs and wants above their own. Do you not deserve that?’ she asked him.
He threw his head back and laughed. ‘Oh, Erin, I have spent a long time fulfilling my own wants and needs,’ he assured her.
She frowned. ‘I don’t think you have.’
‘Oh, I assure you, I have been very satisfied over the last few years.’
‘Don’t do that,’ she insisted angrily. ‘Sexual needs and day-to-day pleasures are not the same thing as love, and security, and safety,’ she bit out so firmly it seemed to shock them both.
Enzo blinked at her once—everything torn away, the mask, the childhood hurts, the near magician-level distraction. Her fingers shook slightly and she fisted her hand, no longer really that shocked by the strength of her own feelings. For him. Her... love .
She had fallen for him, for the Playboy of Amalfi . She was...in love with him, she realised with a hand pressed to her lips, the pink diamond glittering as her hand shook.
Oh god. What had she gotten herself into?
Even having decided to refuse Gio’s offer, even if she’d decided to give up on Charterhouse, she could see how impossible a future with Enzo was. She had betrayed him in the greatest of ways. Surely there was no coming back from that.
Enzo reached up to cup her jaw, his palm warm against a cheek cooled by the night air and such devastating realisations.
She wanted to apologise for her outburst, for her mistakes, for her betrayal. Her eyes welled.
‘Enzo—’
‘It’s okay, cara ,’ he insisted.
But it wasn’t.
She reached out to circle his wrist with her hand when he would have pulled away, her fingers slipping around the space between his watch and his hand with the lightest of touches, with the greatest of impacts.
‘I—’
‘Shhh,’ he said, reversing the hold she had on him, twisting his wrist and instead, capturing hers. He brought it to his lips, pressing a kiss against the soft, vulnerable skin covering her fluttering pulse, sending warning flares across her body that pebbled her skin in goose bumps.
It stopped time, her heart, and any coherent thought she’d had just moments before. He took her with his gaze. It devoured her, penetrated deep into the heart of her. It scoured her, seeking and searching for something she didn’t know.
‘I could show you. How good it can be to satisfy sexual needs. Your needs,’ he clarified, as if refusing to allow her to think that he would use her for his own ends.
Oh, the irony, she thought miserably.
‘It is a crime, cara , to see you hiding from your pleasure the way that you do.’
He was distracting her. She knew it. He knew it. And she shouldn’t allow it, but his seduction was working.
‘While I respect and totally understand your need to wait—and we will wait, cara ,’ he said, speaking of a future she couldn’t see any more, ‘I would like to show you,’ he said, before sucking gently at her wrist.
He made it sound so reasonable; to indulge, to explore, to discover her own wants and needs with him.
‘Let me give this to you?’ he asked, pulling her into his arms, his dark gaze searching hers for permission, for agreement...for surrender.
‘Because I really want to give this to you,’ he said, as if it were the truth, as if he wanted nothing more in that moment. His gaze hid nothing, and she saw it all. Hurt, frustration, desire, confusions, want, and something she couldn’t name.
‘Say yes,’ he begged, his whisper puffs of air against her lips. ‘Just say—’
‘Yes.’
The word was barely from her lips, when Enzo lowered his mouth to claim hers. The storm of desire he’d been holding back, released like a tsunami, a single wave overwhelming them both, leaving only the ability to cling together and hope to survive.
He walked her backwards until her thighs hit the table, lifting her in his arms, and placing her on top of it, inserting himself between her thighs, all without breaking the kiss. Her hands shaped his chest and clutched at his hips, sinking into the material of his shirt and holding her to him.
They had gone up in flames. It had taken so little. With just one word he was hers and she didn’t even know it.
He bunched the voluminous skirts of her dress in his fists, as he drew it up from her ankles to her thighs, feeling the smooth supple skin against his knuckles. Her fingers sank into his hair, her nails scraping lightly over his scalp, sending a shiver down his back to grip his gut.
Frantic. He was frantic for her. And unwilling to wait any longer, he drew back from the lure of her mouth and dropped to his knees. She looked down at him, the flush of need slashed across her cheekbones.
‘ Cara ?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, quickly, her lip pinned by her teeth.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
That word again. He wanted to hear it, over and over and over again.
Pinning the skirts of her dress with one hand, he drew her underwear from her body with the other, slipping them into his pocket, before placing open-mouthed kisses on the inside of her thighs.
‘Lean back, amore mio ,’ he commanded, his hand reaching up to gently press her back against the table, wanting her completely relaxed and focused on her own pleasure, on the sensations he was going to give her.
It opened her to him and he could hold back no longer, as his tongue dipped into the cross-hatch of curls at the juncture of her thighs and found more than he could ever have imagined wanting.
The hot wet heat of her was a drug and he lapped at her, long, slow and wicked.
He teased the small bundle of nerves with the tip of his tongue and tortured her with powerful, deep thrusts of his entire tongue at her entrance.
Her pleasure cascaded against his mouth and ears as she was thrust quickly to the brink of orgasm and he held her there for as long as possible, torturing her with his tongue and fingers, filling her, stretching her, teasing her, delighting her.