CHAPTER FOUR #2
“No,” she agreed. “If I hadn’t wanted you too I would have slapped you right across that gorgeous face for even suggesting such a thing.”
“You are a very sensual woman. I find it hard to believe you suppressed that side of yourself.”
“You’re the first man to ever think so,” she said, wondering at the kernel of shame that rolled through her. “Until I met you, I honestly thought I was some kind of prude.”
“You must be kidding,” he remarked, pulling back so that he could stare down into her eyes. It was a mistake. They were his eyes. Benedetto pulled her roughly against his chest, pressing his chin lightly against the top of her head.
“No,” she stroked his back. “My first time was …” she cleared her throat. “Is this weird to talk about?”
“Not at all,” he assured her, though he instinctively hated the thought of her having slept with others before him.
“My first time was with my boyfriend. I was eighteen. It was the most uncomfortable and simultaneously boring experience of my life. I remember lying there thinking: is this all sex is? Is that what all the fuss is about? I found out about a year ago that he’s gay.
I guess that explains the lack of chemistry, maybe. ” Her smile was wistful.
“That’s it?” He had no choice now but to look down on her.
She shrugged. “No. There was another guy.” Something like fear whispered across her features once more.
“I liked him.” Jealousy, unmistakable, barbed in his gut.
“He worked for my dad, so I’d known him for years.
” She cleared her throat. “It should never have happened. I knew it would be … I knew my dad … it should never have happened.”
Benedetto processed the information she had given him, and the information she hadn’t known she was giving him. “Your father didn’t approve.”
She shook her head, as she remembered the expression on Augstine’s face when she’d revealed she was in a relationship with Connor.
“You will end it, or you will be sorry.”
“I don’t want to end it. I like him, and he likes me.”
“You will end it, Katherine.”
“No.”
She shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. It had been foolhardy and futile from the beginning to hope she could change his mind. She’d had to wear jackets for three weeks, despite the heat of the summer, to cover the bruises on her arms.
“He did not approve, no.”
“So what? Your daddy said he didn’t like the guy and you ended it?”
She swallowed. Her throat hurt. Were they tears, cloying to be shed?
“My father didn’t just say things. He made sure he was understood, loud and clear.”
Benedetto heard the words but there was a disconnect between what he’d understood and what she’d meant, surely. After all, she couldn’t have been implying that Augustine Beauchamp had resorted to physical means to get his daughter to obey him.
“What did this man do to your father?” He prompted, wondering if this ex-lover of Kate’s might in fact be able to help him with the proof he needed.
“He was his research assistant. Connor made sure dad’s cases were on point. He checked facts. That kind of thing. He was incredibly bright. I have no idea what he’s doing now.”
“You really ended it just because your father didn’t approve?”
“Yep.” She straightened away from him on the guise of studying the roses. “I didn’t even think twice.” She exhaled a long, slow breath to wipe the thoughts from her mind. “He’d love you, though.”
Benedetto felt nauseated. “Why do you say that?” His words sounded casual but inside he was screaming with rage.
“You’re just the kind of guy he’d want me to marry one day.” She laughed unsteadily. “I’m only twenty-two,” she hastened to add on.
Twenty-two. He froze. He had known that. Somewhere in the thick dossier of information he’d collected on Augustine Beauchamp he had all kinds of facts on Kate, including her age.
She was a baby. Far too young for what he’d done to her. Far too young for how he’d used her. Far, far too inexperienced for the game he’d pulled her into.
“You’re twenty-two,” he repeated, his face showing his surprise.
“So marriage is so completely not on my radar.” She laughed again, and now she seemed so young. Her innocence and naivety were byproducts of her age.
Guilt was slamming through him. Staring at the rose garden his father had tended for his mother, years after her death, he felt disgusted at his actions. What he had done to avenge the incarceration and death of his father should never have led to this.
He had taken a beautiful young woman and he had turned her into a weapon. Nothing more. He looked down at her and everything seemed completely off-balance. He thought of his phone, sitting switched off, in his bedroom and he wondered if there was any chance the message hadn’t actually sent.
Only he’d seen it go. He’d seen the little tick that indicated it had arrived at its source.
“Kate …”
“Don’t look like that,” she cut him off, hating to see him withdrawing from her.
She didn’t want him to look cold and distant.
She wanted him to stare down at her as though she held all the answers to the universe’s mysteries.
“Please don’t look like that.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed his lips slowly, breathing passion back into his soul, pushing out any doubts he had been harbouring.
“You’re twenty-two,” he groaned against her mouth, wrapping his hands into her hair and holding her tight to his body. “I shouldn’t want you like this.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m twenty-two! I’m a fully grown woman! What are you talking about?”
“I’m thirty-four. Do you know that?”
She shrugged. “So?”
He shook his head. It wasn’t the age difference that was bothering him, so much as the fact he’d taken someone innocent and sweet and used her in a way that was so far from what she deserved.
“You’re okay sleeping with me knowing that it has no future?” He demanded. “Knowing that I have a lot of sex, just like this, with a lot of women, just like you?”
The pain was extraordinary. She’d never known anything like it — at least, not emotionally. “This is because I made a joke about marriage?” She said, keeping her mouth close to his.
“No.” He pulled the old t-shirt of his she wore from the waistband of her pants.
His hands connected with her skin and he felt a rush of grateful desire.
“It’s because, by your own admission, you have limited experience.
And this is great sex. Really great sex.
But that’s all it is. It would be easy for someone like you to think it was more. ”
“I don’t,” she assured him so fast that surely it was true. “I told you yesterday: you have me for two days. So make the most of me.”
He would hate himself afterwards, but he was not strong enough to resist her invitation.
He growled as he ripped her shirt over her head and threw it to the grassed ground at their feet. They knelt as one, hands running over bodies, mouths tasting and tormenting, fingers teasing.
When he was naked, and his arousal was before her, she cupped it with her fingers and stared up at him nervously. “I want to … I’ve never … but I want to …”
“Yes?” He asked, his eyes narrowing as she lowered her mouth and took him within.
He swore under his breath as she flicked his length with her tongue and sucked him until he could hardly stand it.
She pushed at his shoulders, so that he was lying down on the grass and she was able to take more of him into her warm, moist mouth.
He swore louder, his fingers tangling in her hair and holding her where he needed her.
He felt himself beginning to lose control and he pulled her away, lifting her higher so that he could see her face.
Her pupils were dilated, her cheeks were pink and her lips were so delightfully swollen.
He stared into her eyes and he no longer saw Augustine.
He saw Kate, and he saw his own soul too.
Here, on the brink of the rose garden, where the spell of his parents’ love was perhaps at its strongest, he realised that he was the one in danger.
He had never loved a woman.
And yet he knew he could easily come to love Kate.
“I don’t want to stop,” she complained, dropping her lips to his chest and running kisses across his flesh.
“Nor do I, but believe me cara, things were about to come to an abrupt end if you’d kept going.”
Her smile was beautiful. The evening sun bathed her in a golden glow and he lifted his hands to her breasts. He traced circles around her nipples, and sighed at the splendour of that moment. She ran her tongue from his chest, lower still, back to his erection.
“We have all night, don’t we?” She murmured, and once more she took him deep into her mouth. The sight of her fair head moving as she teased his shaft was too much.
“Kate,” he groaned, trying once more to ease her away. But she caught his hands in hers, tangling their fingers together, so that she could hold them to the side.
He was losing every single hint of control.
He was powerless to resist her seduction.
For the first time in his life, Benedetto lost command completely and he discovered he loved it.
As the sun finally dropped over the last hill, taking its warmth with it, they shared something that was new and different for both of them.
It was the beginning of the change that must, surely, have led to the end.
* * *
The tomatoes were perfect. She squeezed them one by one, feeling for the best, but they were each a testament to this country’s ability to produce fantastic fruit. She settled on a couple of large orbs with a mottled red and purple flesh and smiled at the vendor.
“Just these,” she slipped easily into Italian as she passed the two pieces over to him. He weighed them then wrapped each one in brown paper before placing them into a paper bag.