‘Oh.’ She bit down on her lip and uncertainty glimmered in her eyes. She had been the one who’d suggested they needed to keep up a certain public persona. But now the idea filled her with doubts. ‘I don’t know if that’s really necessary...’
‘Not all the time, no. But there are certain things you can no longer avoid.’
‘I haven’t been avoiding anything.’
As soon as she said it she knew it was a lie. She had been holed up in his house as much as possible—reading, emailing, reading some more. Keeping her ears permanently trained on noises that might herald Pietro’s arrival so that she could scamper away.
‘My bank organises a banquet every summer. It is a Midsummer’s Eve theme—very beautiful and enjoyable. You’ll come with me.’
She arched a brow, instantly resenting his imperious tone. ‘Oh, I will, will I?’
‘Si.’
His fingers brushed against hers underwater. Surely it wasn’t an accident? Her heart didn’t think it was. It pounded hard against the fabric of her being with a thundering beat that he must be able to hear.
‘I usually take a date. That would raise eyebrows this year.’
She smiled, but it was a distracted smile. He’d been late home almost every night in the month since they had been married. It was impossible to believe he hadn’t been seen out with different women in that time.
The thought made her heart race, but for a less palatable reason now. Jealousy. Not because she cared for him or wanted him, she hastened to reassure herself. But because he was hers. Her husband. And she didn’t particularly want people thinking that he was straying from the marital bed already.
Marital bed.
What a joke.
Longing surged inside her.
The need he had awoken was at fever-pitch.
She controlled it as best she could, but her mind continued to toss up images of just what it would be like to be made love to by a man like her husband.
The reality wouldn’t live up to her fantasies, Emmeline was certain.
‘It’s Friday night,’ he murmured.
Her eyes clashed with his and the longing was back, begging her to do something—anything—to indulge it.
‘You want me to go?’ she asked quietly.
‘I think you should come, si.’
She bit down on her lip, and then spoke before she could question the wisdom of her proposition.
‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘there’s something I want too. I suggest we...trade.’
‘Oh? And what is it that you want, Mrs Morelli?’
Say the words... Say the words... her courage pushed angrily.
‘I want you to sleep with me.’
They blurted out of her on the warm breeze that rushed past.
Pietro barely reacted. Just a tightening around his lips showed that he’d heard her proposition and was digesting it.
‘I told you—’
Emmeline waved a hand in the air. ‘That you’re not interested in being my first lover,’ she said, with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘But it’s too late for that. You’ve shown me what my body can feel and I want to know more.’
‘I’m not a damned teacher.’
‘No. You’re my husband.’
His eyes narrowed, and his breath was clearly tearing from his body.
‘I’m not going to sleep with you,’ he said with an angry shake of his head.
God, she was Col’s daughter, and he’d married her to ease the mind of his dying friend.
But surely Col knew enough of Pietro’s ways to know that this was a possibility.
Why was Pietro fighting it so hard?
The last month had been a living torture as he’d forced himself to keep his distance, never sure if the flame between them would burst out of control.
‘I’ll go to this...this banquet with you. And whatever else you want me to attend. But I need to know what it feels like.’
‘Why now?’ he asked, the question thick in his throat.
‘I didn’t mean to not sleep with anyone. I just never met a guy I was interested in. Honestly, I started to think I was kind of...sexually not all there. All my friends have been in relationships forever.’ She bit down on her lip.
‘You lost your mother at a vulnerable time in your life,’ he said gently.
‘Yes, that’s true. It changed who I am.’ Her clear amber gaze held his for a long moment. ‘Life sort of got away from me. I feel like I’ve spent the last seven years in a sort of stasis and now I’m ready to start living again. I want to wake up.’
Be brave. Be brave.
She closed the distance between them, surprising him when she wrapped her arms around his neck. ‘I want you to wake me up.’
His eyes were lightly mocking as they stared back down at her, but he didn’t push her away. He didn’t remove her touch.
‘I’m not Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty.’ The words were cold. Determined.
‘I know that.’ She blinked her eyes. ‘I don’t need you to be.’
‘I wouldn’t have married you if I’d known,’ he said with an angry shake of his head. ‘You deserve to find someone yourself. Someone you care about.’
‘She’ll be vulnerable to fortune-hunters.’
Yes, Emmeline—the sweet, naïve virgin heiress—sure as hell would have been vulnerable. She might as well have had a target on her back for some guy to come along and sweep her off her feet.
All Col’s reasons for pursuing this marriage were blindingly clear to Pietro. What had at one point seemed ridiculously absurd now made absolute sense. Even without the fortune she would inherit, her youthful innocence would mark her as the easiest target for no-good bastards on the lookout for an easy buck.
‘This isn’t about happily-ever-after,’ Emmeline said with a grim determination. ‘I’m twenty-two, and until our wedding day I’d never even kissed a guy.’
She dropped her eyes, the admission making her insides squirm with embarrassment.
‘I feel like some dusty old antique no one’s wanted to pick up off the shelf.’ Her throat moved as she swallowed. ‘But when you look at me it’s like... I get it. I get what everyone’s talking about. I understand—finally—the appeal of sex. And I don’t want to die a virgin.’
He couldn’t help but laugh softly at
