‘She told me our marriage was a convenient cover for your relationship with her. She implied that you and she are still very much a thing.’ Emmeline shook her head. ‘She knows that our marriage isn’t conventional.’
The words were a sharp accusation and Pietro swore.
‘That last part is true,’ he said thickly. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything to her but I was...angry. I was wrong to expose you to that kind of gossip.’
‘Yes, you were,’ Emmeline muttered, her heart plummeting. ‘I’m sure she’s told anyone who cares to listen,’ she added, mortified.
‘I don’t care. It’s not true any more. You know how much everything has changed between us.’
He reached down and put a hand on her knee but she jerked away. Her eyes lifted to his and the pain and uncertainty in them had him swearing and veering the car off the road, pulling to a rapid halt in a space marked for buses.
‘Please listen, cara. You know the truth about Bianca and me because I have told you. She has always wanted more from me than I have to give. She is very jealous of you.’
‘I know that,’ Emmeline said quietly. ‘And I know she wanted to hurt me tonight and obviously cares very much for you. But it makes me wonder... What do I know about you?’
‘You know everything about me.’ He groaned. ‘Please believe me, Emmeline. I have never had with any woman what I have with you. This is special, and different, and you and I are both finding our way with it. Don’t let outsiders—someone like Bianca—cause problems for us.’ He pressed a finger beneath her chin, lifting her face to his. ‘I won’t let you. I won’t let her.’
‘I wish you didn’t have such a long list of ex-lovers,’ she muttered.
‘None of them matters to me. Not a bit.’
Her eyes clashed with his; she wanted to believe him so badly. ‘Have you been with her since we married?’
He shook his head.
‘In that first month?’ she persisted, holding his gaze. ‘When we weren’t sleeping together? I hardly saw you, and you were home late almost every night.’
He shook his head. ‘I had dinner with her once. But that’s all. I think I wanted to sleep with her. To prove to myself that our wedding hadn’t changed anything. But the truth is I’d kissed you by then and I no longer wanted any other woman.’
Her heart turned over in her chest. Was it true? Did she believe him? It took such a leap of faith for her to trust anyone—especially given the strange circumstances. But gradually she found herself relenting.
‘Why were you always so late?’
‘You need to ask?’
His smile was like sunshine on a rainy afternoon. She felt its warmth penetrating the storm and could have wept with relief.
‘I didn’t trust myself not to touch you,’ he said thickly. ‘It was bad enough on our wedding night, when I kissed you and touched you and tasted your sweetness for myself. But after the night you wore that dress...’ He groaned. ‘I knew I was in serious trouble.’
The truth in his words filled her. ‘Why couldn’t you touch me?’
His smile was lopsided. And sexy as hell.
‘Because you were meant to be a bride of convenience. Ours was an arranged marriage. I wasn’t supposed to be craving you. To be dreaming about you...obsessing over you.’ His sigh was exaggerated. ‘And yet I was. I am. I suppose initially I resented that. I wanted to prove to myself that I could resist you. Spoiler alert: I couldn’t.’
She expelled a soft sigh, but the memory of Bianca was still too fresh for her to relax completely.
‘I don’t want to see her again,’ Emmeline muttered.
His eyes glinted with a heated emotion she couldn’t interpret.
‘Believe me, you will never see that woman again.’
‘Can we go home now?’
He nodded, and inside he felt as though he’d been spared from Death Row with a minute left on the clock.
He dropped his head and kissed her slowly, gently. ‘Don’t let anyone come between us, cara. I cannot change the man I was, but you are changing everything about the man I am. The man I want to be.’
Her stomach squeezed with happiness. Because she knew he was telling the truth.
She trusted him implicitly.
* * *
It wasn’t long before they found their way back to each other’s bodies, exploring every inch available and sating their appetites.
‘You are crying,’ he whispered, chasing a tear up her cheek, depositing it back in the corner of her eye.
She laughed through a sob, shaking her head, wrapping her hands around his waist. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just so perfect. I don’t know what happened—what I did to deserve this—but it’s just...’
He smiled—a smile that tipped her world off its axis—and then he thrust deeper, and she moaned into the cool night air, her body moving with his. They were completely in sync, completely together.
He kissed her as he ground into her and she wrapped her legs around his back, holding him close, needing him in her core. His tongue lashed hers and together they spiralled off the edge of the earth in a tangle of limbs, sheets, sweat and cries.
Afterwards he stroked her hair, his eyes smiling down into hers. He rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, holding her tight, and she listened to the beating of his heart for a long time. She thought for a moment that he’d fallen asleep, but after a long time he spoke.
His voice was a gravelled husk in the night. ‘Have you spoken to your father lately?’
‘No.’
She shook her head and her hair tickled his nose. He patted it down flat and then stroked her naked back, feeling every bone of her spine, knotting down to the curve of her rear.
Tell her. Tell her.
But the moment was so perfect. Some time he might find a way to be honest with his wife. But on this night, with the sound of
