CHAPTER SEVEN
HE’D GONE TOO FAR. About a thousand miles too far. Hell, he’d gone so far he’d moved into the next galaxy.
Marco studied her from between shuttered eyes, watching her performance. She was doing everything right. Talking, nodding, smiling, but she was obviously distracted. Or perhaps it was only obvious to him, because he knew her well, but her mind was elsewhere.
Could he blame her?
He’d eviscerated her pride. He’d made her tremble and beg. He’d owned her. Worse, he’d threatened her.
Where the hell had that come from? The barbarism was as new to him as it had been unexpected to her. But as he’d said the words, uttered the threat, he knew it to be truly how he felt. He was furious with her for leaving him. And he wanted her to feel that pain even as he accepted that made him a perfect bastard.
She laughed at something his mother said. Her laugh was beautiful. Sweet and melodious. He’d forgotten that.
How long since he’d heard her laugh? That night in Rome?
His mind stretched back to the perfection of their coming together. For months he’d watched her and wanted her, needing her, resisting the impulse because she was an intern in his organization and he owed her more than that.
Right up until her last day when she’d come to him and begged for help and every ounce of willpower had disappeared when faced with Grace turning to him.
So what? He’d decided this was the way forward? He shifted a little in his chair, remembering the way she’d been in his bed.
So beautiful. So perfect. Perfect for him in every way. Right down to the way she’d needed him so badly she’d given in. And he’d seen what it had cost her. The slumping of her shoulders, the withering of her soul. He’d humiliated her and tormented her, using her irrepressible desire against her, and he deserved nothing more than her hatred.
“You can’t stop staring at her.” Claudia murmured softly, her eyes trained on him when he turned his face slightly, acknowledging his sister with a smile.
“She’s my fiancé. I’m allowed to stare.”
Across the table, Claudia’s husband Will lifted a hand and Ben high-fived it excitedly, earning laughs from Rosa, Grace and Will, and a smile from Marco.
“So you’ve forgiven her?”
Marco’s eyes narrowed and Claudia rolled her eyes. “Will’s my husband. You think he doesn’t tell me stuff?”
Marco didn’t react, but his mind was rushing through the past two years, trying to recollect exactly what he’d revealed to Will, and when. Shards of memory pieced together an unsatisfying picture, a composite of events that made little sense. Will had been there at the time though. It hadn’t been necessary for Marco to reveal how he felt. Will had seen the obsession take hold. The way Marco had lost any interest in sleeping with other women from the moment Grace had arrived in Italy all tousled blonde hair and bouncy American smile. The way he’d tried to resist her and finally succumbed, only to have her leave again.
The way he’d drunk himself into a three-day-stupor after meeting the man Grace intended to marry. And had done so again when he’d heard they’d actually married.
The way he’d been half a man ever since.
And now this.
Ben.
As if Will heard Marco’s thoughts, he shifted his attention. Their eyes locked and Will sobered. He understood. Marco’s pain was unique, but Will was like a brother to Marco. They’d been friends a long time, and now they were family.
“How can you marry her?” Claudia pushed, speaking in their language, low and soft. “She betrayed you. She kept you from Ben…”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he said.
“Nonsense. It is not complicated. She hurt you. She kept you from your son. And now you are marrying her.”
“What else can I do?” He asked pointedly. “She’s the mother of my child.”
“Take the child. Screw her.”
Marco’s brows lifted as he took the literal definition of her suggestion and thought how apt it was. He had screwed her. And he intended to do so again. But that wasn’t what his sister meant.
“She is going to be my wife. Mind how you speak of her, Claudia.”
“I’ll never accept her,” Claudia threatened ominously. “Not knowing what she’s put you through.”
“Basta. Enough. Leave it alone.”
“But…”
“No.” He lifted his wine glass and his eyes slashed Claudia’s warningly. “Leave it.”
Her sigh was a flamboyant demonstration of displeasure. “You’re my brother…”
“And she’s my fiancé.” He reached a hand out, placing his fingers on Claudia’s reassuringly. “I’m a big boy. I can handle this.”
She sent him a dark scowl then shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”
Grace didn’t catch any of the conversation but she didn’t need to be a mind-reader to know she’d been the subject of it. And that the mental daggers Marco’s sister had been spearing Grace with all night were never going to abate.
Okay, so Claudia clearly didn’t approve.
And could Grace blame her? The marriage was madness. The situation was impossible to explain away.
The more Grace let her wrongdoing unfold, the more desperate she became. The more shocked at the decisions she’d made. Why hadn’t she fought to tell Marco the truth? Why had she thought depriving him of being a father made any kind of sense?
Because you were scared, a small part of her still capable of remembering that time clearly asserted. You were scared of loving him; of having him hurt you.
And he was hurting her.
I want to make you exist purely for this.
A frisson of warning danced between her shoulder blades and she shifted a little, trying to dislodge it. But it sat there stubbornly, as if to remind her that the danger wouldn’t be easy to evade.
Had he really believed himself in love with her? She looked back on that time, trying to make his assertion fit. And no matter how she bent her memories of their time together, it didn’t work. Because Marco Dettori wasn’t the kind of man to let someone he wanted slip through his fingers. At best, he’d lusted after her, as she had him.
Then again, Grace had fallen hard for Marco, so why was it so impossible to believe the opposite was true?
Because it didn’t fit. It just didn’t fit.
“Mama. Mama.” She shrugged her attention back to Ben, a smile on her face as she looked down at him. “More.”
“Will he learn Italian?” Rosa asked kindly, unable to peel her gaze off the little boy.
“Of course he will, mama. This is his home now.” Claudia’s words were laced with acid and Grace was hit with the certainty that she didn’t relish the idea of being the glamorous Italian’s enemy.
“Children are so intelligent,” Grace murmured softly. “I imagine he’ll learn it by osmosis, the more he hears, the better he’ll get.”
“And do you speak Italian at home, then?” Claudia persisted. Her smile was as thin as ice; a veneer that fooled no one, except perhaps Rosa who was too besotted with Ben to notice anything other than the dimples in his cheeks.
Grace was tempted to point out that she and Marco didn’t generally speak at all back at the villa. She looked towards him, bemusement on her features, and she knew he was thinking exactly the same thing.
“We’re letting him adjust to his new surroundings gradually,” Marco said. “He doesn’t need to be confused by hearing our language. Yet.”
“You think our language is confusing?” Claudia disputed. “Come on, Marco. He’s Italian. It’s in his blood.”
“And it will still be in his blood in six months,” Marco responded shortly, effectively concluding the conversation by standing. “Will? Join me in the garden.”
Grace watched the two men disappear with a sinking heart. Alone with Rosa and Claudia, and only little Ben as a familiar ally, she felt her morale sinking.
Rosa, though, made conversation easily, chattering to Ben, remarking on his physique, his strength, the intelligence he obviously possessed by the way he pointed towards the salt and pepper grinders so intently. But when his eyes grew heavy and he began to rub them, Grace couldn’t stand up fast enough.
“I’m going to get this little guy in bed,” she said.
“Oh!” Rosa’s disappointment was obvious. “So soon?”
“It’s late for him,” she apologized. “But, if it’s any consolation, he’ll be up early.”
Rosa grinned. “And I will be waiting for him with nonna hugs.”
Grace smiled, but her heart was flooded by that immovable guilt. What she’d kept from these people, from all of them, was almost too hard to believe.
She should never have married Steve. She should never have kept Ben in America, and Marco in the dark.
But she couldn’t turn back time; it wasn’t possible, no matter how much she wished it. She could only try to repair things now. And she had only a tiny idea of where to begin.
*
“Your sister hates me.” Grace said the words without emotion, her eyes locked to Marco’s in the mirror as she rubbed face cream into her cheeks then spread the residual over her hands.
“She hates what you did,” he confirmed after moment, his own conversation with Will playing heavily on his mind. He hadn’t even known Claudia and Will had been trying to conceive. But that they’d been struggling for over two years, and had consulted fertility experts only to be told it was basically impossible? His lips tugged downwards at the idea.
It made Ben somehow all the more precious, and yet he could well appreciate the tangle of emotions the little boy’s arrival must have wrought for his sister.
Grace expelled a soft sigh, her resolve straining in her chest. She placed the small tube of moisturizer onto the counter of the dressing table and stood, her silk nightgown falling to her feet. Marco’s eyes dropping instinctively to the two pert nipples visible through the soft fabric and Grace almost lost her train of thought. But she needed to speak to him before she was distracted from her purpose.
“I need to talk to you.”
Marco’s wariness was instant and visible. He straightened, his eyes slashing hers, his doubts communicated in every line of his body. “What about?”
“You said before … you said that you loved me.”
He angled his face away, his eyes dark like onyx as he stared across the room at the drawn curtains.
“Is it true?” Grace closed the distance between them and folded her hands around his hips to draw his attention back to her. But when he tilted his head down, his face was as hard as granite, his jaw clenched, his eyes spearing her.
“Past tense. And I was mistaken. I didn’t know you.”
The rejection sparked a fierce ache in her gut but she wasn’t going to be put off. “I thought … I think I fell in love with you the first day we met.” Her smile was coated with the sweetness of the thought. “Do you remember?”
Of course he did. A heap of interns had arrived from all over the world and then Grace had walked in, late, her hair glowing like sunshine and saffron and he’d stared at her for at least thirty seconds before recollecting his thoughts. It was the first time he’d ever been rendered speechless by a woman. By anyone.
“Not really,” he said coldly.
“I was so nervous when I walked into that room and then you looked at me and everything clicked inside of me. I was going to be fine. Isn’t it weird that you made me feel that straight away?”
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. Her words were doing something strange to him and he didn’t want to follow that through.
“I’d come out of a long relationship with a man I thought I loved and then I met you.” Her eyes lifted to his. “I loved you too, Marco. I thought it was just me. That maybe it would go away. But once we slept together…”
“Don’t.” A harsh word; a definitive plea. He sucked in an angry breath. “You went back to him.”
Urgency made her words soft. “Because I didn’t think you’d ever love me. Don’t you see? You were this incredibly awe-inspiring boss CEO and you obviously wanted me physically but I didn’t know there was anything more to it. If you’d told me…”
“You’re blaming me?”
“I’m blaming both of us.” She swallowed, nerves weakening her knees. But she was going to do what she should have done then. “Why did we let that slip through our fingers? If we both felt the same way, why didn’t we make it work?”
“You’re the one who walked away,” he pointed out with the appearance of cold detachment, crossing his arms over his chest and dislodging her touch at the same time.
“You let me.” Determination fired the words. “You never called. You didn’t email. Nothing.”
He moved away from her, not wanting to sift through the memories. It had been hard enough the first time. But the pull of what had happened demanded his attention.
“I thought about calling,” he said softly.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“You were engaged weeks after leaving.”
She nodded, her marriage to Steve something she didn’t want to discuss. It was both totally relevant and a complete red herring – a decision she’d made that had little to do with their failings to make a go of what they felt.
“I wish I hadn’t married him. Steve was a dear man, and a close friend, but I used him because I was too afraid to raise Ben on my own. But that’s not what I want to talk about right now,” she murmured, before he could push her for any further details. “I fell in love with you two years ago and I don’t think I ever got over that.” Her eyes met his and though her heart was tumbling in her chest and fear was dogging her every step, she was brave despite that. “I think we could have a real marriage. A proper marriage. If we can just get past all this, and remember how we used to feel.”
He stared down at her, and he saw how genuine she was. He understood it.
But pride was a strange beast and it refused to allow him to cower.
“Do you know what I keep thinking?” He asked after a pause that had practically split Grace apart with anxiety. “What if he had lived? What if Steve was still here? I wouldn’t know about Ben, would I? You’d be raising my son in Chicago. So for all that you’re saying you want to make this work, it seems implausible.”
She bit down on her lip, and nodded slowly. “I know. Marco, it all happened so fast and I never stopped to think. To think about you and the decisions I was making. I’m not defending what I did. I was wrong. But I don’t want to live like this. With you so angry at me, and me falling more in love with you all the time.” She swallowed and looked over his shoulder. “I’m still terrified of this, but I want … this time… to make the right decision.”
He practically jerked at her last statement. “This is not love,” he said defiantly.
“You’re wrong.” And she was so confident that the words seemed to almost float out of her mouth.
“No, you are wrong, Grace. I have told you what I want from you. I’ve told you what I’m prepared to give you. If you can’t live with that, then go. It is your choice.”
“You’d let me walk away?” She challenged, disbelief and pain spreading through her.
“Why not? You’re good at it.”
She sucked in a breath at the harshness of his response. What had she expected? Chocolates and roses? A declaration of love in return? “I’m not going to leave. I’ve made that mistake once. And I’m … I’m sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know. I wish I could change everything.” She squeezed her eyes shut as tears threated to moisten her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She was being brave, damn it. “I’m not going to make any more mistakes.”
His eyes narrowed. “Because you love me.”
Her nod was tight. “And because it’s the right thing to do. For Ben. For you. For me.”
“Even though I don’t love you? Even though I want you in my bed and nowhere else?”
She swallowed past the pain. “I don’t think that’s truly how you feel.”
His laugh was a harsh sound of disbelief. “Come here.”
Grace, her heart in her mouth, moved towards him. She closed the distance, her knees still quivering, her belly flopping.
“This is what I want.” He reached for her nightgown and lifted it painfully slowly, his eyes locked mockingly to hers as he pushed it up her thighs, over her abdomen, and finally her breasts. She trembled and goose bumps danced across her naked flesh. He removed the nightgown but kept it in his hands, running it from one palm to the other until it was a thick piece of fabric.
Then, his eyes locked to hers still, challenging her to say something, he caught her wrists behind her back, wrapping them in the material and pulling it tight. It was a crude knot, yet it was surprisingly firm and she was incapable of moving. Her breasts thrust forward and her breath was panting from her.
“You’re angry with me,” she said softly.
“Damned straight.”
“I am too.” She swallowed, forcing him to meet her eyes. “But you don’t hate me.”
His face was ash beneath his skin. “I don’t know what I feel for you,” he said finally. “But it’s nothing I’m proud of.”
The cryptic comment was swallowed by something else as he lifted her easily, and placed her on the bed, her arms behind her back uncomfortable and impossible to move.
“You want me to forgive you?” He grunted, bringing his mouth to hers and kissing the words into her.
She nodded. “I need you to forgive me.”
“And if I can’t?”
She had no answer. No words. She couldn’t contemplate that world.
His mouth on her feminine heart was as unexpected as it was welcome. With her hands bound behind her back she was powerless to do anything but feel. He pushed her legs wide apart, gripping her thighs and holding her still, so she could only writhe as the pleasure of his ministrations spread through her like a coil.
“Marco…”
“I need you to need me,” he said, flicking his tongue. “I need you to need me like you do air and water. It’s all I know.”
Oh, she needed him. She needed him so much more than either of those two commodities. They were luxuries compared to what her body craved from him. “Because you need me?”
He didn’t answer. He stood, staring down at the wanton picture she made, and he felt a brick of relief land in his gut. This is what they were now.
Sex.
Wild, savage, meaningless sex. He undressed slowly, his eyes pinning her to the bed as he stripped his clothes piece by piece. He wanted her with a desperation that was burning through him.
But Grace wriggled into a sitting position and completely rocked him off his foundation by taking his length in her mouth. Without warning. Without preamble. Her lips glided down his length, her tongue rolling across his sensitive tip, making his body jerk with a desperate sense of fulfillment.
Marco swore sharply and stepped back, taking a moment to let his breathing slow before pulling her to standing. He lifted her then, landing her down on his arousal and pushing backwards. With her hands behind her back, he had all the power and all the control. He pressed her against a wall for support and then he owned her.
His body was hard; his need harder. He thrust into her and she cried out as his possession snaked around them both, tying them together for the darkest of reasons. Grace was wrong; this wasn’t love.
It was obsession.
And that was so much more dangerous.