That similarity left me more unsettled as I paced the length of my dark room later that night. Luc’s mother had been the one to take me up to my bedroom suite, not Luc. The party had still been in full swing in the courtyard when she’d come by my table and “suggested” I might be tired. She’d been wrong, of course. I hadn’t been the least bit tired. I wasn’t even tired now, two hours later when the sounds of the party were no longer drifting in through my open—yes, very open—balcony door. I was spitting mad and ready to tear Luc a new one…if the jerk would ever show back up.
More frustrated with every passing second, I dropped into a plush red chair near the cold fireplace and stared out at the twinkling stars past my balcony railing. There was no moon tonight, so everything was darker than normal and fit my mood perfectly. We were leaving tomorrow, which was good. I was ready to get out of this place. Everything about Luc’s family seemed to set him off and make him act like a total lunati—
A rustle sounded outside my open door, followed by a soft thud. Clenching my jaw, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared toward the balcony.
A large shadow filled the doorway, but I didn’t budge. I knew it was Luc by the shape of his shoulders and the way he moved. I also knew it was him because I could smell his intoxicatingly masculine scent.
He sighed, but the sound was more exasperation than anger, which for some reason fired me up even more. “Angioletto, I told you to keep the doors locked.”
“You don’t get to call me angel.” I pushed out of my chair, unable to sit still anymore. Even more unable to control my hurt and resentment. “You don’t get to call me anything any longer. What you did to me down there was humiliating.”
“I know,” he said softly.
He knows?
Asshole.
I stalked over to the wardrobe closet and jerked it open to grab my suitcase. “I had to sit there like some grounded child. You mother had to take me up to my room like I was a five-year-old.” I tossed the suitcase on my bed, feeling like a complete moron. He knew he’d humiliated me? And he hadn’t done a thing about it? Fucker. “I don’t even know why I’m still here. If you’re just going to treat me like Dante’s pathetic excuse for a girlfriend, I’m out of here.”
Luc moved so fast, I barely saw him. One second he was standing in the open doorway, the next he was beside me at the bed, his big hands closed around my wrists, his muscular body between me and the suitcase.
My temper lurched. I tried to jerk my hands from his grip, but his hold was too strong. “Let me go.”
“No.”
“Dammit, Luc.” I pulled harder and ground my teeth. “Let me go.”
“I can’t.” He tugged on my wrists, pulling me into him with ease.
I stumbled, and my body fell into the hard plane of his chest, my arms caught between us. He quickly let go of my wrists and wrapped his thick arms around me, holding me closer than I wanted. I struggled, but he was like solid steel. And, dammit, when he leaned into me, pressed his face against my neck, and sucked in a shaky breath, my anger faltered.
“I tried to let you go,” he breathed into my hair. “I tried everything to keep you from me, but it didn’t work. And now…now you’re part of me, and I can’t let you go. You’re a shimmering light in my sea of darkness, and if you leave, that darkness will swallow me until there’s nothing left.” His arms tightened around me. “I need you, Natalie. I need you with me. You’re the only good thing in my life.”
Everything inside me stilled. Everything but my heart, which picked up speed until it was a bruising rhythm against my ribs.
I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand what he meant. I didn’t understand how he could say such tender words to me one minute and humiliate me another. “Then why did you do that to me?”
He drew back and framed my face with his hands, looking down at me in the dark. And there was just enough starlight coming in from outside for me to see the regret in his stormy eyes. Regret and pain. “Because my father was watching. Because they were all watching.”
I didn’t know what he meant by “they,” but I resisted the urge to pull away, because he looked distraught. And because even though I knew it made me a fool, my heart was thumping even faster. “Your father doesn’t like me.”
“No.”
“Because I’m American?”
“Because he didn’t choose you.”
“I don’t understand.” My brow wrinkled. “Did he set up some kind of arranged marriage for you? Explain this to me so I can understand. What’s going on here, Luc?”
He closed his eyes, and as I watched him draw a slow, deep breath, I knew he was searching for the right words—or any words.
The worry and fear inside me swelled.
“My…family is very old-fashioned,” he said long seconds later, opening his eyes and looking down at me again. Only this time, I saw both tenderness and heartache, so much it threw me off-kilter. “They have plans for me that don’t include a woman like you.”
“A woman like me?”
“Strong.” He kissed my forehead. “Independent.” He pressed his lips to my temple. “Sweet.” His supple lips found my other temple. “Caring.”
My resistance was wavering. I could feel my wall of anger crumbling with every brush of his wicked mouth. But I needed to understand. I couldn’t let this happen again. I hadn’t disobeyed any of his orders. I liked when he took control of my body and my desires—he already knew that. All I’d done today was tease him and love him and show him how crazy I was about him.
I swallowed against the urge to lift my lips to his as he trailed a string of kisses across my cheek. “Then why? Why did you treat me like that? Do you have any idea how that made me feel? People were sending me pitying looks like I was…like I was Maricella.”
“You are not Maricella.” He drew back again, and this time when I focused on his eyes, they brimmed with truth and an insistence that rocked me to my core. “You’ll never be Maricella. I don’t want someone like Maricella. I never did. I want you.” He skimmed his thumb across my cheek. “I want you, Natalie, exactly the way you are.”
Tears filled my eyes. Tears of both love and hurt because they were the words I longed to hear, but something felt wrong. He still wasn’t opening up to me, and I was starting to wonder if he ever would or if our relationship was destined to fail. He’d said he was floating in a sea of darkness, but I was swimming in his ocean of secrets. Why couldn’t he tell them to me? What was so awful he had to keep hidden from me? And why did I feel like my heart was on the verge of breaking and that there was nothing I could do to stop that from happening?
“Mannaggia.” He let go of my face and wrapped his arms around me again, pulling me into the safety and warmth of his embrace.
I was too shaken to fight him. I was too shaken to do anything but let him hold me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to throw my father off. I wanted him to know you aren’t a threat.” He pressed his lips to my ear, and the regret I heard wavering in his voice almost broke me. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning, and you won’t ever have to come back here again.” He kissed my cheek and brought one hand back to my face as he kissed the corner of my mouth. “I promise, sweet Natalie. Never again. Dio, I need you so much. Don’t leave me. Please don’t ever leave me.”
Any thought I had about asking what he meant by “a threat” faded in the ether. His soft, pained words didn’t just drift into my ear, they seeped deep into my heart. And when he pressed his lush mouth to mine, it wasn’t my lips he claimed, it was my very soul.
Sparks spread through me, rippling out from the spot where our lips joined, and, too weak to resist their power, I opened to him. I opened everything to him because I loved him. I loved him blindly and without reason. I loved him even when he hurt me. I loved every part of him, especially the parts he didn’t know how to love himself.
Emotions overwhelmed me, made me frantic for his touch,
for his body, for all of him. I slid my fingers up his back and tipped my head so he could kiss me deeper. He stroked my tongue slowly, as if he was savoring the taste of me, and I let him because I wanted him to feel what I felt. I wanted him to know that I wasn’t just giving him my body, I was giving him all of me. My heart. My soul. Everything he’d said he couldn’t live without.
“Mi hai rubato il cuore,” he whispered, kissing the corner of my lips, my jaw, trailing his wicked mouth to my ear. “C’è un vuoto dentro di me che solo tu puoi colmare.”
I didn’t know what he said, but when he spoke Italian to me in that sexy, tender way, every nerve ending in my body burst into flames. I turned my head and found his mouth again, and when I kissed him and drew him into me, he groaned and pulled me so close, all my worries slipped away.
This couldn’t be wrong. It wasn’t too fast. The love I felt for him—the strength with which I felt it—couldn’t be anything but absolutely right. We would make it work. All the uncertainties still between us, all the secrets… If we held on to this moment and how we felt here, everything would be okay. I believed it. I had to believe it.
“Luc…” I lifted my hands to his face, threaded my fingers in his silky hair as he kissed me. “Luc, I…I need you too.”
An animalistic sound rumbled from his chest. He didn’t stop kissing me, but he did lean to the side and shove my empty suitcase off the bed. Then I felt myself falling, but he was right there to catch me and guide me down, just as he’d caught me and guided me through the last week and a half. And when he pressed all his hard, firm heat into me and I was trapped between him and the mattress, I wasn’t lost. I was found. I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
I don’t remember his strong hands pulling my white T-shirt from my body. I don’t remember him tugging the pink pajama bottoms from my legs. All I knew was blinding ecstasy when he knelt between my thighs and licked up my sex until the only word I knew was Luc.
He was naked when he climbed over my still-shaking body. Naked and already sheathed and everything I couldn’t get enough of. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and pulled his lips to mine. He groaned into my mouth as I kissed him and opened my legs. My body knew him so well, it rose to meet him, and when he pressed inside me, the pleasure was so perfect, I knew this…this was what I wanted. A burning, fiery love that consumed my soul. I could never be satisfied with lukewarm love after him. I could never be satisfied with anyone but him. This man who made me feel crazy and wild and horny and absolutely alive.
“Ah, sweet Natalie.” His fingertips skimmed my jaw as he kissed me. “My sweet, sweet Natalie.”
His words echoed around me, filling my chest with heat and life, but when he began to move, when he thrust deep again and again, the only thing I felt was the fire building inside me that only he could quench.
“Luc…more.” I gripped his shoulders and arched my back, taking him deeper. “Give me more.”
He claimed by mouth again, wrapped one arm around my waist, and rolled. I gasped as he landed on his back, but quickly positioned myself and took the lead, riding him as he lay back on the blood-red comforter and gazed up at me with lust and possession in his sinful eyes.
“Take me,” he whispered, lifting his palms to my face so I could brace my hands on his arms and use them for leverage. “Take all of me. Every part of me. I’m yours, and you are mine.”
My body grew hotter, wetter. He was solid steel around me, beneath me, inside me. I groaned as I lifted and lowered, finding a rhythm with his upward thrusts. And I knew from the flush to his handsome face and the intensity in his gaze that he was just as close as me.
“Ah yes…” I gasped, riding faster. “There. Right there…”
“Look at me.” His fingertips flexed against my cheeks and jaw. “Focus on me, angioletto. Let go with your body, and I’ll take you with me. I’ll always take you with me to heaven.”
I stared into his mesmerizing eyes and relaxed as he thrust up inside me. And when I saw the spark of ecstasy in his eyes, when I felt him swell deep in my core, the connection we shared fired along my nerve endings and exploded in a cataclysmic supernova of heat and light and violent bliss that stole my ability to see and speak and feel anything but him.
His heavy breath was the first thing I registered when I opened my eyes. That and his sweaty body beneath me while his hands lightly stroked my hair and back. The second was ice. Ice so cold, it threatened to freeze everything I felt inside.
I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t know why I felt it. Shivering, I gripped his shoulder in one shaky hand so I could snuggle into him. I needed to be closer to him. I needed his heat to warm the chill suddenly taking hold of me.
He took the cue and wrapped his arms around me, holding me tighter as he pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I’ve got you,” he whispered. “I’ve got you, my sweet, sweet Natalie. As long as we’re together, everything will be okay.”
I’d said the same thing to myself only a handful of minutes ago, but hearing the words from his lips made that ice inside me grow colder. And I was terrified because I didn’t understand why.
Chapter Nineteen
Natalie
The bed dipped hours later. I opened my eyes to find the room completely dark.
“Shh.” Luc whispered, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead. “Go back to sleep.”
My eyes slid closed, and I started to drift back into oblivion, but the sound of fabric rustling brought them open again. Pushing up on my hand, I blinked and spotted Luc on the far side of the bed, pulling on his jeans. That chill I’d felt after we’d made love came rushing back, making me shiver. “Where are you going?”
“I have to meet my father. He wants to talk.”
I glanced at the clock. It was one fifty-two a.m. “Now?”
“Yeah. When he’s had too much wine, he doesn’t sleep.” He buttoned his jeans, pulled on his shirt, then climbed on the bed and braced his hands on either side of me. His stormy eyes were intensely focused as they gazed down at me. “I’ll be back by dawn. Keep the doors locked and wait for me, angioletto. We’ll leave as soon as we can. Then all this will be a memory.”
He leaned down and kissed me. It was a fast kiss, a chaste kiss, but alarm shot through me because I saw both urgency and fear in his eyes just before our lips met.
Confused, I watched him round the bed and move toward the open balcony doors. That cold space inside my chest expanded, and the same sense of dread I’d felt after we’d made love sent my heart racing. I grasped the sheet at my breasts and sat up. “Luc, wait.”
He stopped at the doorway and glanced back at me. “Yeah?”
I didn’t want him to walk out that door. I was suddenly terrified of what would happen if he walked out that door. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Everything’s fine. It will be fine. I’ll make it fine, I promise. Go back to sleep and dream about me.”
He was gone before I could stop him. Before I could think of a sane argument to keep him with me. For a heartbeat, I sat still in the big bed where I’d truly given myself to him only hours ago and told myself I was being silly. There was nothing wrong. He was just going to talk to his dad. I should go back to sleep like he’d said. But that chill inside me was spreading, and I had a sudden fear if it overtook my heart, everything between us would change forever.
I threw back the covers and tugged on my pajama bottoms and T-shirt before I could change my mind. My pulse pounded as I followed him out onto the balcony. A trellis ran down the side of the villa just outside my window, and I quickly realized he’d used it to get in and out of my room.
Movement caught my attention across the courtyard far below. Narrowing my eyes, I watched a dark silhouette—Luc’s dark silhouette—stride away from the U-shaped villa, turn left, and disappear into the trees.
That chill turned to ice in the center of my chest. If he was going to talk to his father as he’d told me, why was he heading into the trees? Wouldn??
?t he meet his dad somewhere in this massive castle?
My stomach churned with both fear and doubt as I stared into the dark, trying to make sense of what I’d seen. I wanted to believe him, I wanted to trust him, but he’d been acting strange ever since his mother had shown up in Venice. Everything since then—his mood, his tone, his actions—had been erratic, and I needed to understand why. A tiny voice in the back of my head warned not to follow him, but I sensed there was more going on than he’d said, and I suddenly needed to know why he’d lied to me.
Urgency pushed me into action. Grasping the trellis with sweaty hands, I slowly began to climb. Halfway down, I realized I was barefoot. I knew I should go back up and grab my Skechers, but I was afraid if I did, I’d lose him in the trees. I couldn’t lose him. I needed to know where he was going. I needed to know what was really going on.
I reached the stone courtyard and paused to swipe my damp palms on my thighs. Nothing moved around me. The villa was dark and quiet, and all signs of the earlier party had been swept away. My shallow breaths lifted my chest as I pushed my bare feet forward, crossing the cobblestones as quietly as I could. At the edge of the courtyard, I peered into the trees. It was so dark, I could barely see. But I knew Luc had gone this way, and I couldn’t turn back now.
I let my eyes adjust to the night and used what little illumination there was from the stars to guide my way. He’d turned left when he’d exited the courtyard. Moving in that direction, I found a well-used path that led into the forest—one we hadn’t taken earlier on my tour of the property. My stomach twisted as I stared into the darkness. I couldn’t see Luc. I couldn’t hear him, but I took a chance he’d gone this way and stepped onto the dirt.