His Virgin Bride: The Fiorenza Forced Marriage / Bought: For His Convenience or Pleasure? / A Night With Consequences

He smirked. ‘It would not do to upset the goose who was about to hand you the golden egg.’

She glared at him heatedly. ‘That’s just so typical of you,’ she said. ‘You have a tendency to measure everyone else by your own appalling standards. Just because you regularly use people to get what you want doesn’t mean other people will necessarily act that way.’

He held her gaze for several beats. ‘I have found most people work things to their advantage,’ he said. ‘It is hardwired into human nature.’

‘I feel sorry for you,’ Emma said. ‘You are so cynical you can’t possibly enjoy life.’

He gave her an indolent smile. ‘On the contrary, Emma I enjoy life very much,’ he said. ‘I have a good income, good food, good wine and good sex—what more could a man want?’

Emma could feel her face burning, but soldiered on regardless. ‘I hope you’re not going to conduct any of your sordid little affairs right in front of my nose,’ she said. ‘It would be totally nauseating to see a host of vacuous women simpering after you like you’re some kind of sex god.’

‘You surely do not expect me to be celibate for the duration of our marriage, do you?’ he asked with a twinkle in his dark gaze.

Emma moistened her dry lips. ‘I…no…well…I…’

‘I have not been celibate in a very long time,’ he said, still watching her with that smouldering gaze.

She shifted restively in her seat. ‘Yes, well, the rest will probably do you the world of good, I would have thought.’

‘What about you?’ he asked.

She looked at him warily. ‘W-what about me?’

‘What is your longest stint being celibate?’

She dropped her gaze from the penetrating probe of his. ‘Um…a fair while…’ she answered vaguely.

The waiter came at that moment to take their order, giving Emma a much-needed chance to regroup. She buried her head in the menu, hoping Rafaele couldn’t see how ruffled she was at his choice of conversation. She felt so unsophisticated around him, like a child playing at grown-ups. She didn’t have the aplomb to laugh off such a personal topic, nor did she have the experience.

Although she knew enough about her body and its responses to know what physical pleasure felt like, somehow she suspected the pleasure Rafaele Fiorenza would dish out would leave her solitary explorations sadly lacking. She had sensed the sensual potency of him that afternoon in the pool. His hardened body brushing against hers had ignited spot fires beneath her skin; she could feel them smouldering even now. Her wayward body was pulsing at the proximity of his long strong legs so close to hers. She had hers tucked as far back beneath her chair as they would go and yet she could still feel the magnetic pull of his body. She couldn’t get her mind away from the thought of having his legs entangled with hers the way they had been in the pool, his hair-roughened thighs rubbing against her smoother ones, the heat and power of his erection so tantalisingly close she had felt the throb of his blood pounding against her belly.

The waiter’s request for her order brought Emma out of her reverie and, after choosing the first thing she saw on the menu, she sat back and took a reviving sip of the white wine Rafaele had ordered for her.

He was still watching her in that indolent way of his, as if he was quietly assessing her character. It made her feel a little exposed, as if he could see through the layers of her skull to what she had been thinking about him just moments ago.

‘Why are you blushing?’ he asked. ‘I thought at first it was sunburn but that colour keeps coming and going in your cheeks.’

Emma sat bolt upright. ‘I’m not blushing,’ she said, even though she knew it wasn’t true. She could feel the twin fires burning on her face and wished, not for the first time, she wasn’t so out of her depth.

He gave her a knowing smile. ‘I think it is rather cute,’ he said. ‘I do not think I have made a woman blush in years.’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t from lack of trying,’ she quipped wryly.

His smile widened. ‘No, that is indeed probably true.’

Emma picked up her glass and took another tentative sip, conscious of his gaze resting on her. Her pulse fluttered in response to his contemplative scrutiny, each of the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickling as if he had touched her there the way he had done earlier in the pool.

‘What do you intend to do with your share of the villa at the end of our marriage?’ he asked.

She set her glass back down and met his eyes. ‘I’m not sure…I haven’t thought that far ahead…’

‘Would you consider selling it to me?’

She nibbled at her bottom lip for a moment. ‘That seems a bit unfair, making you pay for something that really should have been yours in the first place,’ she said.

His expression was unreadable. ‘You are at perfect liberty to do what you like,’ he said. ‘We are now joint owners. But if you wish to sell at the end of the time I would like to make the first and final offer.’

‘It’s a beautiful property,’ Emma said. ‘It would make a fabulous family home. I wish I could afford to buy you out at the end of the time, but I can’t. I would never be able to afford the maintenance costs, for one thing.’

‘My half is not going to be for sale,’ he said with an implacable edge to his tone.

Emma’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. ‘It seems rather a large place for a bachelor.’

‘Perhaps, but I want to retain ownership regardless.’

‘So will you live here permanently?’ she asked.

‘For some of the year perhaps,’ he said. ‘I am thinking of appointing a manager to keep the place running while I am away.’

‘That sounds like a good idea,’ Emma said. ‘It would be a shame for it to be empty for long periods.’

He went silent for several moments, his gaze focussed on the contents of his wineglass. ‘I have missed the place,’ he said almost wistfully. ‘I am not quite ready to let it go. There are some ghosts to lay to rest first.’

Emma was starting to see there was more to Rafaele Fiorenza than she had originally thought. It was no wonder he liked to hold the balance of control in all of his relationships. After his experiences as a child he would abhor being vulnerable in any context. He would never allow himself to love anyone in case they turned against him or deserted him.

He reminded her of a wounded wolf who would only attend to his pain in private. She felt her animosity towards him soften, the anger she had felt from the first moment of meeting him melting away to be replaced by compassion and an acute, almost painful desire to understand.

What had put those lines of strain about his mouth or those dark shadows that came and went in the black-brown depths of his gaze? What made his smile teasing and playful one minute and bitter and cynical the next? What would it take to crack open the hard nut of his heart she wondered. What dark secrets were locked away in there?

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_924052ac-b1e9-58a3-9a91-f5c72033e395)

AFTER the waiter had brought their meals to the table, Emma concentrated on the delicious seafood risotto set before her, in an attempt to get her emotions in check. What sort of romantic fool would she be to fancy herself in love with Rafaele? She barely knew him and, besides, anyone could see he wasn’t a for ever type of guy. She could sense the restlessness in him, the way he worked so hard and played harder, to escape whatever demons drove him.

Emma put her fork down and reached for her wineglass to find his dark, contemplative gaze resting on her. Her heart suddenly felt as if a silk ribbon were being pulled right through the middle of it, making her breath catch in her throat.

‘You mentioned the other day you have a sister,’ he said. ‘What happened to your parents?’

Emma put her glass back down with a little clatter against her dinner plate. ‘I would have thought your private investigator contact would have told you when you had him dig up the dirt on my background.’

Rafaele let out a rusty breath. ‘I am sorry, Emma, but if you had been in my position you would have done the same.’

She held his gaze for a beat or two, but dropped it to say, ‘I haven’t seen either of my parents since I was twelve years old when my sister and I were taken into foster care. Our parents were both heroin addicts. The prolonged drug use fried their brains. They died within months of each other, my father from a stab wound from a drug deal gone wrong, my mother from an overdose.’

Rafaele frowned as her quietly spoken words sank in. No wonder she had been so upset about him looking into her background. It also explained why she was so keen to have financial security to make up for what she had missed out on as a child. His own childhood had been painful enough, but to have such incompetent and potentially dangerous parents would have been soul-destroying. He could see now why she had hooked up with his father, to find an older father-figure who would indulge her every whim. Rafaele wouldn’t go as far as excusing her for prostituting herself in such a way, but at least he understood her motive for doing so.

‘I am sorry you had such a rough time of it,’ he said. ‘I have always thought it is a pity one cannot choose one’s own parents. It would certainly make life easier for many children growing up.’

Her eyes came back to his. ‘I guess so…but it’s a parent’s responsibility to be the adult in the relationship once children come along. Children don’t ask to be born. They deserve to be loved no matter what.’