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

Emma felt her heart tighten at what he had gone through. She could see the pain etched on his face, the deep grooves at the side of his mouth and the almost permanent lines on his forehead making her realise he was not the shallow, selfish man she had first thought. He was a deep and complex man, a man who had been cruelly hurt by the vicissitudes of life, a man who had locked away his heart to avoid further pain. A man almost crushed with a guilt that should never have been laid upon his shoulders.

A man she was one step closer to falling in love with…

‘Thank you for telling me about it,’ she said softly. ‘I can only imagine how painful it must be to do so. It explains a lot…about everything…’

‘This place is full of my guilt, Emma,’ he said, waving his hand towards the giant shadow of the house to the left of him. ‘Even the floorboards creak with it. My father left Giovanni’s room the way it was to drive home the point.’

Emma bit her lip. ‘Maybe you’re reading too much into that,’ she said. ‘A lot of parents find it very hard to let go after the death of a child. Getting rid of their things is like saying they didn’t exist. It’s a way of holding on to them for as long as possible.’

‘For twenty-three bloody years?’ he asked.

She let out a little sigh. ‘I guess everyone has their own time frame.’

‘Stop defending him, Emma,’ he ground out. ‘He wanted me to suffer.’

‘You were ten years old, Rafaele. Just a little boy. You were not to blame. It was an accident. Can’t you see that?’

‘Do you know what it is like, Emma?’ he asked, his dark gaze almost black with pain. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be holding your dead brother’s body in your arms, begging God or whoever is out there to breathe life back into his lungs until your throat is red raw from screaming?’

Emma felt a sob catch at the back of her throat. ‘I-I’m so sorry…’

He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I would have given anything to save him. We had already been through so much with the loss of our mother. He looked to me for everything, but in the end I killed him.’

Emma couldn’t speak. The anguish on his face was too heart-wrenching. She wanted to reach out and hold him to her, to offer what comfort she could, to help him move on from the pain of the past.

‘After we came home from Giovanni’s funeral my father didn’t speak to me for months afterwards. He could barely be in the same room as me. I was packed off to boarding school and on the rare occasions when my father was here at the villa when I was on holiday he kept himself busy with his latest mistress, usually a young woman not much older than me. After I finished school I left the country. I had no reason to think he was anything but relieved when I finally packed my bags and left.’

Emma put a hand on his arm. ‘Rafaele…you need to forgive yourself,’ she said. ‘You can’t carry that guilt for ever. Your father was wrong to put that on you, but perhaps he was feeling guilty himself. Why wasn’t he out there playing cricket with his young sons? Have you ever thought of that?’

‘I have thought about it a lot,’ he said. ‘But even if he did feel marginally responsible he never let on. I do not even know where he was the day Giovanni died. He would never say. All I know is it seemed an eternity before he got back…’

Emma brushed her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I’m so sorry…so very sorry…’

He drew in a deep uneven breath as he looked at the house. ‘I am going to make a start on clearing out Giovanni’s room in the next day or so. It should have been done years ago.’

‘Would you like me to help you?’ she asked.

He turned back to look at her again. ‘No, thank you all the same. This is one job I probably need to do alone.’

A little silence crept from the shadows of the garden towards them.

Rafaele got to his feet. ‘I am going to take a walk around the gardens,’ he said. ‘Do not wait up. I will see you in the morning.’

She stepped up on tiptoe and pressed a soft-as-air kiss to his cheek. ‘Goodnight, Rafaele,’ she whispered.

Rafaele stood and watched as she made her way back to the house, the soft, ghost-like tread of her bare feet making no sound on the dew-kissed, spongy grass.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_4f0478bc-c87c-5fdd-8f85-a3c32cf44f95)

WHEN Emma came downstairs the next morning Rafaele was out on the sun-drenched terrace with a pot of freshly brewed coffee beside him, the morning paper spread out before him on the wrought-iron garden setting. He was dressed similarly to her, in a close fitting white T-shirt and shorts to counteract the early heat of the day. He had recently showered, his hair was still damp and she could smell the sharp citrus tang of his aftershave as she came closer.

He turned his head as he heard her approach, his expression giving no hint of the anguish she had seen there the night before. ‘There is enough for two if you would like some,’ he said, indicating the coffee-pot with a careless waft of his hand.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I never feel truly awake until I’ve had my first caffeine hit.’

‘I will go and get a cup for you,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Would you like a croissant? I jogged down to the bakery first thing this morning.’

Emma gave him a rueful smile. ‘You’re making me feel guilty, talking about early-morning jogs,’ she said. ‘I’m not normally so lazy, but I didn’t sleep well last night.’

His expression was mask-like, although Emma thought she saw something flicker in his eyes as they held hers. ‘I hope it wasn’t something I said.’

She let out a tiny sigh. ‘It was everything you said. I feel like I’ve totally misjudged you. You’re not the person I thought you were. I’m sorry. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.’ She looked up at him appealingly and added softly, ‘I’d like us…I’d like us to be friends.’

The silence stretched for a moment or two.

‘Is that pity I hear in your voice, Emma?’ he asked in a flint-like tone.

She frowned at him. ‘No…no, of course not,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad I now know what happened to your brother and how it affected you and your father’s relationship. Life has been very hard on you. I didn’t realise how hard until last night.’

His eyes glittered darkly as they seared hers. ‘So it explains why I am a complete and utter bastard, does it, Emma?’

She compressed her lips. ‘That’s a choice you make,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to be that way. Lots of people have tragic backgrounds and yet manage to move on without letting it ruin their life and all their relationships.’

‘I have not let it ruin my life,’ he said. ‘And as for my relationships, that is my business and my business alone.’

‘I think you have let it ruin your life,’ Emma countered. ‘You lock yourself away from feeling. I suspect you’ve done it for years. You’re doing it now. As soon as anyone gets close you put up a wall of resistance. You let your guard down with me last night and now you’re regretting it. That’s why you’re being so cutting and unfriendly towards me now.’

He gave a mocking laugh. ‘So little Emma now wants to be friends with me, does she?’

She tightened her mouth without answering.

He stepped closer and, capturing her chin between his finger and thumb, tipped her gaze to meet his. ‘How far are you prepared to take this offer of friendship?’ he asked. ‘All the way upstairs to my bed?’

Emma felt her stomach go hollow as he brought his hard male body even closer. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, her heart beginning to ram against her ribcage as she felt his arrant maleness springing to turgid life against her. He placed a hand in the small of her back, pressing her even closer so she felt the pounding of his blood against her softness.

And then his head came down…

The kiss was explosive. Their tongues wrestled and tangled, darted and dived and submitted and conquered simultaneously. Emma became breathless with growing excitement, her body on fire as his mouth commandeered hers with bruising passion. Her lips throbbed with the pressure, she even thought she could taste blood at one point, but wasn’t sure if it was hers or his, as she had nipped at his bottom lip with just as much fervour as he had hers.

His mouth was still locked on hers as he shoved aside the thin straps of her top and bra, his hands cupping the slight weight of her breasts, her pert nipples driving into the moist heat of his palm. The tingling pleasure wasn’t nearly enough. Emma wanted more of his touch and leaned into him, whimpering her need into the hot cavern of his mouth.

Her breathing came to a screeching halt as he lifted his mouth off hers to suckle on each breast in turn. She arched her back as the rasp of his tongue laved her tender flesh, her fingers grasping him by the shoulders to anchor herself as sensation after sensation coursed through her.

He brought his mouth back to hers, his tongue a thrusting force she welcomed with the shy dart of her own. She heard him make a sound at the back of his throat and her skin lifted in goose-bumps of feverish excitement at how she was affecting him. She could feel the heat and weight of his arousal pressing against her and reached boldly between their locked bodies to explore it with her fingers. He groaned again as she brushed her fingertips over the summer-weight linen of his shorts, the proud bulge of his body making her feel heady with feminine power. She wanted to touch him intimately, she wanted to feel the satin of his flesh in her hands, to shape him, to feel the surge of his blood, to tantalise him the way he was tantalising her.

‘God, I want you,’ he said against her mouth. ‘I am going crazy with you touching me like that.’

His feverish confession incited Emma to slide down the zipper on his shorts, her searching fingers moving aside the final barrier of his underwear. Her breath caught as she felt his body leap against her hand, the smoothness and strength of him rising out of the springy masculine hair making her belly crawl with desire. She looked down at him, her eyes going wide at the size of him as he quivered against her tentative feather-light touch.