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“You have no children. What makes you an expert?”
“Because I know what it’s like to constantly play second fiddle to your parents’ romantic relationships. It hurts, Marcu.”
Her voice cracked and the sheen of tears in her eyes made him want to rage against the injustice of the universe, because fate was harsh and life could be brutal and the only way to survive was by being hard. “Can’t you see that I’m trying,” he said, wrapping an arm around her back, holding her securely.
She blinked as she looked at him, cheeks flushed, eyes brilliant with fierce tears. “Are you?” she demanded. “Or are you hiding from them?”
“What does that mean?”
“The children don’t even know you can play the piano. They don’t know you love music and art and beauty—”
“I did. I don’t anymore.”
“Pity, because everyone needs beauty and art in their life. Children need beauty—”
“Why? It’s just going to be snatched away.”
“Beauty helps us through times of pain. Beauty, like love, heals and redeems—”
“I am certain there is plenty more you’d like to say,” he growled, “but I’ve heard enough from you for one night.”
His head descended and his lips covered hers. Monet stiffened with surprise, and panic, but the panic faded the second his lips touched hers.
Monet felt yanked back in time the moment she’d felt his arm circle her, his body pressing against hers, his frame lean and hard and so very male.
The brush of his lips and scent of his skin overwhelmed her with longing, and memory, and she was eighteen again, and in Marcu’s spacious, luxurious bedroom suite at the Uberto palazzo. As the Uberto heir, he had the largest suite after his parents, gorgeous rooms that seemed to go on and on—living room, study, bedroom, en-suite bathroom, huge walk-in closet. He’d first kissed her in the doorway between his living room and study, and then they’d ended up on his bed, his large body pinning hers, their hands clasped, fingers entwined, her body arching against his, desperate for him.
This kiss eight years later flamed hot, and desperate. It was as if they had left off exactly where they’d stopped...the emotion, the need, the craving, so fierce, so insistent, and yet, so punishing. She had wanted him then, and she wanted him now, but want wasn’t an easy thing, not with their history. The want created pain and anger, because he didn’t care about her, not really. He desired her, the same way his father had desired her mother, but the Uberto men took different women to be their wives. They chose different women to be the mothers of their children. Rage and hurt welled within her, making her burn hot and cold. He’d make love to Monet tonight but then fly out tomorrow to propose to Vittoria.
She’d never be anything more than a side piece. Something used to satisfy one’s carnal desire. Heartsick, she pushed against Marcu’s chest, hard enough to free herself. He, too, was breathing heavily as his arms dropped, but he didn’t move away. She took a frantic step backward, pulse racing, body trembling, even as something inside of her urged her to return to his arms, return to his warmth.
My God, she was stupid. She hadn’t matured at all. He was still so dangerous and destructive, at least to her heart, never mind her self-control. She shot him a fierce look before leaving the study, fleeing for the privacy of her own room.
* * *
Marcu was as shocked as she was. He heard, rather than saw, Monet leave, even though his gaze followed her to the door, but he couldn’t see as much as feel.
He felt stunned, his body hot and cold, but also, strangely alive. Energy coursed through him, hot primitive desire pumped through his veins. His muscles contracted, his heart thudded.
He wanted her.
He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone.
Why?
Was it because she was forbidden? Was it because she represented youth and the last of his innocence?
Why did he crave her when he had never craved any other woman...ever?
His gaze lingered on the closed door, aware of how still everything had become. The room suddenly felt empty and cold without Monet.
He felt empty, and cold, but not as cold as he usually did. She’d lit a flame inside of him and the small flickering flame had the potential to burn brightly. If he let it.
He couldn’t let it.
He couldn’t give in to sensation, or emotion, or impulse. Not when he’d spent the past three years teaching his children that life wasn’t about fun or pleasure. It was about duty, and discipline. It was about reason and intellect.
The flame inside of him was the opposite of logic. The flame was passion and fire and hunger, and it couldn’t be allowed to burn. He had to snuff it out. He had to remember the lessons he’d been teaching the children. Order. Predictability. Self-control. These were the virtues and values he respected, and this is why he structured their world as he did. It was a conscious attempt to protect them from chaos. He believed that discipline and control would serve them well as they grew into adulthood. Discipline and control would allow them to make good decisions, logical decisions, so they wouldn’t be disappointed by life, or worse, hurt by it.
He’d been hurt, repeatedly, until he’d finally learned what life was trying to teach him: emotions were not to be trusted, whereas a cool head, and sharp intellect, prevailed. Which is why he didn’t teach his children about hope, or faith, and why he wasn’t looking for love in marriage. He’d been brought up to believe that love was somehow redemptive. It wasn’t. Everything he’d been taught was a lie. His childhood was one fabrication on top of another, and after Galeta’s death, Marcu had resolved to parent differently. His children would be guided by knowledge and truth, and that was all.
Kissing Monet had been a terrible mistake and it wouldn’t happen again.
CHAPTER SIX
GOOD GOD, WHAT had happened downstairs?
Monet frantically paced her private sitting room, her steps muffled by the thick peach-and-cream Persian rug, the peach and cream echoed in the glamorous Italian silk curtains at the windows and the apricot silk panels on the four-poster bed in the adjacent room.
She couldn’t believe she’d let him kiss her. She couldn’t believe she’d kissed him back, because she had, she most definitely had.
Horrified, she went into the bedroom to stare at her face in the Venetian mirror hanging above the dressing table. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes looked feverishly bright. Her full mouth looked plump and very kissed...because she had been very kissed.
She pressed a hand to her lips, feeling the warmth and sensitivity, thinking it had been forever since she’d felt anything so good, or felt so alive.
She’d wanted the kiss, too. How she’d wanted it. There was no way she could blame him for reaching for her because she’d spent the past few days wondering what it would be like to kiss him now...and if his kiss could wreck her the way it had upended her world eight years ago.
For the past eight years she’d wondered if his kiss had been as overwhelming and wonderful as she remembered, or if it had simply been the fact that it was her first real kiss, and in her inexperience she’d made it out to be more than it was.
Eight years ago his kiss had stripped her bare, stealing her heart, making her his, and all this time she’d wondered why he had so devastated her. And now she knew. It wasn’t inexperience. It wasn’t innocence. It was him. There was something powerful, something electric, in his touch.
His lips on hers just now had made her feel so many things, awakening the past, as well as jolting her from complacency. She wasn’t immune to him. She wasn’t in control of herself here. She wasn’t confident, either. From the time she arrived at the castello she’d been certain he was as aware of her as she was of him, and it wasn’t a casual awareness, but the taut, aching awareness of heat and memory and barely suppressed desire.
The kiss downstairs had burned with desire.
The kiss downstairs—
