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Gracie swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘I’m sorry.’
He looked away again, and Gracie cradled her hand against her belly.
‘I confronted my father one day outside his city palazzo. I knew where he lived. My mother had pointed it out to me enough times. It was just after she’d died. When I confronted him he spat at me and pushed me down and stepped over me. My two half-sisters were with him and didn’t even look my way, even though they’d heard me call him Father. I watched them step into a chauffeur-driven car. I watched how they could just walk away from the unsavoury truth. I envied them their ease and protection. I envied their wealth, which gave them that protection.’
He smiled then, and it made fear inch up Gracie’s spine.
‘My father obviously had a word with one of his men. As soon as the car pulled away I was dragged into a nearby lane and beaten so senseless that I ended up in hospital. It was an effective warning. I never attempted to see him again. I left Italy and I vowed that one day I would look into my father’s eyes and know that I had earned my place in his world, despite his rejection.’
Gracie looked at the hard jaw and the bunched up shoulders. She saw the faint scar running from his temple to his jaw and the smaller scars. She could well imagine that meeting between father and son, and could almost feel sorry for his father. She longed to reach out and touch Rocco now, to soothe his pain. But he was like a wild animal. He was raw.
She remembered something and said, ‘That scar … on your shoulder. It was a tattoo, wasn’t it?’
Rocco nodded. ‘It meant I belonged to a certain part of the slum.’ His mouth twisted. ‘A certain faction. I got it removed when I came to England.’
‘That’s why you never speak Italian. You hate any reminders.’
Rocco dropped his head between his shoulders and said, in a deceptively soft voice, ‘Just go, Gracie … leave me alone.’
Gracie took a step back, hurt blooming out from her heart all over her body. She was terrified she’d start crying. She ached to comfort him. She started to step away, but got to the door and looked back. She saw Rocco standing there, head down, and realised that he’d always been a lone figure. Fighting the world around him while simultaneously longing to be part of it.
Resolution fired her blood, and she kicked off her shoes and walked back over to him. She slipped under one of his arms and came up so that his body formed a cage around her.
She looked up, straight into Rocco’s face and his dark eyes. ‘No, I won’t leave. Because I don’t think you really do want to be alone.’ She reached up and placed her small palm on his rigid jaw. Her eyes caressed his mouth. ‘I want you, Rocco. So much.’
The tension was thick enough to touch, and then suddenly it snapped. Rocco issued a guttural, ‘Damn you!’ and hauled Gracie up into his body so tightly she thought her back might break, but she bit her lip. She would not say a word. She could sense the violence in him, the untamed wildness that needed release, and she wanted desperately to be there for him in the only way he would allow her to be.
Rocco demanded and Gracie gave—over and over again. His kisses were brutal and electrifying. Their clothes were shed as they moved through the apartment, ripped and torn from their bodies in desperate haste.
Afterwards, Gracie couldn’t even remember how they’d got to the bedroom—only that what had happened there had shown her how restrained Rocco had become to tame the natural wildness in him. And the long-simmering anger. Her body ached all over, but pleasurably. She knew her pale skin would be bruised. Rocco had nipped her with his teeth, and she shivered now to think of how she’d wanted him to bite her harder. He’d taken her from behind, with her hands wrapped around the bedposts, and it had been the most erotic thing she’d ever felt. The heavy weight of his body on hers as he’d crushed her to the bed and thrust into her over and over again.
She lifted her head now and looked at him. The innate tension in his body told her that he wasn’t asleep. ‘Rocco …?’
To her surprise he put an arm over his face and wouldn’t look at her. She tried to pull it down and he said roughly, ‘I can’t look at you. I … I took you like an animal.’
Gently but firmly Gracie pulled his arm down and then moved over Rocco’s body so she was lying on his chest with her legs either side of his hips. She put her hands to his face.
‘Rocco de Marco. Look at me.’ He opened his eyes, and she could have wept at the shame she saw. She swallowed back her own emotion. ‘I am fine. I liked it.’
She pressed kisses to his jaw and mouth and down his neck. He put his hands around her upper arms and forcibly moved her back, coming up so that she had to lie on her back again.
‘No. I can’t do this.’
His expression was unreadable in the gloom. Gracie’s heart stuttered as she watched Rocco get out of the bed, his tall, naked form magnificent in the dim light.
He said, without looking her way, ‘Get some sleep, Gracie. We leave tomorrow at lunchtime.’
It was the hardest thing Rocco had ever done, to walk away from Gracie in that bed. He headed straight for the pool and dived in. He’d been aching to plunge into her body all over again as she’d straddled him. ‘I am fine. I liked it.’ Her fervent words had scored his insides like a serrated knife.
She’d seen too much. Got too close. He’d never told about his past. He’d been so careful not to. Yet with the smallest amount of encouragement he’d spilled it all out to Gracie. And she’d accepted it unconditionally. Embraced it.
He’d taken her brutally, and she’d welcomed him every step of the way—had encouraged him. And in the process he had assuaged his pain so that his intense anger had faded and been replaced with a kind of strange peace. Even the shame he’d felt initially was fading.
As Rocco powered up and down the pool he hoped that the physical numbness he craved would somehow numb the feelings inside him. Because these were new feelings, not dark and twisted like the old ones, and somehow they were far more frightening than anything else he’d ever known.
At lunchtime the following day Gracie still felt a little shattered. It was as if an earthquake had happened last night, and she wasn’t sure where anything stood any more. She’d woken late, after tossing and turning once Rocco had walked out so suddenly, and Consuela had informed her that Rocco had gone to his office.
She heard a noise and looked up from the TV. She hadn’t been able to concentrate on the rolling news channel. Rocco stood in the doorway, looking incredibly austere and stern. Her stomach fell. She didn’t need to wonder how things stood after last night. It was written all over him: rejection.
