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'You know I always want you/ she answered in confusion. 'Did you...did you start the row deliberately to....?' But she saw the expression of contempt in his eyes and knew that her assessment had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
'You think I wanted to inject a frisson of imaginary conflict into our relationship?' he demanded incredulously, and he let her hand fall from his as if it was something contaminated. 'Dear God!'
He walked away from her—away from her sweet allure and her dangerous kind of magic. He looked out of the window at the summer clouds blowing across the sky.
'My wild little Sorcha, who is always up for sexual adventure/ he murmured. 'Anyway, anywhere and anyhow. God forbid that we should just go home to bed at the end of the evening, like any other couple!'
Incredulously, she stared at the formidable set of his back. 'Is that what you want?'
He turned again and his face was expressionless. 'It is too late for that, Sorcha—don't you understand?'
She shook her head, as if trying to dispel the confusion. 'No, I don't understand!'
He shrugged. "We have forged the pattern of our relationship. It is what it is. We work and we have sex—and now that the work is coming to an end...well, it follows that the sex will, too.'
There was silence.
'Is that all it's been?' she questioned painfully. 'Sex?'
'How would you describe it, then?' he challenged softly.
And suddenly she realised what he was doing. "Why are you turning this around on me?' she demanded, acknowledging how clever he was. Emotionally, he had pushed her away and sought refuge in sex, and now he was accusing her of compartmentalising! She couldn't win, she thought—or rather Cesare didn't want her to. There would be only one winner in this scenario, and he was going to make sure it was him.
'You're the man who runs a million miles away from feelings!' she stormed. 'If I've acted this way, it's only because that's the way you intimated I should act. What's the matter, Cesare—are you angry because I've actually gone along with it?'
That is enough*' he gritted.
'No, it isn't! We never talk about the things which are going on inside, do we? Like we never talk about when you asked me to marry you—'
'I don't want to discuss it, Sorcha' His voice cracked out like a whip.
"Well, I do! You wouldn't listen to me when I tried to explain myself, to tell you that you were frightening me with your list of suitable qualities you desired in a wife. I was eighteen years old, for God's sake, Cesare, and I really loved you. All I wanted was some love and affection in return—and you couldn't give it to me.'
She waited, wanting some reaction, some denial, or even a furious justification—but there was nothing. His face was like ice, his expression frozen, and Sorcha let out a shuddering breath. Nothing had changed, not really. Back then he hadn't been listening, and he wasn't listening now.
'I'm sorry’ she whispered, because she saw now that she had been wasting her time in ever thinking that they could build something new on the rocky foundations of the past.
'Sorry?' He was angry. How dared she do this to him? Why should he subject himself to unnecessary emotional pain, when it was easier just to lose himself in the silken-soft sweetness of her body? And, oh, when he was far away from England he would find himself another woman—one who wouldn't torture him like Sorcha did with all this stuff.
He gave a cool smile—which concealed the decision being made—and he felt a familiar sense of liberation from having made it.
'Cesare?' she whispered tentatively. 'Lock the door,' he ordered.
Sorcha did as he asked, but something was different—or rather, he was different. He drew down the blinds and shut the world out so that the light in the office was muted and it was as if they had created their own private world.
And then he took complete control—as if he was giving her a masterclass in seduction. The Latin lover personified, he skimmed his fingertips over her skin, lowering his head to graze his lips over her neck, carrying her over to the leather couch at the far end of the room and laying her down on it.
Her bright hair was tumbled all over her flushed face and he reached down to brush a wayward lock away. Sorcha's eyes suddenly shot open, for something had changed and she couldn't work out what it was.
"Cesare?' she whispered again 'Shhh.
He kissed the tip of her nose, then her eyelids, and then her lips, and it was easy to let her misgivings melt away beneath the expert skill of his touch. She shut her eyes tight as he stroked her and murmured soft words in his native tongue into her ear, and she had to bite back her own desire to tell him how much she—
Her eyes snapped open as he entered her, and he stilled. "What is it? '
Sorcha swallowed. 'Nothing, ' she whispered. She tangled her fingers in his thick dark hair as he moved again, and the sweetness of the act was enough to push crazy and stupid thoughts out of her head.
‘I don't love you,’ she thought brokenly. I don't want to love you.
