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She turned her face to the window. “I’m not hungry.”
“It’s another three hours until—”
“I said, I’m not hungry.”
So much for conciliatory gestures. And that tone of voice! When had she begun using it? Did she know what an insult it was, to be spoken to that way?
She had surely grown up with servants and after watching how she’d just dealt with Barbara, he’d damned well bet she’d never treated an employee or a servant as she was treating him.
If he’d whisked her away from a life of deprivation, she might behave differently….
What an ugly thing to think!
Still, she might at least show some interest in him. In her new life. In where he was taking her.
He didn’t know why that should matter, but it did.
“I live in Rome,” he said, after the silence became too much. “In the oldest part of the city. The palazzo’s been in my family for centuries, but it wasn’t in very good repair until I—”
“I don’t care.”
Nicolo didn’t think. He reacted. Grabbed her, hauled her out of her seat and onto his lap. She started to scream and he captured her mouth with his, thrust his tongue between her lips, slipped his hands under her skirt.
She bit him. Beat at his shoulders with her fists. It didn’t stop him. Nothing would. He had taken enough.
Her panties tore in half and she cried out, the sound muffled by his kiss.
“Such a lady you are now, cara,” he said against her mouth. “Such an elegant, bloodless gentlewoman with everyone except me.”
“Nicolo. If you do this—”
“You’ll what? Scream? Go ahead. You’ll only embarrass yourself. I am Nicolo Barbieri. The sooner you learn what that means, the better.”
He kissed her again and again, his hand moving against her flesh under her yellow skirt, cupping her, touching her, hating himself for what he was doing, hating her for what she had reduced him to, wanting what had happened between them that first night, that magical night, to happen again….
But not like this.
His kiss softened.
The stroke of his fingers became tender. He whispered Aimee’s name between gentle kisses and all at once, she sighed against his mouth.
Her arms went around his neck.
Her lips parted beneath his.
And the petals of the sweetly feminine bud between her thighs began to bloom, the dew of it sweet and welcome against his palm.
Nicolo groaned. Shifted Aimee so that she was straddling him. Reached for his zipper…
And realized that even as she kissed him, his wife was weeping. Weeping as if her heart might break.
Nicolo went still. Then he groaned, though not with desire, and folded her into his arms.
“Don’t cry,” he murmured. “Please, il mio amante, don’t cry.”
He whispered to her, soft English words giving way to softer ones in Italian as he rocked her gently against his heart and stroked her honey-colored curls back from her face.
Gradually Aimee’s sobs faded. She sighed deeply; he felt her breathing slow.
