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“There’s no need to lie. Five years is a long time. There’s a lot of water under the bridge, for both of us.”
“More for you than me, I think,” she retorted, barely needing to think to remember the articles that had run about Massimo. Photo upon photo upon photo of him quickly resuming his single life, dating – sleeping with – myriad beautiful other women. For a year, she’d found it almost impossible to go through the motions of life. She’d continued her medical degree, because it was a habit and a distraction, but she’d shut everyone else out. Friends, family, she’d barely eaten, she’d stayed indoors, she’d been destroyed and distraught.
She would never let a man hurt her that way again. Even when Dom ended their engagement, she’d been surprised, and disappointed, but not hurt. Her emotions had never really been involved with him, because she knew better than that now.
“You forget, Alessia, I have first-hand experience of your libido.”
She drew in a sharp breath, her eyes unconsciously revealing her hurt at the low blow. If only he knew the truth! She was a virgin, completely inexperienced with members of the opposite sex. And that was, in large part, thanks to him. “A libido you never indulged.”
A muscle throbbed at the base of his jaw, and his eyes burned their way right into her soul. “I’d like to rectify that tonight.”
Her stomach looped a thousand times. She wanted to say ‘yes’ with all her being but anger kept her strong in the face of that. “How dare you?”
“I dare because you were my wife.”
“’Were’ being the operative word. Past tense, Massimo. You’re nothing to me now.”
He nodded slowly, and something burst inside of her. Pain – fresh pain, because he was going to disappear, just like she was asking. And she didn’t want him to.
“You shouldn’t be here.” She bit down on her lower lip, surrender in those words, a surrender they both heard.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” That had her dragging her eyes to his and for the smallest sliver of time she saw the same torment deep in his gaze that she felt in her heart. It was as though he was fighting a battle all of his own, his apparent desire at odds with what he knew he should be doing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she repeated, but he stayed where he was, and she did the same, locked between her ex-husband and a wall of a corridor here in the Four Seasons hotel.
“Tell me to go and I will.” There was almost a plea in those words, like he wanted her to send him away. As though he’d be grateful if she did. It was all she had to do – tell him to go. Tell him he didn’t belong here, that he didn’t get to look at her, much less touch her.
But oh, it wasn’t so easy.
Alessia hadn’t loved her fiancé. Dom had been kind and sensible and she’d truly believed their marriage would be comfortable and happy, but there’d been no passion, no love, nothing that could ever hurt her. So his rejection of her – when he’d been a ‘safe’ choice – had cut deeply. She felt discarded, unvalued, unwanted.
Having Max – the man she’d believed she loved at one stupid time in her life – offering himself to her? It set every spark in her body alight.
Could she do this though? Despite how he’d treated her? Despite what he thought of her?
Yes. This wasn’t about him. He didn’t matter. He was – to some extent – irrelevant. She wanted to have sex with him. To use his body to slake the needs within hers. She wanted to lose her virginity – finally – and to a man who, admittedly with good reason, thought the worst of her. She wanted to show him how wrong he’d been. She wanted to take what she needed from him, finally, as a way of righting a past wrong, and then she wanted to walk away without a backwards glance. Because he didn’t deserve that.
“I’ll never forgive you,” she said darkly, needing to assert herself, to remind him that desire didn’t change anything.
“That goes both ways.” He volleyed back, so something like a whip jerked against her spine.
She took his anger and held onto it – it was good to remember why there was no love lost between them.
“I don’t ever want to see you again,” she added, for good measure, wondering at the pain in her chest as she threw those words at him.
His eyes narrowed, a small crevice forming between his brows.
“After tonight,” she clarified. His expression shifted by degrees, features relaxing a little.
“After we’re done,” he amended, sending a little shiver of anticipation down her spine. It spoke so specifically of what he was proposing. This was madness and yet it was delicious and impossibly tempting.
“I really do hate you.” But the words were swallowed up as he dropped his head and pressed his lips to hers, the kiss hard, hungry, desperate, demanding. And now she gave into the groan that had been threatening, kissing him back with years of pent-up needs, desperate for this, desperate to peel back time and allow herself the pleasure of the man she’d married – for one night only.
