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I’d told her the truth, that I hadn’t wanted her to know about the war zone that had been my childhood. I hadn’t wanted any of that to touch her. I’d wanted her to stay the bright light that I turned to when things were dark.
I’d thought I’d never have to tell her, and yet... I couldn’t keep it from her, not now. Not when we were going to be married and would have a child to bring up. It wasn’t fair to her, and it wasn’t fair to our child either.
Both my hands were now clenched tightly, and no matter how hard I tried to relax them, they wouldn’t.
‘What happened to me?’ I echoed, my voice sounding strange and hollow in the silence of the cottage. ‘Domingo was a psychopath, Jenny. You wouldn’t have known, because he hid it well, but he was a smiling, charming psychopath. So I suppose you could say that what happened to me was him.’
‘A psychopath?’ The words were a soft, scraped whisper as horror rippled over her lovely face. ‘Con...’
I looked away, unable to bear her expression, staring down at the dark wood of my desk. ‘I think Catherine sent you away to school because she didn’t want you anywhere near him and with good reason. My childhood was a war zone. Domingo wouldn’t allow Valentin and I any kind of attachments. Not to anything.’
I wanted the words to be flat and toneless, the facts issued and nothing but. Yet anger tinged them no matter how hard I tried to prevent it.
‘We had no toys. No friends. No pets. We only had each other, and Domingo would use that bond against us. He would manipulate us, turn us against each other. Valentin responded with argument and rebellion, while I...’ I took a breath. ‘It seemed safer not to feel anything at all.’
There was a long, shocked silence.
I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t want to see what was on her lovely face. Deep down, I’d thought that now Domingo was gone his poison would have gone with him, but it hadn’t. It was reaching beyond the grave and now it was touching Jenny. My Jenny.
That was my fault. I poisoned everything I touched, too.
I needed to get out of the cottage, away from her gentle presence, away from the consequences of my own actions just for once.
I turned from the desk, ready to stride out, only to have warm arms wrap themselves around me and soft curves press against my chest. Jenny looked up at me, her dark eyes liquid with tears, with sympathy, and a compassion that made my entire being clench tight.
I went rigid in her grip, but she didn’t let me go, softness and heat to the sharp edges and ice inside of me.
‘She kept me safe,’ Jenny said thickly. ‘But who kept you safe? Who, Con?’
We both knew the answer to that, and when I didn’t speak she pressed her face to my chest and held me tight, as if her embrace would ease the toxic mixture of emotion inside me.
And it did. I felt the moment all the rage and pain I’d turned inward shift, the press of feminine curves altering it, turning it into a volcano of something hotter, more intense, and far more welcome.
Desire leapt high, consuming me, and for a second all I could do was stand there in a futile attempt to take control.
But there was no controlling it. My hands were in her hair before I could stop myself, pulling her head away from my chest, turning her delicate face up so I could bend and take her mouth like a man possessed.
She didn’t pull away and she didn’t stop me. Her arms tightened and she went up on her toes, kissing me back as hungrily as I was kissing her.
Her mouth was hot and sweet and generous, just like her soul, and I clenched my hands tightly in her hair, holding her fast as I gorged myself on her, letting the taste of her flood through me, blotting out all the rage and pain I’d told myself I didn’t feel.
She held nothing back, giving me everything, and I took it. I couldn’t stop.
I lifted my mouth from hers only so I could tear her pretty pink dress from her body, and then her pretty pink underwear too. Her fingers fumbled with my shirt buttons, pulling at them as if she was as desperate for that skin-on-skin contact as I was.
I helped her, getting rid of my shirt and then dealing with my trousers and the rest of my clothing, wanting nothing more than to be rid of any constraints. Then, naked, I picked her up in my arms and took her over to the couch, laying her on the cushions before following her down and pinning her beneath me.
Her hair was in wild curls over the cushions and tangled over her shoulders, her face flushed. Her eyes were liquid and there were tear tracks on her cheeks. I bent and kissed away the tears, drowning myself in the taste of salt and the sweetness of her skin before finding her mouth again and kissing her deeply and with hunger.
She tasted of summer and sunlight, champagne and strawberries. Of long, warm twilights and perfumed rose gardens. Of all the fantasies I’d ever had about her. I couldn’t get enough. The scent of her arousal was driving me mad.
I kissed my way down her throat to the curve of her breasts, flicking my tongue over her nipple, licking her, teasing her. Then I drew the hard bud into my mouth and sucked. She gasped, arching into me, her hands gripping my shoulders.
She tasted delicious. I wanted to spend time feasting on her, but my own needs were becoming too much for me to control. I shifted between her soft thighs, easing the hard length of my shaft through the hot, wet folds of her sex, feeling her shudder against me.
She whispered my name and then, as I nipped the sensitive bud of her nipple, she groaned aloud.
I was losing myself in the taste of her, the sound of her gasps and the feel of her heat, and all I wanted to do was lose myself more, get rid of all the emotion inside me and leave nothing behind but pleasure.
