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His bride looked at him then, narrowly. “Does that include you?”
Benedetto shrugged, keeping his face impassive though he was once again pleased with her possessiveness. “She’s been with my family for a very long time. You could argue that in many ways, she raised me. So yes, I suppose she does see me as hers. But she is not my lover, if that is what you are asking.”
He didn’t actually laugh at that. Or the very notion of suggesting such a thing where his housekeeper could hear it.
Angelina managed to give the impression of bristling without actually doing so. “It had not occurred to me that you might install your lovers under the same roof as your wife. Though perhaps, given your infamy, I should anticipate such things.”
“I will not do anything of the kind,” he drawled, trying to sound lazy enough that the car would not reverberate with the truth in his words. “But whether you believe that or not will be up to you.”
“You expect me to be jealous?”
“I’m not afraid of jealousy, Angelina. On the contrary. I do not understand why it is considered a virtue to pretend the heart is not a greedy organ when we can all feel it pump and clench in our chests. Lust starts there. And where there is lust, where there is need and want and longing, there will always be jealousy.” He shrugged. “This is the curse of humanity, no? It is better to embrace the darkness than to pretend it does not or cannot exist.”
“Jealousy is destructive,” she said, again in that matter-of-fact tone he suspected was a product of her youth.
“That depends what you are building,” he replied. “And whether or not you find beauty in the breaking of it.”
And then he laughed, darkly and too knowingly, as she reddened yet again.
It was not a long drive to the private airfield where his plane waited for them. Once there, he escorted her up the stairs and then into the jet’s luxurious cabin.
Angelina looked around at the ostentatious display of his wealth and power and swallowed, hard. “Are my things here? I can change—”
“I think not,” he said, with a quiet relish. “You will remain in that gown until I remove it myself, little one.”
Again, that glorious flush that made her glow. Her lips fell open while her pulse went wild in her throat. “But... But how long...?”
“We will have a wedding night,” he assured her, though wedding nights with him were rarely what his brides imagined. “Were you worried?”
“Of course not,” she said.
But she was lying. He could hear the music she played in his head. He could remember all too well those steamy evenings in that barren room that she’d filled with art and longing and her own sweet cries of need and release.
He was entirely too tempted to indulge himself—because he couldn’t recall the last time he’d been tempted at all.
Benedetto tilted his head slightly as he regarded her, not surprised when that bright glow crept down her neck. “You have my permission to please yourself as you wish if you find you cannot wait. No need to lock yourself away.” He indicated one of the plush leather seats in the cabin. “Pull up your skirts, bare yourself to me, and show me your pleasure, Angelina.”
He could hear her ragged breath as she took that in. “I... I can’t.”
Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Then you must suffer, wife. And you must wait.”
And he watched her almost idly as he handled matters of business on the short flight. She sat in her seat as if it was made of nails, shifting this way, and that. Clearly squirming with anticipation, though he supposed she might lie to them both about that. Too bad it was stamped all over her.
He couldn’t wait to indulge himself. He, who usually preferred his wedding nights be more theater than anything else.
Why couldn’t he stick to the script with this woman?
They landed in Italy on another private airfield not far from the coast where the Franceschis had lived for centuries. He ushered her into another car that waited for them, gleaming in the afternoon sun, but this time he drove it himself.
“We must hurry if we wish to make the tide,” he told her.
And the dress she wore barely fit into the bucket seats of the low-slung sports car. But the helpless, needy sound he heard her make when he put the car into gear could only be a harbinger of things to come.
If he let it.
And oh, how he wanted to let it. He had already tasted her—and he couldn’t seem to get past that. He couldn’t seem to keep his head together when he was near her. He couldn’t remember his duties, and that spelled disaster.
