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He smiled then—though really, it was simply a twist of his hard mouth. There was no joy in it. Nothing close.
And that made what had broken in her seem to crumble all the more.
“You are welcome to think so.” His voice was so dark. Too dark. “I can’t stop you. But when it comes to the duty we owe to both the Accardi name and who will inhabit it one day, I must insist that you do as I say.”
“And if I refuse?”
He shook his head at her, though again, his eyes were far too dark. “Unfortunately for you,mia mogliettina, you showed your hand already. Do you really believe that I will ever leave you to your own devices again? Do you imagine that I will ever trust you or anything you say to me, from this day forward? I will not. And if that means that you must spend your life under guard, well...” His shrug was as expansive as it was dismissive. “You will not be the first Accardi wife to live in this fashion. My earliest ancestors achieved peace and annexed land by taking brides from rival families. How do you think they managed it?”
Victoria had all those emotions swirling about inside her. And deeper still, that drumbeat of what she wanted to call temper, but was terribly afraid was something else. Something more in line with those mad dreams she had at night and the images that seduced her as she slept. Then haunted her well into the afternoon.
She had spent all her virginal years imagining what it would be like to have sex. And shoring up her imagination with a judicious bit of research, books, and films. She’d been fairly sure she was ready. As ready as any innocent could be, that was.
And still Ago Accardi had taken her into his arms and taught her that she knew nothing at all about want or need or longing until that night.
It was tempting to blame all the emotions she’d had since that night on her pregnancy, but deep down, she knew better. Even if she wasn’t pregnant, she’d feel the things she did around him. All of them.
He would have haunted her all the same.
“Will you lock me in a tower, then?” she demanded, and her voice was no longer quite as calm and cool as she liked. “Will you throw away the key, or simply have a rotation of guards? Will I be forced to grow my hair long and bold and sing pointless songs out the window, hoping someone happens by to save me?”
He looked at her as if she were mad, as if he’d never read a fairy tale in his life. And instead of taking that as more evidence against him, more clues she needed to harden her position and refuse to obey him, it...made her heart hurt.
It made her wonder exactly what kind of childhood this man had had, that seemed to have involved nothing that any child should ever have to suffer. His whole life had been gilt-edged, to be sure. But beneath all that shine, all she seemed to find was sorrow.
Maybe that was why Victoria dared to draw closer to him. To put herself right there, in front of his folded arms, as close as she could get to him without her belly brushing up against him.
“I don’t have any intention of spending another minute of my life locked up,” she told him solemnly. “You can trust me or not trust me, whatever suits. And I can certainly bide my time if necessary. But I do not intend to remain any man’s prisoner.”
And yet somehow, this close to him, she no longer felt the same driving need tomake him understand.Instead, she could smell the very hint of the cologne he wore, that she had only discovered that night in the garden. When she had been so close to him that the fact he smelled so wonderful had practically knocked her off her feet. And it was more dangerous tonight. Because the longer she stood there, the more his gaze seemed to change. It showed her more of that storm in him, but laced through with that same heat she could feel like a humming deep inside her.
“If you want me to obey you, Ago, you should try asking nicely.”
Victoria forgot where they were, then. Because all she could see was him, and the way the fire inside him seemed to take over the whole of his gaze. She could see only him, and she knew this feeling too well. She’d felt it before. In a ballroom in London. A garden in Cornwall. The chapel in Tuscany.
As if Ago was the world.
And she could feel that tension between them, so hot and so bright that felt like some kind of electric current. And made her wonder how she ever...didn’tfeel it. For surely it was always here, drawing her to him. Making her aware of him in a way she was aware of no other man, no other person, alive.
Making her lean closer when by any reckoning, she should have wanted to run in the opposite direction. She should at least havetried.
Ago reached over and slid his palm over her cheek, as if outlining the line of her jaw. He moved up to her temple, then back down to her chin.
Victoria felt a wild heat, and it was not contained simply to the place he touched. Instead it raced through her like more of that same electricity, finding every place he’d ever touched, making her a living map of the passion they shared. Her collarbone. Her neck. The slopes of her breasts, and the nipples that even now tightened until she was nearly uncomfortable. A straight, breathtakingly hot line from the hollow between her breasts straight down between her legs, making her somehow feel as alive and delicate andherselfas she’d been six months ago. Before her body had changed and the baby within her had taken her over.
Most of all, she felt him there between her legs, an ache that nothing made right or better. She could feel him in a line of delirious sensation all the way down her legs, deep into her toes, even as she curled them beneath her.
But it was there, in her feminine core, she wanted him most. Where everything was more intense than it had ever been, perhaps because she was not only pregnant, but pregnant withhisbaby, or so it seemed to her at that moment. All he needed to do was look at her like this and her whole body came to attention as if to shout,look at how obedient I am. Look at how well I loved you that night, that I took all you gave me, and made new life.
The look on his face changed, so that she almost thought she’d said those things out loud. And she recognized that glittering, deep blue and dangerous in all the best ways.
He found her lips and traced them. One way, then back.
And when he moved his hand yet again, a rough, hot caress that she could feel course through her, Victoria opened up her mouth and sucked his thumb in. She was aware that what she did was sensual and provocative, even though she’d never performed the act she knew was meant to mimic.
But she could see he recognized it all the same.
“Always such a greedy little thing, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice a rough scrape of sound. It made her feel abraded, and she liked it. She licked the tip of his thumb and he grinned, a dark promise. “No wonder your father kept you locked away.”
