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Good luck with that!
He sent me an easy smile. ‘You wish for me to speak to her and explain. I can be very persuasive.’
Oh god.
I was actually dying inside now as I shook my head. ‘That’s not going to happen. Because I have no idea where she is—she may even be dead for all I know.’
He frowned. ‘But still, this makes you unhappy. Because she would not approve?’ he pressed me.
I huffed out an uneasy breath, feeling stupidly exposed again. And woefully gauche. The last thing he surely wanted right now was an in-depth analysis of my dysfunctional relationship with my mum, but it seemed he was not going to let it drop. And I had brought it up, so what choice did I have?
‘On the contrary,’ I mumbled, aware of him so close beside me. Suddenly I wished I could just give in to the desire racing through my body and forget about all my misgivings, but I knew I couldn’t.Quite. ‘She wouldn’t disapprove. She’d probably think I’d hit the jackpot,’ I said starting to feel nauseous. ‘She was always so dependent on men,’ I added, the shame engulfing me. As it had so often during my childhood. When she had turned up at the school gates with my newest ‘new dad’ who she’d picked up that afternoon. Or when I had gone into the living room in the morning and found her draped all over some random guy she’d brought home from the pub the night before.
I forced myself to look up, and gauge Renzo’s reaction.
I was not sure what I had been expecting, probably disgust, or worst impatience—this conversation had to be a massive passion killer, right?—but what I saw instead was the sheen of something strong and vivid in his eyes, not sympathy exactly, but not boredom or irritation either, which surprised me enough to blurt out the rest.
‘She collected men, boyfriends, hook-ups, any willing guy she met, really.’ I shrugged. ‘And she clung to them, until they got bored, and left her, because she was so needy, and insecure. And lonely, I suppose. Ever since my dad walked out on her.’ And she always made sure to let me know, I was never going to be enough to fill that hole, I thought resentfully, but didn’t add, because that would make this confessional even more excruciating.
I sighed, as a little of the panic and embarrassment released its hold on my throat. I had to tell Renzo the truth, even if it did make me look gauche and unsophisticated. I had no experience with these kind of relationships. Withanysexual relationship really. And while I would hate for him to figure out he was the only guy I’d ever slept with, pretending to be someone I was not was somehow worse. Because that was what she had always done.
‘I just...’ I sucked in a breath and forced out the rest of it. ‘I promised myself I’d nevereverbe like her.’ I turned my face to his, but his expression had become strangely unreadable. ‘And being your mistress, even for a little while, makes me feel as if I’ve somehow broken that promise to myself. Do you understand?’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Renzo
ISTAREDATJESSIE, staggered not just by her honesty, but the way her story had affected me. First of all, I wanted to strangle her mother.
I imagined the men this woman had brought into Jessie’s life. If they were anything like the men my mother had been forced to bring into mine... Those pigs, who had hurt and exploited her...and me.
The impotent fury I remembered from my childhood wrapped its tentacles around my chest, making it difficult to react for a moment.
I breathed through it, keeping my face carefully blank of the anger I felt—for Jessie, for myself, for my own mother—a trick I had learned as a boy.
Perhaps I should allow her to back out of our arrangement gracefully.
This ‘liaison’ was already more complicated than it was supposed to be. But as I sat there, forcing the tentacles to release their hold, I could feel the deep throbbing ache that only she had ever made me feel. And the spark of something else—admiration, affection, pride, protectiveness even—which I had never felt for another woman. And I knew I was not a decent man, so I would not do the decent thing. I was far too selfish a man and a lover—and I wanted her too much—to bethataltruistic.
But as the flush lit up her freckles, and her knuckles whitened on her adorable underwear, it occurred to me that maybe I could help her after all.
Jessie was hung up about sex. Why had I never realised this before? She had waited a long time to take a lover, being twenty when I had first slept with her. And I would hazard a guess she had had very few lovers since. Or she would not be so adorably artless and confused about our arrangement.
‘But you do notneedme,Principessa,’ I murmured, even though I suspected she did, just not in the way she believed. ‘Youwantme—these are two very different things, no?’
Her eyes widened, and the colour in her cheeks spread down to her collarbone.
The swell of excitement and exhilaration at the thought of helping her deal with her hang-ups, in the most pleasurable way possible, increased the ache in my groin, as I touched my thumb to her burning face, then trailed it down her neck, to the staggered rise and fall of her cleavage.
Her sharp intake of breath, the jolt of panic and awareness, told me all I needed to know.
Yes, she was scared of this connection. The intensity of our chemistry. This was not all that surprising, as it had scared me too, four years ago. But chemistry like this was so rare, it would be a sin to deny it.
‘What we do together, in bed, is not about ownership,’ I told her. ‘It will not reduce your independence,’ I said firmly. ‘It will increase it. For you will no longer need to be afraid of your mother’s legacy, or embarrassed by it. She is not here. It is only us two. And anything you give to me, I am committed to giving back to you, tenfold,’ I said boldly, relishing tonight, and the days and weeks ahead even more.
It seemed so obvious to me now that she had had few lovers since I had first initiated her. Why that should only make me feel more possessive of her, and excited at the prospect of unleashing her pleasure, and freeing her from the ghosts of her past, made no sense. But I did not intend to examine my reaction. The time for talk—for regrets—was over. She was unsure of herself, of her passion and desire—so I would have to show her how to own it.
It is a tough job, no. But I am more than up for it.
