A Debt Paid In The Marriage Bed

An amused glint entered his gaze. “I’m fairly sure I would be bored with an obedient wife after you. But you are right on the lingerie—that would be my idea of perfection.”

She said a very bad word in her head. “You don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m different. Changed. Not the woman you married, nor will I ever be again.”

“Then I look forward to finding out who that woman is.” He gave her an appraising look. “I’m prepared to make concessions to make this work. Your career is a case in point. You’ve clearly become very successful. You’ve worked hard to get where you are. As long as it doesn’t interfere with our important commitments, we’ll make it work.”

We’ll make it work? Heat rose up inside of her. He had no idea what her work meant to her. The sanity it had been throughout her rocky life.

“As for my mother,” he continued, “she had certain...preconceived notions regarding our marriage you never dispelled with your behavior. You also never made an effort with her. If you do so, I expect you’ll find her a different woman.”

Her fingers curled into a fist. “She thought I deliberately trapped you into marriage.”

“Not an unreasonable assumption when our one night together resulted in a pregnancy. I did, however, make it clear that the responsibility lay on both of us.”

“How big of you.” A red mist of fury wrapped itself around her brain. “What other concessions are you prepared to make, Lorenzo? Are you prepared to let me beneath that impenetrable layer of yours? Talk to me instead of shutting me out? Confront our issues instead of pushing me to the outer fringes of your life until I cease to exist?”

“Yes.” The low rumble in his voice vibrated through her. “I understand I was distant at times...emotionally unavailable if you like. I recognize that as a fault of mine I need to work on. But let’s just be clear, Angelina, you locked me out just as surely as I ever did you with those cast-iron defenses of yours.”

After the big chill had begun. Because eventually it had become too painful to give and never get anything back.

Hurt contracted the muscles around her heart. The wine warming her blood, loosening her inhibitions, made her reckless. “If we’re going for the brutal truth here,” she growled, “if we’re not going to pull our punches, then let’s get all the skeletons out on the table shall we? The real reason our marriage failed was Lucia. Because you would have preferred to stay in your cave, pining for your dead wife. Instead you had to marry me.”

The color leached from his olive skin. His face tightened, cheekbones standing out like blades. The cold fire that engulfed his dark eyes told her she’d gone too far this time. “It was your obsession with Lucia that you wouldn’t let go of, not mine.”

Her chin lifted, heart pounding in her chest. “Tell yourself that enough and you might even start to believe it.”

The silence in the room was deafening. Chest tight, she pushed to her feet and crossed to the floor-to-ceiling windows that framed a magnificent view of Central Park lit up at night. Hugging her arms around herself, she took a deep breath and attempted to regain her equilibrium.

“You aren’t this heartless,” she said after a long moment, turning to face him. “I don’t believe you will let the Carmichael Company fail. You like my father too much.”

His eyes were a purposeful, dark velvet cool. “Then don’t make me. I meant what I said, Angie. I want you back. I want us to give this marriage the shot it deserves. You come back to me with your heart and head fully in it and I will ensure your legacy survives.”

The confusion swirling in her head deepened, thickened. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, struggled to contain her emotions, but they spilled outside of the edges of her barely shored-up walls. “Wasn’t it enough for you?” she asked, voice trembling. “Every second, every minute of those last excruciating months together? We couldn’t even be in the same room without tearing each other’s throats out. And when we did, it didn’t feel any better...it felt worse.”

He got to his feet and prowled toward her. “We lost a baby. It was painful, Angelina, it hurt.”

A rock climbed into her throat. “And here we are hurting each other again.”

He stopped centimeters from her. Her body reacted to the heat of him, the familiarity of him, vibrating with an internal memory she couldn’t control. She pressed her fingers to her cheeks, trying to hold it in, trying to stop the insanity midflow, but he saw it, read her as he always had, eyes darkening with heat.

“The point is to get past the pain. To deal with what we should have dealt with years ago.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, fear bubbling up inside of her like magma, threatening to push her on a course she knew she’d regret. “I’m engaged, Lorenzo. I love him.”

Fire licked his gaze. “You know that’s a lie.”

“It’s not a lie. It’s the truth.”

“You are my wife.” Curving an arm around her waist, he drew her to him. She swallowed as her vibrating body swayed perilously close to the wall of heat that drew her like a moth to a flame. She flattened a palm against his chest, but her feet wouldn’t seem to take her anywhere and her eyes locked on his. “Kiss me like you don’t belong to me,” he said huskily, “and I might reconsider.”

“No.” Her sharp response sounded as panicked as she felt. “Why are you doing this? Why are you being so cruel?”

“Because I should have stopped you the first time you walked out. Because the thought of you with another man drives me insane...because you haunt me, Angelina, every time I’m with another woman. All I can see is those beautiful blue eyes of yours and those vows we recited...” He cupped her jaw in his hand, fingers closing possessively over her skin. “Because we are not over, mi amore. We never will be.”

Her heart stuttered, an ache enveloping her that seemed to go soul-deep. “You can’t do this to me,” she said hoarsely. “Throw threats at me one minute, then say these things the next and just expect me to—”

He lowered his head, breath mingling with hers. “Prove you feel nothing for me. Prove what I’m saying isn’t true and I’ll walk away.”

“No.” But even as she said it, his mouth was covering hers in a whisper-soft caress that switched on every cell in her body. She closed her eyes. Just do it, Angie. Prove it to him, then walk away.

He slid a hand up her back, flattened his big palm against her spine. Warm, possessive, his touch seeped into her senses, stroked a wounded, jagged part of her that had never healed. Warning bells went off in her head, a blaring, unmistakable cautionary signal she should stop this now. But she had to convince him it was over.

Slow, infinitely gentle nudges of his mouth demanded a response. She held herself rigid, determined to end it. Tightening his fingers around her jaw, he tilted her head back and took a deeper possession of her mouth. The alarm bells in her head grew louder as the sweet intoxication of his kiss melted her bones.

“Lorenzo—”

He slicked his tongue across her lower lip. Erotic, intimate, it sent shock waves of pleasure rocketing through her. Her mind blanked, stomach clenched, fingers curling around a handful of his T-shirt. He did it again, stroking soft, vulnerable flesh with a deliberate possession that made her quiver.

When he flicked his tongue along the seam of her lips and demanded entry, she obeyed, lost in a sea of sensation. He rewarded her with a hot, toe-curling caress that made her moan low in her throat, grab hold of him more firmly.

He brought her closer with the palm of his hand at her back. Swept it down to cup the flesh of her buttock. The kiss turned needy, desperate, her hips arching against his burgeoning arousal. Thick, hard, he was so potently virile he turned her blood to fire.

Reality slammed into her like a bucket of ice dropped over her head. She shoved a hand against his chest and pushed back. Breathless, her mouth bruised from his kisses, she stood staring at him.

How had that happened? How had she let that happen?

“I hate you,” she breathed. “I really do.”

His mouth twisted. “That makes two of us. Sometimes I really hate you, too, tesoro. It’s the rest of the time that messes us up.”

She shook her head. Backed away from him. Turning, she snatched her purse off the chair and walked out without looking back.

What had she done?

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