His Virgin Bride: The Fiorenza Forced Marriage / Bought: For His Convenience or Pleasure? / A Night With Consequences. Margaret Mayo
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you had.’ He drew in a breath and added, ‘We were too alike if the truth be known. I never quite forgave him for not protecting my mother and he never quite forgave me for not protecting Giovanni.’
‘What happened to your brother?’ Emma asked.
He picked up his glass and stared down into the contents for a moment. When his eyes came back to hers they had a brittle edge to them that warned her she had come a little too close. ‘I did not bring you out this evening to talk about the past and what can never be changed,’ he said. ‘You have told me all I needed to know and as far as I am concerned I have done the same for you. The rest of my family are dead and buried. I am the only one who remains. Let that be the end of it.’
Emma frowned at him. ‘Why do you keep pushing everyone away?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you care how other people feel about you?’
‘I am not responsible for other people’s feelings,’ he said. ‘I am only responsible for my own.’
‘It sounds to me like you don’t have any feelings,’ she said. ‘Or if you did you switched them off years ago.’
‘I have feelings but I choose not to let them get out of control. I do not see the point in being anyone’s slave. Once you care too much for someone they can exploit you. That is why I do allow myself to become too attached. It is easier all round. No one gets hurt, or at least not intentionally.’
‘So you won’t allow yourself to love anyone, not even the women who share your body and your bed,’ Emma said in disgust. ‘Don’t you realise how much you’re shortchanging yourself?’
He gave her one of his annoyingly indifferent shrugs. ‘That is the way it is.’
‘Well, I hope that one day you meet someone who turns your neatly controlled world upside down,’ she said. ‘I hope you fall in love and hard, and then get unceremoniously dumped just so you know what it feels like.’
He gave her an unaffected smile. ‘Are you putting a curse on me, Emma?’ he asked.
Emma rolled her eyes at him. ‘You’re impossible. I don’t know why I even bother talking to you.’
He smiled lopsidedly as he signalled for the waiter. ‘You talk to me because deep down you like me,’ he said. ‘I am the bad boy you are desperate to reform.’
She gave him a withering look. ‘I know when I’m beaten and you are definitely in the too-hard basket,’ she said. ‘I’m starting to think you’re way beyond redemption.’
‘Yes, well, that is what my father thought,’ he said. ‘Didn’t he tell you what a wastrel I was?’
Emma frowned at his embittered tone. ‘No, he didn’t say anything of the sort. I told you, he barely mentioned you the whole time I was living with him. Besides, I didn’t want to upset him by prying.’
He smirked. ‘It would not do to upset the goose who was about to hand you the golden egg.’
She glared at him heatedly. ‘That’s just so typical of you,’ she said. ‘You have a tendency to measure everyone else by your own appalling standards. Just because you regularly use people to get what you want doesn’t mean other people will necessarily act that way.’
He held her gaze for several beats. ‘I have found most people work things to their advantage,’ he said. ‘It is hardwired into human nature.’
‘I feel sorry for you,’ Emma said. ‘You are so cynical you can’t possibly enjoy life.’
He gave her an indolent smile. ‘On the contrary, Emma I enjoy life very much,’ he said. ‘I have a good income, good food, good wine and good sex—what more could a man want?’
Emma could feel her face burning, but soldiered on regardless. ‘I hope you’re not going to conduct any of your sordid little affairs right in front of my nose,’ she said. ‘It would be totally nauseating to see a host of vacuous women simpering after you like you’re some kind of sex god.’
‘You surely do not expect me to be celibate for the duration of our marriage, do you?’ he asked with a twinkle in his dark gaze.
Emma moistened her dry lips. ‘I…no…well…I…’
‘I have not been celibate in a very long time,’ he said, still watching her with that smouldering gaze.
She shifted restively in her seat. ‘Yes, well, the rest will probably do you the world of good, I would have thought.’
‘What about you?’ he asked.
She looked at him warily. ‘W-what about me?’
‘What is your longest stint being celibate?’
She dropped her gaze from the penetrating probe of his. ‘Um…a fair while…’ she answered vaguely.
The waiter came at that moment to take their order, giving Emma a much-needed chance to regroup. She buried her head in the menu, hoping Rafaele couldn’t see how ruffled she was at his choice of conversation. She felt so unsophisticated around him, like a child playing at grown-ups. She didn’t have the aplomb to laugh off such a personal topic, nor did she have the experience.
Although she knew enough about her body and its responses to know what physical pleasure felt like, somehow she suspected the pleasure Rafaele Fiorenza would dish out would leave her solitary explorations sadly lacking. She had sensed the sensual potency of him that afternoon in the pool. His hardened body brushing against hers had ignited spot fires beneath her skin; she could feel them smouldering even now. Her wayward body was pulsing at the proximity of his long strong legs so close to hers. She had hers tucked as far back beneath her chair as they would go and yet she could still feel the magnetic pull of his body. She couldn’t get her mind away from the thought of having his legs entangled with hers the way they had been in the pool, his hair-roughened thighs rubbing against her smoother ones, the heat and power of his erection so tantalisingly close she had felt the throb of his blood pounding against her belly.
The waiter’s request for her order brought Emma out of her reverie and, after choosing the first thing she saw on the menu, she sat back and took a reviving sip of the white wine Rafaele had ordered for her.
He was still watching her in that indolent way of his, as if he was quietly assessing her character. It made her feel a little exposed, as if he could see through the layers of her skull to what she had been thinking about him just moments ago.
‘Why are you blushing?’ he asked. ‘I thought at first it was sunburn but that colour keeps coming and going in your cheeks.’
Emma sat bolt upright. ‘I’m not blushing,’ she said, even though she knew it wasn’t true. She could feel the twin fires burning on her face and wished, not for the first time, she wasn’t so out of her depth.
He gave her a knowing smile. ‘I think it is rather cute,’ he said. ‘I do not think I have made a woman blush in years.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t from lack of trying,’ she quipped wryly.
His smile widened. ‘No, that is indeed probably true.’
Emma picked up her glass and took another tentative sip, conscious of his gaze resting on her. Her pulse fluttered in response to his contemplative scrutiny, each of the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickling as if he had touched her there the way he had done earlier in the pool.
‘What do you intend to do with your share of the villa at the end of our marriage?’ he asked.
She set her glass back down and met his eyes. ‘I’m not sure…I haven’t thought that far ahead…’
‘Would you consider selling it to me?’
She nibbled at her bottom lip for a moment. ‘That seems a bit unfair, making you pay for something that really should have been yours in the first place,’ she said.
His expression