He had met his mother and it hadn’t worked out? But he had grown up in an orphanage. Where had his mother been when he was a child? And why didn’t he know who had fathered him? Consternation gripped Ellie and she veiled her eyes. Rio managed to be incredibly sanguine about realities that would have seriously disturbed her and it made her all the more aware of how very little she knew about him and how unwittingly tactless she must have been while she was happily rambling on about what finding Beppe had meant to her. Of course, what had she ever personally shared with Rio? Discomfiture filled her. As a rule, Ellie was reserved and she kept her secrets close. She didn’t share personal stuff except with Polly but that had to change now that she was married. Didn’t it? It wouldn’t be fair to expect more from Rio than she was prepared to give herself.
‘Yes, I was incredibly fortunate,’ Ellie agreed ruefully as she took another appreciative bite of her delicious pasta salad. ‘Can I ask you about something?’
‘Anything…’
‘Earlier when we were together, you…you used a condom,’ Ellie reminded him.
‘Isn’t that what you wanted?’ Rio responded, his ebony brows drawing together in a frown. ‘If you are pregnant, we’ll make the best of it but if you’re not, well…it gives us more options.’
‘You mean, we wouldn’t have to stay together,’ Ellie framed, her heart suddenly beating with a dulled thunderous thud against her breastbone.
Rio lounged back in his chair with his wine glass and settled frowning dark golden eyes on her. ‘Don’t put words in my mouth. I said options and I meant options. I believe that babies should be planned and greeted with joy on their arrival.’
Ellie nodded woodenly, thinking about the pregnancy test waiting in her case. ‘I agree. The circumstances weren’t ideal.’
‘Ideal isn’t everything, principessa.’ A slow-burning, wicked smile slanted Rio’s beautiful mouth. ‘But I did notice that day at my house that the idea of getting pregnant turned you as white as a sheet. It’s not a risk I’ll run with you unless you ask me to…’
And how likely was that? Yet that unexpected offer soothed her in some strange way. He wasn’t slamming the door in her face. He had not said that if she wasn’t pregnant they would eventually separate and divorce. His outlook wasn’t that simple or that final. So why was she relieved? What had she feared? She searched his lean, darkly handsome features, her mouth running dry as she struggled to look beyond the sleek dark beauty of him into her appalled reaction to the threat of being parted from him. Polly had seen what she had hidden even from herself: she had got attached, dangerously attached to Rio Benedetti. Recognising that reality hollowed her out with fear. She was afraid of getting hurt and very reluctant to want more from Rio than he was likely to give.
She went upstairs to explore and discovered a dreamy spacious bedroom swathed in opulent fabrics and a divine four-poster bed. Their luggage had arrived in advance and had been unpacked for them. Off the bedroom there was a splendid marble bathroom with sumptuous heated towels and very fancy fittings. Champagne and flowers awaited them. She filched a chocolate off the silver dish beside the champagne flutes and bit into it with so much pleasure that she closed her eyes.
‘You like chocolate,’ Rio said huskily from the doorway.
‘Correction—I would kill for chocolate,’ Ellie admitted with a sudden laugh.
His amusement ebbed as he looked at her, the sheer stunning elegance of her in her gown, stray copper curls showing round her hairline now, the heavier make-up she had worn for the wedding faded, a faint streak of eyeliner at the side of one eye where she had rubbed. And yet she was still so beautiful with her clear green eyes and lush pink mouth. ‘I think I would kill for you,’ he breathed, stunned and unsettled both by the thought and the feeling.
Unfortunately Rio was being forced to work without a script. He was out of his comfort zone. Hit it and quit it was no blueprint for a marriage or a woman like Ellie. If she was pregnant, she would be with him for a long time, he reminded himself darkly. She would make demands, the sort of demands he had never had to deal with before. She would restrict him. She would also probably and regularly drive him nuts. But on the other hand, every pleasure came with a price tag and she was clever, amusing, passionate and ridiculously sexy.
Ellie plucked the pins from hair and let the thick mass fall to her shoulders. Then she spun round. ‘I need your help to get out of this,’ she admitted, turning and indicating the lace ties. ‘It’s beginning to feel very tight.’
Rio removed his jacket and cravat and unbuttoned his shirt. He was thinking about the curves inside that corset, the wondrous curves that bad timing had forced him to neglect that afternoon. Raw hunger roared through him afresh. ‘I love corsets,’ he confided.
‘Thought you would,’ Ellie murmured a tad smugly.
He released the ties and the hooks and let the garment drop to the floor while she exhaled in relief that the constriction had gone. He kept his arms round her, dipped his mouth to the smooth slope between her neck and shoulder and dallied there, lifting his head to nip teasingly at her earlobe at the same time as he raised his hands to cup her full breasts.
Ellie rested her head back against him, tiny flames of arousal dancing over her skin as long fingers tugged and teased at her swollen nipples. She was so sensitive there that she pressed her thighs together as if she could contain the rush of damp heat at her core. He backed her down on the bed but she demurred, pausing to unzip her skirt and let it fall, momentarily forgetting that she was bare beneath.
‘Memories,’ Rio teased with a wicked grin, disposing of his shirt to reveal a corrugated abdomen, hard with lean muscle.
‘You work out,’ Ellie guessed, studying him closely, faint colour feathering into her cheeks.
‘Every day. I’m at a desk too much. Ah…is that a look of approval from Dr Ellie?’
Ellie scrambled onto the bed and beneath the smooth white linen sheet and immediately felt better about hiding her overlarge behind and sturdy thighs. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with her body, she simply wished that when she had been blessed with curves she had also been blessed with more height to carry them. Rio undressed, dropping everything in a heap while Ellie watched him like a hawk, thinking that it had never occurred to her to wonder what it would be like to have her own male stripper. He had a really great body. Broad shoulders, lean hips, the inverted V of muscle running down to…that! Ellie stared, reddened, no longer marvelling that she had been sore in the aftermath of her introduction to sex. He wasn’t small anywhere and, being Rio, he was already primed for action.
‘We can do without this,’ he told her, yanking the sheet back. ‘I plan to make you very hot, principessa.’
Ellie rested back on the pillows. ‘And I plan to make you equally hot,’ she warned him.
Grinning, Rio came down on the bed beside her. ‘You’ve already achieved that…or didn’t you notice?’
Ellie stroked the velvet-smooth thrust of him with wondering fingers. ‘I noticed—’
‘A little less of that,’ he censured as she explored him.
‘No, you don’t get to hand out orders in bed,’ Ellie told him.