As opening volleys went, it detonated like a percussion grenade, leaving his inner ears vibrating. “You think walking away from you was easy?” He was instantly at the same level of anger she was projecting, still riding a wave of intense sexual frustration.
“Oh, I could tell it was hard, Paolo,” she seethed. “But your silly bet was more important to you than what was going on between us. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?”
Part of Lauren was screaming in horror that she was revealing herself this way, urging her to clam up and brush this whole thing under the rug. The other part couldn’t stay silent. She was too angry.
“Pitiful,” she supplied. “I’m not proud that I lack inhibition around you, but at least when I let go in Charleston you were there with me. Tonight you sure weren’t! I hate that you can control this attraction between us and I can’t. If you think I’m going to marry into an imbalance like that, you’re crazy.”#p#????#e#
Her rejection of marriage seemed to make him stand taller while he narrowed his eyes to keen slits. “Is that why you acted like I had contaminated you the morning after in Charleston? You were embarrassed by how abandoned you’d been?”
Lauren swallowed, regretting calling attention to how unconstrained she’d been. A blush rose to swallow her face in a rancid burn. She ignored it to mutter, “When Ryan and I—”
“Never talk to me about the two of you in bed together,” Paolo snarled, cutting his hand through the air to mentally slam shut a door he would never open. Ever. He could barely stand knowing it had happened. He wouldn’t listen to the details.
Lauren swayed as though buffeted by the force of his antagonism.
He looked away, not willing to apologize for his outburst, but dismayed that he was revealing how sensitive he was to the topic.
“—married,” she finished with a tremor of incredulity. “I was only saying that when we got married, I’d never even kissed another man. That sort of inexperience was always a disadvantage. You’ve had a million lovers and—”
“None of those women meant to me what Ryan meant to you,” he ground out. “Do you think you’re the only one worrying about comparisons?”
The question stunned her. Her hands went clammy and her mind went blank.
He gathered himself into a haughty cloud of resentful humility. “Why do you think I tried to stop you that night in Charleston?” he growled. “I thought you were reaching for him. I won’t be his stand-in.”
Her mouth opened, but whatever words she might have found caught in her throat. She had never seen Paolo anything but aristocratic and arrogant and entitled, but right now his pride lay on the floor between them as clearly as a skinned hide. She had to tread very carefully.
He rubbed his face. “Dio! Perhaps we should be ashamed of ourselves for falling into bed that night without considering who it could hurt, but what we did there...don’t be ashamed of that, Lauren. I tried to tell you once before, I like that you respond to me as strongly as I respond to you.”
Then why did you walk away tonight? she wanted to shout, while the rest of what he’d said set a lump of emotion into her throat. “Ryan wasn’t home enough for me to take for granted he would be in my bed. Of course I knew it was you.” That’s why she had reached for him. It had been the culmination of a thousand repressed fantasies.
“And I knew it was you,” Paolo stated forcefully. “You’re not some meaningless hookup, Lauren.”
She searched his closed expression, yearning to believe he was telling the truth, but it seemed so implausible. She was a boring, small-town goody-goody.
Paolo could barely breathe. His lungs felt as though they were being sawed in two while guilt and other emotions tried to smother him. Lauren was pushing him into a territory of self-examination where he didn’t want to go. Yes, there had been a lot of women. Yes, it was true that making love with them had never been an act of making love. He had never seen anything shameful in it because the women he’d been with had all been looking for what he also wanted: physical release.
Suddenly he was deeply ashamed though. His very active, if well-protected sex life was sordid when held up to her making love means something to me.
But that was another way of saying that Ryan had meant something to her. He hated knowing that she might be angry with her dead husband, but still had feelings for him.
Sex always demanded emotion from a woman, though. Paolo knew that. They put their small frames at the mercy of a much stronger being. That required a level of trust men didn’t need. Men weren’t vulnerable when they stripped and covered a woman. They were indomitable. That’s why they liked sex so much.