She turned and left the room, hating his quiet, snarling cynicism . . . despising her cowardice even more.
* * *
She only slept for a few hours a night for the rest of her workweek. When she did finally sleep on Sun
day night, it was no relief, because she dreamed.
Again, she was blinded by night and was in Vanni’s arms, his cock piercing her, her flesh quickening and thrilling around him. She was secure in the cocooning darkness, safe to move at her body’s urging and at his command, free to take his intimate touches, glad to hear his hot, whispered words as he took control of their fierce joining.
“Arch your back, Emma. Offer yourself to me.”
Her spine curved in supple acquiescence, thrusting forth her breasts as far as her restraints would allow. Restraints? Yes, she wasn’t on the beach, after all. The dream had shifted. Her wrists were bound securely over her head. Her legs were spread wide, and his cock thrust high inside her, pounding her like a relentless wave. She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to.
“That’s right,” he murmured darkly in her ear as if he’d just heard her thought. “There’s nowhere for you to go now. You can’t escape.”
He thrust so hard that a cry popped out of her throat. It hurt. No . . . it wasn’t pain, it was a knot of pleasure so tight, it felt like a brutal cramp. But then the pressure unfurled, and she was climaxing.
“Look at me.” She gasped, her body shuddering in sharp pleasure. “Open your eyes. Look at me,” he shouted. Only then did she realize she couldn’t see him because her eyelids were clamped tight.
She opened her eyes and saw him over her, naked and savage, bracing himself on muscular arms. She was on a bed, and the room was lit with golden light. His face was rigid and cold, but his eyes burned her. He thrust his hips and grunted gutturally, the symbols on dense, swelling biceps flashing in her dazed vision like they were lighted neon, not black ink. She felt his cock jerk and erupt inside her, his warm semen filling her.
“Don’t you dare look away,” he grated out, white teeth flashing.
Emma awoke with a start, Vanni’s command still ringing in her ears. Without thinking, she plunged her hand beneath her shorts and underwear and moved it frantically, gasping as she finished climaxing powerfully.
A moment later, her hand fell against the bed, damp from her juices. She panted softly. She was in her bedroom, dawn peeking through the blinds. The dream was still with her, the memory palpable. She could still see his eyes, feel his cock swell inside her before he grunted in release, savage and beautiful.
There’s nowhere for you to go now. Don’t you dare look away.
She rose sluggishly from her mussed bed. This was reality, not a dream, and she needed to get ready for work. Her hospice had quickly reassigned her to a dozen households where she visited several times a week. It was both a comfort to go back to her usual schedule following her assignment at the Breakers, and yet also jarring somehow, as if she was trying to fit a new Emma into an old world.
On the way to the bathroom, she felt compelled to check her cell phone. Vanni had called again last night. She’d listened to the first message he’d left last Friday with a strange mixture of wariness and hunger.
“I need to speak with you. I think I might understand,” he’d said in that clipped, authoritative manner of his. “Call me at this number.”
How could he understand when she didn’t? She’d teased him about his insistence that he was selfish, not really believing because of what she’d seen of him, because of how much he gave her with his smallest touch. But he and that man with the voluptuous Astrid were one and the same. He was selfish, and he’d been right to warn her.
She was to blame. She’d only seen what she wanted to see. All her life, she’d made a habit of doing that. Her mother would fret and worry over lack of finances or Emma’s health. After Emma’s health crisis had resolved, circumstances had altered. Both Amanda and her mother had started to look to Emma for a sense of steady optimism, the go-to girl for a laugh and for seeing the glass half-full. She was her mother’s “miracle” child, a spot of sunshine when the fog of doubt settled. She was the stubborn one who refused to admit defeat, no matter the intimidating playing field. It was that quirk in her personality that had made her overlook what was happening with Colin and Amanda, what was probably obvious to everyone else.
It was that same fault in her character that had made her see only what she wanted to see with Vanni Montand. She’d wanted to experience a grand passion so much that she’d blinded herself, exposed herself to a situation where her naiveté and lack of experience would have undoubtedly wounded her in the end.
It already had wounded her. Thank God there wasn’t a chance for the knife to cut deeper.
She jumped slightly when her phone began to ring. It was Vanni again, she realized as a tingling sensation rippled down her limbs. She dropped the phone abruptly onto her dresser with a thud when she recognized how much she wanted to answer, how much she wanted to hear his voice again.
It suddenly struck her that her phone number was unlisted, and she’d never given it to him.
* * *
She was leaving her last home hospice visit that afternoon when she noticed a gleaming silver car whip into her patient’s driveway and glide toward her with silent stealth. The hair on her nape and arms stood on end. She recognized the vehicle from Vanni’s garage—a sleek, aerodynamically shaped four-door. Apparently, Automobiles Montand could make even a sedate sedan look as fierce and edgy as its sports cars. Her patient, Mrs. Slater, resided in a neat, working-class neighborhood in Evanston. The car couldn’t have been more out of place.
A mingled sense of dread and excitement went through her when the driver’s side door flung open.
The image of him uncoiling his long body and stepping onto the pavement burned her consciousness. Sunlight turned his hair into thick, burnished brown waves. He removed a pair of sunglasses and fixed her with his stare. Everything came to a temporary halt.
Her heartbeat. Her judgment. Time.
He wore a black suit, white shirt, and light silver tie. He looked impossibly handsome and . . . foreign somehow to her stunned brain. Exotic. She was reminded that he was the CEO and owner of a French car company and had extensive family roots in Europe. His tall, lean, muscular body might have been made to wear suits like that. He looked perfectly comfortable and natural in the expensive, fashionable clothing. He probably wore suits like that all the time. Most people were likely used to seeing him attired in such a way. She’d witnessed the exception, seeing him in gray mechanic’s coveralls and jeans.