‘Belle, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Go back to bed.’
My humiliation threatened to engulf me at the curt command—but, before I could mumble my way through an apology and flee, something Remy had said to me recently echoed in my skull.
Alexi wants you too. He’s just better at hiding it.
And suddenly I noticed the tension in his jaw and the flicker of something dangerous in those impossibly blue eyes.
Was I imagining Alexi’s response, thanks to years of adolescent fantasies and the massive sensory overload I had just endured? But, even if that was true, did it matter?
If I wanted Alexi to stop treating me like a child, I had to stop acting like one. I gathered every ounce of courage I had ever possessed and stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight, close enough to smell the chlorine on his skin and see the ripple of tension make his pectoral muscles quiver.
‘No,’ I said, a little astonished by how clear my voice sounded when I was dying inside.
If he rejected me now, if he treated me like a child, if Remy had been wrong, I might never recover. But somehow I knew—just like Remy, when he pressed his foot to the floor and let the new Galanti prototype soar—that the possible reward was worth the risk.
‘What do you mean, no?’ Alexi replied, the dark frown arrowing down so sharply I could almost see thunderclouds forming above his head.
‘I’m not going to bed.’ I let my gaze glide over the planes and angles of his body, let the lava settle between my thighs. The scatter of scars from the many times his father had hurt him added to the deep well of compassion in my ragged breathing. ‘I want to be here, with you. I’m not a child any more, Alexi.’
He blinked slowly, his beautiful lips, the lips I’d yearned to feel on mine so many times, firming into a thin line. A new wave of heat raged through me.
But this wasn’t embarrassed heat any more. It was excited, exhilarated, triumphant heat.
For the first time ever, I’d left Alexi Galanti completely speechless. He didn’t have a snarky remark, an amused comeback. He had nothing.
His gaze glided over me in return. And I felt the burn go through me like wildfire.
‘So, you’re a woman, are you?’ I could hear the edge in his voice, but I could also see the arousal—adding a silver glint to the deep blue of his irises—and knew he was testing me. He wanted to scare me off as he had so many times before.
And suddenly I knew why he had treated me like a child long after I had become a woman. Remy was right—he wanted me. But that gallant streak which he had always pretended didn’t exist—the gallant streak which made him take his father’s fists to protect his brother—had prevented him from taking what he wanted. What we both wanted.
The revelation was like a balm to my soul. And a spur to my senses. It felt how I imagined taking the chequered flag in Bahrain or Melbourne or Barcelona two seconds ahead of the field would feel like. Breathtaking and wonderful, exhilarating and life-affirming all at once.
I’d taken an enormous risk and here was my reward.
‘Yes, I’m a woman,’ I said, my voice clearer and more certain now. ‘And I have been
for a while. You’ve just pretended not to see it.’ But he saw it now, I realised, when he put on his jeans in front of me, almost daring me to drink my fill as he tugged them on and buttoned the fly. So of course I did.
He hadn’t said anything but, as he turned into the light, I noticed the bruising on his jaw.
‘He hit you,’ I said, lifting my hand to soothe him.
His arm shot out and he clasped my wrist in an iron grip, preventing my fingers from reaching the skin.
‘Don’t,’ he said. The word was expelled on a tortured rasp and the subtle whiff of tequila on his breath—and my heart silently broke in two at the wary look on his face. ‘I don’t need your pity,’ he said, but I could hear the pain.
It was so real and vivid, it made my stomach ache.
His grip loosened and then he dropped my hand and looked down. The defeated stoop of his shoulders, the exhaustion in his stance, burned away my intense anger at his father until all that was left was the grief. And the longing.
I stepped closer and cradled his cheeks in my hands. He stiffened, but made no move to stop me this time.
I stared into those beautiful blue eyes, for once unguarded, and saw the sadness there, which made me want to weep. But I could also see the desire.
The love I had always had for him—this proud, stubborn, foolishly gallant man—flowed through me and I let every ounce of it shine in my eyes.
‘Damn it,’ he said as he covered my hands with his but didn’t move to pull them away from his jaw. ‘Don’t look at me like that, bella notte.’