Temptation dragged on him, a temptation that made him wary because he wasn’t interested in anything other than Jemima’s body, and only for a limited time. He needed to control this, to remember that this was about sex—the pleasure and hedonism of no-strings sex. She wasn’t his real world any more than he was hers.
‘There’s no need.’ He lifted a hand, touching her hair as he’d wanted to while he’d watched her move down the runway. ‘We had a deal, remember? This is your night off.’
He thought he’d feel better. He’d thought reminding her of their agreement, the terms, of the role she was fulfilling in his life, would make him feel in control again, would make him feel powerful. But the confusion on her features that was eclipsed by hurt as his meaning dawned did the exact opposite. He wished he could swallow the words back up.
There was courage in her look as she met his eyes. ‘What if I don’t want a night off?’
Damn it. Powerlessness surrounded him. He moved his hand so his thumb ran over her lower lip. Her eyes fluttered closed, her lashes forming two perfect fans on her face. ‘It’s what we agreed.’ He took a step back. ‘My jet will be waiting for you tomorrow.’ He slipped a card into her palm with the details of the hangar and his assistant’s number. ‘Just call when you’re ready to fly out and my driver will collect you.’
She dropped her gaze to the card for a second and then looked back at him.
‘That’s what you want?’
What he wanted? It was getting harder to answer that, but there was always his office, his livelihood, his determination to succeed. These were things that would never wane.
He dropped his lips to hers, buzzing them for the briefest moment. ‘Goodnight, uccellina. Dream of me.’
The hurt was gone from her features. Now there was defiance as she shrugged her shoulders, turning her body from his, moving towards her friends while lifting her head over her shoulder to call, ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
* * *
She dreamed of him in that strange way of haunted dreams, where the fragments seemed so real that she couldn’t say if she was asleep or awake. She dreamed of his hands on her body, his lips against hers, his arousal inside her. She dreamed of him, and she writhed for him, and she woke up with a need she couldn’t quell. It was a warm day in London, the kind of day that made her ache to be back at Almer Hall, where she could dive into the ancient pond, surrounded by mossy pavers and arum lilies, then turn onto her back, staring up at the sky until the sun formed little circles against her eyelids.
She’d done it a lot after Cameron had died. She’d wanted to escape the house, her parents, their grief and their arguments. She’d wanted to escape the whole world. In the pond, with its murky darkness, its ancient shape, she’d found a world all her own. In the water, she’d been weightless, her ears dipped below the surface so she couldn’t hear anything except the beating of her own heart.
In the pond, she’d found peace when her whole world had been falling apart. She’d found relief from summer’s bite and loss’s tight grip—the water had made her whole again.
The sun stretched across her bedroom now, long and blade-like, brighter than a star. She lifted her hand, stretching her fingers in its path, and sighed.
Cesare filled her pores, her mind, her soul, her every thought. He was a fever in her blood.
She pushed the duvet back, showering restlessly and dressing quickly—a pair of denim cut-offs and an oversized shirt that had a habit of falling off one shoulder.
Her need for him was insatiable, but there was no point rushing. He’d be working today, despite the fact it was a Sunday, and the
thought of returning to their Cannes love nest with no Cesare in sight wasn’t a particularly palatable one. She might as well spend the day catching up with friends, seeing as she was in London anyway, and fly out in the afternoon.
In fact, she made a point of going about her life, business as usual: tidying her flat, lunching with her closest girlfriends. She didn’t tell any of them where she’d been, nor who she’d been with. It was easy enough to say she was on location for a shoot—she travelled so much for work no one really thought to question it.
Despite the fact she kept herself busy, the day passed interminably slowly. As her cab cut through London in the afternoon—she’d refused to call his driver, to appear as though she couldn’t manage to get herself to the airport—she admitted to herself that she’d spent the day in a sort of a trance. It was as though her life, her world, was being viewed through a piece of glass smeared in butter. Everything was blurry and impenetrable. She’d been going through the motions but nothing had felt vibrant or right.
It was the dream that had unsettled her. That, and his comment the evening before, which she’d tried not to think about.
‘We had a deal, remember? This is your night off.’
All day she’d pushed those words away, refusing to focus on them, but now as she approached the airport they found purchase in her brain and she couldn’t quieten them.
‘This is your night off.’
She knew what they were, what she’d agreed to, yet his calm reminder of that tightened around her throat like a vise, so she could barely breathe. As though they could so easily be reduced to a simple arrangement, a contract, she as someone who got ‘nights off’. The idea of willingly choosing to be away from him... A shudder ran the length of her spine, a sense of foreboding, because very soon she’d no longer be a part of his life. To Cesare, this was just business, and she was a fool to have forgotten that, even for a moment.
It hurt, but the pain was good. She held it to her chest because it was like a shield—so long as she remembered the truth of what they were, so long as she kept in mind the only thing he’d ever want from her was her body, then she could take the best of what this was, enjoying the sensual pleasure without letting her emotions—her heart—get even remotely entangled.
* * *
His fingertips traced invisible circles over her shoulder, waking her softly. Her eyes felt heavy and she blinked them several times to clear sleep from their depths. Disorientation followed. It was warm, as it had been the day before, and she remembered the pond at Almer Hall as though she’d actually been there, so vivid was her recollection. Except she hadn’t been; she’d been in London, and she’d been alone.
Craving Cesare.