‘What’s this from?’ He drew his finger over her skin, tracing a very pale imperfection that ran in a semi-circular shape.
‘A dog bite,’ Skye murmured, sleepy and relaxed. ‘When I was twelve.’
She didn’t see him frown. ‘It only bit you here?’
Skye stifled a yawn. ‘Yes. He was old and quite crazy, really. He’d got a fright and I was sitting on the floor, right beside him. He gave me a fright, let me tell you.’
‘I didn’t know you had a dog.’
‘He wasn’t mine,’ Skye murmured, shifting a little. Her back was feeling much better but she didn’t tell Matteo that. He continued to move his palms over her flesh and she didn’t want him to stop. Ever. ‘He was my great-aunt’s.’
Matteo’s hands were still for a moment. ‘She raised you after your father died?’
‘Yeah.’ Another yawn. ‘She had seven dogs. Apparently she had a penchant for taking in strays. I was her last, though.’
‘You were hardly a stray,’ Matteo pointed out. ‘Are you close to her?’
‘She passed away three years ago,’ Skye said crisply, closing the conversation out of habit.
‘Were you close to her? Before she died,’ Matteo pushed, either not comprehending her cues or not caring about them.
Skye tossed the words around in her mind, making sense of them, listening to them as if she were an outsider. ‘She raised me,’ Skye said after a long pause. ‘I’m very grateful to her.’
But Matteo wasn’t fooled by Skye’s selective choice of language. She was hiding something, and that rankled. More than it should, given their relationship, or lack thereof. What had he expected? That she’d suddenly open up and confide all her deep and dark secrets to him?
She certainly wouldn’t now. But how come they’d never discussed this before, when they’d first married? Why hadn’t he asked more questions?
Because he hadn’t wanted to know.
Skye had simply been a means to an end, not a person with her own thoughts, feelings, history and sadness.
The realisation wasn’t new, yet it sat strangely in his chest, like an accusation lined with barbed wire. He’d looked at her and seen the hotel.
He gazed down on his wife and a tight smile cracked his lips as he saw that she had fallen asleep. With her dark hair and pink cheeks and pale skin, her red lips shaped like two perfect rose petals. She was his own Snow White.
Only he was no Prince Charming. Prince Charming would never have married her for a hotel. To avenge a theft that had taken place years earlier. And he certainly wouldn’t have blackmailed her into staying married.
His smile faded as he reached for her gently, lifting her as though she weighed nothing, and cradling her to his chest.
She stirred a little, lifting a hand to him, but then she relaxed, a smile on her face.
He lifted his gaze, staring straight ahead as he carried her through the house and up the stairs, to the solitude of her own room.
* * *
Skye’s dreams were of Matteo. Of the night they’d met—the night she’d fallen in love. Her dreams were of their conversations, the words he’d offered her that had been more special than gold dust. ‘I don’t believe in fairy tales,’ she’d told him the day after they’d met, when the mirage of a fairy tale had hovered on her horizon. She hadn’t dared try to grab it. Reaching for perfection resulted in pain.
‘Even when you’re living one?’ he’d pushed, pressing his lips to her cheek so that her stomach had lurched, her heart had thumped and her body had gone into sensory meltdown.
‘There’s no such thing.’ She’d learned that lesson years ago. Her mother had deserted her. Her father had never bothered to get to know her. Her great-aunt had avoided affection as though it were a sign of personal weakness to care for another human. Boarding school had been more a prison than a Hogwarts. ‘There’s just real life.’
‘But sometimes real life can be every bit as perfect as a fairy tale, no?’
Her dreams were of their first kiss, his proposal, their wedding, their first time together. All the times thereafter. The fairy tale she’d thought she was living. A fairy tale that had been a nightmare, in all ways but one. He’d betrayed her and he’d broken her heart, but his body called to hers. Nothing would change that.
She moaned in her bed, arching her back, and she could feel the ghost of his hands on her. A phantom touch that was a torment because it was not real. She stretched her hands out, instinctively seeking him, and not finding him. She reached for him and didn’t connect with flesh.
The sense of loss was instant and it was sharp. She stood on autopilot, still groggy from sleep, her body in complete charge. She moved through his home with no idea of the time. It could have been midnight, or it could have been the early hours of the morning. It didn’t matter.