It was like a physical blow. As if he’d brought his hard, pitiless hand slashing down on her. But how could it be a blow? How could it? A blow—physical or verbal—would hurt, and how could she be hurt by what he’d said?
Not any longer. Not since that morning in Manhattan, when she’d run out of the hotel room to see him waiting by the elevator. Walking out on her after a night that had been so...so...
‘But we have no choice, Ariana—neither you, nor I.’
He cut across the memories she must not have. Memories that were forbidden her, too cruel to remember.
His voice was still harsh and she could only go on looking at him, unable to turn away, to hide, to find any protection or shelter from him. Just as she had been unable to find any protection or shelter from the words he’d dropped like stones, crushing her, breaking her ribs, her lungs, as those elevator doors had opened for him.
‘I’m returning to Italy to be married.’
With jerking hands she raised her glass to her lips, bone-dry again, and took another jolting sip, her eyes dropping down as if to protect herself from his rejecting gaze.
Rejecting her...not wanting her. Not wanting her for anything other than what he’d already had of her.
And not even wanting that now. Not even in his dreams.
In her head she heard his cruel, mocking words that night in Lucca, when he’d excoriated her with his rejection of her.
‘Dreams? Of you? Do you think I would ever sully myself on you again?’
Her grip on her glass of water tightened to painfulness, numbing her fingertips with the pressure she was exerting. It was as if the pressure were around her throat, choking her. Choking her with the truth she had to face.
Luca Farnese—not wanting her...
Not wanting her that nightmare morning-after in Manhattan.
Not wanting her in that hideous scene in his hotel room in Lucca.
Not wanting her now, in this nightmare.
He was forcing himself to marry her—because for a second time she had committed an act of such criminal folly that she must pay for it all her life.
But my baby will not pay! I will not allow that!
Fierce emotion seared through her. Her eyes snapped up again.
‘Yes—yes, wedohave a choice! A choice I will exercise and to hell with you! I will have this baby on my own, and you will not have to force yourself to have anything to do with it—anything to do with me!’
She felt her jaw clench, her eyes burning with fire as she ploughed on, saying what had to be said—what had to be faced. By her—and by him. Her voice was ragged, but she would not let it break. By force of will she spoke vehemently, desperately...
‘You’ve never wanted me for anything but sex! I’ve known that—and faced it!—ever since that morning in New York! You used me then like I was a whore—a sex toy—something to slake your passing lust with! Knowing all the time that you were going to be married to another woman—knowing it all the time you were having sex with me! And if you think...if you think that I would ever,everlet a man like that haveanythingto do with an innocent baby—mybaby!—then—’
His voice cut across hers like a scalpel, eviscerating her.
‘And do you think that I would ever want the mother of a child of mine to be a woman so jealous, so vindictive, that she would do what you did to your own cousin? A woman who had done you no harm—none! Who could never harm anyone! The gentlest, sweetest soul—’
A smothered cry broke from her and she turned away, gulping at her water, wishing it were whisky so that she could drown herself in its oblivion. She was shaking—shaking like a leaf—and she could not hold her glass steady. Water was splashing on to her chest, her lap...
Suddenly the glass was taken from her. Set down on the glass and chrome coffee table—another item of furniture she hated. But then hatred was all that was in her now...all that was knifing through her, hatred and fury and rage and destruction...
She felt the sofa dip beside her, felt her hands being taken. She was shaking still, but the hard, large hands folding around hers would not let them shake. Her eyes jolted upwards. Luca was seated beside her, his hands tight over hers. He was speaking—she could hear his words. But they could not be his, surely... For they were not harsh and hating...
They were weary.
‘Ariana—stop. I will too. We must. Both of us.’ A heavy breath was exhaled from him. ‘Somehow we have to deal with this. Wehaveto...’
He drew her to her feet, and she could not help but rise with him.