“The very one,” he replied coldly.
But he did not wait for her to invite him inside. He strode forward, expecting her to fall back, and so she did. With a deepening flush on her porcelain cheeks, reminding him that she had been meant to be not only the perfect English rose, but an innocent in every respect.
Instead of the kind of woman who would lead her husband on a merry chase against his specific instructions.
“I have spent the past two weeks tracking you this way and that across the Italian peninsula,” he told her shortly as he found his way down the hall that led off of the entryway and into the room where she must have been sitting, for it was bright with light, the flat-screen television on the wall had been paused, and it smelled of her. He gritted his teeth. “When I distinctly recall making it clear to you that I wished for you to remain where I left you.”
She watched him with what he thought was wariness and he told himself he was glad of it. Because she should be wary. She should be terrified, in fact, and flutter about like one of his secretaries, halfway to hysterics at the very idea that she might have disappointed him.
But Victoria did not appear to be the fluttering type. She followed him into the salon, and her hands found her hips, somewhere behind the heft of her pregnancy bump.
“You made a great many things clear, Ago,” she said, and though she was agreeing with him, it was evident from the way she was looking at him that this was not going to be a reprise of the biddable bride he now suspected had been a fantasy all along. “But I never had any intention of celebrating my escape from my father’s clutches by locking myself away again. I’m pretty sure I told you that.”
“You are pregnant with my heir,” he bit out. “Your childish fantasies of escape no longer apply.”
She studied him for a moment, then dropped her hands from her hips, moving further into the room. “There’s a hiking path in Cinque Terre. You can climb up high and look out at the bright, happy villages clinging to the hills. I’ve seen pictures of it my whole life. How could I not go and see it myself?”
“The Accardi estate boasts many walking trails,” he replied, his voice dark. “I suggest you avail yourself of them.”
“In Venice, I waded across St. Mark’s Square and ate gelato on a gondola. In Ravenna I took walking tours and learned about Etruscans, Gauls, and the Byzantine Empire. I ate chocolate in Perugia and dreamed of endless summers in Amalfi.”
“I don’t require your itinerary, Victoria. I have been on your heels this whole time.”
That seemed to neither discomfit nor intrigue her. She only shrugged. “Would you believe that every place I’ve been lived up to and then surpassed every expectation I had? I could have stayed in each new place forever. But how could I? Because for the first time in my life, I have no one to answer to. Nowhere to go. No one chasing after me with an agenda and harsh expectations of what I should do and when. It’s been liberating.”
“And what do you suppose the cost of this liberation is?” But what Ago was focused on was the fact that he should not have come so far to this room. Because she had followed him and was now too close.
And with the notable exception of their wedding day, he had gone to great lengths to make sure that he was never too close to Victoria again.
This was problematic.
Shewas problematic.
Even here in a Roman hotel, drenched in her perfidy, she still smelled like lilacs and cream. And his body had an immediate and devastating response.
When the last thing in the world he needed right now was to be reminded of how he’d gotten himself into this predicament in the first place.
He opened his mouth to continue one of his lectures, the kind that would make his brother sigh and roll his eyes dramatically. But instead, all that lilac and cream seemed to blend together with memories, making everything worse. Because her skin was so soft, and he knew precisely where he could put his mouth at the crook of her neck to make her shudder. Her kisses had been artlessly enthusiastic, and it made that storm in him rage anew to remember how quickly she learned what he taught her. How to fence with him, her tongue in his. How to angle her head and move closer.
And then, later, there on a bench in her uncle’s garden, he had taught her how to find her pleasure first with his fingers, then with his sex, and how to cover her sobs by letting him drink them from her lips.
He was having a hard time remembering why he had come here tonight.
Because it was one thing to avoid temptation as a matter of course his whole life. It was something else again to know and remember every last second of it, and ask himself why on earth he was resisting now.
“The thing about liberation,” Victoria said softly, “is that it is worth any cost.”
His sex ached, but he focused instead on her words.
“I’m grateful to you,mia mogliettina, for proving to me, beyond any doubt, who you are,” he told her with a certain grimness. “You are not to be trusted. You cannot be depended upon. Any hopes I might have had that there was something to salvage in this situation of ours are gone.”
He expected her to wither at that, as so many would have. He did not often bring out the full force of his disapproval because he knew perfectly well that people found him unbearably stern. They crumbled before him like so much ash in the wind.
But surely the situation called for it.
He waited for Victoria to crumble before him.
But instead, to his intense shock, poor, sheltered Victoria...