When it got too cold, when his chest felt so light as if someone had shifted a heavy weight from his shoulders, he swept Sam into his arms and brought her inside.
Moonlight rendered her exquisite for him, just for him. He sat with her in his lap on the chaise, and he kissed her, the moment as fragile and tenuous as the joy in his heart.
And despite the fact that he was about to break his own rules, he made love to her. Uncaring that he was late. Uncaring that he’d look less than perfect. Uncaring that she had become a weakness that could and would shatter him soon.
He stripped her of every inch of clothing and hugged her trembling, silky form to him, pretending that she needed him as much as he did her.
He worshipped her with his mouth, his fingers, with everything in him. He wrenched an orgasm out of her, swallowing her cries and mewls, before he buried himself deep inside her. He drove into her like a possessed man seeking freedom, uncaring of her fragility.
The dark amplified her groans and his hunger. And yet, it was slow and lazy and soft when his own orgasm broke, a balm to his shattered heart.
He wrapped her up in a blanket and lay down with her on the chaise longue until she fell asleep. And then he kissed her temple, traced that scar that he knew better than his own hand now, listened to the steady beat of her heart and left for the banquet.
It wasn’t until hours later that Alessandro noticed a drop of dark red paint on the lapels of his pristine dress shirt. A bright pink streak on his neck. A yellow dot on his chest. She’d done it on purpose, he knew.
Rumpled him up. Splashed color onto the empty canvas of his life. Changed him, made him hers, even if for just a little.
He liked it. And for the first time in fifteen years, his heart didn’t feel heavy at the thought of Violetta.
For Sam had helped him remember all the glorious things about her. All the stubborn things. And more than anything, she’d helped him remember that Violetta had loved life. To the last moment. And that he wanted that for himself too.
Sam woke alone a few hours later, her skin cold, her limbs sort of frozen, and pulled the blanket Alessandro had wrapped around her tighter.
When she stretched her legs tentatively on the chaise longue, her core ached, instantly reminding her of how possessively he had taken her before he had left.
How reverentially he had kissed every inch of her skin. How his fingers had left brief divots in her flesh.
Her body ached and throbbed while her heart, her foolish heart, soared at yet another new experience. Uncaring of the crash it had signed up for.
She had fallen in love with him, with the man whose heart would always belong to a dead woman. She knew it as well as the stuttered beat of her heart, her warm breath and her aching body. Knew that this trip, this adventure that she had so desperately wanted, had changed her. Irrevocably. More than anything ever could.
She also knew that she could not share this vast, brilliant truth with him, that Alessandro wouldn’t want it. That she wasn’t strong enough to face his gentle, polite but irrefutable rejection of her love. That she couldn’t bear to compete with Violetta’s memories.
She deserved better. She deserved him, fully, wholly, unconditionally. She deserved that deep, vast, kind heart of his that could feel so much.
Sighing, she untangled herself from the chaise and got to her feet. Her knees quaked, and a sob surged up through her chest, nearly breaking her. God, she loved him so much and she always would. One look at her and he would know, and the one thing she couldn’t bear to see was his pity.
He’d given her the taste of an entire lifetime in a few weeks, and that had to be enough.
She was gone.
Alessandro had known it even as he’d walked up the steps into the house, returning in the early hours of the morning after the charity banquet.
As strange as it sounded, he’d felt it from the moment he’d stepped out of the car in the courtyard and knew it with a certainty even before he reached the bedroom.
Theirbedroom…
It was free of all the hundred things she’d scattered about. Now it looked sterile and empty, like a damned coffin for all he could breathe in there.
She’d left without good-bye. She’d left before her vacation was up. There was at least another week left. He knew, because he’d been counting the days like a lovesick fool.
He rushed to the studio, and that was as empty as his heart.
Matteo found him in the studio, the creek of the elevator doors and his wheelchair alerting Alessandro.
“She didn’t discuss this with you?” Uncharacteristic gravity filled his brother’s voice.
Alessandro shook his head. He doubted if he could form words even if he tried. His chest felt like it was collapsing on itself, an ocean of pain drowning him.
