He winced but held her stare. “This isn’t right, Francesca. I understand why you’re angry with your family for arranging that marriage for you, but as a form of punishment, this is going to hurt you more than anyone.”
“No it isn’t, and this has nothing to do with my family. They will never know. No one will know. I will never tell a soul.”
“Youwill know. Your soul will know. In a decade from now, you will look back on this night and hate yourself for throwing away something so precious on a man like me.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I will look back in a decade’s time and smile to remember the night I gave myself to a man who makes my blood zing.”
“Francesca…” He said her name like a tortured sigh before his jaw clenched and his back straightened. Refilling both their glasses, his stare hardened along with his voice. “I never answered your question about how many women have slept in my bedroom. Well, there is no answer because there is no way for me to keep count. I couldn’t even tell you all their names. Maybe not even half their names. The time you’ve been my hostage is the longest I’ve gone without sex in nearly two decades. Ask anyone about me, and you will hear words like debauched and playboy, terms that are undoubtedly true. If I’d met you in one of my nightclubs, I would have hit on you. I wouldn’t have had sex with you there, but if you’d been receptive, I’d have arranged to take you home with me, and if you’d been with a friend and she’d been receptive, I’d have taken her home too. The two of you together.”
Francesca didn’t so much listen to his words as feel them. Each syllable of Gino’s intensely delivered words added to the burn scorching her cheeks and the weight of her heart that felt like it was wobbling rather than beating.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asked harshly when she made no response. “I’m a man who rarely spends more than one night with a woman. She has to be spectacular in bed to be invited to spend a second night. I care nothing for personality or what lies in a woman’s heart. All I care about is the end game of satisfying my lust, and bedding you would be no different. You’d be nothing but one of a never-ending conveyor belt of women. The only thing, literally the only thing, separatingyou from the others would be the hostage thing, and even then, it would only be as an aid for remembering your name. Your face will have faded from my memories before you’ve shared a glass of wine with your family to celebrate your release. That’s the man you’re asking to take your virginity, Miss Marino; an unashamed lothario who won’t even remember your face. Do you understand that?”
It wasn’t just her heart now wobbling. It felt like her whole being had turned to jelly, and when she added more lemonade to the fresh measure of bourbon he’d poured into her glass, it was with a hand trembling so hard that fizzy liquid sloshed over the rim.
“I understand that you’re trying to get me to renege on our deal,” she whispered tremulously.
“If you’ve got any sense in that beautiful head of yours, you would take the out I’m offering you. Don’t waste your virginity on a man like me.”
“That you are trying to get me to change my mind only proves you’re a better man than you think yourself to be.”
His face darkened, anger flashing in eyes that had turned to granite. “No, Miss Marino, I am much worse.”
She eyeballed him. “Worse than Elio Ranieri who wants only to break me?”
His handsome face contorted into a snarl. Firing a curse, he took a hefty drink of his bourbon.
She leaned forward. Looking even more intensely at him, she bluntly said, “What if I never feel like this again?”
“You shouldn’t feelanythingfor me,” he bit out.
“I have no control over my attraction for you.”
“You have control over acting on it.”
“Exactly.” The pads of her fingers pressing hard onto the thick cloth, she stretched her neck even closer to him. “Ihave control. Not my family.Me. I could spend the rest of my lifesearching for a man who makes me feel like you do, but never find him. Worse, I might let myself be bullied into marrying that man – what kind of life can I look forward to with a brute like that?” To her horror, tears filled her eyes, but she refused to let them fall or deter her. “This might be my last chance to take my life into my own hands and make a choice for myself. Maybe I will come to regret it, but at least I will look back and know I’m regretting a choice thatImade and not one that was forced on me.”
His knuckles were white around his glass. “You will never be the same again.”
A smile broke through the tension knotted so tightly inside her. “But that’s the whole point. Don’t you see? I’ve lived my entire life like a bird with its wings clipped. This might be my only chance to fly. If I fall, then I fall.”
He held her stare for another long, long moment before closing his eyes and expelling a long breath.
Time seemed to hang suspended before he finally gave a short, jerky nod of acquiescence.
Meeting her stare again, his voice was strained as he said, “One night. That was the deal.”
It felt like the beats of her heart were smashing through her ribs, and for the breath of a moment she thought she might be sick.
Gino sat on his bed with his head in his hands. Francesca was in the shower.
He’d never prayed so hard. Never before prayed for a woman to change her mind about having sex with him.
He felt nauseous. He’d never wanted to have sex with someone less. Intellectually, that was. Yes, he wanted her physically, but so what? She was a beautiful woman with a killer body, and he was a hot-blooded male. Of course he wanted to screw her.
But he couldn’tscrewher.
She wanted him to take her virginity. How the hell was he supposed to do that without hurting her? She was the most annoying person he’d met in his life, but he didn’t want to inflict pain on her. When he’d snatched her from the street, it had been with every intention of returning her fully whole to her family.
