Her breath caught at the graveness in his voice. It rattled through her, the rebuke a slash inside. She swallowed. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I didn’t mean it that way.”
A little of the hardness in his eyes softened. She searched for more words, but nothing seemed right.
“Explain this to me,” she finally whispered. “Please.”
With the wordplease, his eyes softened a little more. He didn’t speak. He looked out in the countryside and she wondered what he was thinking about right now, what he saw in this place and what he saw in her. The distance between them had suddenly widened, and it felt like she would never understand him. The thought weighed heavily inside her.
When he looked at her again, something had shifted. In his eyes, she found familiar spark of heat, and it sent a distracting jolt of awareness through her. “We’ll talk back at the villa.”
Something had loosened inside of Alessandro in the doctor’s office, and it was not settling back the way it should have. The way he needed it to. Instead, he felt the ominous echoes of his younger years, when everything around him seem to trigger a live wire inside him, jolting him with feelings he couldn’t process. He had deadened that live wire long ago, or at least he thought he had, but staring at the image of the baby… The bones of his long-buried emotions had rattled to life again, and they threatened everything that he had spent his adult life building.
But Alessandro knew how to fix this. He knew exactly what would channel all these emotions into something that brought temporary relief and not destruction. He had resisted this path for over a week, focusing on the most strategic way forward to marriage, but ignoring his own needs was clearly taking its toll. Because he was not a man who was accustomed to depriving himself, not in this way. He thrived on sensual indulgence, and the woman in front of him was indulgence incarnate. If this situation was going to demand a pound of flesh from him, he would take from it the pleasures of flesh in return.
Alessandro led Ann-Sophie up the path to the villa and through the silent halls of his childhood, past doors he used to peek through, looking for his absent parents, long before he understood that they were not hiding in one of the countless rooms of this villa, but had fled to someplace or another with half-formed excuses. Over the years, they dropped the pretense of reasons for their disappearances, leaving it to Olivia to deliver the news.The way you did to Ann-Sophie.The thought rattled inside him, and he shoved it away.
As they continued past the hall to what had been his childhood room, he felt the urge to pause. It was strange. He had not dwelled on this part of his life since Ann-Sophie had arrived. But she seemed to infuse unexpected joy into the place where shadows always lurked. Now, all these memories were crashing down on him. He needed to staunch his wounds before they bled him dry. But first, he would give her what she wanted, a glimpse into the past that had formed him. And then he would ask for what he wanted in return.
Alessandro led them through the halls and came to a stop in front of the door next to her room.
“You really have been sleeping on the other side of the wall from me this whole time?” she asked.
He tucked a strand of silky hair behind her ear, then whispered, “Every night, I imagined what we would do if you came to find me.”
Her cheeks flushed a satisfying pink. The lavender scent of her hair was everywhere, and her plump lips were parted and so temptingly close. Just a little more patience, he told himself. When he opened the door, she looked up at him, then entered.
The room was decorated with rich tapestries and hand-carved furniture, and Alessandro appreciated these more impersonal qualities. It lacked the specific associations that his childhood room had.
She stood before a painting of a bacchanalian scene. “Whose room was this? It couldn’t have been yours as a boy.”
“It was intended for guests, though it hasn’t seen any in quite a few years.”
She wandered around the room, and he followed her, like an animal closing in on his prey, his eyes drawn to the curves of her full breasts spilling over the bodice of her sundress. When she had finished peering in the closets and pausing at the bookshelves, he gestured to the baroque love seat.
“Please, sit.”
Ann-Sophie settled into the little sofa, and Alessandro found a footrest for her to prop up her feet, then sat next to her. He stared at the spray of freckles that had darkened across her nose over the last week in the sun. This life here in his villa suited her, he thought, clinging to the satisfaction the thought gave him.
But before he could let the heat of their closeness distract him, he would give her what she asked for. Honesty. It was an exchange, one he had to make for the outcome he needed, he reminded himself. Soon, this would all be over.
Her eyes lost a little of their hazy focus. “What happened in the doctor’s office? I don’t know how to describe it. You looked almost…” Her lips curved down into a frown. “You looked haunted when you saw our child. Whatever this is, we need to discuss it before the baby is born.”
The words sent tremors through the control he had clawed back, but he gave her a tight smile. “I have my questions about being the father that I want to be, and seeing the baby reminded me of them.”
This was all true. Or at least the most palatable version of the truth.
Her frown deepened. “Is this related to what you said about your parents?”
He knew this wasn’t an intentional jab, and yet he felt barbs dig into him. “Are you feeling sorry for this poor little rich boy?”
His voice was smooth and cutting, laced with mockery. It happened so quickly, a reflex that he regretted. He wanted to take this woman to bed and marry her, and yet he found himself snapping at her. And they hadn’t even begun to get into the details. It made no sense, but this was the problem, wasn’t it? This was why he had built up his walls.
Her eyes widened, but to her credit, she didn’t shrink away.
“Don’t do that,” she said with a steadiness he hadn’t expected.
Alessandro gritted his teeth and reined in that out-of-control feeling inside him. Hewould notlash out again. Cruelty was straight out of his mother’s playbook, and he would not be like his mother. Not at any price.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, then forced himself to go on. “When Massimo and I were in our teens, we didn’t last long at any of our boarding schools. Our records say we both got kicked out for fighting, but that is not quite the truth. I got into fights, and Massimo backed me up.
