One Reckless Decision

Then he began to move.

Later, Bethany could not pinpoint the moment she let go—the moment she stopped desperately trying to cling to the shreds of the persona she had built around Leo’s absence and allowed herself instead to sink into the overwhelming, devastating reality of his presence, his body, his clever hands.

Leo made love to her with shattering intensity and ruthless, focused thoroughness. He stripped them both of all their clothes until they were naked in the sun, and then he fed her with his own fingers, olives and cheeses, salted meats and sweet grapes, and washed it down with wine and kisses.

Then he took her again, making her fall apart over and over, until she could hardly remember who she had been before that kiss of hers that had started it all again—this madness and fire, this need and heat.

When the shadows lengthened over the quiet water of the lake, Leo led her back to the castello along the same path that they had traveled that morning. Bethany felt as if years had passed since then—whole decades, perhaps, lost beneath the quiet, encompassing mastery of Leo’s hands, his mouth, his hard and fascinating body.

She was not sure, she thought as he wrapped his hand around hers and tugged her with him through the vineyards, if she would recognize herself if she came face to face with the woman who had set out on this walk. She’d been so determined to play a game, so sure that game would change Leo—never dreaming how deeply it would change her.

But she pushed that thought away because she had no other choice. He was too demanding, too enticing, and she could not seem to stop herself from responding to his smallest caress, his barest glance. And, if she was honest, she did not want to stop herself. She did not want to stop at all.

At some point, when the enchantment of the green and gold fields had worn away and he was not there to ensnare her with his rich, dark gaze, she might have to worry about that. But not today, she told herself, repeating it like a litany.

When they returned to the castello, Bethany was not surprised when he was pulled aside by the usual collection of aides and servants, all of them anxious to speak to him. She climbed to her chamber and ran a hot bath in the deep tub that stood before the high windows of her expansive private bathroom.

Feeling as if she was in a dream, she pulled off the clothes he had so recently put on her, her hands trembling slightly as she remembered his method of dressing her—his mouth against the tender underside of her breasts as he smoothed her bra into place, his fingers exploring every curve, every secret, making each and every one his. She felt a deep shuddering inside of her; she could not stop herself from shivering, though she knew she was not cold.

She knew it was him: the fever of Leo Di Marco, the flush of him still heating her skin. It was the same sorcery he had always wielded over her, rendering her his slave, desperate to do or say anything that would make him touch her, take her, bring her screaming and sobbing to the completion only he could provide.

She should be horrified with herself, with what she had let happen—with what she had made happen. She knew that, could see it objectively, as if from a great distance.

She stood naked as the tub filled, and let the bath salts run through her fingers into the foamy water. She understood that she should be appalled that there was not a single square inch of her body that he had not touched, not one part of her he had not claimed beneath the canopy of the Italian sky. She raised her arms to clip her heavy curls up on the back of her head and winced slightly. She could feel him still, in the slight aches in sensitive areas that were somehow more arousing than painful; in the ecstatic, left-over shivering that she could not control or deny.

That she did not want to control. That she did not want to deny.

Whatever that made her, she did not want to know.

She had just settled into the hot, silky water, letting out a blissful sigh and tipping her head back against the high porcelain edge of the tub, when something prickled across her skin like a breeze. She opened her eyes, not at all surprised to see him in the doorway, his dark eyes shadowed.

She thought he might speak, or that she should, but neither of them moved for a long moment. She felt the steam rise around her, heating her face, making her curls tighten and bounce. But she could not look away from him.

She could not, it seemed, do anything at all but gaze at this man, helpless, as her body reacted to him in the same, predictable manner it always had. As if he had not spent the afternoon having her again and again in a variety of clever and devastating ways. Her body did not seem to care. It only wanted more.

Bethany understood something then, something that seemed to drop through her like a stone while he stood there before her.