Was this restlessness because triumph was so near? Surely he should feel satisfaction instead of this sense of anticlimax?
As for feeling empty—he could fix that with some new project. He’d driven himself so hard and long over this that it was just the prospect of having no purpose that was foreign.
Donato grimaced. Who was he fooling? The joke was on him. He’d always been the one on the outside, looking in.
He hadn’t let it bother him—the raised brows and sudden silence when he walked into a room. The people who were scared by his past. The ones titillated by it.
It hadn’t mattered because he’d never wanted to belong.
Until now. When finally, in the worst possible circumstances, he’d glimpsed the real thing—real passion with a woman who, for the first time in his life, made him feel whole.
‘Donato!’ He swung around to find Ella in the doorway, breathtaking in her finery. The sight of her punched emotion hard and low into his belly.
She was flushed and unhappy. One hand gripped the top of the low-cut dress that threatened to reveal too much pale honey flesh. The other held up the wide skirt as she negotiated her way into the room, past clustering sofas.
With her hair beginning to fall about her shoulders and her diamond eyes glittering, she looked like a bride who’d just been thoroughly, satisfyingly debauched.
Donato’s body tightened as he fought the knowledge that he wanted to be the man to claim her. To scandalise the wedding guests by sweeping her away from the ceremony and making her his in the most intimate way he knew. He wanted to keep her with him, not just while he concluded his schemes for her father, but into a future he couldn’t even imagine. A future where they were together and he’d never be alone again.
He breathed deep and reminded himself there’d never been a place for fantasy in his world.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Sorry?’ She stared at him as if he’d sprouted horns. ‘Is that all you can say? This is beyond a joke. You calmly announce that the wedding is going ahead and then stalk off to take a call.’ She gestured wide with one hand and her dress slipped lower. Donato’s gaze followed, the part of him that was primitive, unthinking male delighted. Another inch or two and—
‘Are you even listening to me?’
‘Of course I am, cari?o. But don’t you think it better we have this conversation when you’ve changed?’
Her lips pursed. ‘That’s the problem. I can’t get the zip down and I don’t want to yank it. Can you?’
On the words she turned, presenting him with her pale slender shoulders. She was so alluring, even more so when she tilted her head forward and lifted her hair. The action revealed the sweet, slender curve of her neck.
Donato exhaled slowly, assuring himself he could unzip her dress and leave it at that. His conscience, or what passed for it, warned that seducing her in her wedding dress would be a mistake. One day she’d wear it, when she found the right man.
The trouble was, thoughts like that awoke the dark violence in him that he’d buried years ago. Donato wanted to throttle that right man, whoever he was. He wanted to beat away any man who dared look at her.
He wanted to muss up the pristine perfection of the dress she’d never wear for him. He wanted to wreck any chance she had of finding the groom she deserved because he wanted her for himself.
‘Donato? I need help here. What are you doing?’
He stepped forward, sliding one arm around her waist and pulling her near.
With an oof of surprise she landed against him.
She felt different. The froth of skirt ballooning around his legs, the cinched-in waist emphasising her delicious shape and the soft pure fabric under his hand reminding him that she wasn’t for him. Despite being his lover, Ella was unsullied by his world and that was the way she’d stay. Their time together had been delightful but it was an aberration.
Carefully, so as not to step on her long skirt, he made himself step back. He lifted his hands to the zip.
‘Donato? We need to talk.’
‘I know.’ His voice was grim. This would be the end. As soon as she knew... ‘There. That’s it.’ The zip slid down. Rather than stopping after an inch, he dragged it further, relishing the way it revealed the curve of her spine.
He bent and pressed his lips to the sliver of bare flesh, inhaling sweet summer flowers.
Ella pulled away in a rustle of offended satin. It took two hands now to keep the dress up and her chin lifted as she spun to watch him through suspicious eyes. ‘Don’t think you can distract me like that.’