She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Their lovemaking was hotter than an active volcano, even the times they didn’t play any of his control games.
She didn’t want to give that side of their lovemaking up, but she liked knowing it wasn’t necessary for intense sexual satisfaction. That they could have completely tender sessions that culminated in a pleasure so profound it was a spiritual experience, not just physical and emotional.
She hadn’t known sex could be like that, but then she hadn’t known it could be so fun and kinky, either.
No, the sex definitely wasn’t the problem. There was a problem, though. While Enzu and she continued to spend time together with the children daily, they spent almost no time alone that wasn’t dedicated to sex.
He shut down any conversation that might actually lead to talking about feelings. And that worried her. Because her feelings just grew stronger and stronger.
She couldn’t imagine he was even considering marrying anyone else, but why hadn’t he made it official? Was he waiting for Christmas? Did he have plans to propose under the tree Christmas morning, or something?
Enzu did love his plans, but she almost laughed out loud at the idea regardless. She didn’t think he had that kind of romance in him.
So, what was he waiting for?
“What has you thinking so hard, biddùzza?”
“How can you tell I’m thinking?”
“Your body is not lax as in sleep. You are not initiating sex, or talking. So…thinking.”
She looked up at his beloved features, barely discernible in daybreak’s shadows. His eyes met hers, but there was a wariness there she thought she’d glimpsed before.
“Have you made your decision?” she asked baldly.
His gaze flared with surprise and then that wariness again, before he pulled the emotionless mask she’d come to hate into place.
“Do we need to talk about this now?”
“I think we do.” She pulled out of his arms and sat up.
He followed suit, increasing the distance between them in the bed. It was only inches, but it felt like a great chasm.
“I do not think there can be any question that our test of sexual compatibility has been a success, can there?” he asked, his tone stilted unlike anything she’d heard from him before.
She couldn’t think about the oddness of his delivery. Not when the words were so painful to hear. “Is that all the last weeks have been? A test?”
She jumped out of the bed, searching for her robe. Needing the protection of a layer of clothing between them, she yanked it on and tied the belt with jerky movements.
“No, più amato. That is not what I meant.” He was out of bed, too, but he stood there naked in the predawn light.
He’d called her that before, on rare occasions, and only when their lovemaking was particularly intense. Another time she would ask what it meant, but right now her heart was threatening to shatter.
“How do I believe you?” she demanded, pain bleeding into her voice. “We have amazing sex, but that’s all you let us have. We don’t spend any time together.”
“We are together every day.”
She refused to believe in the desperation her heart wanted to tell her was in his tone. “With the children. Not alone.”
“We are alone now.”
“For sex.”
“We are not having sex right now. That I know how to do. This…” He gestured between them. “Us. Talking about feelings. I do not know how to do this.”
“How can you say that? You’re an adult, a brilliant man. You’re fluent in two languages.”
“But not the language of emotions.”
“If you felt them you could talk about them.” Tears choked her throat and she went to turn away.
She needed a shower. Something. Anything away from him.
“No!” The word was loud, filled with power and with anguish.
She turned back to him.
“When would I have learned?” he demanded, fury and pain right there for her to see.
“What do you mean? You don’t learn to love. You just feel it. And you can’t teach someone to love you.”
If she could have, she would have. Because not having his love when hers all but consumed her hurt more than any other rejection in her life or even all of them combined.
“You once said we are opposites,” Enzu replied, with a desperation she could not deny this time.
But neither did she understand it. “Yes.”
“I am a tycoon in business.”
“And I’m a low-level employee for your company,” she said, unsure where he was going but unable to deny the entreaty in his blue gaze. “Our financial inequality certainly brought us together.”
He frowned. “You don’t like that.”
“I hate it.”
“Has it occurred to you that there is very little a billionaire might need he could not buy for himself?”
She’d only finished her Christmas shopping for him the day before. She was well aware of that fact. “Yes,” she said with blatant sarcasm. “I do know.”
“So you should realize what a gift it is for you to give me someone on whom to spend that money.”
Seriously? That was his argument? “You have Franca and Angilu now.”
“And you will guide me in how best to use my fortune to make their lives the best they can be.”
Was he saying he had made his choice?
“It has been my delight to introduce you to the pleasures of the flesh,” Vincenzo offered. “Your innocence is another gift my money could not buy.”
“I don’t understand where you are going with this.”
“Indulge me, please.”
She couldn’t deny him. “Okay.”
“You are very impulsive.”
“And you’re so controlled sometimes I think you could be a robot.”
He winced. “With everyone and everything but you. You make me lose control.”
“And that’s significant?”
“Very much so.”
“I love you,” she said, realizing that maybe he needed the words as much as she did. She’d said them before, but she felt the need to repeat them now.
“There is where we are most dissimilar.”
“Because you don’t love me?” she asked, agony exploding inside her.
“Because you are driven by emotion. You understand it. You are conversant in it. Tell me, what do you believe drives me?”
“Success.” But that wasn’t the whole truth. “Your desire to take care of your family.”
“Yes, and in those things I am fluent.”
“I know.”
“But tell me, amore, who in my life has loved me? Who has allowed me to love them?”
She opened her mouth to say the children, but stopped herself. He wasn’t talking about right now. He was talking about for his whole life up until now.
“You loved Pinu.” She knew he had. “You love your parents. You took care of them. You still do.”
“Pinu did not want my protection or affection. Neither do my parents.”
“I think you’re wrong. I think Pinu was thankful for your love even if you never told him in words. And he loved you, too. He named your nephew after you.”
“You really believe that?” The vulnerability in her billionaire’s expression was hard to see.
“I do.”
“You are certain you love me? It is not just sex? Or the knowledge I can make things easier for Toby?”
She didn’t take offence at Vincenzo’s words. She couldn’t. He wasn’t fluent in the language of emotion. In fact he was as inept as a first-year language student in a foreign country.
“Yes, I love you. Very much.”
“How do you know?”
She gave that question the full consideration it deserved. He needed her answer in a way she could never have foreseen.
“Because being with you makes me happier than when we are apart,” she said
finally. “Because I crave your presence in my life. Your texts make me smile, every single time I get one.”
“I like being able to text you.”
She nodded. “I can tell. I know I love you because the thought of living the rest of my life without you hurts more than anything else ever has.”
Tension drained out of his body like air escaping a balloon and the most beautiful smile came over his face. “T’amu.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, thinking she knew but needing to be absolutely sure.
“I love you.”