The Marriage He Must Keep

She gripped around his waist so she wouldn’t bounce and opened her mouth against his back.

“Bite me, cara, and I will bite you right back,” he warned.

“You’re making a fool of yourself!” she cried.

“I’m making a fool of both of us. Someone bring Lorenzo inside. Look after him while I deal with my wife,” he said as they approached the front steps.

“Sandro, her surgery,” Octavia’s mother reminded in a surprisingly strong assertion, standing outside her car, purse gripped anxiously in her white hands.

He swore and paused on the stairs. The world spun again as he swung Octavia into the cradle of his arms. “Did I hurt you?” he asked with real concern.

“No. Yes,” she corrected, so devastated by his rejection of her heart, she could barely look at him, but she did. She let him see how he’d stripped her down to a naked bud then crushed her under his heel. She wanted his love so badly. How dare he withhold it from her?

His expression twisted with remorse.

Above them, Ysabelle said dreamily, “I remember the first time his father carried me kicking and screaming into the house. Sandro was born nine months later.”

Sandro bit out a curse and hefted Octavia higher against his chest as he climbed the rest of the way up the stairs and jiggled the door open.

He carried her over the threshold.

She caught her breath, sentimental enough to be ridiculously delighted by the action. Her eyes blurred with tears and the interior was dark after the brightness of the day. She could barely see, but he didn’t hesitate as he crossed the foyer. He held her tighter as he took the stairs two at a time and didn’t stop until they were in their room. There he kicked the door shut and crossed to set her on the bed.

She scrambled up and off it just as quickly as he dumped her there. He moved to close the balcony doors, but kept an eye on her. There was no way she’d make it to the hall door before he would be on her again.

Part of her was tempted to make that happen. It would turn into sex. In this moment, feeling as upside down as she did emotionally, turning this into a sexual battle seemed like the safer bet. Words might be hard. They might hurt. Sex would feel good, if empty.

She lowered her gaze and pressed her knuckles to her quivering lips.

Sandro’s feet came into her line of vision.

“Guilt is not fun, cara,” he said heavily. “I hate being fallible and I am. I’m human. I try to forgive myself for being a child, for having to learn the hard way the consequences of my actions, but I still blame myself for my father’s death. If he had lived, my mother never would have had to scrape herself up so badly falling in and out of love with other men. I blame myself for that, too.”

“It’s her choice,” she mumbled. “She’s happy. Maybe she doesn’t care if it hurts along the way.”

“Maybe she doesn’t, but I do. I’ve never wanted to go through that same sort of wringer and I’m built to. I have that temperament and I knew if I ever loved and lost, I would be just like her—completely broken. Who would ever want to feel like that?”

She turned her face to the side, struggling to hold back her flinch and the tears that flooded up into her eyes. I’m broken, she wanted to cry.

“I just find it really hard, Sandro.” Her throat was so tight she could barely force her reedy voice to work. “Because I’m willing to take that risk. I love you. A lot. And I don’t think I can bear it if you’re never going to love me.”

He touched her chin, gently drawing her to look at him.

“I do love you, cara. I knew I was in trouble the night we met, when I danced with you. I felt the chemistry and thought for a moment that the safer choice for me would be to let you marry Primo.” His mouth twisted, but his gaze never wavered. “I wasn’t about to let you go to anyone, however. And that scared me.”

She swallowed, lower lip trembling against the pad of his thumb as he caressed it.

“Our honeymoon was...” His face spasmed with a hint of pain. “You call it an affair and it was, for you. I think I knew that. You were infatuated. No, listen,” he hurried, not letting her interrupt. “I know what a sexual crush looks like. I’ve been producing them in women from an early age and yes, I did everything in my power to provoke one in you to ensure you married me, but the way I felt for you was becoming...too much. London served a lot of purposes for me,” he admitted with a humble look.

She pulled in her bottom lip and sucked the salty tang of his thumbprint off it, one foot falling back so he had to let his hand drop away.

“There was a part of me that needed to prove I could get by without you, that I wasn’t completely over my head,” he continued, voice raw enough to lift the hairs on her arms. “Then, after everything with Primo and the birth, I knew even what little you had felt toward me was gone. Do you think I felt good after that?” His regret was palpable, making her throat ache. “No, I felt guilty and hellish and I knew I should let you go, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself why.”