A Dangerous Solace

She looked stricken. ‘I know.’

‘Not. Good. Enough.’ The words stamped through his brain, made him want to pound something. He held on to the edges of his self-control as a tidal wave of anger swept everything he’d planned for this afternoon out of reach. He hadn’t known until this moment how strong his feelings were.

Ava had wrapped her arms around herself. But her chin was up and she looked defiant, not scared.

‘I know that too,’ she said. ‘But, really, what would have happened? Had you fallen head over heels in love with me? Were we going to spend the rest of our lives together? It was just a night, Luca, and I knew you’d had many just like them. I only had that one. One.’ Her voice cracked. ‘I wanted to take it with me—intact, perfect.’

‘Perfect?’ He snarled. ‘What was perfect about it? Casual sex with a guy you didn’t know? Didn’t want to know afterwards?’

She flinched, her eyes reproachful.

‘Oh, and you have never done that? You have never just had sex with a woman you had no intention of seeing again?’

‘Si, I have done that.’ He looked into her stormy green eyes, more dark blue than green in this light, in this mood. ‘But I had no intention of doing that with you.’

Ava’s sharp intake of breath was the only sound, but in his head Gianluca was hearing himself on this subject for the first time.

The excited voices of a group of children coming up from below had Ava reacting first, looking around as if realising where they were. Without even glancing at him she bolted for a gate to the winding walkway that wound down to the base of the incline.

He was breathing hard by the time he reached her at the car, but it had nothing to do with the exercise. She had her arms folded and she looked murderous.

‘I can’t believe you would lie to me like that,’ she flung at him.

Fury pumped through his veins. At himself, at his father, at this woman who demanded too much from him.

‘I do not lie, I do not cheat, and you—’ he stabbed a finger at her ‘—you do not run from me again!’

‘So speaks Prince Benedetti, Prince of—’

‘Of all he surveys—si, I got it the first time.’

He took hold of her elbow and jerked her around, dragging her up against him. The scent of her—vanilla and female skin—filled his senses. But the warm, fragrant softness of her body didn’t remind him of all the times she had cleaved to him naked; it only served to enrage him more.

She did this to him. She made him crazy and furious and then she sucker-punched him with the fact that she was a woman he would do anything for, and that just left him with nowhere to go.

He wanted her in ways that weren’t just sexual—ways that would make any single man nervous—and it was beginning to make him pazzo...crazy.

Maybe he was crazy. Especially now, as he hauled her up and kissed her. He didn’t make it tender or easy or any of the things he’d done with her before. He kissed her with all the wildness of his lust for her, and Ava’s body sprang up against his as if this was what she had been waiting for.

A lot of things were different in both their lives. It was time to take the gloves off and see what this thing between them was made of.

He had her up against the car, her skirt worked high on her thighs, and his hand found her hot, wet welcome. She jumped and cried out when he touched her, lifting one leg to his hip, dragging him in against her, rubbing her sensitive inner thigh over his jeans, inviting what was inevitable... He knew right there and then that he had a matter of seconds to make up his mind before his body did it for him. He was a heartbeat away from freeing himself from the purgatory of denim and thrusting inside her.

He cursed, reefing away from her. They were in the middle of a car park! No one was around, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have company in the next five minutes.

Ava’s eyes were unfocussed, dark, and her colour was high. Her chest rose and fell as, visibly shaken, she drew her stretchy cardigan around her shoulders. Some of the buttons were loose at the top of her dress but she didn’t seem to notice.

‘Come on,’ he said, trying to exert some control on the situation, pressing her into the car. ‘We need to get out of here.’

But Ava’s head was down, she looked fragile, and although he told himself it was her own fault—she’d created all this—it wasn’t true.

He was just as responsible as she was for that night, and she hadn’t just run from him—he’d lost her.

He’d been so caught up in what his family wanted from him he’d let this—Ava—go.

And maybe that was the price his father had finally exacted—not the stint in the military, or the loss of his football career. The true legacy of being a Benedetti was wanting a woman and not being able to hold on to her. Not the way he wanted to.