Ava slowly became aware that tension still inhabited her body, despite the most intense orgasm of her life. Feeling unbearably heavy, she lifted herself up and rolled onto her back, gasping for breath as if she’d just run an endurance race.
She flopped her head to one side and his eyes met hers, still glowing with that intense explosion of desire she’d seen in them as he thrust inside her. It was banked down now, but it was there. Feral, hot, intensely male.
This works for us. That was what he had said. No soft words, no promises, no mention that she would be going home soon. Just, Things have been too intense...this works for us.
The tension pulled wire-tight and she knew she had two choices. She could kill him...or she could kill him.
‘Again,’ she said.
* * *
Hours later, when it was still and dark and the only sound was the cicadas through the open windows, he said slowly, ‘That night we met I had a lot on my mind.’
He felt her shift but she didn’t say a word.
‘My father and I had had an argument the day before. God knows it didn’t seem important at the time.’
‘What did you argue about?’ Her voice was soft.
‘I had responsibilities and I was trying to evade them.’
‘What sort of responsibilities?’
‘Look around you, Ava. I’m a Benedetti.’
Around them was a vast bedchamber. A great empty marble fireplace, lights in sconces, frescos on the wall, heavy bed-hangings. He wondered if she understood the weight of having all this history around your shoulders.
It wasn’t exactly subtle.
‘I was eighteen when I graduated from the military academy and went away to the States to start an Economics degrees at MIT. My father assumed I would be using that degree to work in the family business and he turned a blind eye to my life in the US. I was almost twenty-one when I graduated and was recruited to the professional football league.’
He scrubbed his jaw where the beard was already growing in.
‘Tell me about the soccer. It must have been very glamorous.’
‘Sometimes. Mostly it was training and keeping my nose clean.’
‘And parties, and girls...’ she trailed off.
‘It was a wild time,’ he admitted, not about to lie to her. ‘But for me it was all about the freedom. You can’t know what it was like after all the years of toeing the line.’
Ava made a soft snorting sound. ‘Oh, I think I can, but go on.’
‘We had a confrontation the day before Alessia’s wedding. I told him this was my chance and I wasn’t giving it up. My father said I should be by his side at the meetings with the Agostini Banking Group. It was time I showed him I was serious. I told him they were nothing better than organised criminals, and he struck me. I said things I could never take back. I told him I hated him, that he was weak. I hated him for what he’d done to my mother and that my whole purpose in life was never to be like him.’
He pulled himself up a little straighter in the bed.
‘He told me I was to put on a suit and go to Naples with him for the meeting. I laughed at him and chose instead to go to my cousin’s wedding.’
‘Our night,’ she said softly.
‘The night of the reception, the night we were together—yes, our night.’
Now there was only the sound of the cicadas. They both seemed to be holding their breaths.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
‘He had a massive heart attack. He was only fifty-three.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I never got to take any of it back. He was under tremendous strain. He’d dug himself a hole stretching back twenty years, full of debt and corruption. The entire banking group collapsed, two of his business partners were gaoled, and most of the property was sold to meet the debts.’
‘And you joined the military after all,’ was all she said.
‘For the honour of my family, for my father. It was what he wanted,’ he said softly. ‘I know it’s hard to understand, and I don’t entirely understand it myself, but ours was once a good name. It represented service to the state, an integrity that could not be compromised, and in two generations that had been destroyed. I wanted to build something from the ashes, and the military seemed as good a place as any to start.’
‘That’s why I couldn’t contact you,’ she said slowly. ‘I rang all those numbers you gave me and only one of them, the one to your office, was connected. I guess the message was never passed on.’
Gianluca stilled. ‘The media went after our family like piranhas. All the numbers were changed. You left a message, cara?’
‘A number and my name.’
Gianluca was silent.