Then she looked up at him, trembling with fear, and it felt as if time stopped. But she’d learned her lesson. It was better to reveal the truth, come what may.
“I mean it.” With a deep breath, she looked straight into his eyes and said in a totally different tone, “I love you, Nico.”
CHAPTER NINE
“I LOVE YOU.”
Nico felt the words like a blow, as if she’d punched him in the throat.
I love you.
Those words had been said to him before, by overeager girlfriends trying to take the sexual affair to the next level, to tie him down, to get him to put a ring on it. He’d seen them for the manipulations they were.
This was different.
Nico looked down at his beautiful pregnant wife in his arms. Honora. So beautiful inside and out. She meant the words. He saw emotion shining in her big green eyes. Love. What did that even mean?
Her heart-shaped face was filled with adoration—adoration Nico knew he didn’t deserve. He knew he was selfish and ruthless and cold.
How had Honora convinced herself to see something else? Had he been complicit in her self-deception?
He also saw her unspoken longing for him to return her love.
Why? His demons reared their ugly heads. So she could possess and control him? He would never allow himself to be so weak, so vulnerable, so helpless, giving his soul up into the power of another. As a boy, he’d always yearned desperately for attention, to feel like he belonged, like he was valuable. Instead, he’d bee
n neglected, heartsick and alone, always wondering what was wrong with him that even his own mother seemed to regret his existence. Never again.
But as Honora looked up at him, as her soft body pressed against his, he looked down at her full breasts, pushing up against the thin straps of her red cotton sundress, and felt a different emotion. The only one he could allow himself to safely feel.
Desire.
Even after hours of making love to her—in the Hamptons, on the private jet—Nico suddenly wanted her more than ever.
She loved him. He’d never asked for her love, but now he possessed her, body and soul.
And if he couldn’t love her back, he could at least give her his body, because it was utterly and completely hers...
The sky above the villa was bright blue, and a warm wind blew in from the azure sea as he held her amid the lemon groves. Nico saw the growing question in her beautiful face: Did he love her, too? He could not break her heart with the truth.
So he kissed her.
She felt warm in his arms, her baby bump pressed against him in her red sundress, as he stroked her bare arms. Her hands reached up to pull his head down to deepen the kiss, which made him ache for her even more. It was as close as he could get to love.
He ran his hands through her long dark hair, which swept loose and long over her bare shoulders. Her fingertips stroked lightly through his short black waves, then down over his shirt. Around them, he could smell the scent of lemons, of Italy, of the sea. He smelled roses and vanilla—the scent of his wife’s perfume. He kissed her passionately, holding her close.
Cupping his unshaven cheek, she whispered against his lips, “I love you, Nico.”
Again. He shuddered from a mixture of desire and dread. He liked her loving him, he realized. But if she knew he could never return her feelings...
He had to make sure she never realized that. For her sake. He had to protect his wife’s feelings, to make sure she never knew his heart felt nothing.
But his body—
“I want you,” he whispered huskily. He kissed her again and felt the sweet pleasure of her lips drawing him down, down into an intoxication more thrilling and mind-numbing than he’d ever experienced with alcohol. He felt her shiver in his arms.
Taking her hand, Nico pulled her away from the lemon groves, through the formal Italian garden, past the roses and burbling marble fountains. The warm sun caressed their skin as he drew her back to the enormous white wedding cake villa that was perched on a cliff overlooking the coast.
He paused for only a moment when he saw Benny Rossini scowling as he was escorted into a waiting SUV by his security chief. Honora watched, her face shadowed with worry and guilt.