CHAPTER SIX

ANOTHERNIGHT,ANOTHERCHARADE.

They were attending the opening of a new restaurant overlooking the Grand Canal and being in such close proximity to Rae again, Domenico was once more struggling to keep control of himself.

In a fitted blue dress paired with open-toed stilettoes and a black leather jacket draped across her shoulders as there was a chill to the evening air and they were seated outside, Rae looked sensational. His heart had struck up a restless beat the moment he'd locked eyes on her back at the palazzo, a dizzying cocktail of heat and need moving through his blood and making his heart race and it hadn't stopped since. In the pearlescent glow from the low candles forming the centrepiece of the table, the alluring power of her vivid blue eyes was impossible to avoid and the fever stirring in his blood was only intensifying and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do to stop the sultry memories from cascading through his mind, one after the other, each more arousing than the last. Nothing to stop him thinking about how close he had been to charging into her suite and taking her in his arms the last time they'd been together and how he wasn't sure he had it in him to resist again.

In the days since their last public outing Domenico had barely seen her, not because of any special effort on his part but because his normal daily routine was so demanding. He rose early for a punishing workout before heading to his office, where it was customary to spend up to twelve hours, but, with the final pieces of a major deal still being worked out, those hours had been running closer and closer to midnight. By the time he returned to the palazzo most nights Rae had eaten dinner alone and was secluded in her suite, and though that lack of interaction had not been by design, Domenico was relieved by it.

Because he didn't trust himself around her at all. All it took was for him to catch her scent in the air and need unfurled within him like a fast-flowing river, and he hated the thought of being so tempted by her that he abandoned his good sense. That he forgot the lessons he'd paid so dearly to learn.

All he needed was her presence, her cooperation—for her to stick around for the next six months so he could retain ownership of what was already rightfully his. He required nothing else, not from her.

But even knowing that, even having told himself that every day since Rae had been back in Venice, he could not keep his eyes from devouring her or his thoughts from dwelling with heightened awareness on all the ways she was so very different from the woman he had married.

There was an aura of self-possession to her now that had been absent before. He could see it just by looking at her, in the way her shoulders were thrown back, her head held high. She refused to be intimidated by anyone or anything, and had proven that at the ball a few nights previously, when she'd handled Luisa's catty remarks with a cutting comeback of her own. Luisa had thoroughly deserved it and seeing her slammed back into her box had been satisfying, but it had startled him to hear Rae being so sharp with her words. But an even greater source of consternation was that Rae had felt she'd had to respond in such a way. Because her reaction had made it obvious that she'd suffered Luisa's unpleasantness in the past too, and that she had been wounded by it, and he had never known.

And he should have.

He should have noticed and taken action to protect her. Rae was his wife. He had brought her into his life and his world and it had been his responsibility to take care of and defend her. Only he clearly hadn't, and because of that failing Rae had been forced to act out of character, and that was not sitting well with him at all.

Not that he didn't appreciate her newfound strength and confidence. That flare of fire in her eyes when she'd refused to back down, and the steely determination to get her own way, even when up against his powerful will, were definitely intriguing new facets of her, but where those changes had sprung from and why she'd felt the need to change were questions running on a loop in his mind. Testing and troubling him. Driving him to question if he had paid enough attention, if he'd worked hard enough to discover exactly what had been swirling beneath the serene fa?ade she had presented to him. After all, he hadn't known about her unease around Luisa, or how sensitive she'd been to the cruel society gossip. What else had he been unaware of? What else had he missed?

‘How's your food?' Rae asked, seeing that he wasn't eating as his thoughts wandered.

He reached for his wine glass, taking a sip of the rich merlot to moisten his bone-dry mouth, and loosen the intensity of his single-track thoughts. ‘It's good. You'll like it. Here, try a little.'

Domenico held out his fork to her, knowing it painted the picture of a devoted husband, but as her lips tightened around the fork and it slid between her mouth, he realised his mistake, realised that he had just poured oil on the fire simmering in his blood and, right on cue, he felt it, that sudden violent strain against his trousers. And as he imagined those perfectly ripe lips clamped around his throbbing length, sucking him deeper into the warm wetness of her mouth, his erection only grew more solid. More excruciating.

Heat raced along his veins, his skin suddenly too tight for his body as he worked to block out the erotic image in order to block the feelings it conjured, but it was too vivid, too potent. Hard as he tried, Domenico couldn't loosen the fixed image from his mind and, far from steadying himself, a wild, reckless abandon was mounting in him, urging him to take Rae's hand, slide it beneath the table and onto his crotch. Nothing in that moment seemed more urgent than letting her feel exactly what she did to him, and reminding her what powerful pleasure he could offer her in return.

Knowing he needed to change the direction of his thoughts and fast—before he did something he would majorly regret later—he searched desperately through his hazy mind for a safe topic of conversation.

‘You were speaking with Imogen earlier?' Rae had been speaking to her on the phone when he'd returned home to the palazzo. ‘How is she?'

Rae stared back at him, her slim eyebrows halfway up her forehead.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?'

‘Because you hardly ever ask after my sisters,' Rae replied with her newly acquired bluntness.

‘That's not true. I've asked about your sisters many times,' he insisted shortly, feeling defensive about the accusation because of course he'd asked about her sisters in the past. Hadn't he? ‘And even if I didn't, I'm asking now.'

Rae softened her gaze and swallowed her small mouthful of food. ‘She's good. She'd been at the library, studying for most of the day.'

‘How is she getting on with her studies? Has she been enjoying her course?'

‘Yes. She's doing really well.' Rae smiled, her pride in her youngest sister evident. ‘Her classes finish at the end of the month. Then she has a few final assignments, but after that she'll focus on her dissertation. I want to try to coax her out here for a few weekends, get her away for a few days or she'll just work non-stop.'

Domenico watched her, seeing what she wasn't admitting in the pull of her lips and the concern momentarily clouding her beautiful eyes.

‘You're worried about her?' Rae was always worried about Imogen and Maggie, but this was something else. ‘Are you concerned she's pushing herself too much with her studies?'

‘No. Well, yes, but it's not just that.' She offered no more, dropping her gaze and digging her fork back into her dish.

‘We can't just sit here in silence, Rae. We need to talk about something. Imogen is a neutral topic at least,' he pointed out with cool pragmatism.

With a look that said she knew he had a point, she relented. ‘Imogen got involved with someone last summer. I don't know who he was, I never met him and neither did Maggie. But she got in pretty deep with him pretty fast. And then he just walked away with barely more than a goodbye. Maggie and I didn't know about any of this until after it had happened, but it hit Ims hard. She became quiet, withdrawn. If she hadn't had her classes, I'm not sure she would have got out of bed.' Her forehead creased with a concerned frown. ‘She's better now, a lot better, but I'm not sure she's completely over it.'

‘A rejection like that, from someone she thought she could trust and who she thought she loved, she may never be completely over it. That kind of wound has a way of staying with you so that, even twenty years later, that sting of rejection feels just as sharp as the day it was inflicted,' Domenico imparted with all the certainty of someone who had experienced it himself and Rae's eyes lifted to his, the troubled blue of her gaze deepening to the colour of the darkest, deepest sea. It was that which alerted him to just how much he had inadvertently given away about himself. ‘But she will move on. You just need to give her time. It doesn't happen overnight.'

Rae was still watching him, curiosity now burning in her gaze.

‘What happened all those years ago that hurt you so badly, Domenico?' She leaned in closer, her eyes fixed on him with a compelling clarity and directness from which he felt there was no escape. ‘You can tell me.'

‘We were talking about Imogen,' he reminded her, growing more uncomfortable by the second under her intense gaze.

‘Now I'm asking about you,' Rae responded. ‘What happened? Who rejected you?'

Domenico looked off to the side. He had no intention of breaking his silence on the past. It was something he never talked about, but their conversation had unlocked an unpleasant memory that had started to snake through him and his usual tactic of pushing it aside was not working. In the strangest upending of emotion, he was struck by the desire to share it, to dispel it from his mind, and before he could examine that sudden urge, try to curb it, his lips were moving and he was answering her, information he had never spoken aloud before spilling out.

‘My mother.' He faced Rae again. ‘She lived here in Venice for a period when I was younger. By that time, I'd discovered who she was and when I found out that she was moving here I got so excited. I thought she had to be coming here because of me. For me. To see me, maybe have me come and live with her. It wasn't like I wanted to leave Elena—I loved her—but this was my mother. I'd been dreaming about meeting her for a long time.'

He paused, needing a moment, but the words were in a rush to escape. ‘Every time the doorbell went during those days and weeks I leapt to my feet, so sure that it would be her. But it never was. She never came. Then one day Elena had taken me out for lunch and she was in the same restaurant. She walked straight past us and looked right at me. But, instead of smiling or stopping, she just looked right through me with those cold, hateful eyes and it was like I'd been burned. All I wanted to do was cry, but I didn't want to disappoint Elena, so I just held it in...'

Feeling emotion pressing at the backs of his eyes at the stinging recollection, Domenico shook his head, wanting to move on, erase that too intense moment. But looking across at Rae certainly didn't help. She was absorbed in all that new information. Having omitted all the finer details of his story, all she'd ever known about his childhood was that Elena had taken him in when his own mother had been unable to care for him. He'd never wanted her to know the whole ugly truth of how unwanted he'd been, fearful that with that knowledge she'd start to find him lacking too.

‘But, like I said, Imogen will find a way to move on. She's strong. She'll be okay.'

Rae's eyes were stuck on him and he knew that, in spite of his attempt to draw attention back to her problem and her sister, Rae was thinking only of his story in that moment.

‘How did you move on from that?'

Domenico was quiet for a second as he relived it, remembering the hurt and the confusion. Remembering how those emotions had spread through his body like a virus and how hard he'd fought against that anguish.

‘I made the memory and feelings as small as I could and locked them in a little box where they could do no further harm,' he told her dispassionately.

Rae's hand had reached out and was curled around his fist, warm and soft, and the urge to twine his fingers through hers, to accept that comfort, was overwhelming.

‘Did you ever see her again? Your mother.'

The lump in his throat was so large it was a second before he could answer. ‘Only from afar.' But those sightings of her were tattooed into his brain too, because she hadn't been alone. She'd had her children with her—the children she had kept, the ones whose existence she had welcomed and celebrated. Whilst he'd remained ignored. ‘And no,' he added more sharply than he intended as he anticipated her obvious follow-up question, ‘she doesn't still live here. It's been years since I set eyes on her.'

‘I'm sorry, Domenico. I don't know what to say other than that.'

‘You don't need to say anything.'

He didn't need sympathetic words, or platitudes. He didn't need to talk about it. It was a reality that he had borne for years and talking about it would change nothing, and yet didn't the burden of it suddenly feel a little lighter, its sting a little less potent?

His phone rang but, without breaking their eye contact, he swiped a finger across the screen to reject the call and, before Rae could cajole any more confessions out of him, he moved on. ‘Are you ready for dessert? Your favourite is on the menu—tiramisu.'

Just as he reached for the menu, his phone buzzed once again.

‘Mi scusi.'With a quiet growl of annoyance, he snatched it up, intent on giving the caller an earache for disturbing him, not once but twice. But then he sighed as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line, hanging up with a promise to be at the office soon. ‘I'm sorry, Rae. There's a crisis with a new deal we're working on and I need to go and deal with it in person or it could fall apart.'

He was aggravated, and not just because his prize deal had hit a snag, but because it meant cutting short his evening with Rae.

She smiled across at him. ‘It's okay. Don't worry. I couldn't eat another bite anyway.'

Her words didn't dispel his niggle of guilt, or the feeling that he would prefer to stay with her, even though he didn't understand why he was feeling that sudden yearning for closeness with her.

‘I'll sort the bill and walk you back to the palazzo.'

‘You don't need to do that. You need to hurry. I can get myself home. It's not far.'

‘You're not walking back alone. That's final,' he added when she opened her mouth to protest, the thought of her navigating the darkened streets alone sending trickles of fear seeping down his spine.

Throwing down a set of bills on the table, Domenico took her hand, leading her from the restaurant and making their goodbyes. Only a few of the photographers who'd been documenting the arrivals of Venice's social elite remained, but they eagerly snapped yet more shots of Rae and Domenico as they exited onto the street.

The night was dark and quiet. Venice's streets and bridges and waterways were almost empty. The dark water was still, reflecting the glitter of the lights from the surrounding buildings. Domenico kept hold of her hand as they walked in silence, the gentle brushing of his thumb feeling the crazy skittering of her pulse, making him wonder if she was also sensing that new intimacy between them, if she was as aware of him as he was of her, every brush of her arm, the nudge of her hip.

‘Am I allowed to ask what the crisis is?' Rae asked after a few minutes of quiet. ‘Or is it top secret?' she teased and Domenico saw it as a sign that she was feeling it too, that whatever had shifted had done so for them both.

‘It's fairly top secret, yes,' he said, slanting her a quick smile to keep the light mood in place because he didn't want to disturb that connection blooming between them. It was the closest he'd felt to another person in a long time and whilst that normally wouldn't have mattered to him, in that moment it did. ‘But for you I'll make an exception. The Ricci Group is negotiating a big deal that will see us expand into operating a cruise line.'

Her eyes popped. ‘Like Raphael always wanted?'

Domenico was surprised that she'd remembered. Surprised, and pleased. ‘Yes.'

‘Domenico, that's incredible. Congratulations.' Her smile illuminated her whole face and Domenico's lungs squeezed. She was so beautiful, so much more than she knew, that it was actually painful. In the months that she'd been gone he'd encountered countless women, many of whom were eye-wateringly stunning, yet none had drawn from him a reaction that could compete with his response to Rae's smile.

‘Thank you. It's been hard even getting to the negotiations. The company we want to partner with has a CEO who is notoriously guarded about who he deals with, but we've been making some good progress lately and I don't want anything to derail it.'

‘Did Elena know about it?'

He gave a single nod of his dark head. ‘She did. I told her a few weeks before she passed. When she took over Raphael's role as CEO she tried to realise that dream on a few occasions, but it never worked out.'

‘I remember her telling me. I always got the sense that was a big regret of hers. She must have been incredibly touched that you were doing that.'

‘Sì, she was.' The memory of that conversation, of all his conversations with Elena, rolled slowly through his mind, a million shards of memory causing a million throbs of pain.

He tried not to think about it too often—his default way of dealing with anything difficult—but he missed her. Missed her more than words could express. It was an ache that at times diminished but then always roared back into existence. At times he felt that, without her guiding presence, he had no sense of whether he was coming or going, no anchor tethering him to the earth.

It was an unpleasant snapshot of what his life would have been had Elena not stepped in and taken him in as a baby and it only sharpened his conviction that he had to succeed in this deal. He had to show Elena that she had been right to give him the chance in life that she had. Once more he needed to prove his worth.

‘It must still be incredibly hard for you,' Rae said, watching his expression and reading everything in it, and abruptly he felt too exposed, too vulnerable, and he worked to shove those feelings back into the locker they'd sprung free from. Because he'd already told Rae too much, allowed her to glimpse too much of him. ‘It's not been long since she passed. If you ever want to talk about it, about her, I'm here.'

As she made the offer, she watched him from those deep blue eyes and a potent emotional need stretched within him. A yearning to accept and tell her everything and deepen that tentative bond weaving itself around them like a magic spell. To reach out and grasp the comfort and connection she could provide and once more feel moored to something, someone. To feel that he had a place to call home, someone to call his family.

But they were dangerous yearnings that had to be cauterised. Ripped out, root and stem. Because chasing those feelings only led to heartache. That was a mistake he'd made already—he would not be foolish enough to do so again.

‘I'm fine,' he said curtly, resuming a faster stride. If he said that enough times, believed it to be true, at some point it would start to be true, wouldn't it?

‘Well, if at any time you change your mind, the invitation stands,' she said lightly, and was it his imagination or did Rae look a little deflated at his brusque dismissal? And why did that bother him?

They reached the palazzo. Lights burned in a few of the windows invitingly. Rae looked at the door and then back at him, a small smile on her lips.

‘Thank you for walking me back. I hope you can fix whatever the problem with the deal is. Goodnight, Domenico.'

‘Not so fast.' Domenico seized her hand as she tried to turn away. With a single step he moved closer to her, close enough to cause her breath to audibly hitch and her eyes to explode with colour. ‘A man in love doesn't say goodbye to his wife for the night without a kiss.'

She swallowed and looked back at him nervously. ‘There's nobody around, Domenico.'

There wasn't. But he didn't care. ‘I'm not taking any chances,' he breathed, lowering his head towards hers.

It had been about making sure any lurking photographers or eavesdroppers had a show of them engaging physically. He was adamant about that, even though his lips had been tingling with anticipation of the moment their mouths would meet, but when the petal softness of her lips moulded to his and she responded with that gentle mewl of pleasing capitulation, his nerve-endings caught fire and the kiss became about something else entirely.

About coaxing more of that passion from her until she had no way of hiding from it. And revelling that in that heady, fevered pounding of his blood that she, and only she, could inspire.

Because this was something that Domenico understood and was happy to accept. Desire made complete sense to him, far more than those bewildering emotional yearnings that had surfaced with such strength only moments ago.

Banding his arms around her and drawing her tight against the wall of his body, he sought to squash those feelings into nothing, to incinerate them with the force of the heat blooming between their bodies, and with the passion of their kiss intensifying he could feel the confusion in his mind lessening, shrinking, until all made perfect sense again.

This was all that he wanted from Rae. Not her compassion, or comfort or understanding. He wanted the taste of her on his tongue, the feel of her arching and gasping beneath his hands. That was all permissible, the maximum he would allow himself to crave, to take.

And Rae was offering plenty of herself. Her hunger had overtaken her, her mouth moving against his with as much abandon and eagerness as his own, her chest grazing wantonly against his. She couldn't hide it. She sought everything that he did and as the flames of her desire licked against his own, they swirled into an even brighter, hotter, more treacherous fire.

Pressing her backwards into the wall of the palazzo, Domenico slowed the rhythm of their mouths, taking the kiss deeper as he slid his hands inside her jacket and around her body. Moving slowly, purposefully, they traced her waist, down over her hips and then around, exploring the toned peachiness of her bottom, the feel of her as exciting, as arousing, as dangerous as the taste.

He'd ignored and avoided this for too long, he realised with a burst of clarity. Too many nights he had lain awake, his sleep disturbed by his unfulfilled craving for the sweet connection with her body, and that had probably helped to cause the confusion in his mind, his body becoming overwrought with need and misinterpreting the signals being transmitted. But that was easily fixed.

‘I think we may need to revisit the terms of our arrangement, tesoro,' he murmured against her lips, finding the power to momentarily break the kiss.

Rae's cheeks were flushed and she blinked a few times, a frantic look spreading across her face. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Us, Rae. This. We clearly both still want each other. We may as well take advantage of this time and enjoy ourselves.'

‘No.' Rae shook her head, lightly at first but then with even more vehemence. ‘No. Domenico. You're wrong. I don't...'

‘Don't lie and tell me you don't feel it too, Rae,' he said huskily. ‘I know your body, your kisses.' Even in that second, he could feel the hum of her blood, moving fast and hungry through her aroused body. ‘I know you still desire me as I do you.'

An expression of panic shot through her eyes and she tried to put as much space as possible between their heated bodies. ‘We're not having this conversation. We have an arrangement and the terms of it are fine. And now you should leave. You need to leave. There is a problem at your office and people waiting for you,' she reminded him sternly.

Domenico couldn't argue with that. The clock was ticking on his crisis. But if he didn't have to leave...

Using his finger, he angled her flushed and frantic face up to his. ‘You may be able to run from this right now, but we will be talking about it again,' he promised, feeling the quiver skittering beneath her skin. ‘What we have is too special to waste, Rae. So think about it...think about all the ways you know I can satisfy you. I know I will be.'