Chapter Sixteen

If you had told me a month ago, that I would be sitting on a bed in a guestroom at the Baldini mansion, playing The Game of Life with Elio, I would have died laughing. Yet, here we are, playing a silly board game together and trying to forget about the past and the current difficult situation that we find ourselves in.

"Another baby? Ugh!" I exclaim as I get yet another card that says I have had another child. My little car is completely full and I'm running out of money.

Elio laughs and the sound warms my heart. It's good to see him acting like a human being for once. It makes you almost forget what he truly is. "And here I am without any."

"If you were a chivalrous man, you would offer to help me with all of my kids," I tell him, moving my playing piece a few more spaces.

He smiles and reads the card he was instructed to pull from the stack. He looks up at me then, pausing before taking the rest of his turn. "Didn't you always want to have a lot of kids?"

I feel the smile slip off my face. "Yes," I admit. I feel sadness twist around my heart. "I wanted to have a big family just like the one I grew up in."

"It's not too late," he tells me.

I scoff at this. "Nothing has turned out the way I thought that it would."

"That's usually how life goes," Elio replies negligently, finishing his turn.

"Looks like we're almost done with the game," I say. "I think I'm going to win."

He slants a coy look up at me. "It does. Do you want to sweeten the experience for me since I'm probably going to lose?"

I eye him cautiously. "What do you want to do?"

"I was thinking we could add a stripping element to the game. Might make things more fun for those of us who are going to lose."

I laugh lightly. Clever man. I told him to show me intimacy that didn't include sex, but he has managed to somehow come back to his favorite way of expressing his interest in me. However, I have to admit that seeing more of him wouldn't hurt my feelings. "You're going to be doing a lot of stripping, I think," I warn him.

He smiles at me, and my heart stutters a little. God, why does he have to be so good-looking?

"Fine by me," he says. He tells me what kind of system he wants to use to determine when to take off an article of clothing and I agree to it.

I take my turn and I score a point on him. I arch my brow at him. "One point for me," I remind him.

He smiles at me and my traitorous heart flips over in my chest as he sits up straighter and shrugs out of his tight-fitting shirt.

Elio was always meticulous in his personal grooming, and I see that nothing has changed in the years since we were together. His tan skin is smooth, shadows dipping into the grooves and marks of his well-defined muscles.

I swallow firmly, and turn back to the board. "Your turn," I direct him to cover my sudden arousal.

"So it is," he says, and takes his turn. I watch in a distracted way as he reads the little card he was directed to pick up. I see his lip curling and I know that I am going to have to take off an article of clothing as well.

"One point for me," he says, confirming what I had surmised from his expression.

"Don't tell me that you were pretending to be bad at this game so you could convince me to up the ante," I say accusatorily as I start unbuttoning the silk shirt I chose for our meeting.

I can't decide if I'm happy that I wore a bra or not, as I cast the shirt to the floor in a puddle of brilliant, shiny color.

Elio's eyes eat up the sight of my bare skin hungrily, and I can practically feel them on my skin like a physical touch. I shiver, hungry for him in spite of myself.

"You are still so beautiful," he says to me softly, his eyes lingers on the curve of my breasts peeking out above the cups of my bra.

"Did you expect I would have grown ugly in just seven years?" I inquire, straightening my shoulders a little and pressing my breasts forward subtly.

He laughs, the sound sweet to my ears. "I don't know what I expected," he admits. "You were frozen in my mind as a young girl. You might have gotten fat, or grown tired from being a single parent locked up in hiding."

I frown a little. "Well, if you were really worried about that outcome, you would have been more thoughtful toward me all along," I say, taking my turn.

I was hoping to feel anger, but mostly I just felt sadness at the truth in my words. Elio is wearing down my resolve to be furious with him.

Maybe this is why people are always giving in to the devil in biblical writings. The charm of this man is criminal and my susceptibility to it is a significant threat to my plans to try and save myself and my son from a life as pawns of Elio and men like him.

"Why did you go to Marco?" he asks me as I am reading the directions for my turn from the card in my hand.

I glance at him over the dog-eared cardboard. "Who else should I have gone to for help?" I ask him.

He frowns a little at my words. "Well, despite the fact that I wish you would have come to me, why didn't you go to your parents for help?"

I snort derisively. "You think my parents would have been sympathetic to my unhappiness with our engagement? And with me pregnant, do you think anyone would have prevented you from marrying me, even over my dead body?"

He has the good grace to look a little disheartened at my words because he recognizes the truth in them. I finish taking my turn and point at him. "Off with some more clothing," I order him.

He flashes me a grin and rises off the bed so that he can slip out of his pants. I slide my eyes away from his package, resisting the urge to lick my lips at the sight of him.

His tight boxer briefs offer the barest concealment of his most intimate self, and my fingers are itching to get him out of them. I'm not sure when this evening shifted for me, but I know already that I want to give in to him and let him fuck me senseless.

"Oh, look," Elio says merrily as he finishes his turn. "I got another point."

I allow a small smile to tuck itself into the corner of my mouth and I rise from the bed to slither out of my tight jeans.

My lace thong is also borrowed, which means that it is a bit too small for me. I know that the lips of my pussy are just peeking out around it, and I feel a moment of intense pleasure when I see Elio's eyes catch on the sight and linger.

He lifts his heated gaze to my eyes, and his mouth softens into the ghost of a smile.

"Borrowed as well, I see," he tells me, nodding to my underwear.

I laugh. I can't help it. "Prisoners can't be choosers," I say airily.

"Your turn," he tells me, and I take a cautious seat on the bed again. I feel like all I need to do is shift the tiniest amount and I will be fully bared to him.

I take my turn, and I'm so distracted that I barely register that I have to take off another article of clothing once I have completed it. I glance at Elio, so close, yet so far away.

"Enough of this game," I say to him, my voice husky. "I'll let you pick between bra and panties if you answer a question. I'll know if you're lying."

His dark gaze is locked on mine, the heat of it searing through me. "Ask it," he says, his tone silky smooth, tinged with danger.

I swallow hard, the sound audible in the silence between us. "Did you mean what you said on the phone that day?" I ask him.

His brows draw down over his eyes as he tries to figure out what I mean. "Which day?" he asks.

My heart is beating so fast it feels like it might burst. "The day I ran away. You said you'd leave me behind. That I was an inconvenience. Did you mean it?"

I have no idea why I'm asking him this. He could easily lie, or he could answer that he did mean it, and the result will be the same.

How can I expect the truth from a man who tells lies for a living?

Sudden understanding flares to life in his expression. He sits up abruptly, his shoulders tense. "That's why you left?" he asks, incredulously. "You heard me on the phone saying I would leave you behind me after you were pregnant and you left?"

I feel a flare of rage at his words. "Elio, how on earth should I have reacted? You were planning to dump me in Mexico and forget about me after I was pregnant with your heir. I was already pregnant, so the clock had run out for me. How on earth should I have felt?"

Elio makes a choked sound that I can't connect to any particular emotion, driving a hand into his dark hair. "You stupid, stupid woman," he says, but his tone is sad, not accusatory. "I didn't mean any of those words. I was never going to leave you behind."

I make a dismissive sound. "Could have fooled me," I retort.

He meets my gaze again and I freeze at the intensity of the emotion raging in his dark eyes. "You were my lifeline, Kate," he says fiercely. "I was barely keeping all the pieces of myself together back then. I would never have left you, not for anything."

I believed him, despite what happened in the past, but it makes no sense to me. "Then why did you say that?" I whisper. I hate how weak I sound and how much pain the memory still causes me.

He abruptly swings his legs over the edge of the bed, and comes to sit directly beside me. I flinch as he sits down; I can't help it. He sees my fear and he frowns a little before reaching out with gentle hands to clasp my shoulders.

"Kate, I…" he sighs, weighing his words. "I was on the phone with my father. It is no secret that he was a very bad man and not someone that you trifled with. He wanted us to be married, but he also was afraid that I would forget about my responsibilities to the business."

I shake my head, trying to pull away from him. "That doesn't explain anything," I hiss at him. I feel sick to my stomach that I have let all of this go so far. I haven't done anything but given him the upper hand again.

"No, Kate, wait," he pleads. I stop struggling but I don't look at him again. I train my gaze to the floor.

He sighs again, but he doesn't speak for a long moment. I finally risk a glance at him. He's looking down at his hand on my arm, clearly lost in his memories.

There's a note of fear in his expression that makes me pause, my heart in my throat.

"Kate, my father was…worse than you could ever imagine," he grinds out. "I never wanted him to know what you meant to me. It would have been dangerous for you to become a threat to his control over me. I was trying to protect you, not push you away."

My mind races as I try to decide if he's telling the truth about this. I remember his father being a casually cruel man and I always felt a certain thrill of terror when his eyes would land on me, but I never considered what Elio thought about him.

I suddenly remembered the desperate and depraved way that Elio would fuck me when he came home from "training" with his father. Suddenly, it all makes sense to me and I feel a sense of wonder at the thought that Elio never meant to send me away at all, but instead was trying to keep me safe.

I look at the beautiful, dangerous, damaged man sitting on the bed beside me, his eyes closed as he wrestles with some kind of internal battle.

I gently reach out and push his tousled, dark hair back off his forehead. "Elio, look at me," I say softly.

For a moment, I think that he won't do as I have asked, but then he reluctantly opens his eyes and meets mine.

"Prove to me that you never meant to leave me," I say to him, knowing that what happens next will define everything about our relationship from this moment forward.