BEATRICE HAD LOST herself in this dream a thousand times. A soft bed at her back. The glory of Cesare braced over her. That shatteringly intense look on his face that she could feel all over her, within her, as if they were the same.
As if where it counted, they were one.
She’d had this dream again and again and again, but this was different.
This was better, when that should have been impossible.
The sun was gold and red and molten outside the windows, making them both glow. And Beatrice lay there in that very same T-shirt she’d been admiring earlier, wrapped up in the scent of him. Her body was hungry in ways she’d tried so hard to forget, heavy and needy, and this time she wasn’t going to wake up bereft and alone.
Best of all, his hands were on her belly. He was frowning in total concentration as he learned the new shape of her, sliding his palms beneath the shirt and over the mound of the baby they’d made.
And every dream she had involved different reenactments of the night they’d shared in Venice. She had been mining a memory and on some level, she’d imagined she would keep doing it the rest of her life. But this was something else.
This was all new, and better still, they knew each other now.
He knew her name. She knew him.
They had spent weeks together, not a few wondrous hours.
Venice had been like a dream even when it was happening.
This felt like poetry.
Like the passion she’d known was in him all along.
He laid kisses on either side of her navel. His warm palms, hotter by the second, smoothed down the slopes of her bump as he whispered words of praise and adoration in Italian.
Sweet little sonnets all for her, and their baby.
Our baby, she thought, and that was a revelation all its own—and it could not matter, not in this precious moment she had not believed would ever happen, that there were complications hovering there, just outside the bedroom—
Beatrice pushed them aside. Because this belonged to them, and the memory of the night that had changed everything. This was theirs alone, and the future that kicked inside of her, as if the baby recognized its own father.
And somehow, the sweetness of this introduction—not only of herself to this man who had changed her life, but of this father to the baby he should have been expecting from the start the way she had been—made everything...
More.
The sweeter the things he murmured to the baby, the hotter it was. The more carefully and reverently he touched her, the more restless she became, desperate to wrap her legs around him the way she had in Venice—though she supposed that would not be as easy now.
It might not even be possible in her current shape, but the longing only intensified. The wanting only deepened.
She had known he was her baby’s father, of course, but Beatrice had never understood until now how all the different things he was to her could twine together.
Brother to his sister. Father to their child. Lover of her dreams, finally in the flesh once more.
He was Cesare, and in some way, she had always considered him hers—even knowing that she couldn’t have him.
And maybe this was a dream after all, but maybe this was the one she would never wake up from. Because time seemed to flatten out and turn to honey like the rest of her, like the sky outside, as Cesare crooned to her belly, whispered promises, and pledged himself to their unborn child as if he had wanted nothing more than an unexpected pregnancy all this time.
There was so much emotion inside of her that Beatrice hardly knew how to keep it all inside. She tried. She told herself there were things that needed to stay hers—
She did her best, but it all spilled out anyway.
“I thought you would cast me out,” she found herself saying. She pushed herself up on her elbows to look down at him as he crouched there, his hands tracing lazy patterns over her belly and a look of wonder on his face. “That you would call me a gold digger, or something in that vein.”
“You would have had to know who I was.” He lifted his gaze, a deeper, darker blue than any she had ever seen. “There are many things to discuss, Beatrice, this is clear, but I know full well you had no idea who I was. Any more than I knew you. It is a fact I have regretted ever since.”
“Cesare...” she whispered, but not because she had anything particular to say to him. More because she felt a wild, deep joy that she could call him that. Here, now. His name was known to her, he was known to her. She could lie back, naked and gloriously pregnant, and still sing it at the top of her voice if she wished.
Yet try as she might, she couldn’t keep the complications at bay. There was last night. There was still the very same reason she’d run to that pool and tried to scrub her need for him off her skin. It wasn’t that the joy in sharing the baby with him ebbed. She wasn’t sure it ever would.
But it was layered with other considerations, whether she liked it or not.
“You asked another woman to marry you,” Beatrice made herself say. She made to sit up, to pull away from him, and shook her head when he stopped her. “This is wrong.”
“Two things,” he said, in that dark and stirring way of his. “First, I did not ask her to marry me. I intended to, months ago, but something held me back.” His gaze searched hers. “You, Beatrice. Shuffling around in your headmistress costume, right under my nose. I could not understand why you drew my notice, why I could not look away, why I dreamed of Venice but saw glasses and a tight bun instead.” He watched as she took that in, flushing with a pleasure she couldn’t make herself contain. She wasn’t sure she tried. “And second, you can consider things ended with Marielle from this moment forward.”
It was shocking, really, how much she wanted to do just that. “I doubt she will consider it ended, however much I might.”
“Marielle wants a spotless legacy over which she can reign.”
“So do you,” Beatrice whispered. “You speak of little else.”
“I thought I did.” He shook his head, his gaze dropping to her belly. “But you and I, this child we made, this is not spotless and still, it is beautiful.”
And Beatrice felt her whole body relax at that, in a way she had not let herself relax since she first knew she was pregnant. And certainly not since she’d come to Italy.
Some part of her had not believed, until now, that it was possible she would be okay.
But he thought it was beautiful, this mess they’d made. This miracle.
Cesare looked almost rueful. “I have no doubt that Marielle will be delighted to be released from any connection with me.”
Beatrice thought she should argue. That she should insist that they sort out the matter of his engagement now, and it didn’t matter to her that it was clear Marielle would not have done the same if their positions were reversed. It wasn’t about Marielle. It was about the kind of person Beatrice had always thought she was—
But Cesare was moving up the length of her body to settle himself beside her, and his face was so close to hers that he was all she could see.
She forgot anything and everything but this. But him.
At first, after Venice, she’d believed that she would never see him again. And then she had, and that had been worse. Then it had all been a kind of torture, but she had soldiered on because she’d truly believed it would be good for her child.
And because she’d discovered that she cared quite a lot for Mattea, whose behavior she understood so much better now. And, of course, because she liked being near Cesare. She craved it.
Even when he didn’t recognize her.
But Beatrice was only flesh and blood, in the end. She was only human. Headmistress Higginbotham was the armor she wore, and she had spent years perfecting it, but the reality was this. A woman lying naked and big with child, in bed with the only man she had ever touched. The only man who had ever touched her. The man she had longed for ever since she’d met him, before she’d known who he was and after.
And it turned out she had precious little strength left to resist him.
She reached over, because she could, and she traced the dark arch of one brow, then the other. She tested the line of his proud nose, his sensual lips. She shivered, imagining the way he could use them on every last inch of her, the way he had in Venice.
The way she knew, somehow, he would again now.
“But I have heard you talk about the kind of life you want,” she heard herself say, because there were still sharp little poking things, there in the back of her mind, “and it isn’t this, Cesare. It isn’t the man who showed up in his sister’s room today and healed something in her. I... I can’t reconcile the two.”
“I will tell you.”
He pressed his mouth to her cheek, her jaw. To one corner of her mouth, then the other. He found her temple, then the soft spot between that and the shell of her ear.
“Last night I stood at the bottom of the grand stair while the woman I had carefully selected to be my wife walked toward me. But all I was interested in was you, a woman my would-be bride did not even notice was there.” A strand of her hair lay between them, sodden and dark, and he paused to curl it around his index finger with great deliberation. “I excused myself from world leaders and men with great power when I would normally speak with them for hours, so I could watch you hold court over a handful of teenagers. And I resented it when I was forced to take my spot at the head of the table, because I was not interested in the tedious conversations and social mores that awaited me. Because, my little owl, though you may not realize this, very little has interested me since your arrival but you.”
“Impossible,” Beatrice whispered, though she could feel the way her lips curved. “Surely a man of your stature cannot see over the cliff of his own consequence all the way down to a woman of such humble origins as mine.”
“I might not have recognized you, Beatrice,” he said in a low, thrilling voice that washed through her and over her and made everything inside her hum, “but I see you. Hidden behind glasses you do not need, your hair tamed into submission, and swathes of clothes to hide your shape. Still, I saw you. Still I dreamed of you.” He made a kind of growling sound. “It was always you.”
She thought there was more there, because hadn’t he told her something like that, months ago?
I have never been a man of passion, he had told her when he was deep inside of her, keeping her on the edge of that sweet shattering for what had seemed like a lifetime, but for you, I would learn it. For you, mi tesoro, I would become a creature made only of desire.
Beatrice hadn’t let herself imagine that this could happen. That they could finally be together again. He rolled away to kick off his shoes and pants, then came back. He sat her up, stripping his T-shirt from her body and tossing it aside.
And when he lay back down beside her, there was nothing between them but skin, and she wasn’t sure she had any arguments left inside her.
“Beatrice,” he said, in that dark, thrilling way of his. “Kiss me, I beg of you.”
So she did.
Cesare had kissed her in Mattea’s rooms earlier, and again by that pool, but this was different. Because this felt like a sacrament.
And Beatrice was greedy enough to think it ought to be. That this kiss should function like a vow, fusing them together. Especially when he moved over her, making pleased, greedy noises as he filled his hands with her bigger, rounder breasts.
“You are so lush,” he told her as if the words were too small to contain what he meant, “so beautiful.”
And then he laid her back down in the center of his bed, and worshipped her.
Every inch of her, as if this was their new religion, theirs alone to share.
And he wasn’t quiet about it. Cesare was inventive and imaginative and he wanted to let her know about each and every discovery he made as he went, so that by the time he made it over her bump and down into that furrow between her legs, she was trembling, her eyes slick with emotion and need.
For he had stretched her out on the edge of that cliff for a long, long while, and he clearly meant to keep her there.
“You are even more beautiful than I dreamed, then I remembered, my little owl,” he told her. “But you will be even more beautiful when you come in my mouth.”
And then he kissed her there, too.
He licked into her, devouring her, making her arch up to get more of him. As much as she could. There could never be enough. Every touch made her want more.
One lick, another, a twist of his jaw—and she was in pieces.
The lover she remembered took charge then, sliding his fingers into her soft heat and finding his way inside her. And all the while he licked her, again and again, letting her catch her breath only slightly before throwing her out into bliss once more.
Only when she was sobbing, not sure if it was from pleasure—or if she was pleading, or what she was pleading for—did he crawl up the length of her body, moving her hands away when she would have reached for him.
“I wish to worship you,” he told her, very sternly. “And I need for you to let me, Beatrice.”
And what could she do but obey.
Cesare lay down beside her and rolled her over him, helping her kneel over him. Then he guided her, lowering her down on top of him while they both watched the thick head of the hungriest part of him sink into her soft heat.
He made a rough, low noise and then he gripped her hips. He looked like every dream she’d ever had, true at last. He gazed up at her with those dark blue eyes gone electric.
And then he used his hands at her hips to lower her onto him, inch by inch.
It was a slow, wild stretching. He was so big, so hot and so hard, and her body ached as it accommodated him—because it felt so good. Because it was scalding hot and so beautiful.
Because it was everything she had told herself she would never have again.
Beatrice already knew how beautifully they fit together, but she remembered, too, how he had murmured praise and wonder in her ear as he’d worked himself inside her that first time. How he’d taken such care with her untried body. How he had eased his way inside, a fraction of an inch at a time, until she had been shuddering all around him—not sure if she was sobbing or singing.
Until he’d reached between them, taken that proud little bit of flesh there between his fingers, and introduced her to herself.
Beatrice could see that Cesare was remembering the same thing now. That miraculous first joining in Venice. It had been a culmination of the magic of their meeting, their dancing, their astonishment of having found each other—
And it had only been the beginning.
Tonight, he eased his grip just slightly, though his jaw was tight and his gaze narrow. She could see the faint tremor in him as he held himself in check, his control its own wonder. And she didn’t waste the opportunity. She rocked a bit as she straddled him, experimenting with moving one way and another, expecting to feel strange and unwieldy in this new body of hers that kept changing by the day.
But she only felt more beautiful.
And she felt him more.
“I would have said that there was no way that you could be more beautiful to me, mi tesoro,” he told her, his voice hoarse with awe and wonder and that driving need that had its teeth sunk in her, too. “But you have proved me wrong.”
“I couldn’t believe you didn’t know who I was,” she told him, looking down so their gazes could be as locked together as the rest of them.
And, however disapproving she might have attempted to sound, it all trailed off into a sigh as he smoothed his hands up higher. Then began to tease her breasts, finding them significantly more sensitive than they’d been before.
Just like the rest of her.
“You will forgive me,” he said.
“Will I?”
Cesare’s eyes were on hers, and he moved his hands again, back down to her hips until he was moving her, too. Raising her, lowering her, and it was like sunburst, like fire.
It was the whole world, and she’d spent a lot of time and effort convincing herself that nothing could be this good. That she’d made that up. That she’d been making excuses for how she’d behaved in Venice, so unlike herself. And how she hadn’t even bothered with protection. And all the other things she’d failed to do that night, like guard her feelings, her dreams, her heart—
But this was a revelation all over again.
Her head tipped back of its own accord. Her toes curled.
She had to brace herself on his chiseled chest with her palms as he lifted her up, then slid her all the way back down the hard length of him.
So slow.
So deliberate.
And so good it should have been illegal. It shouldn’t have been allowed.
Beatrice started to shake all over again, simply because this was happening again. When she’d been so sure that anything that fierce and that glorious could only occur once in a lifetime, on one magical night, to be dreamed of ever after—
But then she was shaking all over again, falling apart, hurtling off of that cliff.
She heard him laugh, and knew that he wasn’t going to stop. That this wasn’t a dream.
That this was real, and even better than before, and she would be lucky if she survived the intensity of it this time.
In that moment, she wasn’t sure she cared.
He gave her no quarter. There was no time to rest, no time to catch her breath.
She fell off of that cliff, but he kept bringing her back and bringing her back until she didn’t think she was holding herself up anymore. Cesare was the one who was holding them both there, maintaining that perfect rhythm.
That thrust and parry that made them new every time.
Beatrice couldn’t count the number of times she’d broken apart. She lost track of anything and everything but this, this wild communion, this twining of far more than simply their bodies.
Because it really was sacred, this thing between them. This riot of light and color, fire and need.
When she felt him lose track of that rhythm, when his pace broke down and his thrusts became jerky and mad, she held on tight. As best she could.
And when he roared out his pleasure, she felt it from the inside out, and hurtled off into all the light and heat beside him.
It was dark outside the windows when she came back to herself.
She discovered that she was lying on her side, and he was at her back, his arm slung over her with his hand resting on the baby.
It brought home the fact that this wasn’t a dream, because all of her dreams had been renditions of that night in Venice. A beautiful night, but only the one night.
She hadn’t been pregnant then.
If she was honest, it had never occurred to her that he would accept her pregnancy so easily now. She’d assumed she’d never have the opportunity to tell him about it and if she did, he’d reject the possibility the baby was his without proof. Wasn’t that what men like him did in situations like these?
“Don’t you want a barrage of tests?” she asked into the dark room. “Don’t men in your exalted position insist on establishing paternity, as a matter of course?”
She felt a new sort of shaking and realized he was laughing. That she could feel him laughing, just there behind her.
And this was the man she remembered. Not the Cesare Chiavari she’d met here, brooding and tightly wound and in danger of flying apart at any moment. This was the man she’d remembered all these months, with that voice like a simmering fire and a certain languid confidence that moved through her bones like molten gold.
“The lawyers will demand it,” he said, sounding lazy in her ear.
“But you’re not concerned.”
“Should I be?”
Beatrice felt the faintest brush of irritation, then, though she couldn’t have said why. She wasn’t sure it made sense. She looked back over her shoulder, shoving her still-damp hair out of the way.
“You could have had a thousand lovers since that night in Venice,” she said, though that was the last topic she wanted to discuss. Still, it was realistic, and surely she should cling to such things now, no matter how far removed from reality she might feel at the moment. It would help with any whiplash on the other side of this. She hadn’t liked that much when she’d experienced it—first when she’d discovered she was pregnant. And again when she’d recognized him instantly, and he had not known who she was. Maybe she could mitigate it. “I assume you have.”
“I have not.” Cesare moved then, rolling her over so she was more on her back and he could prop himself above her. Once again, he found a thick strand of her hair and played with it, as if looking for hints of red in the dark mass of it. They glinted, as if it at his command, in the soft light from fixtures he must have switched on without her noticing. “I told myself it was because I should not expect an innocent wife if I was not willing to curtail my own activities. But the truth of it, Beatrice, is that I wanted only you.”
And she wanted nothing more than to melt into that. Into him.
But this time around she had a child to think of. This time around she needed to protect the both of them.
“How convenient for you that I walked into your palatial home, then,” she said, and she could hear that touch of asperity in her voice. She could feel it crashing around inside her.
But he didn’t seem to notice. “I have already had my staff reach out to Marielle,” he told her. “She was already told that she was not to make any broader announcements, and now she has been made aware that there will be no announcements made at all. I am told she took the news with only a sigh.”
Beatrice flinched a bit at that, but could not keep herself from touching him. She traced her finger along the edge of one of his pectoral muscles, then let it go where it would, finding its way along those spectacular abdominal ridges that had haunted her for months now.
“Maybe all she really needs is someone to love her for her,” she said but he did not reply.
And that felt like a warning. Beatrice knew she should heed it.
Then again, he’d seen who she was. He’d been inside her, again. He had even accepted the baby. Why should she imagine that this was all happening a little too easily? A little too quickly?
Maybe, she told herself, you’re simply unfamiliar with getting what you really want. It’s never happened before.
Here in his bed, with her hands on his beautiful body, wrapped up with him as if they’d never let go, she could finally admit that he was what she’d wanted all along.
That night in Venice had changed her, profoundly.
She had only been pretending otherwise because she had to. Because she could not say, I fell in love with a stranger during a one-night stand and I will never be whole again without him, not even to herself.
“The girls gave me a makeover,” she told him now, almost shyly. “They were being funny, obviously. It was a bit of a lark to dress up the headmistress and dare her to go out like that, looking like a total stranger. It never occurred to me that I would do more than have a glass of wine somewhere and let myself be anonymous for an hour or so, then return.”
If there were warning signs here, she didn’t see them as he shifted, pulling his fingers through the length of her hair, as if testing its weight, its luster.
“I was in Venice for business,” he replied after a moment or two. “I had decided at the dawn of the new year that it was time I took the next steps, and I was certain that I had found an acceptable woman who fit my criteria. Everything was as it was meant to be. And then, there you were. You set all of my good intentions on fire.”
She searched his face and what she saw was that same intensity. She remembered it. She’d seen it here, too.
It was part of this thing that always burned inside her, and in him too.
“At first I was glad I did not know your name,” she whispered, a new confession. “That made it seem not quite real. Like a dream. I thought that night was a secret I would keep forever. But I missed a period. Then another. And by the time I took a test, it could only tell me what I already knew.”
“I looked for you,” he told her gruffly, in that same hushed manner, as if this bed of his was a confessional they shared. “I woke up, you were gone, and I could not accept it. I looked for you everywhere that following morning. But no one had seen a ravishing woman, dressed in red, a siren to make men run ashore at the slightest glance. It did not occur to me that she was a costume you had worn.”
“I didn’t look at a picture of you before I came here,” she said, with sudden urgency. “It didn’t occur to me that Mattea Descoteaux could have any connection to that man or that night. If I’d known it was you I would never have come like this. I had imagined I would go to Venice once the baby was born, and look for you then.”
“But you are here now, little owl.”
Cesare kissed her then, long and deep and slow.
And she forgot the other things she might have said, because the kiss caught fire.
This time, he had her brace herself on her hands and knees as he took her from behind, holding her hair in one hand like a rope, so he could find her mouth when she looked back. When he encouraged her to look back and find him.
It was possible that she might have lost a bit of consciousness, there, when he reached beneath her legs and found the center of her need, then pinched it.
Or maybe it was simply that there was a kind of starry sky within her that only he could find.
Over and over again.
And Beatrice fought to find her breath again, Cesare stretched out like a god beside her, and thought, This is all much more than I ever believed I would have. It’s enough. It’s more than enough.
Because it should have been.
But the truth was that she felt like crying.
He rolled out of bed and then hoisted her up in his arms again, carrying her off into his shower to wash them both clean, making them both smell like him.
And maybe she did cry as he used his hands between her legs to make her fall apart once more.
Maybe she sobbed, riding his hand and kissing him like she would never see him again, while heat and steam billowed all around them.
Afterward, he pulled his T-shirt and sweats back on again. Then he took more time than was strictly necessary to help her into a robe, until she was flushed and perilously close to giggly.
So close that she almost pulled him close and whispered those words that were heavier on her tongue by the moment—
But she didn’t.
Cesare had been so quick to accept all of this, but he’d never mentioned love.
And Beatrice could not raise her baby without love. She wouldn’t. It was the one gift her parents had left her, the greatest inheritance imaginable. And for her, it was a simple thing, there beneath the role she’d played here while she’d waited for him to recognize her.
There had never been another man in her life. There never would be.
She had accepted that a long time ago, never imagining she would see him again. He was it for her.
But though she was brave in so many ways, because she’d had to be, Beatrice could not bring herself to tell him. To say the words that would make her feelings clear.
He walked her back to her attic room, as if this was some kind of date. He stood outside the door to her little room. He looked down at her, and ran the back of his fingers down the side of her face.
Beatrice thought, This can be enough. I can make this enough.
And when he bent to take her mouth with his, sending all those stars and all that molten light spinning through her, she believed she could do it.
She truly believed she could.
But then there was a soft, strangled noise from farther down the hall, and he lifted his head.
And when they turned, Mattea was standing there at the top of the stairs, looking pale and shocked, and worse still, terribly betrayed.
“This was about him,” she whispered, her wounded gaze on Beatrice. “This was all about him, wasn’t it? It was never about me at all.”
“I came here for you,” Beatrice managed to say, because that was true.
“Mattea,” Cesare began.
But his sister turned that same deeply betrayed expression on him. “You don’t care about me at all. You’re just as bad as the rest of them. Worse, because they never pretended.” She pulled in a ragged breath. “I hate you both.”
And then Mattea turned toward the stairs again, and ran for them, her feet like a drum as she raced down toward the bottom of the house.