Chapter Sixteen

It was well after midnight, and the streets were eerily quiet as Alec led her back to his home. They walked side by side, but at no point during the short walk did he move to touch her. What little intimacy they had uncovered minutes ago had vanished now that they weren’t inside the cabin’s comforting darkness. Instead, his sharp eyes were consumed with scanning their surroundings, while his countenance projected a formidable prowess that would ward off all but the most determined of troublemakers.

“We weren’t followed,” he said, answering a question that hadn’t even occurred to her. They rounded a corner and came to a stop in front of the once-grand palazzo. All the windows were dark. Nico, his mother, and aunt had no doubt been asleep for hours. “No one knows where I live. Not even the signore. And no one would ever assume I was daft enough to live here.”

Lottie’s heart twisted in her chest. “It’s your parents’ house, isn’t it?”

Alec nodded, but he still did not look at her. She would have given anything to know what he was thinking of: His mother’s death? His father’s unstoppable descent into madness? But then, such thoughts must never be far from him. Alec had chosen to live among those ghosts.

“Come,” he said. Lottie followed in silence as he entered the house. In the entryway he lit a single candle and led them up the winding staircase toward his flat. In the daytime, the palazzo’s faded grandeur could still be seen. But now the single flickering candle threw strange shadows against the high walls that only seemed to emphasize the many years of neglect and decay.

Alec came home to this every night, Lottie thought with a shiver as she followed him into the flat. The window shutters had been left open, and the main room was illuminated by the silvery moonlight. Alec paused to light a small candelabra. “It’s rather medieval now, but someday I hope to have electricity,” he said with an apologetic smile. Then he led her toward the bedroom with the desk. The one that contained so many secrets.

Alec entered the room and placed the candelabra on a bedside table. Then he turned to face her. “Get some rest. If you need anything, I’ll be right outside.” He gestured toward the threadbare sofa in the main room.

Lottie’s heart twisted again. Alec wouldn’t even sleep in the other bedroom that still housed his mother’s things. She sat down on the bed and grazed a finger against the worn coverlet. “You must have so many memories here,” she murmured and glanced up shyly. Alec’s face was hard, but his eyes burned witch black in the candlelight.

“Too many,” he said in a low voice. “Sleep well. You have a long journey ahead of you tomorrow.” He turned to leave but Lottie came to her feet. She pressed a trembling hand tightly against her abdomen.

“Alec. Wait.”

She had spoken his name so rarely these last days that it felt like casting a spell, an invocation for a power far greater than any she possessed. Alec immediately stopped before the doorway. His entire frame tensed. He turned halfway toward her. Just enough for a shard of moonlight to illuminate his strong profile. “You’re scared?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but Lottie would say close to anything if it drew him back to her. He turned all the way around and stepped closer. Though his face was as hard as before, his gaze seemed to penetrate straight to the hot, pulsing desire building within her. A weaker woman would have crumpled under what could easily pass as a glare. But not Lottie. She knew what that glare was hiding, and she would not leave Venice without uncovering it.

“You have nothing to fear now,” he said gruffly. “I promise.”

She looked down, gathering her courage. “Don’t leave.” She hadn’t the nerve to add me. And yet, how many times had she asked that of him when they were children? Too many to count. But he had broken that promise in the end.

When she dared to glance up again, Alec still hadn’t moved, but his mask had fallen away. Everything he worked so hard to keep hidden was laid bare before her: the wariness, the pain, and, most important, the desire.

Her eyes were drawn to the sensuous curves of his lips, almost indecently full for a man. How badly she wanted him to kiss her again, but not for show this time. Not for anything other than the sheer pleasure of it. The want. The need of it.

He stared at her for a long moment. His piercing gaze stirred something so raw within her she almost fell to her knees. “It’s the shock of earlier,” he finally said. “You don’t know what you’re—”

“Stay with me. Please.”

Alec closed his eyes and muttered a curse.

  

It was the please that finally broke through Alec’s last remaining barricade, though it had been steadily crumbling for the past hour. The overwhelming desire to protect Lottie from every possible danger was nearly as consuming as his desire to have her—but only nearly.

When Alec had left all those years ago, he had been certain that doing so would ensure her future. Sir Alfred made it clear that with him gone, Lottie would marry a respectable man of good standing and become a pillar of the community, as was her destiny. But if he stayed, Sir Alfred promised to do everything in his power to ruin Alec. With his scandalous heritage and lack of fortune, who was he to tear her away from the only world she had ever known merely in exchange for his pitiful little heart?

She may be happy at first, Sir Alfred had allowed, but in time she will come to resent you. Will you sentence her to that fate?

If he had loved her any less, perhaps he would have.

But instead Lottie had surprised them both and found her way in the world, on her own terms. Alec could not help but admire her for it—even if his worry had nearly driven him mad. She might want him for comfort this evening, but she had already proven she did not need him. Not the way he needed her. Since he had first stepped out onto that hillside terrace in Tuscany, somewhere, in the deepest part of his heart, Alec had wished for something like this. Prayed for it.

When he opened his eyes, Lottie was slowly stripping off her evening gloves. He had yet to respond to her declaration beyond a muttered curse, and the sight of her bare arms was not helping. The open shutters let in the bright moonlight, casting her in an otherworldly glow. Standing there proud and tall in her gown, she looked like a fairy queen—one who came to visit every five years for only a few precious hours. Alec’s mouth filled with both the familiar tang of regret and of longing so visceral, so all consuming, that it suffused every cell of his body. She met his gaze, those green eyes as sharp and determined as ever, and Alec had to swallow past the lump in his throat. He was wrong. She was no fairy queen, but a warrior goddess.

“Tell me what you want.” He tried to inject the words with a cold, clinical authoritativeness to mask the pathetic need currently coursing through him.

“I…I want you to touch me,” she breathed. As her eyes heated, a kind of desperation stirred within him, a brutal greed he had never before experienced. And he craved more.

Her hands then went behind her back and the gown puddled to the floor. She wore only a paper-thin chemise. “The corset is built into the bodice,” she explained with an impish smile.

“A modern marvel,” Alec managed to quip, while his gaze roved all over her body, taking in every newly exposed inch: the slope of her slender shoulders, the length of her arms, the delicate collarbones framing her décolletage, the soft swell of each breast. A shard of moonlight illuminated her pale skin dotted with freckles. If they’d had all the time in the world, he would kiss every one.

Lottie canted her head. “Are you going to stand by the door all night?”

Alec’s eyes lifted to hers. He had been staring. Coveting, really. Yes, he would always covet what he could never truly possess. Lottie held out her hand and Alec willed his legs to move. As their palms slid against each other, the shock of familiarity was as strong as ever, even through his gloves. Alec tore them off. Then, in another instant, he crushed her against his chest and thrust a bare hand into her silky hair, sending those thick russet waves tumbling out of her coiffure. Lottie stared up at him in wide-eyed surprise at his sudden movements. Alec forced himself to take a steadying breath and focus on the moment, before he gently set his mouth to hers.

The very air seemed to crackle as their lips touched, just like their last kiss, but Alec had been an entirely different man then. One whose walls were still intact. One who had no idea what he was getting into. And one who had grossly overestimated himself.

How could this be only the second time they had kissed? The thought of kissing her again had become a steady, insistent murmur these last few days. But now it was as if a whole orchestra had reached a violent crescendo. Something burst forth inside him, like a bird escaping its cage. As if kissing her freed him. Made him anew.

And he could not let her go so easily this time.

Lottie pressed her lips harder against his, kissing him like her life depended on it. Like he was her only source of air. And Alec was no better. He kissed her back with equal hunger until the taste of her lips was no longer enough. He brushed his tongue along her bottom lip. It was only a cursory, cautious lick to gauge her interest, to see if she would grant him entrance, but she let out a squeak of delight as her fingers tightened and twisted in his hair. Then she boldly pushed her soft, velvet tongue into his waiting, eager mouth.

Damn.

“Lottie, wait,” he said raggedly, breaking the kiss. Alec tried to pull back but the lapels of his jacket were fisted in her hands.

She shook her head stubbornly as she tugged on his shirt. “I’m tired of waiting.”

Alec chuckled. Try waiting years.

Before he could do something incredibly foolish, like voicing such a thought, Lottie rose on her toes and found his lips again. His arms automatically went around her and he pulled her close once again, until her entire body, every bloody, lovely inch of her, was pressed against his. But it still wasn’t close enough. He needed nothing between them—no skin, muscle, sinew—nothing until their very hearts could beat as one.

The thought gave him a start and she pulled back, concerned. “What is it?”

Alec shook his head and tried to speak, but it was far too much to put into mere words.

She began to move them toward the bed and Alec followed, helpless to resist. He, who never gave an inch during such intimacies, was suddenly at her mercy. Utterly. Completely. At some point he had lost his control—no. He knew exactly when. It had been slipping away since he’d beheld her once again. Only it was so gradual he hadn’t realized until it was all gone from him. Until it was far too late.

Alec laid her down gently on the bed and smoothed his palms over the feather-soft skin of her shoulders and arms. He dragged one fingertip slowly along the curve of her collarbone, and she let out a light laugh. “That tickles.”

“Does it?” He gave her a devilish smile even while his heart ached. How badly he wanted to know everything that made her laugh. One hand cradled the nape of her neck, his thumb drawing back and forth across the sensitive skin below her ear, while his other hand slowly journeyed lower. All the while he watched her face for any sign of reticence, of regret. She could still change her mind, and if she did he would halt. But as his fingertip moved from tracing her collarbone to the lacy edge of her chemise, she arched up. His hand automatically opened as she pressed her breast into his waiting palm.

It had been over a decade since Alec first lay with a woman and yet, based on the whimper that escaped his lips, he might as well have been a virgin once again. His fingers closed greedily around her small but shapely breast. As he gently cupped and caressed the firm flesh, a glazed look came over Lottie, and she pulled him down for another succulent, plundering kiss—all lips and teeth and tongue. He wanted to move slowly. To spend hours simply kissing her, but his overwrought body would not heel. Alec jerked down the front of her chemise and plucked the tip of her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Lottie began to writhe beneath him, and a series of increasingly urgent cries vibrated against his mouth. As they continued to devour each other, he pulled up the hem of her chemise in rough handfuls and nearly ripped off her drawers. His hand then skimmed over the supple flesh of her thighs and along the lacy edges of her stockings to the tuft of feminine hair. He wrenched away from her lush mouth to brush a featherlight touch over her most intimate place. Lottie canted her hips forward in response and he rewarded her eagerness with a long, lingering caress that slowly turned deeper. More insistent.

She let out a heart-stopping gasp, and her eyes flew open with a mixture of surprise and pleasure that Alec planned to never forget. After a few moments of trial and error, he found the motion and pressure that seemed to affect her the most. Then he dipped his head and drew her rosy nipple between his teeth. The mere taste of her rosewater-scented skin sated him more than any banquet ever had.

She breathed his name and arched even higher, her fingers digging into his scalp, holding him to her breast, as if there was a chance he might pull away. While he continued to suck, his free hand began to gently pinch her other nipple, and the evidence of her desire grew heavier and warmer under his fingertips. He coaxed her steadily toward her release, feeling every shudder of pleasure, every muffled sigh, every twist of her hips, until every muscle seemed to tighten at once. He pulled away to watch as Lottie’s lips parted, gasping in wordless cries at the sensation rioting within her. Then her brow tensed before it all slowly faded into an expression of pure bliss.

His erection had grown so stiff and hot it was nearly painful, but it didn’t matter. This was enough—more than enough. More than he had ever dreamed. To simply touch her, to watch those emerald eyes grow heavy with pleasure, to hear her cry out with desire built by him, by the two of them together. She could get on with her life, and he could have just a little bit of her. A memory to keep. He pressed a soft kiss against her lips and she brought her arms around his shoulders. Her hands slid under the collar of his jacket and he shivered at her smooth touch, but it was another moment before he realized she was easing it off.

“Lottie,” he murmured, but she only tugged harder, until he was obliged to remove the garment himself, lest he become trapped in his own dinner jacket. He stood from the bed and pulled the jacket off, while Lottie watched him with a dark, ravenous look that threatened to undo him all over again. Her eyes followed the jacket as he let it drop to the floor, then returned to his face.

She uttered just one word: “More.”

A thrill shot through him at the idea of disrobing before such a rapt audience. He sank one knee on top of the bed, looming over her partially clad figure, and began to unbutton his waistcoat, though his fingers slipped more than once, until it, too, joined the jacket. Her hand traveled between her thighs, and she pressed it against the still-sensitive flesh. Alec inhaled sharply at the sight. Lottie gestured to his suspenders with her chin. “Those too,” she murmured.

He pulled each one off slowly, deliberately, riveted by watching her watch him, of pleasuring herself to his image.

“You’re so lovely,” he breathed. “You can’t imagine.”

She gave him a dazed smile while her heavy gaze tracked every movement. As he began to unknot his bow tie, she sat up and placed her palms on his thighs. Alec’s breath caught as she slid her hands upward, and his mind darkened. She brushed lightly against the fall of his trousers at first, then pressed harder. Alec hissed and moved to stop, but he was much too slow. By the time he grazed her wrist, his pants were already unbuttoned and those elegant tapered fingers took hold of his length. Pleasure blazed through him, hot, reckless, and unstoppable. He was at her mercy now, no longer showing her how to be touched but craving her touch for his own sake.

She adjusted her grip, experimenting with different holds until he showed her what he liked best. After a few strokes she swiped her thumb over the moistened tip, and Alec let out a hoarse groan. Lottie glanced up, and the corner of her mouth lifted in a slow, seductive smile. Christ. He could expire at this moment and die fairly happy from seeing that expression. But then she spoke.

“As I was leaving the palazzo, I paused by an open door,” she began, her voice low and husky. “The one you pulled me from. Did you look to see?” Alec managed to shake his head. Lottie lowered her eyelids in a rather ironic display of modesty, considering what she was presently doing. “A man was seated in a chair and a woman knelt before him. I saw her take this in her mouth.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and immediately saw her in the same position. “Lottie.” He meant to say her name as a warning, but instead it came out sounding anguished. The plea of a desperate man.

“I’ve heard of such things,” she continued, “but the practice never sounded very appealing. Now, though…with you…”

Fuck.

The thought of her even considering such a thing was more than he could bear. More than he could allow.

“I—”

The rest of his noble protest died in his throat. Died at the sight of those luscious pink lips parting for him.

The heat of her mouth alone forced Alec to the very edge as a pleasure greater than he had ever known rocked through him. Her movements were tentative and inexperienced, but it did not matter. Alec had never been this hard in his life. A sound ripped out of him, high-pitched and unrecognizable, almost like the wild keen of an animal. He was speaking, too, though he could barely make sense of his own words beyond Yes. More. Dear God. Lottie.

But before he could lose control completely, he gathered his wits enough to pull her eager, gasping lips away. Her eyes were heavy lidded, as if she had felt as much pleasure in performing the act as he had in receiving it. Then she pulled her chemise over her head and fully revealed the most perfect pair of breasts the Almighty had ever created. Somehow Alec managed to look back to her face, and then he understood.

Lottie wanted far more than his touch.

She would not stop until he had all of her.

And he would do it.

It was if all the air had been drawn out of his lungs. “Lottie,” he protested again, but he was terribly weak and she knew it. “You can’t want—”

She brought her palm to the side of his face and rubbed her thumb against his cheek. “But I do want, Alec,” she whispered thickly. His heart nearly beat out of his chest, but before he could fully absorb this, she laid back down on the bed, offering her body to him. “Please.”

If her first please had decimated his self-control, the second severed whatever remained of his reason. The idea that she would need to ask this of him, as if he were doing her a favor, was incomprehensible to his lust-addled mind. Of course he would do this. Of course he would make love to her. There was no other course of action available. He would have done anything, anything, for her in that moment.

He stepped out of his trousers and ripped his shirt off so hard that several buttons scattered across the floor. Lottie let out a short laugh that turned into a gasp as his body moved over hers. He, too, was startled by the sensation of her soft skin against his own; at once both tantalizingly novel and yet so achingly familiar. So damn right. He smoothed a palm up one of her stockinged thighs and slowly rolled it off. Their eyes met as he tossed it aside and moved to the other one. She said nothing, only stared at him in silence. Watching. She was nearly naked beneath him, but so much more seemed to be bared in that gaze. Alec had to look away. As he removed her other stocking, Lottie opened her thighs, and he gladly sank between them. Then he pressed greedy, succulent kisses all along her shoulders, the ridges of her collarbones, and the hollow of her throat, while her fingers dug deeper into his hair.

“I need more,” she begged again. “I need you.”

I need you.

She rubbed her nest of curls against his arousal, still hard as granite. Some primal part of him took over then, and he began slowly pushing into her voluptuous, silken heat. Lottie positively quivered beneath him, and her impatience only seemed to increase, which in turn further stoked the already scorching fire within him ever higher. She pressed her mouth by his ear and let out a string of desperate, lust-fueled words––yes, more, please—while she cradled his backside in her hands, urging him deeper until she suddenly let out a sharp cry and tensed.

Alec immediately froze as alarm flooded through him.

Lottie’s eyes flew open. “No, don’t stop,” she pleaded, but her voice was tight with pain. A sound that brought him back to his senses.

There had never been a Florentine lover.

No cad who had used and deserted her.

And no matter what Lottie felt about being “ruined,” this created complications for them both. Alec gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the intense pleasure still blooming inside him. He cupped her jaw and urged her face toward his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She met his gaze, as clear-eyed as ever. “Because. I wanted it to be you,” she said. “So badly.”

His rusty old heart creaked a little. “But I’ve hurt you.” He knew that could be interpreted in a hundred different ways.

He had heard the desperation in her voice earlier. The willingness to do whatever it took to secure her future.

I won’t bother asking what choice you would make if you were in the same position.

“No,” she breathed, applying it to this particular moment. “It’s not nearly as painful as I expected.”

The rigid set of her features said otherwise. Even if she was only using him, he found he didn’t much care at the moment. “If we’re going to continue—”

“Do…do you not want to?”

He huffed a laugh at the uncertainty in her voice. “I want you to enjoy it.”

“I am,” she insisted with her usual stubbornness.

Alec couldn’t hold back his smile. “Well, then I want you to enjoy it even more.”

He drew his other hand between them and found the bud of her sex. He began to rub it gently, watching as the tension in her brow slowly faded and her eyes warmed. They could talk later. When they were both clothed. And his brain was fully functional. For now, he only wanted that look to grow.

“Oh. That is better,” she murmured.

Alec swallowed the urge to gloat as she pulled him closer until every one of his senses was filled with Lottie. Only Lottie. He dragged openmouthed kisses across her brow and down her neck, stopping to nip her earlobe and whisper the sweetest words he could think of. He grazed the sensitive bud once again, listening closely for any lingering sounds of pain. The thought that he had hurt her at all was unbearable, but all he heard now were those delicate little breaths quickening with every feathered touch. Slowly, so slowly, Alec pushed until he was fully sheathed in her velvet heat. Then he began to gently pump his hips.

She suddenly moaned his name and tightened her thighs around his waist. Alec let out a ragged gasp at the mind-melting sensation and could no longer hold back. The sound of his name on her lips, uttered in the throes of pleasure, propelled him toward a sharp, aching release that verged on painful—but not painful enough to distract from the words thundering in his mind: God, I love you. He remembered to withdraw only at the last possible moment, the force of his release so strong he saw stars. How easy it would have been to spill his seed inside her and bind them together forever, but he would not force her hand nor bring another bastard into the world.

He pushed back the damp curls that had fallen across her face and pressed his forehead to hers. They stared into one another’s eyes. His must have been as wide and wild as hers. Neither said a word, for there were none that could properly explain what had passed between them. Every little shred of him seemed to have shifted, turned inside out, been born anew. He hadn’t even felt like this when he lost his virginity. Why, he couldn’t remember the woman’s name now. It was as if every previous experience had been wiped from his memory, rendered meaningless when compared to this. But underneath the euphoria that still surged through every vein, a sinking, sickly dread gained hold. All this time, he had lived in utter ignorance. Confined to his fantasies. Alec hadn’t realized what bliss it was.

But this.

Of all the missteps of the past few days, this was by far the worst. The last five years had been somewhat bearable, but now his heart would never be whole again. Not without her. Alec nestled his head against the crook of her neck and silenced his mind with the sound of her pulse returning to normal. He had dreamed of falling asleep wrapped in Lottie’s arms thousands of times, but for this one night it would come true.