“What is this? Some kind of payback? You want me to see what it feels like to be used? Well you’re doing a pretty damned good job of it, Theresa. Consider it a lesson well-learned...” he finally used his superior strength and lifted her off of him as if she weighed nothing and she curled up into a humiliated ball, tears finally slipping down her cheeks as her entire body clenched with sexual and emotional frustration.
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything,” she protested thickly. “I just didn’t want to get emotionally involved again! I didn’t want to start thinking there was anything other than physical attraction between us. I can’t afford to make that mistake again…”
“Mi dispiace, cara,” he said regretfully as he got up and shoved his hands into his pockets to stare down at her. “I can’t give you what you want. Not the way you want it…”
“You’ve done it before,” she pointed out, sitting up and swiping at her hot, wet cheeks. “We can just go back to that…”
“There’s no going back to that,” he negated harshly. “Never again…”
“I know I’m not your type,” she strove to sound casual about that painful fact and ignored the slight sound of dismay that seemed to rumble out from deep within his broad chest. “Compared to all those supermodels and actresses, I know I’ve always been Miss Dull and Dowdy… but you overlooked that once. I thought maybe…”
“Are you fishing for compliments?” He asked in an insultingly suspicious voice, his face creased into an incredulous glare. “Because I know that you cannot be serious with this load of tripe!” She blinked up into his outraged face and he barked out a disbelieving laugh at the confusion in her eyes.
“Well… how do explain the fact that you can barely stand to look at me?” she finally found her voice again and he winced at the painful embarrassment and anguish that she couldn’t manage to disguise. “I know how much you hated touching me and I may have been a virgin when we married, Alessandro, but I knew enough to realize that a man who has to drink himself into a stupor before touching a woman, a man who can barely exchange a civil word with her and has to scrub her scent and touch from his skin as soon as he’s capable of getting up after sex… a man like that has to be repulsed by the woman in his bed.” Another harsh sound was torn from his chest and he lifted both hands to scrub them over his face and eyes and up into his hair, leaving it in messy peaks. Finally he simply stood there, staring down at her with his fingers linked in the nape of his neck, seemingly unable to respond to her pained words.
He sat down next to her and dragged her back into his lap with a helpless groan, arranged her until she was straddling him again. This time he dragged his knees up to support her back and wrapped his arms around her slender frame, building a fortified human cage around her trembling body.
“Theresa…” he groaned, burying his face into her soft, fragrant hair. “I do want you, cara. I’ve always wanted you…” He cupped the back of her head in the palms of his large hands and stared intently down into her eyes, trying to convey his earnestness through sheer force of will. Theresa’s tear-drenched gaze swept over his deadly serious face and she couldn’t read it. Once again he had his emotions under tight control and even though he was saying the words she couldn’t tell if he was being sincere or not.
“You don’t have to lie,” she finally whispered, dropping her head to one of his broad shoulders and closing her arms around his broad back, feeling safe, warm and protected. “I’m sorry I brought this up again, Sandro. I didn’t mean to. I don’t mean to keep throwing the past back into your face like this. I do recognize how difficult the situation must have been for you and…”
“Stop it,” he finally interrupted the burble of words that she couldn’t seem to control. “Just stop it… yes the situation was beyond my control. It was, and still is, incredibly difficult but this does not mean you deserved the treatment you got from me and it certainly doesn’t mean that I never wanted you. Theresa, most nights I could barely keep my greedy hands off of you.”
“You couldn’t?” She lifted her head from his shoulder to stare up into his grim face.
“Why do you think I insisted that we share a bed?” He pointed out. “That way, I didn’t have to go and find you when my need for you overrode all else.”
“Oh…” she responded stupidly.
“Yes… ‘oh’,” he nodded. “And despite all of my idiotic stratagems to keep intimacy between us to a minimum, remember I blamed you for this marriage as much as I did your father, I could never get enough of you.”
“Oh…” she muttered redundantly and his lips twitched into a little smile.
“That’s why I never slept with those women the tabloids kept pairing me up with,” he whispered, his long thumbs stroking back and forth across the satiny skin stretched over her high cheekbones.
“You really didn’t sleep with any of them?” She asked in a small, uncertain voice and he nodded, never shifting his eyes from hers, as if he could make her believe him through sheer force of will.
“Why would I? When I had you waiting for me at home,” he growled and she blinked back her tears, which threatened to overflow.
“Why should I believe you?” she finally asked.
“Why would I lie to you? I have nothing to gain from it, we’re getting divorced, going our separate ways in a few months’ time… right?” The last emerged a bit uncertainly and Theresa blinked at the unwelcome reminder.