“That I need you to go home. I’ve arranged for my driver to collect you – he’ll be here within the hour.”
Chapter Twelve
The dormant terror leapt back into life in a single pump of Luisa’s heart. “You want me to go…? But why? What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s hap–” He cut himself off and drew in a long breath of air. “Last night happened. My job here is to keep my brother focused on the wedding and ensure he makes it to the church on Saturday and exchanges his vows. Instead of watching over him and making sure he didn’t do anything stupid at the ball, I spent the night fucking you and have slept half the day away.”
She flinched, not at the crudeness of his language but the denigration of everything they’d shared. “That’s what you call it? Fucking?”
“That’s what I have to call it,” he stated bluntly. “And if we had only fucked then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I need you to go home, Luisa. I will tell people we had an argument and agreed it was best you leave so we both had a chance to calm down.”
“What happened to this week being too important to allow rumours to circulate about our marriage?” she askedtremulously. “Because that’s what you said to me when I suggested we have separate rooms instead of this suite. You dismissed it.”
“Things have changed, but your reasoning back then was solid and if you leave now it will have the added effect of making it more believable when we announce our plans to divorce on Monday.”
She didn’t just flinch at this, she recoiled as if he’d struck her with his bare hand. She could barely speak to say, “You still want us to divorce? Even after last night?”
He was unyielding. “More so. Last night was a mistake that went too far. I need you gone, not just because you’ve become a distraction to me but for your safety.”
White noise was buzzing so loudly in her head that it was difficult to make sense of what he was saying. “What has my safety got to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with it. The way you make me feel is dangerous, Luisa.”
“So you keep saying,” she said in a tone so hushed she barely heard it herself.
“I keep saying it because it’s the truth and I need you to understand it.”
She shook her head and hugged herself tightly. Her heart was beating so hard she could hardly breathe. “Who are you trying to convince, though, Gennaro? Me or yourself?”
A tic appeared right beneath his eye. “You know the kind of man I am.”
She stared at his implacable face and swallowed back a swell of nausea. She had the strong feeling she was going to be sick.
“I got too close, didn’t I?” Her voice sounded all quivery and wrong. Everything inside her felt quivery and wrong. “And now you want me gone, out of sight and out of mind so you don’t have to deal with it.”
He muttered a curse and expelled a long, ragged breath “No, Luisa, I want you gone for your own safety because everything I feel for you is dangerous and last night has made those feelings a thousand times worse. I let it go too far and have put you in danger. I’m a jealous, violent man, you know that – why the hell do you think I imposed the rules I did on our marriage and kept the distance I did with you? It was for your sake.”
The white noise turned into a scream in her head and suddenly she was hurling the phone she hadn’t even realised was still in her hand at him. Only her terrible aim stopped it hitting him in the face.
He jumped to his feet like he’d been shot. “What thefuck, Luisa?”
She’d thrown the covers off and launched herself off the bed to shove hard at his chest before she even comprehended what she was doing. “If you’re so violent, retaliate,” she taunted shrilly, shoving at his chest again. “If you’re that incapable of controlling yourself, hit me.”
If he’d been implacable before, he was a block of marble now. “Stop it,” he ground out through clenched teeth.
“Stop what?” She pushed his immovable chest as hard as she could. “Stop goading you into hitting me? Iwantyou to hit me. Go on, Gennaro. Prove what a violent shit you really are. Blacken my eye before I take myself to Dante and let him kiss it better for me.” She brought her face right up to his. “And then I’ll let him fuck me better too.”
Impossibly, his features darkened even more, the marble turning to granite.
She laughed, a bitter ragged sound, right in his dark, stony face. “I bet he’samazingin bed. I bet he can do things to a woman you’ve never even dreamed of.”
The tic pulsed even harder.
“Which of us would you want to kill first? Me or Dante? Picture it. Go on. I dare you. Picture me and Dantenaked together. Picture us laughing at you because I promise you, that’s what we’ll do when we’ve finished screwing each other’s brains out.”
She’d been lifted into the air and laid on the bed before she could catch a breath.
Catching her chin in his hand, he brought his face down to within an inch of hers. “You push me too far,” he said savagely.