Читать книгу Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Shocking Scandals: Castelli's Virgin Widow / Expecting a Royal Scandal / The Guardian's Virgin Ward - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 17

CHAPTER NINE

IT WAS NOT until the following morning—after Luca had woken up to discover that none of the previous night had been one of the remarkably detailed dreams he’d had about Kathryn over the past couple of years, because she was still there, sprawled out beside him and wholly irresistible—that he allowed himself to think about what the inescapable fact of her innocence meant.

First, he’d rolled over, instantly awake and aware and as hard for her as if he’d never had her. She’d come awake a moment later, and he’d watched her eyes go from sleepy to pleased to wary in the course of a few blinks.

He’d found he hadn’t cared much for wary.

So he’d pinned her hands above her head and settled himself between her thighs. He’d expressed his feelings on her tender breasts until she’d been gasping and arching beneath him, and then he’d driven himself home once again, losing himself in all her molten sweetness.

And he’d found the sound of her gasping his name as she convulsed around him far, far preferable to any wariness.

He managed to control himself in the shower they shared—but barely—and maybe the fact that doing so was so much harder than it should have been kicked his brain back into gear.

Kathryn was dressing, her head bent and a certain set expression on her face that he didn’t like. He stood in the doorway to the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his hips and watched her, aware that he should not be feeling any of the things that stampeded through him then. He knew that expression she wore. He usually liked it when the women he bedded showed him that particular blankness, because it meant they planned to walk away from him with no fuss. And quickly.

He didn’t want her to walk away.

He wanted her right here, and he didn’t care how crazy that was. How insane this entire situation was. That no one but him—that no one, especially him—would ever believe that Saint Kate had been a virgin until now.

“Kathryn.” She didn’t precisely jolt when she heard her name, but that wariness was back in her gaze when she lifted it to his. “Why did you marry him?”

She pressed her lips together in that way of hers that he should not find so fascinating. She tugged her bra into place and then bent to pick up her crumpled dress, frowning at it in a way that made something in the vicinity of his heart clench. Luca didn’t speak. He swept up his own discarded shirt and prowled over to her, watching the way her eyes widened as he approached. Her lips parted slightly, as if she needed more air, and he couldn’t pretend he didn’t like that.

He liked entirely too much. Her lush little body, packaged in that lacy bra and matching panties that highlighted parts of her he could never obsess about enough. The faint marks from his mouth, his unshaven jaw. He was a primitive creature, he understood then, though he’d never thought of himself in those terms before. When it came to Kathryn, he was nothing short of a beast.

Luca liked his mark on her. He liked it hard and deep, so much it very nearly hurt.

He settled his dress shirt around her shoulders, then tugged her arms through. And then he took his time buttoning it up, fashioning her a dress that was much too big for her frame, but was in its way another mark. Another brand.

The beast within him roared its approval.

“Are you going to answer me?” he asked in a low voice as he rolled up one cuff, then the other, to keep the sleeves from hanging nearly to her knees.

She swallowed, and he saw that her eyes had changed color again, to that slate green that meant she was aroused. Good, he thought. He didn’t imagine he’d ever be anything but aroused in her presence again. He wasn’t sure he ever had been anything else, come to that.

But she blinked it away and took in a shuddering sort of breath.

“He said he could help,” she said.

She moved away from him, and the sight of her in his shirt did things to Luca that he couldn’t explain. He didn’t want to explain them. They simply settled inside him, like light.

“Why did you need help?”

Kathryn worried her lower lip with her teeth, which he felt like her mouth against his sex, but he held himself in check.

“My mother was single when she had me,” she said, and Luca blinked. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. Something so...mundane. “She’d never expected or even wanted to have a baby at all, but there she was, pregnant. Her partner made it clear he couldn’t be bothered, and in case she’d any doubts about that, moved out of the country straightaway, so no one could expect him to contribute in any way to the life of a child he didn’t want.”

“He sounds charming.”

Kathryn smiled, very slightly. “I wouldn’t know. We’ve never met.”

Luca watched as she moved to the bed and climbed onto the mattress, settling herself near the foot with her legs crossed beneath her and his shirt billowing around her slender form. It only made her look that much more fragile.

And made him want to protect her, somehow—even against this story she was telling him.

“My mother had huge dreams,” she said after a moment. “She’d worked so hard to get where she was. She wanted a whole, rich life, and what she got instead was a daughter to raise right when she really could have made something of herself.”

Something in the way she said that scraped at him. Luca frowned. “Surely raising a child is merely a different rich life. Not the lack of one altogether.”

Kathryn’s gaze met his for a moment then dropped.

“She’d worked so hard to succeed in finance, but couldn’t keep up with the hours required once she had me. And once she left the job she loved, at an investment bank, she couldn’t afford child care, so she had to manage it all on her own.” She threaded her hands together in front of her. “All of my memories of her were of her working. She usually had more than one job, in fact, so I wouldn’t want for anything. She wasn’t too proud to do the things others refused to do. She cleaned houses on her hands and knees, anything to make my life better, and despite all of that, I was a terrible disappointment.”

Luca had the sense that if he disputed this story, if he questioned it at all—and he couldn’t understand why there was that thing in him that insisted this was a story that needed disputing when until hours ago he’d been Kathryn’s biggest critic—she would stop talking. It was something in the set of her mouth, the line of her jaw. The stormy gray color of her eyes. So he said nothing. He merely exchanged his towel for a pair of exercise trousers and then crossed his arms over his chest. He waited.

Kathryn let out a breath that was more like a sigh.

“She wanted me to be an investment banker, too. That was always her preference, because she could teach me everything I needed to know and because her experience meant she could direct me.”

“I believe that is called living through one’s child. Not the best form of parenting, I think.”

She frowned at him. “Not in this case. I could never get my head around the math. My mother tried to tutor me herself, but it was a waste of time. I can’t think the way she can. My brain simply won’t work the way hers does.”

“My brain does not work the way my brother’s does,” Luca pointed out mildly, “and yet we’ve muddled along, running a rather successful company together for some time.”

“That’s different.” Kathryn lifted a shoulder then dropped it. “I nearly killed myself getting a First in economics. I spent hours and hours torturing myself with the coursework. But I did it. Then I went on to an MBA course because that was what my mother thought was the best path toward the brightest future.” She blew out a breath that made her fringe dance above her brow. “But the MBA was beyond torture. I was used to putting the hours in, but it wasn’t enough. No matter what I did, it wasn’t enough.”

She shook her head, frowning down at her hands, and Luca had never wanted to touch another person more than he did then. She looked too small and something like defeated, and it lodged in his chest like a bullet.

It occurred to him that he’d never seen her look like this. That she’d fought him every step of the way, if sometimes only with a straight spine and a head held high. But defeat was not a word he’d ever associated with her before.

He found he hated it.

Kathryn met his gaze again then. “And that was when I met your father.”

He shifted position and realized he was holding himself back as much as anything else. As if he didn’t know what he might do if he stopped—as if he still had that little control, when it still involved Kathryn yet wasn’t about sex. He couldn’t say he much enjoyed the sensation.

But one great mess at a time, he thought darkly.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “In that mythic waiting room, the birthplace of your epic friendship. The only friendship the old man ever had, as far as I am aware.”

“You asked me to tell you this story,” she pointed out. “You keep asking.”

Luca couldn’t trust himself to speak, one more novel experience where this woman was concerned—and one he knew he would have to think about later. He inclined his head, silently bidding her to continue.

“It happened just as I told you,” Kathryn said, her gaze reproving. “We started talking. Your father was charming. Funny.”

Luca snorted. “Old.”

“Maybe everyone is not as ageist as you are,” she snapped at him.

He raked his hand through his hair then, annoyed and frustrated in equal measure.

“It is time for the truth, cucciola mia,” he said then, roughly.

He moved before he knew he meant to, crossing over to place himself directly in front of her, at the foot of the high bed. She tilted up that chin of hers, as if she expected him to take a swing, and Luca was obviously deeply perverse, that such a thing should excite him. Or maybe it was simply that he liked it when she fought. When she stood up for herself, even against him. When she was nothing remotely like defeated.

“I’m telling you the truth. I can’t help it if it’s not the truth you want to hear.” She eyed him, as if his proximity bothered her. Luca hoped it did. It would make them even. “I think we’ve already established that you have a history of believing what you want to believe, no matter what the actual truth might be.”

He felt his mouth curve in acknowledgment. “But this is not a question of innocence. This is a question of how a young woman meets a much older man in a medical facility, so she could have no fantasy that there was anything virile about him at all, and decides to marry him anyway. I have no doubt that he proposed to you. That was what he did, always. But what made you agree?”

Kathryn held his gaze, and Luca didn’t move. He didn’t even blink, aware somehow that she was making a momentous decision. And he needed it to be the right one. He needed it—and he wasn’t sure he wanted to investigate why that need was so intense. After a long while, she let out a sigh.

“My mother has crippling arthritis,” Kathryn explained. “When it flares up she can hardly move. It had become very difficult for her to take care of herself.” She shook her head, more as if she was shaking off a wave of emotion than negating anything. “I should have been there to help her, but between the classes for my degree and all the studying I had to do to barely keep up, I couldn’t even do that well. I lived with her, which was one thing, but it was all beginning to feel a lot like drowning.” She sucked in a breath. “But when my mother came out of her appointment, she recognized your father at a glance. One thing led to another, and we all went out for a meal.”

Luca waited.

“Your father is very easy to talk to, actually.”

“That was not a common sentiment.”

“My mother told him everything. My struggles with my degree. Her battle with her arthritis. He was very kind.” Her gray eyes grew distant, and he thought she tipped her chin up that much farther. “And at the end of the evening, he asked if he could see me—just me—again.”

“This is where I think I need some clarification,” Luca murmured. “Did you date a great deal?”

“I didn’t date at all,” she retorted, and he almost didn’t recognize that fierce thing that soared in him at that, possessiveness mixed with a kind of triumph.

“But you dated my father.”

For the first time she looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t necessarily want to date him,” she said softly. “But he’d been so nice, and so sweet, and I didn’t see the harm in having another dinner with him. I thought I was doing a good deed.”

“What did your mother think?”

She didn’t quite flinch. But he saw the tiny, abortive movement she made, and his eyes narrowed.

“She’s always worried that I had more looks than sense,” Kathryn said quietly. “Which I’m afraid I proved to her through my failures with my studies.”

“A first-class degree is, by definition, not any kind of failure.”

“I had to work ten times as hard as she did, and I still only did it by my teeth,” she said with a dismissive wave of one hand. “But when we met your father, it seemed a perfect opportunity to stop worrying about the brains part and let the looks do some good for a change.”

“What,” Luca asked through his teeth, “does that mean?”

“It meant we both knew he liked the look of me,” Kathryn said, with an edge to her voice. She sat up straighter on the bed. “And he was just as funny and kind and charming when I went out with him alone. Still, when he asked me to marry him on the third date, I laughed.”