A Scandal in the Headlines(17)

“I would have thought that much was clear,” he replied, a self-mocking curve to that hard mouth she knew too well now. Far too well. “If nothing else. I want you, Elena. Then. Now. Still. God help us both.”

Elena clenched her hands together in her lap, everything inside of her seeming to squeeze tight and ache. Something deep and heavy sat over the table as the sun disappeared for good, and soft lights came on to illuminate the terrace. She could feel it pressing down on her, into her, and the way he was looking at her didn’t help.

“No clever reply to that?” His voice then was quiet, yet no less lethal, and it sliced into her like a jagged blade. “I don’t know what lies you tell yourself. I can’t imagine. But I know you want me, too.”

She shook her head as if that might clear it, pulling in a breath as if that might help. When she looked at him again, she wasn’t playing her part. She couldn’t.

“I want you,” she said in a low voice, letting all of the ways she loathed herself show, letting it all bleed out between them, letting it poison him, too. “I always have. And I’ll never forgive myself for it.”

She thought he looked shaken then, for the briefest moment, but he blinked it away. And he was too hard again, too fierce. She told herself she’d seen only what she wanted to see. He sat forward, those dark, cruel eyes fixed on her, and she reminded herself that nothing shook this man. Nothing could. Especially not minor little earthquakes like her.

“Congratulations, Elena,” he said, his voice a sardonic lash. “I believe that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me since you told me your name.”

She had to wrench her gaze away from his then, while she ordered herself to stay calm. To tamp down the chaotic emotions that surged inside of her, taking her over, making her want nothing more than to sob—once again—for something she could never have. Something she never should have wanted in the first place.

Unbidden, images of what they’d done together, here on this very same terrace, skated through her mind. His mouth, those hands. The wild heat of him, his impossible strength and his ruthless, intense possession—

Something occurred to her then, slamming through her as hard and as vicious as if he’d punched her in the gut. He might as well have. It couldn’t have been worse.

She had been on birth control pills throughout her relationship with Niccolo, but the past six months had been so hectic. She’d run away and run out of the pills, and she hadn’t wanted to leave any kind of record of where she’d been—so no doctors. She hadn’t imagined it would be an issue. And then, today, she’d simply forgotten she wasn’t protected.

She’d forgotten.

“We didn’t use anything,” she gasped out, so appalled she could hardly get the words past her lips. She felt numb with horror.

Alessandro went still. Too still. And for the first time in their brief, impossible acquaintance, she couldn’t read a thing in the narrow, considering gaze he aimed at her. She could only see the darkness.

“I’m clean,” he said. Cool and concise. And nothing more.

And the caustic slap of that helped her, strangely. It reminded her who she was, what she was doing here. Why she’d decided to give in to her desire for him in the first place.

“You think I’m a liar and I know very well you are,” she said, trying for a calm tone. “You’ll excuse me if I have no particular reason to believe you.”

Temper streaked across that arrogant face of his. “You know I’m a liar, do you?” His deceptively gentle tone made her skin prickle. “And how exactly do you know that?”

She laughed, deliberately callous. “Because I know your name.”

A deep blackness flashed through his dark green eyes and over his face then, old and resigned, with the faint hint of some kind of pain, and Elena fought off a sharp stab of regret. She shouldn’t care if she hurt this man’s feelings. He certainly didn’t care if he hurt hers. So why couldn’t she stave off the bizarre urge to apologize? To trust him the way that insane part of her urged her to do?

But even as she opened her mouth to do exactly that, she stopped herself. Because their carelessness had changed everything. She knew enough about him to know that he would never send her back to Niccolo if he thought she might be carrying his baby. Not a proud man like Alessandro. Not when the blood between the Falcos and the Correttis had been notoriously bad for generations.

Which meant, after all of this, she really was as safe as she’d always felt with him.