A Scandal in the Headlines(34)

“What’s the matter?” he asked from behind her, that combination of perception and kindness in his tone that was uniquely his. It undid her.

But she couldn’t cry. She couldn’t betray herself like this, when she’d come so far and given up so much.

Elena turned to face him. She met his dark gaze, saw the concern there that she couldn’t acknowledge, that she couldn’t let herself accept. Alessandro’s mouth crooked in one corner, and that was all it took for her to melt. To want. To topple over into that stark, demanding need.

“Come here,” she said, her voice husky with the things she couldn’t say, the truths she couldn’t tell.

And he obeyed, this fierce predator of a man, his dark eyes bright and fixed on her with that same hunger. She waited until he was close and then she dropped the towel, and he laughed.

“You’ll be the death of me,” he said in that low voice that made her skin prickle, and then his hands were on her skin, lifting her and pushing her back onto the bed, coming down on top of her with that delicious weight of his, smooth muscle and dangerous man.

“I’ll sing the elegy at your funeral,” she promised him, and his smile deepened in a way that made her ache everywhere, hot and greedy for him.

“I won’t die alone.” He buried his hands in her wet hair, pulling her mouth to within a breath of his. “I promise you that.”

Their gazes tangled, held, as she reached between them and pulled him free from his running shorts. As she reached for the side table, then rolled protection down over the hard, smooth length of him. As she guided him to her entrance.

“Elena,” he whispered. “I—”

But words were even more dangerous than he was. She couldn’t have it. She couldn’t risk it. She moved her hips against him, inviting him in. Making him groan. Keeping him quiet.

Being the whore he thought she was, or she thought she was, or this situation had made her. She told herself it didn’t matter anymore. She only knew she had to see it through.

He pushed inside of her, and they both sighed. That perfect, impossible fit. That slick, wild fire. That coil of desire, tight and hot, that only seemed stronger every time.

This was killing them, she thought then, her gaze locked to his, lost in his, truths shimmering between them that she refused to voice. He knew things he shouldn’t know, the way he always had, and they might as well be dancing still, around and around, as familiar and as lost to each other as ever.

But he moved in her then, commanding and powerful and hers—hers despite everything as he had been from that first glance, that very first touch of their hands—and she forgot again, the way she always did.

For a little while.


Alessandro stalked out of the house.

He moved across the terrace toward the pool, where Elena sat on one of the loungers, whiling away another summer morning. She looked perfectly at ease, while he was still boiling over with all the frustration he’d unloaded on his assistant over the past few hours. He made a mental note to increase the man’s annual bonus.

“One more week, Giovanni,” he’d snapped when yet another Corretti family crisis had been trotted out as if it was a critical business issue that required his immediate attention. Because Alessandro was expected to care, to be responsible. To handle everyone else’s mess. “I’m on holiday. Tell them to sort it out themselves, or wait.”

“But, sir …” His assistant had cleared his throat. “They grow more insistent by the hour!”

“Then I suggest you earn your outrageous salary,” Alessandro had growled, ending the call. But it hadn’t done much for the restless agitation that still coursed through him, making him feel edgy.

He slowed as he drew closer to Elena, tucked up in the shade of an umbrella, paging through foreign magazines with every outward appearance of lazy contentment. For some reason, that flipped a kind of switch in him.

One more week to forty days. One more week until he and Elena were finished—or bound together in a way he’d tried not to think about too closely. One more week, and he wasn’t ready.

He didn’t want the life he’d left behind when he’d fled Sicily a month ago. He didn’t want to slip back into that same old role that had brought him nothing but grief for the whole of his adult life. He didn’t want to dance to the tune of a dead man, or fight these losing battles against his family’s bad reputation. He was as tired of it as he’d been the day he’d left.