The Unwanted Wife (Unwanted #1)(17)
“I see no need to prove myself in this way.”
“You can’t answer it, can you?” she challenged. “Yours is on the third of January. You have four older sisters—Gabriella, Sofia, Isabella, and Rosalie—and a large extended family. You dislike spinach and are allergic to bee stings. You like—”
“Enough!” He sliced an impatient hand through the air in front of his face, cutting her off abruptly. “This is bordering on stalkerish and it proves nothing other than you possess a creepy excess of information about me, which I must admit, I am more than a little uncomfortable with.”
“Hardly stalkerish.” She shook her head. “I have been living with you for more than eighteen months, and I loved you when I married you. I was interested in knowing you. These are the kinds of mundane facts married couples know about each other. Everything I know about you, I had to learn for myself, none of it was ever volunteered. You didn’t know about my hobby, or how I take my coffee, or when my birthday is because you were not interested enough in getting to know me, not because I’ve been keeping secrets. That’s how it’s been for the last year and a half, and that’s how it still is, despite your sudden feigned interest in me.” He started to say something, but she raised her hand to quiet him. She was amazed when he actually shut his mouth.
“I know now that I wasn’t the bride that you would have chosen for yourself,” she managed to say despite the huge lump in her throat. She couldn’t meet his eyes as she acknowledged that painful fact. “You made that pretty clear on our wedding night and every day since then. But I think that at the very least, I deserve to be treated with some show of respect…” She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling and wrapped her arms around herself. He said nothing in response, just kept staring at her thoughtfully.
“I don’t really know what you want me to say,” he eventually admitted, and she smiled sadly.
“I know,” she acknowledged with a dip of her head. “That’s a major part of the problem.”
He unexpectedly shoved himself away from the table and took the couple of steps it required to bring him directly in front of her. He hovered threateningly above where she sat, and Theresa tried her best not to cower beneath his brooding regard. He then surprised her even further by dropping to his haunches in front of her, placing his hands on the arms of her chair, and trapping her in her seat.
“I may not know these things you asked of me, Theresa,” his sexy accent thickened as his voice dropped a few notches, “but I do know you.” She shook her head mutely, disconcerted by both his proximity and his direct stare. He was definitely not avoiding her eyes this time. She felt like a deer trapped in the headlights, and she wanted to look away, she wanted to escape but she could barely breathe, much less avert her gaze.
He raised one hand and Theresa braced herself for his unwanted touch, desperate not to flinch. In the end, she still jumped slightly when his fingertips brushed across her lips.
“I know what makes you tremble with desire.” His voice had lowered even further, nothing more than a seductive rumble now, and her lips parted slightly. “I know where to touch, where to kiss, where to suck…I know how to make you moan, scream, and cry out in ecstasy.”
“That’s just sex.” She found her voice but hardly sounded convincing. He merely smiled, lifting his other hand until he had her face framed, with his thumbs stroking across her cheekbones and his fingertips burrowing into the soft hair at her temples.
“It doesn’t solve anything,” she continued to protest, with the same lack of conviction as before.
“Maybe not”—he shrugged without concern—“but it feels fantastic.”
“But we don’t do it right,” she murmured, thinking about the fact that he’d never kissed her, not on the lips, not once. His fingers stilled and she realized, rather belatedly, that he may have misconstrued her comment. That was fine with her, if it meant that he would stop this blatant seduction of her senses.
“What do you mean?” She could tell how much it cost him to keep the affronted heat out of his voice. He started up the lazy stroking again.
“I always thought that one day I would make love with my husband,” she whispered. “But we don’t do that, do we? We just have sex. We…” She used a word that she had never in her life uttered before. Sandro recoiled slightly in response, and the soothing stroke of his fingertips stopped abruptly.
“Don’t use language like that,” he rebuked. “It doesn’t suit you!”
“Well, it’s what you once called it,” she defended herself hotly.
“I would never—”
“You did.” She interrupted the imminent denial calmly. “On our wedding night, after the first time, I tried to…to…” She blushed as she remembered her na?veté back then. She had reached over to snuggle with him, and he had moved to the edge of the bed in an effort to get away from her. “Well, anyway, you told me not to mistake what we did with any act of love. That it was much more basic than that. Just sex, you said, just…well…you know…”
His hands had dropped from her face to her shoulders, and his eyes narrowed on her painfully humiliated face. His grip tightened on her shoulders, and she squirmed slightly before it let up and he kneaded her shoulders.