Сара Крейвен – It Happened In Rome: The Forced Bride / The Italian's Rags-to-Riches Wife / The Italian's Passionate Revenge (страница 26)

‘And now get out of my sight, per favore.’ His voice was harsh as his expression as he stood, refastening his jeans. He did not look at her. ‘You said you wished to sleep. Bene. Go to bed and do so. You will not be disturbed.’

Emily scrambled to her feet and fled to the stairs. Once in her room, she closed the door, leaning back against its panels, aware of the wild thunder of her heart—and the forlorn ache of her hungry body, trapped in its self-imposed fast.

He’d wanted to seduce her and she’d prevented him. Objective achieved. Job done.

But at what a cost.

It would have been a relief to her feelings if she could have called him a brute—an animal. But it wouldn’t have been true. In its way, what he’d done to her had been a demonstration of almost passionless efficiency. There had not been one kiss or caress. Which made it somehow worse.

You prefer to close your heart and mind against me… His words came back to haunt her. Because that was indeed what she’d set out to do from the first, deliberately and precisely. And tonight she’d reaped the bitter harvest of her actions.

This is what you must expect…

Dear God, she thought, was that going to be true? And, if so, how could she bear it?

This could not be how he treated the other women in his life, so she could only hope he would soon grow tired of this sterile and one-sided arrangement. Return to his old ways—old loves, she thought, and flinched.

In the meantime, she couldn’t allow herself to be found here brooding like this when Raf came to bed. It was vital not to let him see that anything he might do mattered to her. Or that she might have anything to regret.

She undressed quickly and got into bed, turning her back to the door and thumping the pillow into shape. She wouldn’t be asleep when he arrived or, probably, for hours afterwards, but she could pretend. And he’d said he wouldn’t disturb her.

And from now on she would keep strictly to her own side of the bed.

It seemed an eternity before she heard him come upstairs and walk past on his way to the bathroom. She burrowed further under the covers, closing her eyes so tightly that tiny stars danced behind her lids, and waited for his return. For the moment when her door would open.

Then, softly but very definitely, Emily heard a very different sound—the subdued click of the spare room door closing just across the passage.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

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