herself inside the château’s ornate entry hall like a missile.
It’s fine, she told herself, though she didn’t believe it. Though she could hear the drumming panic in her own head. Everything is perfectly fine.
She made herself slow down. She was aware of Luca just behind her, a solid wall of regret at her heels, but she told herself to ignore it. To pretend he wasn’t there. She forced herself to walk, not run. She headed up the stairs and then down the hall that led to the family wing. She made her way all the way to the far end of the château, and then finally, finally, she could see the door to her own room. She couldn’t wait to close herself inside and...breathe.
She would take another very long bath. She would scrub all of this away. She would curl herself up into a tiny little ball, and she would not permit herself to cry.
She would not.
Luca said her name when she’d finally reached her door, when she had her hand out to grab the handle and was this close—
And Kathryn didn’t want this. She didn’t want whatever cutting, eviscerating, gut punch of a thing he was about to say. Whatever new and inventive way he’d come up with to call her a whore and make her feel like one.
But she wanted him to know how fragile she was even less, so she turned around and faced him.
He stood much too close, his dark eyes glittering, an expression she couldn’t place on his beautiful face. She wished he wasn’t so gorgeous, that he didn’t make her ache. She imagined that might make it easier—might make that tugging thing near her heart dissipate more quickly.
She should say something; she knew she should. But she couldn’t seem to make her mouth work.
“Where are you going, cucciola mia?” he asked softly.
She hated him, she told herself. The only thing worse than his insults was this. That softness she couldn’t understand at all.
“I don’t know what that means. I don’t speak any Italian.”
His mouth moved into that curve again, and his dark eyes were much too intense. He reached over and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and Kathryn knew he could feel the way that made her shudder. And her breath catch.
“I suppose it means my pet, more or less,” Luca said, as if he hadn’t considered it until that moment.
And the true betrayal was the warmth that spread through her at that, as if it was that laugh of his, bottled up, pure liquid sunshine starting deep inside her. Because he was dangerous enough when he was hateful. Kathryn thought that this other side of him—what she might have called affectionate had they been other people—might actually kill her.
Her throat felt swollen. Scratchy. Because of the noises she’d made in that car that she couldn’t let herself think about? Or because of that brand-new rawness lodged inside her now? She didn’t know. But she forced herself to speak anyway. “I don’t want to be your pet.”
That curve of his mouth deepened. “I don’t know that it’s up to you.”
Kathryn felt restless. Edgy. As if she might burst. Or scream. Or simply crumple to the ground—and he seemed perfectly content to stand there forever, seeing things in her face she was quite certain she’d prefer to hide.
She scowled at him. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
This time, when he reached out, he took her shoulders in his hands and tugged her into his arms, and when he wrapped his arms around her, she melted. God help her, but she simply...fell into him. All that heat and strength, enveloping her like some kind of benediction.
“Come,” he said quietly, letting her go. “I’ll show you.”
Kathryn knew what she needed to do. What her mother would expect her to do. One slip was bad enough. One terrible mistake. There was still time to save herself. There was still the possibility that she could call tonight a lost battle and go on to win the war, surely. She needed only to pull away from him, step inside her room and lock him out, so she could set about the Herculean task of putting herself back together.
But she couldn’t make herself do it.
And when Luca opened the door to his bedroom and held out his hand as if he knew exactly what battles she was fighting and, more than that, how to win them, Kathryn ignored the great riot and tumult that shook inside her, and took it.
* * *
Luca didn’t know how to make sense of any of this.
And that lost look in her too-dark gray eyes, something too close to broken, was too much for him. He had a thousand questions he didn’t ask. A thousand more stacked behind them. He had the sense that there was something lying in wait for him, just over his shoulder or perhaps deep inside him, that he didn’t care to examine.
Not tonight, when he’d discovered that she was precisely as innocent as she’d sometimes appeared.
It didn’t matter how or why. Even the subject of her marriage to his father could wait.
What mattered—what beat in him like a darkening pulse that only got louder and more insistent with every breath—was that whatever else happened, whatever games she played or was playing even now, whatever the hell was going on here in all this California moonlight, she was his.
His.
Luca didn’t wish to question himself on that. On why that surge of sheer possession seared through him, as if she’d branded him somehow with the unexpected gift of her innocence. He only knew that she was his. Only his.
And Luca wasn’t done with her. Not even close.
She put her hand in his and let him lead her into his rooms, and there was no particular reason that should feel like trumpets blaring, drums pounding, a whole damned parade. But it did.
It should horrify him, he knew, that he had so little control where this woman was concerned—but tonight he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He took his time.
He stood her at the foot of the great platform bed and undressed her slowly, not letting her help. He slid her shoes from her feet. He found the hidden side zipper on the bodice of her dress and eased it down, then tugged the whole of it up and over her head. He unhooked the bra she wore and pulled it from her arms, letting it fall to the floor with the rest.
When she stood before him in nothing but those panties he’d shoved out of his way in the car and that uncertain look on her face that he thought might kill him, Luca took a moment to ease his fingers through her hair. He pulled out what remained of that upswept knot she’d worn to dinner. He stroked his hands through the thick, straight strands, comforting them both.
And only when she let out a long breath he didn’t think she knew she’d been holding did he finish undressing her, easing her panties down over her hips and then over the length of her perfectly formed legs.
Luca let himself look at her for a long time, indulging that possessive streak he’d never known he had. Because he’d never felt anything like it before tonight. He shrugged out of his jacket and kicked off his shoes. Still he gazed at her, letting her exquisite
