to her dark-brown curls, all of it tempered with the faintest spray of freckles across her pert nose. He did not allow himself to concentrate on the delicate fullness of her mouth. It did not seem to matter that he knew her appearance of wide-eyed innocence was nothing more than an act.
It never seemed to matter.
He wanted his hands on her skin, his mouth on her breast. Those tight, ripe nipples against his tongue. He told himself it was all he wanted, all he chose to allow himself to want.
“Escaped?” he queried, icily. “The last I checked, you were living quite comfortably. In a house I own.”
“Because you demanded it!” she hissed, that fascinating splash of color rising from her graceful neck toward her soft cheeks. He knew other ways to raise that color upon her delicate skin and very nearly smiled, remembering. She darted a glance around at the crowd which surrounded them, as if for strength, then faced him again. “I wanted nothing to do with that house.”
He was a man who commanded empires. He had done so since his father’s death when he was only twenty-eight, maintaining his family’s ancient wealth while expanding it into the new era. How could this one woman continue to defy him? How was it possible? What weakness in him kept him from simply crushing her beneath his foot?
But he already knew the weakness intimately. It had already ruined him. He felt it in the heaviness in his groin, the edgy need that spiraled through him and demanded he get his hands beneath the heavy black suit he knew she was wearing to hide from him. Because she could never deny what she felt when he touched her, that he knew full well. Whatever else she chose to deny, or he preferred to ignore.
“I am fascinated by your uncharacteristic acquiescence,” he said through his teeth, furious with himself and with their entire tangled history, her trail of broken promises. “I recall making any number of demands that you chose to ignore: that you remained in Italy, as tradition required. That you refrained from casting shame on my family’s name with your behavior. That you honored your vows.”
“I will not fight with you,” she told him, her blue eyes flashing and her chin rising. She made a dismissive gesture with one hand, the one that should have worn his ring yet was offensively bare. He clamped down on the surge of temper. “You can choose to revise history however you like, but I am finished arguing about it.”
“Then we are in perfect agreement,” he bit out, keeping his voice low and for her ears alone despite the fierce kick of his temper—and that hollow place beneath it that he refused to acknowledge. “I have not gained an appreciation for public scenes since we last met, Bethany. If it is your plan to embarrass me further tonight, I suggest you rethink it. I do not think this will end the way you wish it to end.”
“There is no need for a scene,” she said at once. “Public or otherwise.” She shrugged, drawing attention to her delicate neck, and reminding him of the kisses he’d once pressed there and the sweet, addictive taste of her skin. But it was as if that was from another life. “I only want to be divorced from you. Finally.”
“Because it has been such a hardship for you to stay married to me?” he asked, his voice cutting and sarcastic. “How you must struggle.”
He was not a man who believed in impassioned displays—particularly in public, where he was forever being held up against the example of his family’s long legacy—but this woman had always provoked him like no other. Tonight her eyes were too blue, her mouth set in too firm a line. It clawed at him.
“I understand how it must cut at you,” he continued coldly. “To live in such unearned luxury. To have all the benefits of my name and protection with none of the attendant responsibilities.”
“You will be pleased to learn that I no longer want them, then,” she said. She raised her brows at him in direct challenge, but he was caught by the flash of vulnerability he saw move across her face. Bethany—vulnerable? That was not a word he’d ever use to describe her. Wild. Uncontrollable. Rebellious. But never defenseless, wounded. Never.
Impatiently, Leo shoved the odd turn of thought aside. The last thing in the world he needed now was to become intrigued anew by his wife. He had yet to recover from the initial disaster that had been his first, ruinous fascination with this woman. Look where it had led them both.
“Do you not?” he asked, his voice harsh, directed as much at his errant thoughts as at her. “How can you be certain when you have treated both with such disrespect?”
“I want a divorce,” she said again with a quiet strength. “This is the end, Leo. I’m moving on with my life.”
“Are you?” he asked, his tone dangerous. She either did not hear it or did not care. “How so?”
“I am moving out of that house,” she said at once, a wild fire he could not entirely comprehend raging in her sky-blue eyes. “I hate it. I never wanted to live there in the first place.”
“You are my wife.” His voice cracked like a whip, though he knew the words had long held no meaning for her, no matter that they still moved through him like blood, like need. “Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. Just because you have turned your back on the vows you made, does not mean that I have. I told you I would protect you and I meant it, even if it is from your own folly and stubborn recklessness.”
“I’m sure you think that makes you some kind of hero,” she threw at him in a falsely polite tone that he knew was for the benefit of the crowd around them. Yet he could see the real Bethany burn bright in her eyes and the flush on her neck. “But I never thought anyone was likely to kidnap me in the first place.” She let out a short, hollow laugh. “Believe me, I do not advertise our connection.”
“And yet it exists.” His voice brooked no argument; it could have melted steel. “And because of it, you are a target.”
“I won’t be for much longer,” she said, her foolhardy determination showing in that stubborn set to her jaw and the fire in her eyes. He almost admired it. Almost. “And you’ll find that I’ve never touched any of the money in that account of yours, either. I’m going to walk out of this marriage exactly as I walked into it.”
“And where do you intend to go?” he asked quietly, softly, not daring himself to move closer. He knew, somehow, that putting his hands on her would ruin them both and expose too much.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she said, her gaze direct and challenging, searing into him. “But I’ve met someone else.”
CHAPTER TWO
THE room seemed to drop away. All Bethany could see was the arrested look in his eyes that narrowed as he gazed at her. He did not move, yet she felt clenched in a kind of tight fist that held only the two of them, and that simmering tension that sparked and surged between them.
Had she really said that? Had she truly dared to say something like that to this man? To her husband?
How much worse would it be, she wondered in a panic, if it was actually true? She found she was holding her breath.
For a long, impossible moment Leo only stared at her, but she could feel the beat of his fury—and her own heart—like a wild drum. He looked almost murderous for a moment—or perhaps she was succumbing to hysteria. Then he shifted, and Bethany could breathe again.
“And who is the lucky man?” Leo asked in a
