A Scandal in the Headlines(36)

“I am here,” she threw back at him, her voice still so ragged and her eyes so dark, too dark, “until we discover whether or not our recklessness results in a pregnancy neither one of us wants. We risked bringing a brand-new life into all of this bitterness and hate. That’s the kind of people we are, Alessandro.”

“Why don’t you teach me,” he said then, his gaze on hers, hot and hurt and too many other things he couldn’t define and wasn’t sure he wanted to know, though he could feel them all battering at him.

“Teach you what? Manners? I think we’re past that.”

“You’re the expert on men like me,” he said, fascinated despite himself when she blanched at the way he said that. “You know all about it, apparently. Teach me what that means. Show me. Help me be as bad as you think I am already.”

Something shifted in the air between them. In her gaze. The way her blue eyes shone with unshed misery, and the way she suddenly looked so small then, so vulnerable. So shattered.

And all he felt was … raw. Raw and ruined, all the way through to his bones.

Or maybe that was the way she looked at him.

“Let me guess what makes me the perfect teacher,” she said, her voice cracking.

“You tell me, Elena,” he said, his own voice a low, dark growl. “You’re the one in bed with the enemy.”

And she swayed then, as if he’d punched her hard in the gut. He felt as if he had, a kind of hot, bitter shame pouring over him, almost drowning him. But she steadied herself, and one hand crept over her heart, as if, he realized dimly, it ached. As if it ached straight up through her ribs, enough for her to press against it from above.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

Her voice was thick and unsteady, and he had the impression she didn’t see him at all, though she stared right at him. Her eyes were wide and slicked with pain, and he watched in a kind of helpless horror as they finally overflowed.

“I don’t …” She shook, and she wept, and it tore him apart. And then her uneven whisper smashed all the pieces. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

Alessandro reached for her then because he didn’t know what else to do. Elena threw her free hand out to stop him, to warn him. Maybe even to hit him, he thought—and he’d deserve it if she did. He did yet another thing he couldn’t understand, reaching out and lacing his fingers through hers, the way he had on that dance floor long ago. She shuddered, then drew in a harsh breath.

But she didn’t pull away, and something in him, hard and desperate, eased.

“I can’t breathe anymore,” she whispered, those tears tracking down her soft cheeks. He felt the tremor in her hand, saw it shiver over her skin. “I can’t breathe—”

He pulled her to him, cradling her against his chest as if she was made of glass, the need to hold her roaring in him, loud and imperative and impossible to ignore. She bowed her head into him and he felt the hand she’d held against her own heart ball into a fist against the wall of his chest.

He ran his free hand down the length of her spine and then back up. Again and again. He found himself murmuring words he didn’t entirely comprehend, half-remembered words from the long-ago nannies who had soothed his nightmares and bandaged his scrapes as a boy. He bent his head down close to hers and rested his cheek on top of her head.

She shook against him, silent sobs rolling hard through her slender body, and he held her. He didn’t think about how little sense this made. He didn’t think about what this told him about himself, or how terrified he should be of this woman and the things she made him feel. And do. He simply held her.

And when she stopped crying and stirred against him, it was much, much harder than it should have been to let her pull away. She stepped out of his arms and dropped his hand, then scrubbed her palms over her face. And then she looked up at him, tearstained and wary with a certain resolve in her brilliant blue eyes, and something flipped over in his chest.

“I’m not a whore,” she said, something naked and urgent moving over her face and through her remarkable eyes as they met his. “I’m not engaged to Niccolo. I ran out on him six months ago after he hit me, and I’ve been hiding from him ever since.”

He only stared at her. The world, this island, his house, even he seemed to explode, devastating and silent, leaving nothing but Elena and the way she looked at him, the faint dampness against his chest where she’d sobbed against him and what she’d said. What it meant.

She was not engaged. She was not a whore. She wasn’t a spy.

It beat in him, louder and louder, drowning out his own heartbeat.