Bound by the Italian's Contract(60)
He smiled and ran a hand up her arm, creating friction that hummed in her. “Want to talk about it?”
Her words thrown back at her. She shook her head, fighting tears of frustration. Revealing her past would solve nothing.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. “I just want to get this job over and done with and go home.”
He crossed both arms over his chest and stared at her, the silence crackling between them for a long, uncomfortable moment. She looked away with a shiver, afraid he could read too much into her mind. That he could uncover her deepest secret.
“Is it me you’re bent on running away from?” he asked at last.
“No.” She knew as soon as his blue eyes narrowed that her quick reply had revealed too much.
“Then why? Tell me why you are so desperate to leave here.”
She pressed her fingers to her forehead, feeling the first tinge of a killing headache. Wasn’t her heart hurting too much for her body to tolerate more?
“Drop it, Luciano.”
“No. You’re not leaving this room until you tell me what has upset you.”
She peered at his resolute features and thought marble statues didn’t look as hard or inflexible. “You can’t lock me up.”
“Want to bet?”
Not on her life. “You’re being totally unreasonable.”
One dark eyebrow arched. “You have that desperate look of a woman ready to hide from the world.”
“I do not.”
“I’m not blind,” he said. “What are you trying to hide from?”
Tears threatened again, but she managed to hold them back. She wouldn’t cry. Wouldn’t give Godolphin the satisfaction of terrorizing her waking moments as well.
“Bella,” Luciano murmured as he gathered her into his embrace, her weary resistance failing to deter him. “You can tell me anything. You know this.”
“Not this time. Please.”
The man who’d destroyed her innocence was his friend and business associate. He was here at la Duchi Royal, waiting to hear if he’d been chosen for the job. She couldn’t involve Luciano in the mess that was her personal life.
And just admitting that loosed her tears. They came hot and miserably fast, burning trails of makeup down her cheeks that his tailored shirt soaked up.
“What happened? You must tell me that much,” he insisted, keeping her encased within his arms, clearly not about to give up.
What was the use in holding her silence? He was right. She could tell him that much.
She sucked in a shaky breath and held it, willing the chills to stop yet knowing nothing would ever truly purge her of the hell she’d endured.
There was only one way to get through this. Tell the truth.
One more shaky inhalation and she blurted out, “I was raped.”
CHAPTER SEVEN