‘Brilliant,' she said, and cleared her throat, the sound loud and awkward in the confined space of the cockpit. Ben turned to look at her, and Natalia's breath froze in her chest.
‘About that kiss … ' he began.
Here it comes, she thought. The apologies or accusations, it didn't matter which. It was a mistake. Let's forget it ever happened. Maybe that would be for the best. Safer. She lifted her chin a notch. ‘What about it?'
Ben stared at her for a long, endless moment. It was too dark for Natalia to make out his expression. ‘I can't stop thinking about it,' he finally confessed in a ragged whisper, and then he was pulling her towards him, and she was on his lap and his mouth was on hers and that was all they needed to say about that kiss.
This one was even better.
Ben's hands slid along her body, his thumbs grazing the sides of her breasts before coming to rest on her hips, guiding her even closer so her legs splayed on either side of him, her body pressed intimately to his. It felt so good, Natalia thought hazily, but not good enough. She wanted more. She needed more. She shifted, pressing against him, her fingers fisted in his hair, raked his back in an agony of sensation, anything to get closer.
His hands were hard on her hips as he pressed back, and desperately Natalia thought how they were wearing too many clothes. Too much between them. Ben must have thought so too for impatiently his hands pulled at her dress, her underwear, his fingers finding her, and Natalia lost all train of thought, the sensation was too great, too much.
Until the cockpit was suddenly awash with light and someone tapped on the hatch of the plane. Ben jerked his mouth from hers and in one quick movement pushed her from his lap so she was sprawled most inelegantly, her dress up around her waist, half on her seat, half on the floor.
Natalia blinked, too shocked to even push her dress back down. One of the airport's security guards was shining a torch into the plane, but he'd immediately grasped what was going on for he backed quickly away.
‘Scusi … scusi … '
Reality returned in a sickening rush. Humiliation too. Carefully Natalia pulled her dress back down.
‘Sorry,' Ben muttered, and reached for her hand. Natalia ignored it. It wasn't easy to act sophisticated when she'd just been dumped on the floor, but she tried.
‘That's not quite how I envisioned this ending,' she murmured, giving him a tart look even though inside she felt sick with humiliation and hurt.
‘I thought it was the press.'
Ah. Well, that explained it. The last thing Ben wanted was to be caught in flagrante with Princess Natalia. ‘The press, camping out at the airport after midnight?' she remarked drily. ‘I know you don't like the paparazzi, Ben, but I think that's verging on paranoid.'
‘Sorry,' he said again. He didn't look at her as he said it. Natalia felt her heart start to splinter.
‘Sorry you thought it was the press, or sorry for dumping me on the floor like so much rubbish? Or,' Natalia continued, making sure to keep her voice dry, as if this were all so amusing, ‘sorry for kissing me in the first place?'
Ben didn't answer. His expression had become so irritatingly unreadable. ‘Perhaps you're sorry for all three?' she suggested. ‘That would be a nice hat trick.' Ben remained silent and she finished adjusting her dress, her chin held high, her hands trembling.
‘I'll drive you home,' he said after another interminable moment, and Natalia didn't bother to reply. She didn't think she could.
* * *
Nothing had gone the way he'd expected. Fury and regret pulsed through him as Ben drove Natalia home. She sat next to him, her posture ramrod straight, her chin tilted at an impossibly proud angle. Had he hurt her?
Of course you did, you bastard.
He'd dumped her on the floor. He'd pushed her away from him as if she disgusted him. It had been an instinctive response, one borne of self-protection and even fear. He'd had his moments of weakness exploited all too often. A tear-streaked face at four years old. Sullen and alone at twelve. The agony of his knee injury at sixteen. The paparazzi had captured every moment of emotional vulnerability and anguish he'd ever experienced and plastered them across their papers so the whole world had seen. So his mother had seen, and been heartbroken. Oldest Jackson misses his Daddy. Another Jackson Disappoints. Ben Jackson's Dreams Shattered.
He'd lived through it all, and he would not do so again. He'd spent his life, his whole damn life, trying to live a quiet life, worthy of respect and out of the glare of the media. Trying to give the Jackson name the respect it had once earned. He'd thought he could have done it with football, but when that failed-when he failed-he did it with business. All along he'd wanted to make a difference, to change the way people thought about his family, and in one sordid moment he could have ruined it all. That's what had gone through his head in a lightning-flash of fear when the cockpit had suddenly blazed with light. And while his history might have justified the fear, it certainly didn't excuse the way he'd just treated Natalia.
He'd been foolish, he supposed, to have taken her out at all, and yet even so he couldn't regret it. He'd wanted to be with her … and he still did.
Even now he wanted her, and not just physically, although that was certainly foremost in his mind. He wanted to apologise, explain why he was so afraid, and not just of the press, Ben realised in a rush of painful self-recrimination. Maybe that was just an easy excuse. He was afraid of himself. Afraid of losing control, of letting himself go because heaven only knew when Natalia was in his arms his whole world spun on its axis. Natalia had been right; he didn't like feeling weak and helpless and out of control. He hated it.
You're afraid of being afraid.
He pulled up to the palazzo and put on the emergency brake, turning to look at Natalia, to say something, but she'd already opened the door, her face angled away from him. ‘Natalia … '
She turned to him with one of her old mocking smiles, but he could tell her heart wasn't in it. His wasn't either. ‘Thank you for an evening that was full of surprises,' she said, and without waiting for a reply, she waggled her fingers in farewell and then disappeared into the palazzo.
Ben cursed aloud.
* * *
Thank goodness it was the weekend. She didn't have to see Ben for two whole days. Maybe, Natalia hoped, knowing it was futile, she'd have put the whole sorry episode behind her by Monday morning. Maybe she'd have forgotten it completely, or at least stopped remembering the sweet slide of his lips against hers every second of the day.
The weekend was endless. She thought about him constantly, wondered what he was thinking. Feeling. Wearing, even. She felt like a teenager with a first crush, except she'd never felt like this as a teen. This was deeper, darker, more dangerous, and yet infinitely sweeter too, and that made it all the more painful.
She relived the moment he'd pushed her away from him over and over again. He'd acted out of instinct, which made it worse. He'd been desperate to distance himself and the thought hurt more than it should. It shouldn't hurt at all; it had just been a kiss.
A lot more than a kiss, Natalia acknowledged grimly. A lot more than even just sex. Her heart was involved; she felt it twist and splinter, jagged shards of disappointment digging into her soul. This was why she didn't believe in true love. This was why she didn't get involved with men she could care about. Until Ben.
How had he done it? Why had she let him?
On Saturday evening she'd broken down and rung Carlotta. She needed to talk to someone, someone who knew her. She felt a prickly, uncomfortable guilt in ringing her twin; she'd distanced herself from Carlotta since she'd had her son, Luca, five years ago. It had been an instinctive and unconscious decision, not that different from Ben pushing her off his lap, Natalia realised with a jolt. A means of self-protection. Carlotta's life had changed so dramatically, and hers hadn't. Carlotta had moved to Italy, had lived a quiet, sober life that Natalia secretly envied in its independence and freedom even as she witnessed Carlotta's heartbreak and sorrow.
Carlotta answered on the first ring. ‘Natalia?'
‘Ciao, Lotta.' The nickname from childhood slipped out instinctively.
Carlotta must have guessed something from her tone-or the nickname-for she asked quietly, ‘Natalia, what's wrong?'