She lowered her gaze and pressed her knuckles to her quivering lips.
Sandro’s feet came into her line of vision.
“Guilt is not fun, cara,” he said heavily. “I hate being fallible and I am. I’m human. I try to forgive myself for being a child, for having to learn the hard way the consequences of my actions, but I still blame myself for my father’s death. If he had lived, my mother never would have had to scrape herself up so badly falling in and out of love with other men. I blame myself for that, too.”
“It’s her choice,” she mumbled. “She’s happy. Maybe she doesn’t care if it hurts along the way.”
“Maybe she doesn’t, but I do. I’ve never wanted to go through that same sort of wringer and I’m built to. I have that temperament and I knew if I ever loved and lost, I would be just like her—completely broken. Who would ever want to feel like that?”
She turned her face to the side, struggling to hold back her flinch and the tears that flooded up into her eyes. I’m broken, she wanted to cry.
“I just find it really hard, Sandro.” Her throat was so tight she could barely force her reedy voice to work. “Because I’m willing to take that risk. I love you. A lot. And I don’t think I can bear it if you’re never going to love me.”
He touched her chin, gently drawing her to look at him.
“I do love you, cara. I knew I was in trouble the night we met, when I danced with you. I felt the chemistry and thought for a moment that the safer choice for me would be to let you marry Primo.” His mouth twisted, but his gaze never wavered. “I wasn’t about to let you go to anyone, however. And that scared me.”
She swallowed, lower lip trembling against the pad of his thumb as he caressed it.
“Our honeymoon was...” His face spasmed with a hint of pain. “You call it an affair and it was, for you. I think I knew that. You were infatuated. No, listen,” he hurried, not letting her interrupt. “I know what a sexual crush looks like. I’ve been producing them in women from an early age and yes, I did everything in my power to provoke one in you to ensure you married me, but the way I felt for you was becoming...too much. London served a lot of purposes for me,” he admitted with a humble look.
She pulled in her bottom lip and sucked the salty tang of his thumbprint off it, one foot falling back so he had to let his hand drop away.
“There was a part of me that needed to prove I could get by without you, that I wasn’t completely over my head,” he continued, voice raw enough to lift the hairs on her arms. “Then, after everything with Primo and the birth, I knew even what little you had felt toward me was gone. Do you think I felt good after that?” His regret was palpable, making her throat ache. “No, I felt guilty and hellish and I knew I should let you go, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t ready to admit to myself why.”
His eyes were dark gray, like heavy English rain, his brow furrowed, the lines at the edges of his mouth deep.
“Especially because you weren’t being open with me,” he added. “You held a lot back, too.”
She realized that her fingers hurt because she had them clenched together. She searched his expression, stunned to think that she might have been hurting him with her restraint all that time when she’d only been trying to deal with her own pain.
“I’ve never really talked about myself,” she excused. “I thought you’d be bored or annoyed, think I was complaining about nothing.”
She still felt as though her inner struggles were insignificant, but glancing up, she saw she had his full attention. She swallowed, shaken.
“When I said I didn’t expect you to love me, it was because I didn’t think there was any reason you should,” she admitted.
He cupped the side of her face. His expression was filled with adoration. “I don’t understand how someone who thinks as deeply as you do doesn’t see her inner value.” His thumb brushed her cheek. “When you started showing your true self, I was so proud and excited and scared that I would crush you before you were out of your shell... I like this woman you’re becoming, Octavia. I love her. In fact, that silly little word doesn’t even come close to describing the vastness of what I feel.” He stepped closer and framed her face with both hands, possessive. The way he looked at her was not soft and tender like Ysabelle’s count, but fierce and enthralled and ravenous. “I didn’t want the pain of loving, but—” He swallowed, his emotions so close to the surface his eyes gleamed. “I couldn’t stop myself from falling for you.”