'As a sobering taste of your near future, consider this... depending on my choice of timing, if I walk out on this marriage you will lose everything you possess.' Luca spelt out that reminder with an immovable cool that made what he was saying all the more shocking.
The silence, broken only by the steady tick of the grandfather clock, hung there between them as breakable as a thin sheet of glass.
'No...no...' Every scrap of remaining colour drained from Darcy's shaken face as she absorbed the full weight of that threat. 'You can't do that to me!'
'I think you'll find that I can do anything I want...' Strolling closer with fluid ease, Luca stretched out a seemingly idle hand and closed it over her clenched fingers. Slowly, relentlessly employing the pressure of his infinitely greater strength, he pulled her towards him.
'Stop it...let go of me!' Darcy cried, totally unprepared for this even more daunting development, heartbeat thundering in panic, breath snarling up in her convulsing throat.
'That is no way to talk to a new husband,' Luca censured indolently as he skimmed a confident hand down to the shallow indentation at the base of her spine and held her there, mere inches from him. He studied her with satisfaction.
'And particularly not one with such high expectations of your future behaviour. All that cutesy tossing of coins and sleeping on the floor like a naive little virgin...it's wasted on a male who has perfect recall of being pushed down on a bed and having his shirt ripped off within hours of meeting you!'
As that rich, dark-timbred voice flailed down her taut spine like a silken whip, Darcy's eyes grew huge and raw with stricken recollection of her own abandon that night in Venice. She trembled, her pallor now laced with hot ribbons of pink.
'You were wild,' Luca savoured huskily. 'It may be the most expensive one-night stand I ever had, but the sex was unforgettable.'
Expensive? But she still couldn't concentrate. She gazed up at him, as trapped as a butterfly speared by a cruel pin. Only in her case the pin was the stabbing thrust of intense humiliation piercing her to the heart. Raising one lean brown hand, he rubbed a blunt forefinger over the tremulous line of her full lower lip and she shivered, spooked by the blaze of those brilliant dark golden eyes so close, the shocking effect of that insolent caress on her tender mouth. With stunned disconcertion she felt a spark of heat flame into a smouldering tight little knot that scorched the pit of her tense stomach.
'You burned me alive,' Luca whispered mesmerically. 'And you're going to do that for me again...and again...and again until I don't want you any more...is that understood?'
No, nothing was understood. Too much had happened too fast, and at absolutely the wrong psychological moment. Darcy had stood at that altar, firmly and exultantly believing that she was in the very act of solving her every problem. Everything had fallen apart when she was least equipped to deal with it. Now she was simply reeling from moment to moment in the suffocating grip of deep, paralysing shock.
'Who are you...why are you doing this to me?' she demanded all over again, her incomprehension unconcealed as he released her.
'Isn't it strange how the passage of time operates?' Luca remarked with a philosophical air. 'What you once didn't want to know for your own protection, you are now desperate to discover—'
'You can't do this to me...you can't threaten me...I won't let you!' Darcy swore vehemently.
'Watch me,' Luca advised, consulting the rapier-thin gold watch on his wrist with tremendous poise. 'Now, I suggest you locate your passport and start packing.'
'Passport...p-packing?' Darcy parroted.
'My surprise, cara.' His mocking smile didn't add one iota of warmth to the cold brilliance of his dark eyes. 'In a couple of hours a helicopter will pick us up and take us to the airport. We're flying to Venice. I want to go home.'
Darcy backed away from him, green eyes burnished by angry bewilderment. 'Venice? Are you out of your mind? I'm not going to Italy with you!'
A fleeting smile of sardonic amusement curved his expressive mouth. "Think that refusal through. If I leave this house without you, I will not return, and you will forfeit any hope of winning your inheritance in six months' time.'
'You bastard...' Darcy mumbled sickly as that message sank in. Evidently Luca knew far more than she had naively told him. He knew the exact conditions of her godmother's will. A marriage that lasted less than that six-month deadline would not count.
His stunning dark eyes narrowed to an icy splinter of gold. 'In the light of the circumstances of your child's birth, I'm astonished to hear you use that particular word.'