Manhattan's Most Scandalous Reunion by Dani Collins, Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER NINE

ASTHEIRMONTHon the island wound down, Cenzo discovered, if not quite a joy in his menial tasks, a sense of satisfaction in completing them.

And could not help but feel it as a kind of victory.

He found he liked the simplicity of their days on this rock. He woke on his pallet, which he had come to appreciate. It was always still dark when he rose, and he liked the faint hints of dawn on the other side of the windows as well as the cold stone beneath his bare feet as he moved through the castle. Up and down the many stairs. He liked to run all the steps, twice, before making his way to the kitchen to begin preparing the signora’s breakfast.

He brewed strong coffee every morning, then threw together some batter to make the morning buns he knew Josselyn preferred. Particularly as a counterpoint to his rich, bitter coffee.

Of all the tasks he completed in the course of a day, he thought he liked none so much as when Josselyn wandered into the kitchen, her lovely, soft eyes still shaded with sleep. She always looked so grateful for the coffee he pressed into her hands and the sweet roll he’d made for her that was usually still warm. So grateful that it made him wonder about her. About the life she’d led on the other side of this strange month. About the things he couldn’t recall. That such a small thing could bring her such obvious joy seemed to him like some kind of miracle.

He took it as daily evidence of her husband’s unsuitability.

A topic he liked to think about a great deal, especially when Josselyn set off for her morning ramble about the ruins. Cenzo spent the mornings cleaning. He started at the top of the tower and worked his way down, and while that was one more area of this life of his that he would not describe as joyful, per se, he had come to find a certain fulfillment in the completion of his daily chores. And he liked that as he did them he could see Josselyn down below, frowning out at the sea as she took her morning constitutional, moving in and around the ancient stones.

He liked to think that what she worried over, as she stared out toward the horizon, was him.

Just as he liked to think that her nights were sleepless as his were, because the fire could be denied but that didn’t make the flames any less bright.

“This is our last day here,” she told him that morning, a tautness in the way she held herself that he disliked. “Men will come tomorrow to take us back. When they do, things will change.”

“What will change?”

Today she had taken her coffee and her bun out to the terrace. It was another warm morning, the sun and the sea in seeming concert, as if the whole world was that same gleaming blue. Just like the blue stone she wore on her hand.

Something in him shifted uneasily as he stared at that stone today. The ring was always commanding, but it seemed to him almost to echo inside him this morning. But he couldn’t quite catch hold of it. Like a melody he knew he recognized, though he’d forgotten all the words.

Cenzo concentrated on Josselyn instead.

He had grown to consider himself something of an expert on her expressions. On every stray feeling he could read in those lovely brown eyes of hers or the color in her cheeks. They seemed grave to him today.

“Everything will change,” she warned him. “You must prepare for that. Things have been very simple here, but this is not the real world.”

“You must tell me what my position is like in the real world, then,” he said, not liking the dire way she was speaking—but also not particularly concerned. Let things change. He would remain the same. He was certain of it. “I’m not sure I know what the position of personal manservant typically entails.”

Her smile seemed dry, and in any case, went nowhere in her eyes. “I don’t think that’s a title you’re going to embrace.”

“Come now, signora.” And he threw caution to the wind, then. “If you wish to release me from my position, say so. If that is the change you mean. Or I will be forced to think you are running away. That will not make your marriage any better. You must know this.”

She swallowed, visibly, but she did not drop her gaze.

“I had hoped that your memory would come back while we were here,” she said, evenly enough. And he might have thought that his words had not affected her at all were it not for the pulse he could see beating out a mad rhythm in her neck. He liked that. He took some pride in it. “I hoped that you would not have to face reality without knowing who you really are.”

“You are more concerned with who I really am than I have ever been.” He could have sat with her at the little table, but he felt too...restless. That near-melody in his head was driving him a little bit mad. He leaned against the rail instead. “To be perfectly honest with you, I do not care at all what or if I remember. I know what I need to know.”

“I think that’s easy for you to say that now,” she replied, sounding...cautious. “Because you don’t know.”

“This is what I know about myself, signora.” He had started calling her that because it had seemed appropriate. It was a reasonable way to address the lady of the house. Or the castle, in her case. But he had come to like the way it tasted on his tongue. And better still the way that each time he said it, she always reacted. A widening of her eyes, a darkening of all that brown. A sucked-in breath, or her lower lip suddenly pulled between her teeth. Oh, yes, he liked it. “I am strong. I sleep upon stones and rise refreshed. At first it seemed to me that a life of servitude must be demeaning, but I have not found it so. There can be no shame in it. Everything I do here, I do well. What have I to fear from a reality that can only offer me more opportunities to excel?”

Josselyn laughed the way she did sometimes, as if she couldn’t quite believe the things he said. As if she couldn’t quite believe him, though that didn’t make any sense.

“What’s remarkable is that I know you believe this. You might even be right. Still, I know things that you don’t know. And, Cenzo, there’s no telling what kind of reaction you’ll have when you learn them.”

She looked so serious that he almost wanted to ask her more questions. To find out what she meant.

But he dismissed the urge almost at once. Because what did he care? He couldn’t remember it anyway. He had vague impressions of what the world out there contained. When Josselyn had told him they were off the coast of Sicily, he had known not only what Sicily itself was, but other things about it too. That it sat off the coast of Italy. That it was a part of the Mediterranean region. Over the course of this month, with the help of some of the books in that small library, he’d assured himself that while he might not know himself, he knew the world.

He did not know how to tell her that he was not so concerned with what the world might show him. He was far more convinced that he would be the reckoning upon the world. But saying such things could only sound arrogant, coming as they did from a manservant.

Her manservant.

Josselyn had told him all along that what he did mattered far more than what he thought. That was how he decided, there and then, in the glare of their final morning and her dark predictions about what waited for them when they left this island, that he might as well do what he had wanted to do all along.

“Enjoy your morning,” he told her. “And let me worry about the things I will learn tomorrow. There can be no need to ruin our last day on the island, can there?”

She looked torn. She even opened her mouth as if she was about to tell him something important, but stopped herself.

He waited. Because, for her, he would always wait.

“Cenzo...” she began again, but when he only raised a brow, she shook her head.

Then left him there, going off on her morning walk.

It was a longer one today, but that gave him more time to prepare her lunch. And his plans. When she walked back up he met her in the courtyard, carrying a large basket with a thick blanket over one arm.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“I thought we should have a picnic.”

Josselyn moved her sunglasses to her head, anchoring back her thick, glossy hair. She was wearing one of her dresses today, a short-sleeved, pretty punch of color that ended far enough above her knees to make him feel the fire of her, everywhere.

But the look she trained on him was questioning. “Is that a joke?”

“Am I a man who makes jokes?” His voice was dry. “I cannot remember, but I rather think not.”

She smiled. “No, indeed. You are many things, but I’ve never known you to be a comedian.”

“Then perhaps you should accept that I have packed a small feast and intend to feed it to you in the open air, complete with a lovely view of the sea.”

And it occurred to him after he set off, taking the stairs that wound not toward the ruins, but toward the back of the rocky island, that he was once again acting as if he was the one in charge rather than her.

He could admit that it felt more natural to him.

Cenzo felt that strange echo again, but shook it off.

And besides, Josselyn followed him. That told him she couldn’t be too concerned that he had ideas above his station.

The spot he had in mind was a rocky outcropping, nestled slightly below where the first castle must have stood. It was accessible only by the stairs he took to reach it, carved into a smooth fall of rock with a sheer drop to the sea below.

“I don’t ever come this way,” she said from behind him. “Probably because it’s terrifying.”

“You will live, cara mia, I promise.”

It was not until he’d walked a bit more, with only her shocked silence behind him, that Cenzo realized he had used an endearment. That it had just...slipped out. And it was certainly not the way a manservant addressed his mistress.

But he could hear her feet against the stones. She was still following him. He might have breached the rules of proper etiquette, but it hadn’t turned her away.

The trouble was that every time Josselyn failed to put him in his place, he only felt bolder.

It was as well that this was their last day here, then. Better they should sort out what was between them alone, here, before the world intervened.

Before there were external reminders of the difference in their stations.

The outcropping had a thick wall behind it where flowers had grown over time, spilling down from above like a curtain of bougainvillea. And there were stones marking the cliff’s edge, making it less dangerous than it might have been otherwise.

“What do you think this was used for?” Josselyn asked as she stopped in the middle of the wide ledge, her gaze out on the ocean before them.

“A lookout station, I imagine,” he replied without thinking about it. It was only when she turned to look at him that he realized he’d said that with perfect authority. As if he knew.

He took a moment to examine himself, and it was true. He knew it. “Does that qualify as a memory? I feel certain I am right about this place. It feels like a fact.”

“Why don’t we call it a fact, then.”

And she smiled at him.

That damned smile. It was the ruin of a man, though Cenzo felt nothing like ruined. She smiled at him and his heart danced in his chest. She smiled and the sea and sky seemed to tangle around each other, changing places and he hardly cared.

She smiled and the world stopped dead. And he had to believe that even once they left this place, it would be the same.

And what could he care about the world when he had her?

Because there were whole worlds in this woman, and he wanted to know each and every one of them.

Cenzo spread out the blanket he’d brought, then set about unpacking the lunch he’d made them.

“This isn’t a lunch,” she said admiringly, coming over to drop down to her knees on the edge of the blanket. “It truly is a feast.”

“Mangia,”he murmured.

He threw himself down on the blanket, stretching out on his side. And he watched as Josselyn helped herself to the food he’d prepared for her. Cured meats and hard cheeses, piled high, arancini, fried balls of creamy risotto, busiate al pesto Trapanese, the Sicilian version of pesto with a favorite local pasta shaped like a coil. And a tower of his handmade cannoli to finish.

Cenzo liked watching her as she filled her plate, and then, better still, while she ate. Josselyn was not missish, or overly delicate. She wasn’t afraid to eat with her fingers, or lick them, or sigh lustily when the flavors overtook her.

He found all of it almost unbearably erotic.

“Why aren’t you eating?” she asked. “I hope you don’t think that will keep me hanging back politely. It’s all too good. Must be the sea air.”

“Must be,” he agreed.

And he would have eaten, but he wasn’t hungry. Or not for the food he had prepared, anyway.

“When is the last time you went on a picnic?” he asked. “It appears to make you giddy.”

Josselyn frowned as if she meant to argue, but then the frown melted into a smile. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been on a picnic. This might actually be my first time.”

“Then you should be celebrated.” Cenzo sat up and pulled out the bottle of wine he had brought, bubbly and sweet, much like she was today.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly,” she began, already frowning.

But she went quiet, her cheeks flushed red, when he handed her a glass.

Cenzo lifted his glass in a toast, and the clink of the glasses together shot through him like yet another echo of the song he surely should have known by now.

But that was one more thing he could not bring himself to care about, not when his signora, his Josselyn, was sitting there before him, her bare legs kicked out in front of her and her shoes tossed off to one side. The breeze played with her hair the way he wanted to, lifting strands here and there and making her beauty seem all the more impossible.

“You will forgive me,” he began, though at that moment he didn’t care if she did. Even if he knew she would object, Cenzo needed to say it. “But you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

She laughed, but her cheeks got brighter. “I am the only woman you’ve ever seen, as far as you know.”

“Not true,” he argued. “There was another woman. At the doctor’s.”

“Fair enough.” Josselyn rolled her eyes. “I will accept that of the two women you remember seeing, you find me more beautiful than the one old enough to be your mother.”

“I dream about you,” he told her, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. And ignoring the tightness in his chest. “Then I wake to you each morning and the waking is better than what I dream at night.”

Josselyn made a soft, sighing sound, and set her glass down on the blanket between them. “You shouldn’t say these things. You can’t mean them. You have no context.”

“You keep telling me what I might feel. What I might know. Sometime in the future, perhaps. But I can tell you what I know now.” Cenzo felt that echo in him again, but it felt like her. As if she was inside of him. “You, Josselyn. Everything in me is filled with you.”

He thought she looked anguished. He watched, everything in him hectic, as she got to her feet. He liked the way she moved even now, lithe and easy. She moved to the rocks at the cliff’s edge and he took a moment to appreciate the picture she made there, her hair blown back, her dress moving over her body, as she stared out into eternity.

Only then did he follow her. He came to stand behind her, close enough that her hair danced over him at last.

“I may not know who I was two months ago, but I know you,” he said, his mouth at her ear. “I know you want me, Josselyn. It is written all over you. Every time you look at me. Every time you smile, or laugh. I don’t need to remember anything when you are before me. I can see all the things I want as if they are emblazoned upon you.”

“Wanting something doesn’t mean you should have it,” she said, though her voice was low. And he could feel the tremors that went through her, one after the next.

“Why shouldn’t you have it?” he demanded. Then his hands were on her, taking her by the shoulders and turning her to face him. There was a kind of misery in her gaze, and he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t bear it. “I do not wish to be cruel, but if this upset is for your husband, you must forget him. What kind of man allows his wife to go off with another man and live like this for a month?”

Josselyn was shaking her head. “Even if I told you everything that I know about you, don’t you see? It would only be a story you were told. It would mean nothing.”

“Let us write our own story,” he said.

And then he could wait no longer.

Cenzo lowered his mouth to hers, and finally—finally—took her lips.

And kissed her as if his life depended on it.

It did, somehow. He was sure of it.

And it was a marvel of sensation. He felt exhilarated. As if he’d come home at last.

Better still, that fire between them ignited.

He thought she might pull away and run from him once more, but instead, she melted against him. And then, when he angled his head so he could taste her deeper, wilder, she surged against him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and threw gas straight into the flames.

Cenzo kissed her again and again, then had the presence of mind to scoop her up into his arms and carry her back over to the blanket. He lay her down in the middle, like she was one more dessert. A sweet banquet for him to enjoy.

He came down with her, every part of his body tight with need and wonder, because she was finally in his arms. Finally.

“I shouldn’t let this happen,” she whispered, though she made no move to get up.

“I want you,” he told her, though it was more than that.

His heart was involved, and every bone in his body, and every last part of him—from his dreams at night to his every waking thought. But he worried that if he called it what it was, she would balk.

“I want you,” he said again, as if it was a vow. “And I cannot imagine there is any knowledge on this earth that could change that.”

Then he set his mouth to hers again before she could argue, kissing her until she was pliant and soft. And for a lifetime or two they were tangled together like that in the open air, as if they were a part of the sea and the sky at last.

And it was true that he couldn’t quite remember other women, but that didn’t mean Cenzo didn’t know precisely what to do. He pressed openmouthed kisses down the length of her neck, so he could set his mouth to that pulse that always betrayed her.

His hands skimmed down the front of her body, finding her curves and then making his way to the hem of that flirty little dress so he could do the whole of it in reverse. But this time with his palm touching her warm flesh and exulting in it.

He found her hip, then her breasts, and he could bear that only for a moment before he pulled back from her, stripping the dress up and over her head and tossing it aside. She wore a lacy little half bra that lifted her breasts to him as if on platters.

This banquet, he could not deny. Cenzo bent his head to taste her, to devour her.

To worship her.

And the first time she shattered, it was like that, her back arched and her nipple in his mouth while he played with the other, using her body like it was an instrument.

His instrument, playing his tune, at last.

Her moans licked all over him, spurring him on. He found the shallow dent of her navel, then moved even farther down to bite gently at one hip and to grip the other, his fingers wrapping around to test her plump behind. He spread her out before him, using his shoulders to keep her legs apart.

And he liked that she wore another little scrap of lace there, just covering her sex.

He followed suit, covering her mound with his open mouth, sucking gently on the lace until her cries changed pitch.

Cenzo stripped the panties off her hips and down her legs, then settled himself back into place. He drew her perfectly formed legs over his shoulders, lifting her up on the shelf of his hands and licking his way into all her soft heat.

She tasted even better than he could have imagined—and he had done little but imagine it this whole month. He found the center of her need and played with it, taking his time to find what made her jolt, what made her cry out. He filed away every buck of her hips, every arch of her back.

He learned her. All of her.

Cenzo brought her to the edge, then receded. Over and over, until she was sobbing out his name, throwing it out into the sky above them, the sea beyond.

And only when her fingers were sunk as deep into his hair as they could get and her hips seemed to rise of their own accord, did he finally take her over.

He held her there, still shattering and shattering around him, until he thought that his own greedy hardness might undo him.

Only then did he sit back, looking down at this bounty before him. She was astonishing. Her taste was in his mouth, tart and sweet, and she sprawled out before him like a dream. He felt her beauty like a physical blow, as if Josselyn was shattering him simply by lying there.

And she was. He could feel it—everything inside of him turned to glass, then cracked into shards—as if he was defenseless.

As if he was hers.

It took him a mere moment to strip off his clothes and then he was coming down to her again, gathering her to him, so that at last they were naked together.

At last.

Cenzo knew that it had only been a month, but it felt to him like a lifetime. And even though he knew she was right, that he couldn’t remember and lacked all context, he still had the bedrock certainty that he would feel the same no matter what he remembered.

Whatever his life might turn out to be, he needed her at its center.

It was nonnegotiable.

And he would prove it to her.

He positioned himself above her. Her eyes, dazed now, found his. His hardness moved through her slick heat, and he felt himself very nearly roar with the gut-punching pleasure of it.

“Cenzo,” she managed to breathe out. “Cenzo, there’s something I must tell you—”

“You can tell me anything you wish, la mia amata,” he told her, his gaze locked to hers. His beloved. “Anything at all.”

Josselyn blew out a breath. Her hands were pressed against his chest, but not, he thought, as if she wished to push him away so much as pull him close.

“I’m a virgin,” she said.

He tried to take that in. He tried to make sense of it. But he couldn’t. It was like a tidal wave, and there was nothing to do but swim.

“I told you, did I not?” Cenzo looked down at her as the wave hit him. Because there was only one truth. Only one conclusion. “You were always meant to be mine.”

She shuddered, but he wasted no further time concerning himself with a foolish husband and a pointless marriage he did not pretend to understand.

Nor did he care. Not when there was this. Her. He worked the hardest part of him into the mouth of her sex until he felt the resistance in all that slippery heat.

Mine, something roared inside him. Always and forever mine.

Then, heeding an instinct he could not have named, Cenzo drove himself inside her.

And as he did, something burst inside him, an interior explosion of light and echo, like an endless cascade.

It went on and on, even as below him, around him, Josselyn shattered anew.

Cenzo was lodged deep inside her. Her heat seemed to scald him as she cried out and the rocks bounced the sound of her pleasure back to him, like a symphony.

And he knew.

He knew.

After far too long stumbling about on the wrong side of that wall, Cenzo Falcone knew exactly who he was.

And what this wife of his had dared to do to him.