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

CHAPTER TEN

ITFELTASgood as it hurt.

That was Josselyn’s last and only thought before the power of it swept through her, leaving her shaking, gasping, and little more than a mess of too much sensation and need.

She had thought him big and strong as he’d stood beside her on the altar. But his strength seemed new to her now, braced above her on a soft blanket with a curtain of bougainvillea behind them and the Sicilian blue all around.

New, too, because he was in her.

He was inside her, and the thought made her clench down on that rampantly male part of him so deep within her own body. Josselyn shuddered, and she was pleased when she heard him hiss as if he felt that same rush of pain melting into pleasure.

When she found his gaze again, he looked...different.

His predator’s eyes were focused on her, intent in a different way.

A familiar way—

But then, before she could work out what that might mean, Cenzo began to move.

And all the things that had come before, each new sensation that had wrecked her and remade her, was like nothing compared to this.

The heat of him. That thick, impossible steel. The way he moved, each deep, drugging stroke teaching her that she knew nothing at all about her body, about the things she could feel, about what she’d been put on this earth to do.

For surely it was this. Two bodies become one, and in the becoming, this bliss. This joy, hot like fire and so sweet that it, too, hurt.

Josselyn wanted to hurt like this forever.

She wanted to keep her eyes on his, searching for something she couldn’t have named if her life had depended on it. But instead, it was as if her eyelids were too heavy. They drifted shut, leaving her simply lost in the glory of this.

The rhythm of it. The advance and retreat.

As if they were no more and no less than the waves, the tide, the sea itself.

The sensation inside her sharpened, the glory of it expanded, and then everything broke apart—

And this time, as Josselyn spun out into nothing, she heard Cenzo let out a roaring sound, then fly away with her.

She had no idea how long it was they lay like that, his face buried in the crook of her neck, his weight too heavy and yet perfect. It was exactly what she most needed, just then. To be held and contained when she thought bits and pieces of her must have scattered from one end of the Mediterranean to the other.

And she felt as if she might cry when he finally stirred, pulling out of her body and shifting to one side. Though he pulled her with him, rolling her so she was braced there on his chest, and that was new. Different.

It was all so new and different, Josselyn could hardly make sense of it.

Her breasts felt huge and oversensitive and every time she breathed, they seemed to drag against his wonder of a chest to send new heat spiraling through her. His legs were strong and hair-roughened and the slide of her soft skin against them made her...quiver.

Josselyn suspected she was a mess, yet she couldn’t seem to make herself care the way she usually would. Because she knew she shouldn’t have let this happen, but she had to fight with herself to remember why. All she wanted was to do it again.

And again.

She wanted to go back in time and spend their whole month like this. Why had she spent these days playing such stupid games when she could have been learning all these mysteries that started and ended where his body and hers came together?

Cenzo smoothed her hair back. It took her a moment to really focus on him, this gorgeous man who knew her now as no other ever had. Or ever would, something in her whispered.

His gaze moved over her face and she could feel it like another touch. Her beauty mark, her lips. Each cheek, as if he was committing her to memory.

When she had long since done the same with him and those aquiline features, brutal and beautiful, that could have been stamped in steel, bronze or gold.

When his gaze met hers again, it seemed to punch through her, stealing her breath.

He lifted his head, and kissed her gently, sweetly, on her mouth.

Then regarded her steadily, that mouth of his unsmiling while his mythic eyes blazed.

“Cenzo?” she asked, something cold spinning inside her.

“Little wife,” he replied, an edge to his voice she hadn’t heard before. Not in a month, she corrected herself. And her face must have changed as the import of his words finally hit her—as that not quite endearment slapped at her—because he smiled. “Your tragedy, Josselyn, is that I remember everything.”

Her heart stopped. Or maybe she only wished it did, because when it kicked into gear again, it made her whole body shudder.

She tried to push away from him, but for a long moment he held her fast—a quiet, unnecessary display of his superior strength.

Then he finally let her go, but the message was clear.

Josselyn hardly knew what to do with herself. She expected him to rage at her. Something dizzy inside her wheeled around and around and she wondered if he might simply toss her off the cliff, here where she doubted very much she would live through it the way he’d claimed she would before.

You coward, a voice inside her chimed in then, harshly. It would be remarkably convenient if he did such a thing, wouldn’t it? Then you would never need to face what you’ve done.

Her hands were shaking as she struggled to pull her panties back on, then somehow fasten her bra with fingers like ice. She felt sheer relief when she finally pulled her dress back into place, and then stood, keeping her eyes on Cenzo.

Waiting for what must surely come next.

As she had always known it would, sooner or later.

He was standing now, dressing far more slowly than she had. Lazily, even. Josselyn wished that she could read his mind. That he would share his thoughts as he had this last month, but instead he only looked at the remains of their picnic there on the blanket.

“A servant,” he said in wonderment, though there was that sharp, dark edge beneath it. “You made me a servant.”

All of her justifications and rationalizations tasted like ash on her tongue, but she was a different woman now than the one who had married him, so filled with foolish hope. For one thing, she was no longer quite so naive. She had seen what she was capable of, how petty she could be, and there was no unknowing that.

But she was also terribly afraid that she had fallen in love with a man who did not exist.

A man she was married to, for good or ill.

“It is what you wanted to do to me,” she reminded him, fighting to keep her voice level, and not quite succeeding. “Why is it so different?”

“My ancestors built this castle,” he said, still in that same tone. “And you had me sleep on the stones they lay with their own bare hands. For a month.”

“Wasn’t that what was on offer to me?” Josselyn countered. “Either in a bed with you, the man who announced he wished to ruin me, or wherever I was most uncomfortable—isn’t that what you said?”

He stared at her for a long moment, and it was as if she could see two men before her, one superimposed over the other. The ruthless man she had married, cruel and unconcerned with her feelings. And then the Cenzo who had lived with her here this past month, who had cared for her, worried over her, and made love to her.

One had made her a wife. The other had made her a woman.

And her heart felt firmly broken between the two.

He did not say another word, and that felt like a deeper indictment. Instead, he turned on his heel and started back up those stairs that had led them here.

Josselyn stayed behind, letting the adrenaline and all that leftover sensation wash through her, not surprised when she felt faintly sick. Rather than give into it, she busied herself with packing away their picnic and folding up the blanket. She did not look at the edge of the cliff again, for fear that strange near-joy that she’d felt at the rail far above one night would take her over again.

Because if it did she would never know if she wished to fly—or if she was taking the most expedient exit route away from this shamble of a marriage. And her own shameful part in it.

Cenzo had only threatened her, after all. She was the one who had actually gone through with it.

Eventually she started back up the stairs herself, one hand on the wall beside her. She concentrated only on the steps themselves, not the steep drop-off to one side, because looking at the water far below made her feel dizzy.

She made it back up to the gate, if slowly, and when she pushed her way through it, she braced herself for Cenzo. Would he be waiting? Would he be even more furious? Was it anxiety that charged through her...or anticipation?

But he wasn’t there. She heard only her own footsteps echoing as she walked across the courtyard to let herself in the wooden door of this place she had been tempted to consider a kind of home of late. More fool her. It had only ever been a home of lies.

Inside, Josselyn walked carefully through the pretty rooms that flowed in and out of each other on the first level, her eyes moving this way and that to see if she could find him. For she had no doubt that she had not heard the last on the subject of her treachery.

But the more she thought about it, the more her own temper seemed to wake up inside her, blowing away the shame that had bloomed first.

Because he had planned to do these things to her. He’d been only too delighted to tell her all about it. She needed to remember that.

Not that two wrongs made a right, but it was important to remember that there were two wrongs. Not one. Not only hers.

She slid the picnic hamper onto the island in the kitchen, the blanket folded on top, and acknowledged that she’d expected to find him here. But the kitchen was ominously empty. Josselyn thought a moment, then set out to look for him. But it wasn’t until she took the stairs down to an odd little gallery that ran along the side of the castle that she finally found him.

A place she had only ever visited once before, back when she’d arrived here.

Cenzo was standing, arms crossed and an unreadable expression on his beautiful face as he stared at a series of paintings on one wall. Across from him were three stained-glass windows, all sending a mad, giddy light dancing over him, tempting her to imagine that he was something other than dangerous.

When she knew better.

“Cenzo,” she began.

But his hand moved, slashing through the air in a universal demand for silence, and the peremptory gesture made her jump slightly. And had its intended effect, because whatever words she thought she might say, they disappeared into the sudden constriction in her throat.

He did not look at her, keeping his gaze on the painting in front of him.

“Falcones do not divorce,” he told her, his voice dark and low. “And that should not bring you comfort, little wife. It should terrify you unto your very bones. Because that means that I will never release you. I will never set you free. I will spend the rest of our lives making certain you understand exactly what it is that you did to me here. And paying for it. Again and again and again.”

Her pulse picked up, but her temper came with it. “It’s threats like those that lead a newly wedded wife to tell her husband, stricken though he is with sudden amnesia, that he’s a servant. And threats like those that make it difficult to feel as badly about that as I should.”

He turned to face her, his gaze a terrible fire. “Do not worry, Josselyn. I will make certain you feel as bad as you should. I will dedicate myself to the task.”

She believed him. And she could see their life together, rolling out before her, dire and upsetting forever. It made her stomach knot.

“If I had it to do over again,” she said, because it was true and she thought she owed him the truth, if nothing else, “I wouldn’t tell you that you were my servant. Though I do not think it has done you any particular harm to spend a month imagining that, for once, you were something less than the center of the universe.”

“I will thank you not to imagine you can decide whether or not I have been harmed.”

“Cleaning a toilet does not actually harm a person, you know,” she shot back at him. “Any suggestion it does is, at best, melodramatic.”

He only lifted a cruel brow, and she missed the other version of him so much it stole her breath.

“Is that so, cara? Because you have spent so much time in your pampered life scrubbing toilet bowls?”

And she could see it then, the true force of his temper. She could see the blaze in his eyes easily enough. But more than that, she could see the way he held himself so still, so carefully, as if the slightest thread that held him together might snap at any moment—and he might, too.

Josselyn should have been terrified by that, but what she felt instead was something closer to exhilaration.

It didn’t make sense. Then again, none of this made sense. She had been raised to be meek. To obey her father, because they both knew that no matter her feelings on the subject, he truly did have her best interests at heart. She’d gone along with this marriage because she’d trusted her father—and, she could admit now, because Cenzo was more work of art than man and she’d had foolish, girlish hopes.

But this past month had taught her that when push came to shove, she was not meek at all.

And maybe, in another scenario, that might have made her a monster.

Yet she rather thought that here, on this remote island where Cenzo had intended to enslave her with sex and isolation, it made her a contender.

At the very least it made her his equal.

“You can be as angry as you like,” she told him, lifting her chin as if that could take the brunt of his glare. “But I think we both know that given the opportunity, you would have happily done the same.”

His jaw was so tight that she could see a muscle flexing there. And his eyes were little more than a blaze.

“This is a portrait of my father,” he told her, indicating the portrait beside him. “I looked at this portrait every day for a month and had no idea who I was looking at. I cannot forgive it.”

“I understand.” She meant to bite her tongue, but it was as if it had a mind of its own. “But I feel I should point out that you couldn’t remember anything. You wouldn’t have recognized him no matter what I told you.”

Cenzo’s gaze blazed hotter, and surely it should have scalded her. “He is the one who renovated this castle. Before his time, there was nothing to do here but camp out in ruins, think about our ancestors, and pray for deliverance. But he made it a home. He used to come here every summer and spend at least four weeks alone. He said he liked the conversation between himself, the sea, and the sky.” He dragged in a breath. “One year he came back from his retreat, got into the car that waited for him, and instead of driving back to the Falcone villa Taormina, he drove himself halfway up Mount Etna. Then over the side of a cliff.”

“I read about his accident,” Josselyn said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

And it was as if he erupted, though he still stood still.

She hardly knew how she remained standing.

“Don’t you dare apologize to me,” he growled at her. “Don’t you dare, not with your wicked father’s blood in your veins. Making you a monster like him.”

That was a little too close to what she’d been thinking herself—and harder to dismiss when he said it. She focused on the part that wasn’t her.

“Maybe now you can tell me what it is you think my father did to yours,” Josselyn managed to get out. “When I can tell you that to his mind, your father was a friend. His best friend, who he misses to this day.”

Cenzo looked as if he might explode, but he didn’t. He took a moment to breathe instead, while every hair on the back of her neck stood up.

“My father made one phone call when he came back from the island that night,” Cenzo said after a few moments had passed. “He called Archibald Christie, his old roommate and supposed friend. They spoke for ten minutes and then he drove off to kill himself. Your father has never divulged the content of that call, but my mother has a theory. She maintains that the phone call was the last step in a campaign of envy your father had been waging against mine for decades. And that night, he won.”

“My father never envied yours,” Josselyn said, her voice shaking from all the emotions she dared not show. Not here. “He considered him a brother.”

“My mother tells a different tale,” Cenzo shot back. “Of how your father always wanted her, and how he could not handle the fact that she did not want him in return. How he worked subtly to undermine his supposed best friend, always pretending he might support him and then instead disappearing. Sometimes for years and years. What kind of friend is that?”

“Which years?” Josselyn demanded. “Was it when my mother died? Along with my brother? My father became a widower as well as a single father overnight. What kind of friend was your father not to understand this?”

“He had a darkness in him,” Cenzo told her, as if the words hurt him. As if he would have given anything not to say them. “It grew worse the older he got and your father preyed upon it. Instead of soothing my father’s fears, he inflamed them. He pushed him, because he bitterly resented that the man you think he considered a brother had not suffered as he had. He made sure that he did.”

“That’s crazy,” Josselyn breathed. “And entirely false. If I were you, I would ask yourself why your mother would tell you such a story.”

“Because it is true,” Cenzo thundered at her, the stained-glass bathing him in color. “Your father was a poison to mine and he knew it. He took pleasure in it. I know he convinced you that his only aim in arranging a marriage between you and me was your safety, but that is not so. He wanted to make sure that he still had access to my mother and that he could still work his poison—this time, on me.”

She wanted to laugh, but nothing was funny. And worse, she could see that Cenzo believed every word he said.

“Where is he, then?” Josselyn asked, her voice soft, but shaking. “I spoke to him when I last took the boat out. He did not demand to know where we were, so that he could race to my side and attempt to influence you. Nor did he attempt anything like that in the past two years—I know because I made his travel arrangements. He must be a terribly ineffectual villain.”

“He plays a long game,” Cenzo growled. “He is so good at it that you don’t even know he’s doing it.”

“Cenzo, this is madness.”

Josselyn tried to find even a hint of the man she knew in his stark features, but there was no hint of him. She had fallen in love with a man who didn’t exist. When she’d known better. But she couldn’t help wanting to somehow reach this version of Cenzo, too.

She tried again. “Whatever you may think of my father, however manipulative you might think he is, he loves his daughter. I am his only remaining child. If you believe nothing else about him, believe that.”

“Yes, such love,” Cenzo threw back at her. He prowled toward her, but she didn’t back down. She didn’t cringe away from him, or so much as step back an inch. Instead, she glared as if he didn’t make her shake. Even when he wrapped his hands around her shoulders not hard, but with enough intention to make her quiver, down deep inside. “Such love indeed, that he would sell you to the highest bidder.”

“It was an auction of one, as you are well aware.”

“Such love, if you are to be believed, that he would deliver you to a man you hardly knew and wash his hands of you, that easily.”

“I have already told you that his own arranged marriage turned into something beautiful. He thought he picked the best candidate for what he assumed would be a repeat.”

He shook his head, his old coin gaze glittering. “You are delusional.”

And she thought he meant that, too.

Josselyn didn’t bother to argue the point. She doubted he would hear her. Instead, she held his gaze—and did not back down. “You are well and truly poisoned, Cenzo, but not by my father. He was happy enough to look you in the eye and shake your hand on the day he delivered his only daughter into your tender care. Yet your mother chose to hide. Why is that? If she is so certain that my father is the villain, why wouldn’t she use the opportunity of her son’s wedding to her enemy’s daughter to set the record straight?”

“Because your family has done enough, damn you,” Cenzo threw at her.

And then he was kissing her as if his life depended on it.

So she kissed him back in the same way, because she knew hers might. That was how wildly her heart thundered within her.

He swept her into his arms and carried her through the castle, up those winding stairs toward the top of the tower, and he did not spare so much as a glance for the landing where he had fallen a month ago.

Once in the sprawling master bedroom he threw her into the center of that wide bed where she had slept so many nights by herself, then followed her down.

This time they tore each other’s clothes off. This time it was less a beautiful dance and more a different kind of combat. Wild and slick.

Hot and edgy.

“Do you think this will solve anything?” she demanded as he thrust inside her.

“It will solve one thing,” he growled at her ear, as if his words were torn from him. “It will make this need less sharp.”

But to Josselyn, every touch was sharper than knives.

And her curse was that she loved every cut.

Even if, when she woke the next morning, she was alone.

For a moment she was confused, especially because she could hear a sound she hadn’t heard in some time—the motor of the large fishing boat that had brought her here.

She leaped from the bed and grabbed her wrapper as she ran, throwing it around her and somehow managing not to trip and kill herself on the stone stairs.

Josselyn raced down to the kitchen, where she had found Cenzo every morning since she’d come here, but it was empty again.

Save the note in bold, slashing handwriting on the island where her coffee and breakfast usually waited.

Find your own way home, little wife.And take heed—I will come for you when it’s time.

She crumpled it in her hand, a terrible sob building inside her as she ran through the castle and out through the great wooden door. Then across the courtyard to the old gate.

When she pushed her way through and stood out on the wide steps, she could see the boat pulling away.

And the single, solitary figure standing out on the deck at the stern, his face tilted up toward the castle’s heights as if he’d summoned her deliberately.

Just for the pleasure of leaving her behind.