AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Amelia scanned his face. ‘I presumed Anton was keeping you busy.’
‘Yes, extolling the virtues of his fiancée, which I’ve heard about a thousand times, mind you.’
‘He’s madly in love.’ Amelia smiled, but there was a strange hollowness in her heart as she spoke those words. Suddenly, not being able to touch him was a form of torture, and yet she’d done this to herself. ‘Benedetto—’
‘Amelia,’ he returned, drawling her name with a hint of mockery.
She toyed with the ring she wore. ‘This is weird.’
‘Being back in Catarno?’
‘Being here with you.’
His eyes flared. ‘You are not with me.’
‘No.’ Her voice was ambivalent.
‘You can’t be,’ he reminded her, or perhaps he was reminding himself too. ‘It’s too complicated.’
Amelia nodded, but frowned. ‘Maybe it doesn’t have to be.’
Benedetto was very still. ‘Go on.’
‘There’s a way to my room through my office. You could come to me tonight.’
His nostrils flared. ‘Sneak around behind your family’s back?’
Heat flushed her cheeks. ‘I know it’s not ideal...’
‘I’m not a teenager, Amelia, and neither are you.’
‘My personal life is no one’s business,’ she said, tightly, but she was hurt, because he’d rejected her.
‘You were the one who said your life here is an open book,’ he pointed out.
‘I know. It is. But—’
‘There is no but,’ he said, with a single shake of his head. ‘We can’t do this.’
‘Damn it.’ She stomped her foot, but at that moment a team of servants burst through the doors, intent on clearing the table. Amelia’s eyes met Benedetto’s, held them, her lips parted but what more could she say?
‘Goodnight, Your Highness,’ he said, with a dip of his head.
Amelia’s heart turned cold. ‘Goodnight,’ she whispered, but Benedetto had already left.
If she hadn’t told him about the discreet access to her room, he wouldn’t have been lying in bed for hours, hard as a rock, staring at the ceiling, thinking of Amelia, craving her, wanting, wishing, needing.
But she had, and he was, and at some point in the small hours of the morning, tired of wanting and not having, he gave up on being noble and right, and decided to give into temptation. One more time. It still didn’t mean anything. It was just sex. Like on the boat, but here. What did geography matter? So long as they both understood the temporary nature of this, what was the harm?
Benedetto dressed in a pair of trousers and a shirt, slipped his feet into shoes and strode from his room, down the corridor, towards the suite of rooms he knew, from previous visits, belonged to Amelia.
He concealed a bitter smirk as he approached her doors. One wrong turn and he might very well end up in Anton’s rooms instead. How to explain that? he thought. But his memory was accurate. Silently, he pushed the heavy oak door inwards, taking in the details of Amelia’s study as he went—the floral paintings, the pretty furniture, the large windows. He closed the door then looked around, for another way into and out of the room. At first, he missed it. This doorway was only three-quarter height, a relic from a different century, when people were smaller.
He moved to it, hand on the doorknob, as he contemplated turning back.
There were a thousand reasons to resist Amelia, namely, because he wanted to be able to look back and know that he’d acted honourably towards her. That he’d never done anything to risk her heart.
Which brought him back to the necessity of being honest with her before this happened.
