Page 28 of The Music of Love

“Did I hurt you?” His throat was so tight it was a chore to force the words out.

“No. No, I’m not hurt.”

Stacy turned away as memories of the last few moments flickered through his brain with shocking clarity. He’d treated her like a whore—worse. He couldn’t recall ever using a woman so hard. Of course never in all his years had a woman used the word fuck in his presence—not that the curse excused his brutality. He swallowed hard, his cock twinging at the memory of her vulgar command.

The next few moments were every bit as excruciating as one would expect after one had intimate relations with a virtual stranger in a horse barn. They busied themselves tucking and straightening. Once he’d reassembled his clothing as best he could, he put on his glasses and turned to her.

She was waiting for him.

“Signora—”

She held up a hand, her eyes no longer hot, but severe. “Please, don’t apologize. There were two of us, and I’m no blushing maiden.” Yet she blushed all the same. “This was a mistake.” Her mouth twisted miserably as her eyes swept the room, landing everywhere except his face. “Just because I’m a woman does not mean I’m not equally responsible.” She gave a small, bitter laugh. “You didn’t, after all, despoil an innocent virgin.” She bit her lower lip and met his eyes. “What I wish to know is whether it will be possible for me to continue working here after . . . this.”

Any remaining warmth that had lingered inside him fled at her words. He’d violated a woman in his employ—a person whose very livelihood depended on him—the very thing he’d sworn not to do, and now she feared for her position and future.

“This will change nothing between us, Signora Stefani.” He spoke the foolish words with a cool assurance he was far from feeling. How could things not change? He’d been inside her, for God’s sake, and he bloody well wanted to be there again, right now, in fact.

Everything had changed.

Everything.

He realized she was still looking up at him, as if waiting for something more—but what?

Reassure her, you dolt.

“I’m certain we can continue to work with each other, ma’am.”

Her eyes were veiled, but she nodded, as if his cold, stilted words were satisfactory.

He held out his arm. “Come, I’ll take you back to the house.” She laid her fingers lightly on his sleeve but did not say a word.

What had he done?

What had she done?

Portia ran up the steps after her employer left her in the entry hall. When she reached her room she threw herself onto her bed and took her head in both hands, tugging on it as though she could yank it off and exchange it for another—one that was not so horribly bent on destroying her. She’d all but crawled into the poor man’s breeches—after tearing them off his body.

Ivo had been correct; she was no better than a rutting bitch.

Fuck me, Stacy.

Portia groaned at the horrid memory and wished she could hide in a crack in the earth and never come out again. How could she? Had she forgotten so quickly how her vulgar language and behavior had horrified and disgusted the last man she’d bedded? Would she never learn?

She’d been a naïve and foolish girl of seventeen the first time she’d used such language with Ivo. It had been her wedding night and Portia had not gone to his bed a virgin. If that hadn’t been bad enough, she’d used the words her first lover had taught her; doing and saying things no virtuous Catholic girl should have known. Things Benedict had taught her.

Portia fell in love with Benedict Carruthers, one of her father’s students, when she was fifteen. He’d been only three years older than Portia but decades older in sin. The youngest son of an English earl, he’d bedded his first woman at thirteen. Blond, blue eyed, and smooth-cheeked, Benedict had looked like an angel but he’d been the devil himself, especially in bed.

It had been Benedict who’d taught Portia dirty English words and then encouraged her to use them liberally when they made love—a habit that was obviously impossible to break. Benedict had been demanding and wicked, but also generous and kind in his own way.

“Never hide your sensual nature,” he’d told her not long before he was killed. “Passion is something to be proud of, even though men try to shame women for taking pleasure from their bodies.”

Benedict had been English, but he’d had a temper to match any Italian man. His temper had ultimately been his undoing and he’d died in a knife fight a week before Portia’s sixteenth birthday: stabbed through the heart with a stiletto and left to bleed to death in an alley.

Portia had been devastated, convinced she would never love again. But then Ivo—a handsome, gifted genius—came to study under her father several months later. Now that she was older Portia knew what she’d felt for Ivo had been hero worship; his talent had blinded her. And then her father had died of a heart attack and she’d been terrified of what the future held. Ivo had been her salvation. Or so she’d believed.

Their marriage was a disaster from the very first night. He never forgave her for not being a virgin and he deplored her sensual nature.

The most recent example of her deplorable sensual nature echoed in her head: Fuck me, Stacy.