Emmeline waved a hand in the air dismissively. ‘I can manage.’
‘Fine.’ A curt nod. ‘My room is down at the other end of the hallway. Last door on the right-hand side. If you need me.’
As in, Don’t bother me unless you’re on fire, your room is falling away from the building, and there is no one else you can think of to call.
‘Okay.’ She smiled—out of habit rather than happiness.
He paused on the threshold for a moment, his eyes glittering like onyx in his handsome face. ‘Buonanotte, cara.’
‘Goodnight.’ The word came out as a husky farewell. She cleared her throat but he was gone.
Emmeline stretched her arms over her head and then moved towards the door to her room, pushing it shut all the way until it clicked in place.
This was her home now.
She shouldn’t think of herself as a guest, nor of this arrangement as temporary. She’d married him—for better or for worse—and, while she wasn’t stupid enough to imagine they’d stay married forever, this was certainly her place in life for the next little while.
The doors did open on to a wardrobe, as she’d suspected, and her two suitcases sat in the centre. She’d unpack in the morning, she thought, when she had more energy. She pushed one open and pulled out a pair of cotton pyjamas and the prospectus for her university course, putting them on the foot of the bed.
Her feet were aching, her body was weary, her mind was numb. What she needed was a hot shower and the pleasant oblivion of sleep.
She reached around to the back of her dress and groaned out loud. The buttons. The damned buttons.
The mirrors in the wardrobe showed exactly what her predicament was. There were what seemed like hundreds of the things; they’d taken Sophie an age to do up, and without help Emmeline would never get out of her dress.
Obviously she could sleep in it. Sure, it was heavy and fitted, and she wouldn’t exactly be comfortable, but it would save her any embarrassment and she could simply ask one of the staff to help her the following morning.
Or... a little voice in the back of her mind prompted.
She grimaced. Yes, yes. Or...
She pulled the door inwards and peered down the corridor. It was longer than she’d appreciated at first, and somewhere at the end of it was the man she’d married.
Refusing to admit to herself that she was actually a little bit scared, she stepped into the hallway and walked down it, paying scant attention to the artwork that marked the walls at regular intervals. At the end of the corridor she waited outside the last door on the right, taking a moment to ball her courage together.
She lifted her hand and knocked—so timidly that she knew there was no way he would have heard the sound.
Shaking herself, she knocked harder:
Once.
Twice.
Her hand was poised to knock a third time, and then the door seemed to be sucked inwards. Pietro stood on the other side, his face unforgiving of the interruption.
‘Yes?’ It was short. Frustrated.
‘I...’ Emmeline swallowed. ‘Am I interrupting?’
‘Do you need something?’
Her eyes clashed with his—angry gold against unreadable black.
‘This is in no way an invitation...’
His lips flickered for the briefest second into a genuine smile. It was so fast she thought she might have imagined it.
‘Fine. What is it?’
She spun around, facing the wall of the corridor directly opposite. ‘There’s a billion buttons and I can’t undo them. I guess wedding dresses are designed with the fact in mind that a bride won’t be undressing alone...’
‘Apparently,’ he murmured, moving closer.
She knew that because she could feel him, even though he didn’t touch her. His warmth seemed to be wrapping around her like an opportunistic vine up an abandoned wall.
‘Would you mind?’ she asked quietly, keeping her attention focussed on the bland whiteness of the hallway wall.
‘And if I did?’
‘I suppose I could find some scissors somewhere...’ she pondered.
‘No need.’
And then, even though she’d come to his room for this express purpose, the sensation of his fingertips brushing against her back made her shiver. Her nipples strained against the fabric of her gown in a new and unexpected sensation.
‘Are you cold?’
The question caught her off-guard. She bit down on her lip, willing her body to behave, her pulse to quiet, her heart to settle. But her body had its own ideas, and it continued to squirm, delighting in his closeness and his touch.
‘I’m fine.’
His laugh was soft, his breath warm. It ran across her back like a wildfire she should have paid better attention to.
He pushed at the first button, flicking it open expertly. One down, nine hundred thousand to go, she thought bleakly. He dragged his fingers down to the next button and her stomach rolled with awareness.
Emmeline sucked in a deep breath.
He wasn’t trying to turn her on; this was just how he was. The man oozed sensuality from every pore of his gorgeous, perfectly tempting body.
Still, as he undid the second button and moved on to the third the dress parted an inch at the top, and she was sure it wasn’t an accident that his fingertips moved across her skin as he lowered them to button number four.
He worked slowly, and for every second she stood in front of him she felt as if her nerves were being pulled tight, stretched and tormented. At button number twenty he wasn’t even halfway down her back, and a fever-pitch of heat was slamming through her.
Had he undone enough for her to take the dress off? She wasn’t sure, at this stage, that she much cared if the dress got torn, so long as she could get it off without subjecting herself to another moment of...this.
Oh, maybe one more moment, she conceded weakly, sucking in a deep breath as his fingers grazed the flesh near where her bra should be. She hadn’t needed one in the dress; its boning was sufficient.
Lower still, and the next two buttons came apart slowly. His fingers were achingly close to her lower back, to the inches of flesh that dipped towards her rear.
No man had ever seen her there, let alone touched her. His fingers lingered on her flesh, not moving downwards, just stroking her skin. Her pulse hammered and her eyes drifted shut on a tidal wave of imagining and longing, on hormonal needs that had long ago been relegated to the back of her mind.
‘I... I...’ The word stammered out as a dubious whisper. ‘I can cope from here,’ she said quietly, even though her body screamed in silent rejection of her comment.
He ignored her. His hands moved lower, to the next button, pushing it through its beaded loop, separating the fabric, and then his fingers were back, lingering on the flesh exposed by the undone dress.
‘That’s enough,’ she said again, with more strength to her words, and she backed them up by moving a step forward, away from him, and slowly turning around.
His eyes almost electrified her. They were full of something—some strange emotion