Page 25 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)

Chapter Thirteen

Rico sauntered out of the bathroom with a towel slung around his waist. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so damned good, so damned alive .

First thing Monday, he would travel to Valenza and search for the perfect engagement ring.

It was incredible to believe he’d spent his whole life grateful he could avoid marriage until his older brothers had taken the plunge.

It had never occurred to him that he’d fall in love and want to marry, and he couldn’t wait to see his brothers’ faces when they realised the pressure would be turned up to maximum on them both.

Their mother, already itching for a grandchild, would be like a dog with the bit between its teeth.

She would be insufferable. It would be brilliant!

When he crossed the threshold, Marisa was sitting on the bed, her feet on the floor.

As he was already running late, he should be thankful she’d put some clothes on and so removed the temptation of her gorgeous naked body, but seeing as he wanted to screw her whatever she was or wasn’t wearing, that was moot.

“When do you have to go back to work?” he asked.

If it were Monday, he’d have to rethink going to Valenza then.

He wanted her to come with him, and she was far too conscientious not to return to work when she said she would.

She’d see it as letting her boss and colleagues down.

Rico had not been the slightest bit surprised when she’d told him she’d never taken a day off sick. Not ever.

Instead of answering, she lifted her face.

Straightaway, he could see something was wrong. Where his father’s colour earlier had been ashen, Marisa had no colour at all. It was like looking at the face of someone who’d had all the blood drained from them.

He sank to his knees before her and took her hands in his. They were as lifeless as her colouring. He gazed into her deadened eyes. “What’s wrong, my angel?”

If her eyes hadn’t locked onto his, he could have easily believed she’d fallen into some kind of trance. She held the lock without any form of expression and for such a long time that fear began to grip like a vice in his chest. “Marisa?”

She blinked. It was such a deliberate blink that he wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d heard her lids click together. “Rico…” Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Why does your brother call me The Unicorn?”

It was the pulse of shock in Rico’s eyes that plunged the heart-tipped knife in one sharp, agonising push.

Marisa had never seen him lost for words before. Never seen him anything but fully self-possessed.

The knife twisted.

“One of them…” It was hard to speak. “Tommaso, I think, sent you messages.” Remembering the mocking look she’d seen in Tommaso’s eyes, she slipped her hands from Rico’s hold. His phone was by her side. She handed it to him.

His jaw was tight as he took it from her, his stare flicking from the phone to her as he unlocked it and read the messages. He closed his eyes.

“Am I…” She had to swallow to continue. “Is this… You and me… Is it all some kind of joke?”

He rubbed his hand over his mouth and leaned his head back to breathe deeply. When he finally looked at her, the piercing blue eyes were swimming in anguish. “I’m so sorry.”

The twisting knife withdrew and thrust back deeper, so deep a whimper of pain stuck in her throat.

His face contorted, and in an instant her face was in his hands. “No, Marisa, please, don’t cry. However this started, I love you, okay? I love you.”

“Tell me,” she choked out, barely able to see, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Tell me everything. Was any of it real?”

“My feelings for you are real, that’s the important thing. Hold onto that, angel. I love you.”

“ Tell me,” she wailed. “Start with why he calls me The Unicorn. What does that even mean?”

He pressed his forehead to hers and tightened his grip on her face. “May God forgive me, it’s because your virginity makes you rarer than a unicorn.”

Now she could hardly breathe, never mind speak. “You told him?”

“He already knew. So did Mattia.” He kissed her forehead and released her face to wrap his arms around her and hold her to him.

Perversely, the solid warmth of his skin and the Rico scent of warm oranges acted as a comfort, and when he moved onto the bed to sit beside her, she let him manipulate her pain-riddled body so she was cradled on his lap, her face buried in his neck.

“Between us, we knew everything about every guest at my sister’s engagement party,” Rico explained quietly.

“I wanted you the moment I saw you…” He sucked in a breath then pr essed his mouth tightly into the top of her head.

He was teetering on the edge of an abyss.

Marisa needed the truth. Deserved the truth.

But it was a truth that was going to hurt her so badly he could already feel the pain he was about to inflict on her.

“I was going to tell you everything once we were married.” He threaded his fingers through her hair and prayed with every fibre of his being that it wouldn’t be for the last time.

“When I started on this with you, I didn’t know – couldn’t know – that I’d fall in love with you for real.

” He sucked in another long breath and then Rico made his confession.

He left nothing out. Didn’t try to spin any of it in a positive light.

His confession was true and unvarnished, and with every word he spoke, he could feel the essence of Marisa leave her body until it felt like he was holding a ragdoll in his arms.

“Please,” he whispered once the silence that followed his confession became more than he could bear. “Say something.”

But the sound she made wasn’t words. It was a sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life; a muffled howl that rose from her soul, and then she was crying, sobbing so hard tremors strong enough for him to feel them in the blackness of his soul wracked her slender frame.

She clung to him, her tears drenching his neck and rolling onto his chest, and all he could do was hold her tightly and whisper over and over that he was sorry and that he loved her, and pray for her to believe him and forgive him.

Time slipped away as they clung together. Rico had a distant awareness of his phone buzzing and ringing multiple times, but it was background noise. All he could see, feel and hear with any clarity was Marisa and the desperate misery he’d inflicted on her.

After forever had passed, her sobs lessened into nothing, and she slowly disentangled herself from his arms and staggered off him with a mumbled, “I need to use the bathroom.”

She locked the door behind her.

Ignoring another ringing of his phone, Rico held his head in his hands and prayed harder than he’d ever prayed before for her forgiveness.

The bathroom door opened. She stepped out of it, holding herself tightly. Her face was blotchy, her eyes red and puffy. It was a sight that destroyed him.

He’d done this to her. He’d taken the heavenliest creature to walk this earth and broken her. “I’m –”

She held out a hand and gave a short shake of her head to stop him speaking. “I’ve heard enough,” she whispered before unsteadily crouching down to lift her beach bag onto her shoulder.

“Don’t go,” he begged.

She shook her head and sniffed, biting her bottom lip before looking back at him. “I never want to see you again.”

“Marisa…”

“ No .” She didn’t raise her voice, but her sharpness was deafening. She took a long breath. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to me?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “And I would do anything to –”

“ No .” Somehow, this was even sharper. She stood taller.

“I don’t want to hear another word from your lying mouth.

I thought God sent you to me, but my sister was right.

The world was right. You’re beyond redemption.

You said my virginity makes me rarer than a unicorn, but that was the wrong tense – it made me rarer than a unicorn.

I believed in you and I trusted you with my heart, my body and my soul, and it was all a lie.

You wilfully took my virginity so you could win your brother’s Swiss chalet.

You and your brothers treated me like a piece of meat…

no, a toy. I was just a toy to you, with less value than the chips used to gamble with in your casinos. ”

“No!” He couldn’t let her believe that. “It might have started like that, but when I came to your room that night, I was already in love with you and knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

He’d never seen such coldness in her stare before.

Never known she was capable of it. “If you’d ever loved me, you would have told me the truth before taking the one thing you knew I was saving for the man I was going to marry, and when you said you were going to tell me the truth after we married…

” She shook her head in disgust. “How dare you? Even if I believed that, how dare you connive to trap me in a marriage based on a lie, knowing I would never divorce you? When I think of everything you’ve done and all your lies, that one cuts the most. You were planning to steal my future.

I might even have your child growing in me.

You’re despicable, and I hope God does forgive you for what you’ve done, because I never will.

Stay away from me, Rico – I never want to see you again. ”

He was on his feet to block her exit before his brain had even engaged. “I am begging you, don’t leave like this. Don’t leave me, Marisa, please, I am begging you, don’t go. I will do anything to make things right. Anything. Anything .”

She tried to move around him. “Let me go.”

He stepped back, now blocking the door, panic scratching at him like he had a thousand rodents burrowed in him. “Please, Marisa. I know I’ve fucked up, and I know I’m an unconscionable bastard, I’m everything you say and think I am, but my love for you is the only –”