Page 13 of Second Chance Christmas

“Ecstatic.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t really suit you. You’re too sweet for it.”

“I didn’t come here for this.”

His brows drew together. “You just want to screw and then run away again?”

“Yeah, actually.” She took another gulp of champagne then placed it down on the bedside table before stalking towards the light switch and flicking it off. “That’s what I came here for. Let’s get one thing straight. I already know you. We spent years getting to know each other, being together, but it was forever ago.”

“Not that long,” he murmured into the darkness. She heard the clinking of his glass, as he replaced it on the table.

“I don’t have any interest in knowing you now. You’re home for Christmas, I’m home for…well, I don’t know how long, actually, but let’s just enjoy this and leave it at that.”

“Cassidy—,”

“Leonardo, listen to me.” Her voice had taken on a strained quality. “I will walk out of that door if you don’t agree to this. We are having sex, that’s all. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to answer your questions. I just want to feel how you made me feel last night. Do you think you can manage that?”

He was right there, and when his hands gripped her hips there was anger in them, but not like Grant. This wasn’t a scary anger, it was satisfying. She was glad she’d provoked him to that, glad she could make him feel that way.

“Is this what you want?” He asked, pushing her back against the door and kissing her until she was writhing and moaning and begging him to take her.

“God, Cassidy, you are impossible,” he snapped, but he pushed off her clothes, and his own, until they were naked. She wasn’t imagining the way his hand lingered on the scars at her side, and she sucked in a sharp breath at what felt like an invasion of her privacy, but then he was lifting her, carrying her to the bed, placing her down and kissing her again, speaking to her in Italian—words she didn’t understand and never needed to, because it wasn’t about what he said, it was the tone of his voice and the huskiness and the desperation she could perceive in every word.

It made her feel like a goddess; but then, it always had.

When he’d first told her about the affair, she’d wondered if he’d done that with her, too. The other woman. Had he whispered Italian phrases into her ear as he’d made love to her?

Cassidy coughed a little, the memory unwelcome, strangling her, making it hard to breathe, and Leonardo was instantly solicitous, pulling up to look at her, though he could see nothing in the darkness.

“Don’t stop,” she commanded, her body his to do what he would with, at least for the next little while. She surrendered completely, and his possession of her was total.

For a moment, there was such happiness, such euphoria, that it was easy to forget all that had come before. The betrayal, the grief, the total desolation. The sense that she’d lost herself completely. And then, Grant. Grant, whom she would never have met had it not been for a desperate need to find herself again. Grant, whom she would never have slept with, had Leonardo not cheated. Grant, who had broken her again and again, until finally fear for Audrey’s life had made Cassidy run.

She lay beside Leonardo, breath burning in her lungs, pleasure throbbing in her veins, and then she shifted, mentally detaching herself from him, and this.

But Leo reached out, caught her hand in his. “Don’t go yet.”

“Why?” She sounded just as defeated as she felt.

He expelled a sigh and then reached across her for the lamp shade, flicking it on in an obviously unintentional gesture. Out of habit. Out of a need to see her face.

“Don’t!” She cried, immediately, panicked. He frowned, and then, sure enough, because of her reaction, his eyes dropped to her stomach and she squeezed her eyes shut, hating him. Hating him for seeing her scar, for seeing what Grant had done to her. Hating him for allowing Grant into this moment in a way that was brutal and awful.

“Cassidy.” His voice was a deep rumble, but his touch was gentle, as his fingers ran over the marks, slowly, exploring, trying to understand.

“Don’t,” she pushed his hand away, but strangely, didn’t move off the bed.

His breath was an audible release and a moment later, his lips were on her stomach, on the twisted skin there, kissing it lightly, and something flickered inside of her.

“You are beautiful,” he said, simply, so simply that she believed him, in that moment, and her heart lifted and glittered with a lightness she hadn’t known in a long time. Her eyes fluttered open to see him, laying kisses across her hip, his reverence almost worship like. “So beautiful,” he added, glancing up at her, his eyes connecting her to another time, another place, when everything had been so simple, and his love had been all she’d needed.

But Cassidy had been a different person back then.

“I have to go,” she said, rejecting those memories, the warmth that was flooding through her, the pleasure she was experiencing with his hands on her body, his touch, his kiss, his words of appreciation.

He rested his chin on her stomach lightly, his eyes on her face showing a hint of frustration.

“Why?”

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