She stopped trying to struggle back into him, just allowing the pleasure to wash over her in waves. Her breasts tightened, and Byron’s every movement enhanced her experience, just as he meant it to. Antonietta reached for his mind to share her every orgasm, the beauty of giving herself up to heat and fire. To him. She could feel his growing exhilaration as her body became more and more stimulated, gripping him tightly and taking him with her right over the edge.
When she could breathe again, Antonietta found herself laughing as he stepped carefully backward, taking her with him into the bubbling water. “Are we permanently stuck together? My legs are going to give out, and I didn’t do any of the work.” The water bubbled over her buttocks, fizzed between their bodies, and teased her feminine core. “I hope you know you’re never going to persuade me using sex. You can try, I hope you do try, but I’m going to make a decision based on other things. Important things like your choice of music.” The laughter faded from inside of her. Antonietta went very still.
Byron slipped out of her body, turned her around to face him, his hands resting lightly on her hips. “What is it, Antonietta?”
“Do I have a choice, Byron? Are you asking me if I want this conversion or telling me about it because you intend to convert me, no matter how I feel?”
Her fingernails dug into his arms. He could feel the beat of her heart, hear the steady, frightened rhythm. Byron curled one hand around the nape of her neck. “I brought you here with every intention of converting you.” His voice was very low. “My first duty to you and to my people is to protect you.”
“I need to sit down.” Her breath was trapped somewhere in her lungs, and her legs were rubbery. She felt behind her for one of the seats. Byron helped her to sit in the foaming water. “Turn off the jets.”
He did so, and the room was suddenly quiet. She drew up her knees, wrapped her arms around them. “Do you have any idea how vulnerable a woman can feel? I’m a strong woman and not afraid of most things, but I’m intelligent enough to stay in an environment that works for me. I have managed to do most things I’ve wanted, but I’ve always made certain that I surrounded myself with people I trusted. Being blind makes me even more vulnerable. I can’t slap your face and walk out of here like a drama queen. If I fell over a chair, it would ruin the effect.”
“Do you want to slap my face?”
She pushed her wet hair from her face. “No, I want you to let me make my own decision. This isn’t a small thing you’re asking of me. This is even bigger than marriage, and I was never going to get married.”
“Why wouldn’t you marry, Antonietta?”
She shrugged her shoulders. The water held heat, and right now she needed heat. “How would I ever know a man wanted me for me? I’m not how you see me at all. I’m overweight, and I do have scars; not like Tasha led me to believe, but they’re there. I’ve seen firsthand how damaging a wrong marriage can be. Paul and Tasha suffered so much. You have no idea. Their father was such a womanizer.” She rubbed her hand over her face. “He was with every maid in the palazzo and every other woman he could charm. He was in all the tabloids. He didn’t care where he was or who would see him. He was capable of having sex with a woman in front of the Paul and Tasha and laughing about it. He was abrupt and disapproving with Paul and showered Tasha with presents and little else.”
“He had no honor, Antonietta. I do.”
“Aunt Selena knew about all the women. She drank so she could pretend otherwise. There was a rumor that one of his women had his baby.” Antonietta rubbed her hand across her mouth as if trying to wipe away a bad memory. “Aunt Selena died one day under what the authorities claim were suspicious circumstances. She and Anton were in the tower. There was a terrible fight.
Nonno
went up and tried to calm her and get her to come down. Even Helena tried. Selena fell or was pushed. It was a horrible time in our lives. If there ever was a baby, Uncle Anton paid the woman off, and she aborted it, because it was never mentioned again. He went on with his life as if nothing happened.”
“How did he die?”
“A car accident. He was drinking and went off the road.” She leaned the back of her head against the rim of the Jacuzzi. “Tasha’s been married. Both times her husband cheated on her. Franco is married, and his life is miserable. The few men I’ve dated that seemed a reasonable partner ended up wanting my money and/or the Scarletti business.”
“Is that what you think I want, Antonietta?” His voice was very quiet.
She shivered despite the heat of the water. “You want me to be a creature, another species that needs blood to survive. You want me to change what I am for you.”
“Would you prefer me to walk away from you?”
The moment he said the words, she felt a wrenching panic inside of her. “I thought you said lifemates could never be apart.”
“Do you want me to leave you? Do you want to go on with a life that does not include me in it? That is the question, more than any other, for you to decide.”
“I want out of here.” She stood up, the water pouring off of her.
Byron was there instantly, lifting her out of the Jacuzzi and wrapping a soft towel around her. Antonietta clutched it to her and made her way to the bed, using the map in Byron’s mind. “Then there is a choice. You brought me here to convert me, but you’re giving me a choice.”
“You would never be happy or trust me completely if I made such an important decision for you, Antonietta. I know that much about you. I want your trust. And I want you to choose me. I do not want it to be because you are my lifemate, or because you might regain your sight, or even because we have good sex. I want you to say yes because you feel the same way about me as I feel about you. I want you to know you love me that much.”
“Great sex,” she corrected softly. He was tearing her up inside. If he had tried to force her, she would have fought him at every turn, but he was asking her. More than just asking her. He was stripping away his pride and laying his feelings at her feet. “Byron, if I ask you to live with me at the palazzo, the two of us together, married in my way, and we could find a way to be safe, would you do it if I didn’t follow through with the conversion?”
“You are my lifemate. I would choose to live with you and grow old with you. I would end my life when you died.”
Antonietta heard the ring of truth in his voice. She curled up on the bed, her head on the pillow. “Come keep me warm, Byron.”
He went to her immediately, just as she knew he would, fitting his body around hers, his arms drawing her close, wrapping around her so that she felt safe and warm.
“I want a family wedding with Tasha standing up for me. And I want you to make peace with her.”
“She is determined to have Captain Diego throw me in prison.”
“She’ll stop when you’re family. We protect family, and that will include you.”
“You are asking a lot of me, but I suppose for you, to keep you happy, I will find a way to get along with your provoking, impossible cousin.”
She turned in his arms, found his face with her fingertips, moving her hands over it to take in every detail. She touched his lips, his teeth. “I choose you, Byron. I want to spend my life with you. So let’s get to it.”
He leaned into her, kissed her on her mouth. Her lips were trembling beneath his. “I want you to be certain. There is no going back. Once we do this, I cannot undo it.”
“I would never say yes if I didn’t mean it.”
He kissed her again with such tenderness her heart somersaulted. He held her with such care, his enormous strength leashed. Even in the throes of wild passion, he was careful with her. She felt his breath, the soft velvet of his lips, the gentle tug of his teeth as they scraped back and forth in a mesmerizing rhythm over her skin. There was white-hot pain giving way immediately to pleasure. Whips of lightning danced in her veins. Antonietta wrapped her arms around Byron’s head, her fists tangling in his hair. She felt his tongue, heard his soft whisper, words she didn’t catch.