Page 29 of ‘I Do’ for Revenge
Flora shook her head. ‘No. Not since I came here from London after my parents and younger brother, Charlie, died.’
Vito’s eyes widened. A look of pure disgust came over his face. ‘That man kept you locked up like Cinderella. All you were missing was two evil stepsisters.’
Flora found it hard to breathe for a moment. She’d never had anyone else evaluate the life she’d taken for granted before. And the loyalty and obligation she’d felt to her uncle was still there, like a scar.
‘I can’t really complain. I had a roof over my head—I lived in a beautiful palazzo. I got my education.’
Vito made a rude sound. ‘That palazzo was like something out of a nineteen-fifties film set, straight out of the Cinecittà movie studios.’
A surprised laugh at Vito’s accurate assessment came out of Flora before she could stop it. She put her hand over her mouth.
But still, the impulse to be loyal made her say, ‘I think my uncle just appreciated another era.’
Vito snorted. ‘He appreciated not spending money on anything but creating misery, more to the point.’
Flora sobered. Vito was right. She’d always known her uncle kept her all but locked up, but she’d convinced herself it had been for her protection and security. Now she could understand that he’d done it so that she wouldn’t leave before he could get his hands on her inheritance.
The sense of years spent locked out of the world suddenly made her appreciate what was happening here now with Vito. She was being awoken in more ways than one. She felt a sense of urgency. ‘What time is the glam team coming?’
‘Three o’clock.’
‘And what time do you have to go to the office?’
‘About half an hour ago.’
Flora summoned up all of her courage and threw back the cover and stood up from the bed. Naked.
‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘as you’re already late, what does another half-hour matter?’
Vito’s face flushed and his eyes narrowed on her body. For a moment she imagined Vito leaving her standing there, walking away, but then he scooped up Benji, who had trotted over to smell his feet, efficiently put the dog out of the room, closed the door and stalked towards Flora, shedding clothes as he did.
By the time he reached her he was naked. His body gleamed in the sunlight flooding into the room and Flora took her opportunity to really look at him, marvelling at his sheer perfection.
‘Keep looking at me like that and we’ll be here until tomorrow.’ Vito growled, reaching for her, and placing his hands on her waist. She was pressed up against him and she quivered all over at the contact. His erection pressing against her lower belly.
Breathless, she looked up and said, ‘And that’d be a bad thing because...?’
Vito took a skein of her hair and wrapped it around his hand. He said, ‘Because I have every intention of showing you off this evening and making sure everyone can see the jewel that has been locked away for too long.’
Emotion caught at Flora before she could stop it. Making her chest tight. In a bid to defuse it and distract Vito from just how seismic his words were to her, Flora reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck and then they were falling back onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and sighs and murmurs that grew more frantic and desperate as they lost themselves in each other again.
Flora was looking at herself suspiciously in the mirror. Even Benji was looking at her suspiciously. With his one good eye. Flora said reproachfully to his reflection in the mirror, where he was sitting on the bed behind her, ‘Itisstill me, Ben.’
She sniffed her wrist where the stylist had instructed her to spray some perfume. It was heady—musky rose and something lighter. She liked it even if it didn’t feel remotely like her. Maybe it was the scent putting him off.
Because visually, she was almost unrecognisable. Flora had never had a fantasy of being transformed like Cinderella, but if she had...she was living it right now.
The stylist and her team had just left and finally Flora was able to take in the magnitude of what they’d been working on all afternoon. She blushed, thinking of how when she and Vito had emerged from the bedroom after a couple of hours indulging in exploring each other with a thoroughness that had left Flora limp with an overload of pleasure—the glam team had been waiting for her.
Flora had felt like a naughty child caught playing truant. Vito had left her in the hands of the team, but not before she’d heard him instructing the stylist, ‘Under no circumstances is her hair to be straightened.’ That had caused another rush of emotion to Flora’s chest, making her feel as if a layer of skin had been removed, exposing vulnerabilities she’d pushed down for a long time.
But then Vito had left and she’d been sucked into a whirlwind of having her hair trimmed and styled, nails manicured, a facial, her entire body measured to within an inch of its life, all leading to this...vision in the mirror.
The dress was a very pale pink blush colour, strapless and cut across her chest to reveal more cleavage than Flora was comfortable with, but the stylist had assured her it was not too revealing. The bodice was tight and then from her waist the dress fell to the floor in whimsical layers of silk and chiffon.
It was deceptively simple and Flora could barely feel it when she moved. As if it were made of air.
She wore a simple diamond choker and a diamond cocktail ring on her index finger. Diamond stud earrings.