One Summer at The Villa: The Prince's Royal Concubine / Her Italian Soldier / A Devilishly Dark Deal

WHEN Antonella came to, the first thing she noticed was the heavy weight pressing down on her. She could barely breathe. The second was the sharp smell of rain and the dark odor of wet wood. Wind whipped in gusts against her body, chilling where her dress was soaked through. She tried to push the weight off, but it shifted. Suddenly, she was looking up into Cristiano’s dark face.

Her heart turned over at the sight of blood trickling down his cheek.

“You are not hurt?” he said before she could manage to speak.

“I-I don’t think so. But I can’t breathe,” she rasped.

He shifted to the side and Antonella drew in a deep breath, nearly coughing with the relief of feeling her lungs expand. “What happened?”

Cristiano glanced up. Her gaze followed his and she gasped as she realized what she was seeing. A jagged piece of the roof was gone. And the wall. But that wasn’t the most amazing thing. No, it was staring up at the rain-lashed sky through the branches of a tree that caused her insides to liquefy. The bulk of the tree had hit the bed, the branches splaying out crookedly in all directions.

Oh, God.

If he hadn’t pulled her off there in time…

Only the mattress prevented the tree from falling to the floor and crushing them beneath the weight of the branches. As it was, they would have to crawl out from under the limbs that spread over them.

Antonella touched his face, flinching at the same time he did—and trying very hard to ignore the sizzle arcing through her at such simple skin on skin contact. “You are bleeding.”

He swiped his fingers over his face, then probed upward, stopping just beneath his hairline. “It’s not serious, just a scratch.”

“It’s a lot of blood.”

“It’s fine.”

Antonella bit down on her lip to stop it trembling. Surely he would know if he were badly hurt. He’d said he’d served in the army, so he must have experience with this kind of thing. She had no choice but to trust that he did.

He lifted his shirt and wiped it across his face. “We’ll have to crawl out of here. Can you manage it?”

“Yes.”

He nodded once. “The going will be rough, but stay close.”

Though Cristiano picked his way carefully, Antonella scraped her arms and legs more times than she could count. Shards of wood had splintered off from the main tree, and crumbled terracotta and stucco littered the area, making the process slow and painful.

She suppressed her cries of pain. It would do no good and she was determined to get out from under this tree before the storm did something worse. The wind swirled through the collapsed wall, whipping her wet hair into her face and making it hard to see anything in front of her. Rain pelted her, chilling her heated skin.

Fortunately, it was still light outside, because if it’d been dark, she didn’t see how they could have made it. How would they know where to go? She’d stupidly left the master bedroom without a flashlight or a candle. She’d made her way to this bedroom in the meager light coming from the kitchen, the only room without shutters. Cristiano had a flashlight when he’d arrived, but he’d lost it, probably during the struggle with her.

It was all her fault.

They’d nearly died because of her, because of her wild emotions and stupid phobias.

Around her, the wood creaked ominously. Leaves rustled and the branches bit and scratched her tender skin. After what seemed like an hour, Cristiano turned back to look at her and she realized he’d made it through and was now holding the last of the branches up for her.

Antonella slipped beneath them and resisted the urge to collapse on the floor. Cristiano didn’t give her the chance anyway. He stood and offered her a hand. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet. Pain shot through muscles cramped from crawling across the hard floor, but still she didn’t cry out. She’d learned long ago not to show pain.

Pain equaled vulnerability.

And vulnerability to a man, in her experience, was like blood to a shark.

“Hold onto my shirt,” he ordered. She obediently grabbed a handful, and then they were moving again. A few moments later, they reached the master bedroom. Compared to where they’d just been, it was so peaceful. The white sheets on the bed glowed in the candlelight, making the bed seem even larger than it was. Antonella wanted to collapse on it, fall asleep, and pray this was a nightmare and she would wake up in her room at home in Monteverde. Dante and Isabel would laugh when she told them at the breakfast table about her strange dream.

“Come into the bathroom,” Cristiano said, grabbing the first aid kit he’d brought into the room earlier, “and we will clean these cuts.”

For the first time, she noticed that he too was scraped and bloody. When he turned, she stifled a gasp. “Cristiano, your back!”

She hadn’t been able to see him well when they were in the darkened hall, but his T-shirt was torn open over his shoulders and a gash spread across their width.

He glanced at her. “I know. You’ll have to tend it for me.”

In the bathroom, light from three skylights shafted down and lit the area well enough they didn’t need a candle. Cristiano took a towel from a stack on a bamboo shelf and dipped it into the water in the sink. After he’d wrung it out, he handed it to her.

“Wipe away the blood and dirt,” he said, then retrieved another towel for himself. He stripped out of his shirt while she worked on her arms and legs.

Several of the cuts welled up again and she spent more time pressing the towel hard against them in succession, trying to stop the bleeding. No cut was very deep, thankfully. She would certainly be bruised, though, where Cristiano had slammed her to the floor.

“When you’ve finished, spray some of this on,” he said, pushing a bottle of antiseptic toward her. “I’m afraid it will sting, however.”

“I’ve cut myself before. I’ll survive a few stings.”

When she sprayed the first cut, she thought she would scream. Sharp pain lanced through her, diminishing after a few moments. She repeated the process again and again, biting her lip and working quickly.

Cristiano was waiting with bandages. She had three cuts that needed taping up—one on her left arm and one on each knee. “I can do it,” she said when he started to rip at the adhesive strip.

He was standing so close, his naked chest gleaming with sweat and fresh blood. His hair was damp with rain, and a smear of dirt crossed beneath his right eye. He’d wiped the blood from his face, but had missed the dirt. Even dirty and somewhat disheveled, he made her heart thud.

He didn’t say anything, simply handed her the strip and let her do it herself. She bandaged her arm first, then her knees. When she looked up, Cristiano was watching her, an odd expression on his face.

Or not so odd, in fact. When she’d bent to bandage her knees, he’d been able to see straight down her dress as the wrap gaped open. In spite of the lingering pain of her cuts, heat slipped through her veins, caused a fine sheen of sweat to rise on her skin. Moments ago, she’d been chilled and sober.

Now, she marveled at the languid warmth creeping along her nerve endings and pooling in her deepest recesses.

Cristiano’s eyes clouded for a moment. When he reached for her, she thought her heart would stop. Would he kiss her? Would she let him? Should she?

His fingers brushed her ear as he tucked a stray lock of hair behind it. A shiver ran down her body.

“Why did you think I would hit you, Antonella?” he said softly.

She stiffened. She knew he couldn’t miss it, though she tried to shrug it off. She even forced a “how silly” laugh. But it sounded fake—and he knew it as well as she.

She didn’t want him to see how close to the truth he was, how it rattled her to have him know something so deep and personal. How many times would she fall apart in front of this man she was supposed to hate?

“I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I’m just a bit stressed. I overreacted.”

But Cristiano would not be stopped. “Did one of your lovers hit you? Is that why you thought I would do so?”

“Of course not!”