Chapter 14 #2
He sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’ Where would he even begin? Especially when all he wanted was to not remember any of it. His gaze caught hers and held. ‘And I’d rather get lost in you than a past I cannot change.’
The breath she released was audible. Slow and rough as her pupils dilated again. She eyed him for long beats, her blue gaze searching his as if trying to decide whether to push or not. Whether to stand her ground or surrender to the heat flaring between them once more.
With the tension in his muscles reaching screaming point, Alessandro was about to open his mouth and prompt her but then, wordlessly, a decision obviously being reached, her hands slid to the hem of her sleep shirt, pulling it up and off her body and tossing it to the ground at his feet.
Alessandro’s breath was a hiss as her full frontal nudity shot like a bullet straight to his dick.
He might have seen her naked only minutes ago, he might have seen her naked a lot these past few weeks but the sight still arrested him.
The swing of her full breasts, the curve of her hips, the suppleness of her thighs and the utter fascination of where they met at the top.
Before he could step forward, she was reaching out, snagging his belt, dragging him close, her fingers working the buckle as Alessandro’s brain got up to speed. It got up to speed fast as she yanked down his zipper and reached inside his underwear to free his aching cock.
‘Le cose che mi fai,’ he muttered.
The things she did to him.
And then there was no more space for words. Just two hungry mouths open and questing, two tongues tangling and two hands urging him closer.
Somehow, she boosted herself up on to the vanity, angling her hips just right, bringing him to her centre, not stopping to remove his clothes just pushing them aside, his cock jutting out of his fly as the head of it found the heart of her and, with one snap of his hips, he was inside her, hot and tight and wet and all the noise in his brain ceased, replaced by the noises of her – of Nat.
Her gasp at his entry and her moans as he pounded into her, and her whispered, ‘Yes, like that, just there, just like that,’ each word taking him away from his past and grounding him here and now, with Nat, as he thrust and thrust, the simmer of his release hurtling towards boil.
She fell back on to her elbows and Alessandro didn’t miss a beat, tearing his mouth from hers to latch greedily on to a nipple, dragging in air as he rubbed the stiff pucker of it against his teeth. Her sharp cry urged him on even as her fingers ploughed through his hair and twisted painfully.
He grunted but didn’t stop, her hand holding him captive to her breast as he thrust and sucked, the whimpers of her pleasure and the hot, tight, clutch of her around his cock driving him on. His hand slid south, his fingers probing and finding the hard knot of her clitoris and flicking.
‘Alessandro!’
It was said on a high, breathy moan as she tightened like a vice around him and came, her body bucking and writhing and catapulting him, his heart thundering, to his own cataclysmic release.
Much later, in his bed, Nat lay draped down his side, her head on his shoulder, his fingers absently running up and down her arm. Sleep hovered around them in a post-coital haze that was both energising and paralysing at the same time.
Somewhere in the sticky morass of her thoughts, she knew she shouldn’t have succumbed to the temptation of him tonight.
A stronger woman would have pushed harder.
A smarter woman would have taken the opportunity to talk about his past for a change.
He’d finally uttered his wife’s name and she could have used that to get him to open up more about the woman that held him fast in the clutches of grief.
But the way he’d expressed his desire, the way he’d looked at her with those wounded eyes, she’d have given him anything.
She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder, revelling in its warmth and their combined aroma. Her hand was resting on his belly and she trailed her fingers up his chest. ‘Your cousin looked at me very strangely this afternoon when I opened the door.’
It had puzzled her at the time but been quickly forgotten in the delight of meeting someone who had obviously known Alessandro for a long time.
It had been informative, not least because she realised that Val was the cousin Alessandro had told Peyton about when she’d brought McKenzie to A&E that day she’d been ill.
‘He was probably trying to work out how available you are,’ Alessandro murmured, his voice sleepy but his body not so loose now.
‘You seem close.’
‘We are. We grew up in the same village. Our fathers were brothers. My parents, they were very… passionate people… they argued, a lot. They split up and got back together and split up and got back together. They were up and down like yo-yos. I would get shuffled to Zia Rosa’s when things were in upheaval.
Which was often. It didn’t matter that she was deaf or had six kids of her own, she always took good care of me.
She and my uncle had this totally different relationship. Zio Ben adored Aunty Rosa.’
Nat tried not to get too excited about the level of information Alessandro was offering. He was usually more guarded and she revelled in knowing him better. ‘Do you have siblings?’
‘No. Just me. Which was probably a good thing. My father finally left for good when I was fourteen and my mother really fell apart. We both moved in with Rosa after that.’
His words seemed devoid of emotion – just a factual recounting – but Nat knew what it was like to have a split home. She rolled on her stomach and propped her chin on Alessandro’s chest. ‘Did you miss your father?’
His fingers stroked a path up and down her arms as he shook his head. ‘Not really. I barely knew him. He travelled with his work a lot. He wasn’t exactly a hands-on father. He left it up to my mother mostly. And then when he was home they were usually arguing.’
Nat’s heart broke for him. Her own memories of her father, before he’d walked out and become emotionally unavailable, couldn’t be any more different. Maybe that explained Alessandro’s clumsy fathering. No solid role models. Maybe he, too, had left the parental role up to Camilla.
‘I’m surprised you married at all with that kind of history.’
The sultry caress of his fingers stopped for the briefest of moments before they resumed and Nat knew she’d entered an area crisscrossed with land mines.
‘You sound like you talk from experience. Are your parents divorced too? Is that why you haven’t ever married?’
Nat shut her eyes as he firmly changed the subject.
She’d obviously pushed him far enough for one night and he’d revealed all he was going to – which was a hell of a lot more than she’d known to date.
They didn’t do this – talk. They had sex until they fell into exhausted slumber.
Talking had never been high on their list of priorities.
But suddenly she wanted to know everything there was to know.
She sighed and turned on her side again, draping her arm across his chest, her leg over his thigh as she pondered his question, his fingers still trailing a lazy path on her arm. She didn’t want to talk about herself but maybe if she did, he might open up some more about himself.
‘My father left when I was eight.’ Her words fell into the silence and Alessandro’s finger faltered temporarily before starting up again. ‘No warning. He’d been having an affair for a year and the other woman, Roxanne, was pregnant. So, he just… left.’
His finger stroke turned into a soothing rub of his palm. ‘I’m sorry.’
Nat shut her eyes. Why after all this time was the devastation still so potent sometimes?
‘It was never the same after that. I spent time with him and Roxy and the kids over the years, Mum made sure of it. I have two wonderful half-brothers. But it was like he’d moved on from me.
Sure, he still loved me in his own way, I knew that, but he just stopped being a father to me, like I stopped being his responsibility. ’
Nat swallowed the lump that had lodged in her throat.
It had been a long time since she’d thought about this stuff.
‘He had his new wife and his boys and I was just always… an afterthought. The old love and affection we had was gone. He became withdrawn from me, emotionally distant, and I always felt – still do, I guess – that I had to prove I was worthy of his love.’
He didn’t say anything for a beat or two. When he did, he’d obviously joined some dots. ‘It must have been hard for you to watch Julian…’ Alessandro tsked impatiently and corrected himself. ‘Juliano. And me. In the beginning.’
Nat nodded. ‘I could see the way he looked at you with such longing and it reminded me of the way I used to look at my dad after he’d left. I know the situation was different with you two, that grief was involved, but…’
‘I don’t think it matters the reason,’ he murmured. ‘The fact is, we were in trouble and I just didn’t know how to fix it. And then you came along.’
Nat smiled and snuggled closer. ‘Super-Nat to the rescue.’ He chuckled and her heart filled with the sound of it. ‘Pity I wasn’t so good at fixing my own problems.’
‘Are you talking about the man you mentioned that day in the lift? You said it had become… untenable? I think that was the word you used?’
‘Yup.’ Nat still couldn’t believe she’d let herself get so deep sometimes.
‘He was newly divorced when I met him and that was probably my first mistake. But he was so sad, so knocked around by life and so kind and caring and he was so happy to be happy again, with me, I fell in love with him. He was endearing.’
Which was exactly why being here with Alessandro was stupidity. Alessandro and Juliano were just history repeating itself. Except it was worse. Rob and his wife had chosen to separate. Alessandro hadn’t chosen. His wife had been taken.
‘So, what happened?’
‘His ex-wife was in his life, our lives, a lot.’
‘You didn’t like her?’
‘I liked her fine. But I don’t think either of them ever really let go. He spent more and more time with her, making excuses to see her. A leaky tap. A family wedding. A Valentine’s Day meltdown. And after years of coming second to her I just couldn’t do it any more.’
‘That does sound untenable.’
Nat shut her eyes, the skin on her arms turning to goosebumps as Alessandro drew circular patterns with his fingers. It had been awful. A long slow death, hanging on, hoping things would change.
‘C’est la vie.’ She shrugged. ‘By the end there wasn’t really any love left. Just hurt. I’m over it now.’ She didn’t want to talk about Rob any more. Or her father. It was his turn. ‘What about your wife? Camilla? How did she die?’
His fingers stopped again and his body tightened and she knew, even before he moved, rolling on top of her to settle himself in the cradle of her pelvis, that he wasn’t going there. ‘I think we’ve talked enough for one night, don’t you?’
Lowering his head, Alessandro dropped a string of tiny kisses up her neck and across her jaw.
She should have protested. God knew, she wanted to know everything about him but her treacherous body was already responding to the weight of him, the hardness of him as his mouth found all her sensitive places.
And did she really want to know about the perfect Camilla and their perfect love? Hadn’t she had enough of that in her last relationship?
So, she didn’t push him away and insist on talking. She didn’t get huffy. She didn’t get up and leave his bed. Instead, she shut her eyes and let him sweep her away to that place where only she and him existed.