Chapter 4 #2
For the first time since she’d walked into her apartment and found him sitting on her sofa, Gabriella felt truly vulnerable. Even when she’d believed he was going to kill her and her fear had come close to consuming her, she hadn’t felt such stark vulnerability.
But there was no choking. The fingers cradling her head tightened, but only to pull her head back.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said roughly.
“I want to fuck you instead. Clean yourself.” And then he gripped her shoulders, helped her upright, hit the switch to increase the water pressure, and, without giving her another glance, crossed the space to help himself to a towel off the floor-to-ceiling heated towel rail.
While he dried himself with brisk efficiency, Gabriella stared at his back, wondering what the hell she’d done wrong and why he wasn’t making her dry him. And then she wondered what the hell she was wondering all this for. With Tommaso, there was no rhyme or reason.
Rubbing the towel in his hair, he turned back to her. “I said to clean yourself. The next time I have to repeat an order, there will be consequences.”
Instead of reacting to the hate she was incapable of stopping herself from throwing at him with her eyes, he returned it, his stare full of mirrored loathing before he turned his back again and stepped out of the shower.
Shaking inside and out, Gabriella used the shower gel she’d slathered all over him to clean herself with. Not only was he intent on degrading her in every possible way, he was going to force her to smell like him, too.
But he’d had his chance to kill her, she reminded herself as she washed her hair with his shampoo.
She’d known since embarking on her plan to bring the Espositos down that she would likely die for it, but Tommaso had spared her life.
She had to remember that. He wasn’t going to choke her to death.
They’d made a deal. Her life for her life.
He wasn’t going to take it from her now.
It would put him in breach of his word, something no self-respecting Esposito would allow.
He was going to put her through hell, make her wish she’d chosen death, but he would get bored of her. That was the thing she needed to cling to.
He didn’t need to kill her to make her life hell, but the hell wouldn’t last forever.
She finished rinsing her hair at the same moment he finished brushing his teeth. Staring at her without expression, he handed her a towel. “There’s a hairdryer on the wall by the sinks. Dry your hair and clean your teeth, then join me. You have fifteen minutes.”
Tommaso looked at the time on his phone. Gabriella had exactly two minutes left to join him in the bedroom.
He took a drink from the large glass of whisky he’d poured while waiting for her to finish in the bathroom.
Exhaustion seeped through his veins. He felt weighted down by it.
He’d barely slept since the first night of his father’s death, and now, with enough alcohol to tranquilise a horse sloshing through his system, his body was close to calling time and demanding sleep.
But not yet. Sleep could wait a little longer.
First, he would do what he’d spent four years fantasising about doing, and screw Gabriella…
but not in the way he’d fantasised. This would be straightforward and perfunctory, just enough to expel some of the fury of emotion gripping him and reinforce to her that she belonged to him now.
The beats of his heart would accelerate as they always did during sex, but he would feel nothing more.
He would force her to look in his eyes and feel his hate while he brought her to orgasm.
Tommaso had felt all kinds of sensations in his sexually active years, but the sensation of Gabriella’s touch on his skin was nothing he’d been prepared for.
The only time he’d felt such a visceral response to a touch had been at his thirtieth birthday party when she’d run her fingers down the nape of his neck.
He’d been even less prepared for the sensation of her lips around his cock. The first press of her lips to it had blown everything else away. While he revelled in losing control during sexual games, it was always on his terms. He chose when to lose it.
When Gabriella had taken him in her mouth, he’d come perilously close to coming before she’d even got started, like he was some damned inexperienced teenager who’d never touched a woman before.
It was her treachery causing all this virulent emotion in him. Learning she was a rat had added betrayal-fuelled rage to his grief, and he needed an outlet for it. Her body would be that outlet. He would purge himself in her, and then he would switch off his mind and sleep.
The bathroom door opened. Fully naked, the light behind her casting her in a glow like she was some kind of warped avenging angel, she stepped into the bedroom.
Her spine straight, chin bullishly lifted, she padded to the bed with none of the disjointed movements of earlier, as if she’d knitted herself back together.
This was the fearless Gabriella he’d fantasised about for four years, but in his fantasies, she’d walked towards him with desire and not disdain in her eyes.
She was like a beautiful, unbroken horse that didn’t know when it was beaten.
She would obey him for the sake of her life and let him do whatever he wanted, but she would keep some essence of herself reserved, would always make sure he knew that what he took from her would never be given freely without the deal they’d made.
He could laugh. Didn’t she realise how closely he’d spent the last four years watching her?
He knew how her mind worked, knew how greatly she cherished her independence and autonomy.
The sooner she realised she’d lost both those things, the better.
She belonged to him now, completely, to do with as he wished and treat as he wished.
Draining the last of his whisky, he placed the glass on his bedside table and patted the space beside him. “Time to lie down, rat.”
Her plump lips tightened a fraction, but she didn’t break her stride. He lifted the bedsheets for her. Without a word, she lay beside him and fixed her defiant stare on the mirrored ceiling.
Not wasting any time, he climbed on top of her, nudging her thighs apart with his. Resting on his elbows, he gazed down at her beautiful, set face.
Unfiltered loathing stared back at him. All her makeup had been washed off, the light sprinkling of freckles over her cheeks and nose visible.
The pulse in her enflamed neck was throbbing just as visibly.
He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to the delicate skin above it.
Felt the heated tremble of her body. Felt the brush of her taut nipples against his chest.
Her eyes closed.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
The long, dark lashes parted. The dark brown eyes firing loathing locked back onto his.
He adjusted his hips so the weight of his erection pressed against her pubis.
Her only reaction was a slight widening of her eyes.
“Lift your bottom.”
Her mouth tighter than ever, her breaths coming in faint snatches through her nose, she did as she was told.
Keeping himself propped on one elbow, Tommaso skimmed his fingers over her delicious breasts, quelling his craving for a taste of them – tonight was about sex and only sex – and reached down to take hold of his erection and press it to her opening.
Poor Gabriella, he thought sardonically. It didn’t matter how mutinously she arranged her beautiful face, he could feel the excited heat vibrating through her body.
She wanted him, he thought with satisfaction. And she hated him for it.
But not as much as he hated her. Or as much as he wanted her.
He slid inside her slick, hungry depths in one long, smooth thrust.
Gabriella came within a breath of crying out.
She’d have been lying to herself if she’d said she hadn’t been burning for his possession, but in no way had she been prepared for the sensation of Tommaso so deeply and thickly sheathed inside her.
There was a pulse of shock in his eyes, and in that pulse a connection flowed between them.
He hadn’t been prepared for the sensation either...
A blink later, and the connection was mercifully severed with such alacrity that she could believe she’d imagined it. Must believe she’d imagined it.
She had imagined it. There would never be any connection between them. Never. Tommaso could take her body, do whatever he wanted to it, but her body was not her. He would never have her.
His jaw clenched. Similar thoughts must have been running through his mind, for only hate-filled lust now pulsed in his black eyes.
He withdrew to the tip and then drove hard inside her again. And then he did it again. And again.
Closing her eyes, Gabriella tried to empty her mind, but it was impossible. Tommaso was on her and inside her, fucking her with determined, rhythmic thrusts so exquisite in their sensual precision that her body was begging her to respond. Begging her to touch him.
She wouldn’t. She mustn’t.
She would not do anything of her own volition.
“Gabriella, look at me.” His harsh, gravelly words soaked into her senses.
Her eyes fluttered back open.
His face was closer to hers, his eyes so dark it was like gazing into obsidian. His mouth was a set line, the tendons on his neck elongated.
His pace was quickening…and she was quickening too. No matter how desperately she fought her body from betraying her, there was nothing she could do to fight the fizzing flames of sensation building within her with each hard stroke from his strong loins.
She fisted her hands to stop them from acting on the yearn to touch him.
It was her last line of resistance, her last defence, because now there was a throbbing deep inside her, and as his breath changed and his thrusts drew even quicker, even harder, there was nothing she could do to stop herself climbing the ascent to an ecstasy so complete her whole body went rigid as she rode its blissful waves and white light flickered behind her eyes.
She was still riding the waves when he gave a long, strangled groan, and then there was a pulsating heat deep within her before he collapsed on her, his sweat-dampened cheek and soft beard pressed tight against her neck.