Chapter 5 #2
Tommaso tried to catch his breath. His face was burrowed in the crook of Gabriella’s delectable neck. The thrills from his powerful climax were still raging through him, the distant thud playing in his ears the echo of his heart.
There had been a split-second before his brain had fully woken, a solitary moment before the events of the day had risen to the surface.
He’d been fully erect. The backside his erection had been straining against had made the lightest of movements just a beat before she’d made the lightest of moans.
On some subconscious level, he’d known the figure pressed so tightly against him was Gabriella and when he’d rolled her onto her back and kissed her neck and she’d spread her legs welcomingly for him, he’d thrust himself inside her with such an explosion of emotion that to suddenly remember why she was in his bed had caused those emotions to twist into something rancid and ugly.
He'd sensed the exact moment she’d remembered why she was in his bed too.
That awareness hadn’t stopped her coming, he reminded himself with bitter-tasting satisfaction.
Bitter tasting because all he wanted was to lock her back in his arms and go to sleep until he’d recovered enough to do it all again.
Bitter tasting because he’d had the first deep sleep since the night she’d let him put his head on her lap and had stroked his hair to comfort him.
Bitter tasting because she was a treacherous rat, and he had no business feeling anything but hate for her.
Furious with himself, he pulled himself out of her and jumped out of bed. “I’m going to take a shower,” he said, too sickened with the both of them to look at her. “Don’t go back to sleep.”
The bathroom door opened. Gabriella’s heart jumped, but she made sure to keep her features defiantly neutral.
Buck naked and smelling incredible, Tommaso emerged in a cloud of steam.
Without looking at her or saying a word, he disappeared through the other door in the bedroom.
She caught a glimpse of what had to be a dressing room.
He reappeared quickly, wearing a pair of snug black cotton briefs.
Still not acknowledging her, he stepped out onto the landing and vanished.
She closed her eyes and hugged her arms for the warmth Tommaso’s coldness had stolen and tried hard to stop herself remembering how it had felt to have his body-heat permeating her.
If she didn’t feel so sick, she would laugh. What was the point in trying not to remember when she could still feel his skin on hers and her own skin was still fizzing from the sensation of the climax he’d given her?
She found her shirtdress on the bathroom floor in the same spot it had fallen when she’d stripped it off the second time. She slipped it on. It was the only item of clothing she now possessed. The only thing she possessed.
There was a long bench in the centre of the bathroom, and she slumped onto it and hung her pounding head.
What would become of her apartment, she wondered despairingly.
It was the apartment her parents had made into a home before she’d even been conceived.
When her mother died, she’d been glad to move in with the Espositos.
She’d been sixteen and would have rather drunk fresh blood from a rabies-infected bat than live with the family who’d murdered her father and killed her mother, but living under their roof would give her the evidence needed to bring the bastards down.
She’d found nothing. At eighteen, she’d finished her education and moved back into her apartment, and even though her job with the Esposito Group meant she’d earned excellent money, certainly enough to buy something in one of Naples’ fancier districts, her little apartment was where all her good memories lived and where she felt safe.
She would never be safe again.
Working directly with Lorenzo had given her access to a treasure trove of documents, but very little actual evidence of criminality.
Bit by bit, though, that little actual evidence added up to something significant.
But there had been no collective knockout blow.
Nothing she could put in front of the judiciary and guarantee all the Espositos and their biggest enforcers spent the rest of their lives in prison.
What she’d found barely skimmed the edges.
Put what she’d amassed in front of the Court of Assizes, and she’d be lucky if any of them other than Tommaso spent a single night in a cell.
She dragged her nails over her head. Last summer, her luck had changed, and she’d obtained proof of Tommaso’s involvement in organised crime.
Then, a few months later, she’d found and copied evidence of money laundering.
Again, it had pointed in Tommaso’s direction.
She’d agonised over what to do with it. Get the Esposito she hated the most put away, and so turn the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate’s spotlight onto the family as a whole and hope they found what was needed to send them all down?
Or continue biding her time until she had enough incontrovertible evidence to put them all away in one fell swoop that no amount of bribes or more serious, deadlier efforts at tampering could stop?
All her agonising had been for nothing. If she’d acted when she’d first gathered all that proof, Tommaso would very likely already be locked up. Instead, he had the box she’d kept the evidence in, and she was the one imprisoned.
Sensing a presence watching her, Gabriella looked up and locked eyes with her jailor. A wave of emotion crashed through her.
With a jerk of his head, he beckoned her to follow him back into the bedroom.
The second she crossed the threshold, she saw the beautiful white dress Siena had been wearing when Niccolo escaped from the church laid on the bed. A handful of bags and boxes with designer labels were on the ottoman at the foot of it.
Her heart thrashing, Gabriella turned her horrified stare back to her jailor.
His wild black eyes glittered. “Siena’s idea. She thought it fitting, seeing as you’re the reason she was jilted before she could make her vows in it.”
“I had nothing to do with Niccolo jilting Siena,” she choked.
If she didn’t already know her marriage to Tommaso would be one of degradation and humiliation, this would have cinched it.
Gabriella had helped Siena into that dress only six days ago.
She’d been by her side when the news had come through that the groom had absconded from the church.
She’d watched Siena throw her bouquet to the ground and stamp on it, and then minutes later watched her throw herself onto the cold stone floor of the church and sob over her father’s lifeless body.
It had been Gabriella who’d wrapped her arms around Siena and comforted her.
As much as she hated all the Espositos, a residue of the love she’d felt for them for the first sixteen years of her life had stubbornly remained intact, and she’d been helpless to stop her heart aching for the woman she’d once thought of as a sister. It had ached for all of them.
She’d sought Tommaso’s eyes, she suddenly remembered.
While Siena had clung to her, Gabriella had looked for the one she hated the most. And he’d looked for her.
The shock and grief she’d found in his stare had lanced her heart so deeply that if she hadn’t been holding Siena so tightly, she would have gone to him.
By the time Valeria had taken her sobbing daughter into her own arms, Tommaso and his brothers had gone.
Gabriella hadn’t seen him again until he’d come to Valeria’s suite late that night and curled beside her with his head on her lap.
By that point, Siena’s white wedding dress had been discarded in a heap on the suite’s floor.
From where Gabriella now stood, she could clearly see the red stain of the wine Siena had poured on it.
The man she’d comforted that night’s laughter was cold. “You think Niccolo would have humiliated my family if he didn’t have a weapon to save his own skin when we came for retribution?”
“He jilted your sister because he hated the whole foul lot of you,” she spat. “He decided the risk of running was worth whatever you meted out if you caught him.”
“There was no risk to him, not when he had you as his shield and weapon to save himself.”
“He would never have given you my name if you hadn’t threatened his lover. Unlike you and your whole foul family, he has decency. He gave you my name to save her skin, not his.”
“You’re a na?ve fool if you believe that.”
“Na?ve to believe that love exists? Hasn’t Rico’s decision to get out of the family business for Marisa taught you anything about love?
” The youngest of the male Esposito offspring had just fallen in love with a woman of such moral goodness that he’d walked away from the family business for the sake of her soul.
Gabriella laughed. “That was a stupid question. As if you know a damned thing about love. You’re a narcissistic bastard who cares only about himself. ”
The darkness on his face turned so ugly that she thought he was going to hit her.
When the blow came, though, it was no blow. Tommaso palmed her cheek. His wild black eyes boring into hers, his gravelly voice as silky as she’d ever heard it, he said, “I love my family. I protect my family. Everyone else can go to hell…all except for you, my beautiful, poisonous rat.”
With a cruel smile, he brought his face closer and dropped his voice.
“It delights me to know that, for all that you hate me and wish me dead, your body is my passport to making your life a living hell, because the only thing you hate more than me is how badly you want me.” The hand palming her face slid down her neck.
Rubbing his bearded cheek to hers, he inhaled deeply.
“I can still smell our sex on your skin….” His hand skimmed lower, traversing the mound of her breast until he reached a hardened nipple and lightly circled a finger around it.
“I could take you right now,” he whispered sensually.
Abandoning her breast, he slid his hand down her belly and abdomen and cupped her sex.
“Slide into you and find you wet and ready for me…” He slipped a finger inside her and nipped her earlobe.
“Just as you’re wet and ready for me now. ”
Moving his hand away, he stepped back and studied her with the same cruel smile on his face. “Shower – you will find toiletries and makeup in the bags on the ottoman – and then put the dress on. We marry in two hours.”