Chapter 6 #2
She looked at her new slimline watch, the only item she’d put on since Katya, Tommaso’s housekeeper, had led her upstairs and opened the dressing room door. Although not openly rude, Gabriella had sensed the older woman’s coldness towards her and guessed that she knew the truth or a version of it.
White gold, the watch’s clockface was ringed with tiny diamonds. It was beautiful. It also showed that she’d been back in the villa for five hours.
Which of the Espositos’ enemies were circling?
And what were they circling for? One facet of the empire?
Or the whole lot of it? Gabriella knew enough of the workings of the legitimate side to know it couldn’t just be taken from them, but the shadowed stuff was built on different foundations, one where the real world of legal contracts and insurance didn’t operate.
Breaches of non-existent contracts in the shadowed world weren’t punished through the courts.
They were punished with the brute force her treachery would have warranted if Tommaso hadn’t shown her his twisted form of mercy.
A distant noise made her straighten. Padding softly back to the bedroom, she strained her ears.
She hugged her arms around herself, her racing pulses telling her Tommaso was home long before the bedroom door opened.
Carrying a bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes, he kicked the door shut behind him.
“Hello, wife,” he mocked, glittering black eyes capturing hers for a heart-stopping beat before he placed the opened bottle – she dimly thought that must have been the noise that had caught her attention – on a sideboard. “Did you miss me?”
She had no idea how she was able to speak when her throat had tightened so acutely or how she was able to keep her poise. “Do you really expect me to answer that?”
His smile was as mocking as his tone and words. Pouring them both a glass, he held one out to her, forcing her to walk to him for it.
He raised his glass. She tapped hers to it. Eyes locked, they both drank.
“Finish it,” he ordered.
She complied.
He refilled it to the brim and nodded at her to drink it all too.
Taking the empty glass from her, he flashed his perfect teeth in another mocking smile. “What a good little wife you are.”
His laughter at her mutinous glare landed like fingernails scratching a chalkboard.
Strong nostrils flaring, he began to strip. The chunky watch came off first as it had done the night before, followed by his shirt.
Gabriella held herself together as much as she could, determined to give no reaction when, inside, she was already throbbing with anticipation.
How was she supposed to keep her poise when a rampantly sexual Adonis was stripping naked for her, she wondered helplessly.
Gloriously naked, he climbed onto the bed. Propping himself against the headboard, he pointed at his cock, which was already at full mast.
God help her, she was already melting for him.
Painfully aware her neck and face were betraying her, Gabriella tightened her lips and pinched for the tiny hidden zipper at the side of the dress.
“No.” His eyes flashed. “Keep it on. I want you to fuck me in your wedding dress, wife.”
Firing all her loathing at him, she lifted the skirt of the dress and, without any ceremony or effort to tantalise him, pulled her knickers down.
He beckoned her with that hateful crook of his finger.
Not breaking the lock of their stares, she got onto the bed and, with a mass of stained lace and taffeta pooling around them, straddled him. Lifting her bottom, she raised herself until the head of his erection was pressed against her opening.
Her stare full of mutinous defiance, despising her body’s treachery in being so wet and swollen for him, she sank down on his length.
His eyes pulsed, but the mocking challenge of his expression didn’t alter. Taking her hands, he placed them on his chest, angling her a little forward. “Fuck me,” he commanded thickly.
Swallowing hard, frantically imagining all her nerve endings switching off in a futile effort to trick herself into not feeling the sensation of their groins locked together or the feel of him so hugely inside her, she dug her nails into his sublimely masculine chest and began to ride him.
Hands tight on her hips, his now hooded eyes flashed, his lips parting as the mocking challenge evaporated with a sensual groan. “Tell me this doesn’t feel good for you too?” he whispered.
Refusing to give him the satisfaction of an answer, Gabriella clamped her lips together and continued rocking back and forth on his enormous length, fighting with everything she had to blot out the incredible sensations fizzing and bubbling inside her…
and fighting just as hard to blur the effect of the growing hunger pulsing in his black eyes.
God help her, she could feel his hunger, and God help her if it wasn’t feeding her own.
She must not come, she frantically prayed even as the fizzling and bubbling built and spread. Not like this. Not when Tommaso had handed the control of their lovemaking – fucking, she hurriedly corrected herself – to her.
But the fight between her mind and her body over Tommaso had always been one no amount of rationalising had ever won.
The gossamer thread she was holding herself together with was ripped away when his hands moved off her hips and tore the bodice of the dress.
Huge hands scooped inside her bra and freed her breasts that she hadn’t even known were desperate for release until he lifted his head and took one in his mouth.
The thrill of pleasure was so immediate and so acute that she was helpless to stop the hitched breath-like moan that flew from her lips.
With a savage groan, he leaned back, taking her with him, one hand clamped to her hip, the other splaying on her back, the pads of the fingers dragging down her skin, his lips and tongue feasting on her breasts as if he were trying to devour them whole.
She’d never known such all-encompassing burning pleasure existed.
No longer capable of fighting, she obeyed her body’s demands.
Throwing her head back, Gabriella pressed her hands to the headboard and rode him with soft cries she could no more control than she could control the throbbing, fizzing heat building and building inside her, and when her climax exploded, she could no more stop herself from grabbing the back of Tommaso’s head and holding him tightly than she could stop the waves of ecstasy from thrashing through her.
The waves were still rippling when his fingers bit into her flesh, his cheek pressed tight against her breasts, and with a throaty groan, she felt the heat of his orgasm burrow deep between her legs.
The thrills from Tommaso’s climax were giving no sign of abating. Not while he was still sheathed so tightly inside her.
God help him, he wanted to stop time and just stay like this. Right here. With Gabriella. With her hands burrowed in his hair and her heart pounding beneath his ear. The only thing that could make this moment more perfect would be if they were fully skin-to-skin.
He could hear the shallowness of her breaths. To imagine that just a day ago he could have stopped her from ever taking another breath made his chest tighten inexorably.
It felt like forever had passed before he could gather himself together and pull his head back.
Her eyes opened. What he found in them made his chest even tighter. Swimming in the dark chocolate brown was fear...but not the same fear as when he’d aimed the gun at her. This was a fear that made his heart thump and his lips suddenly ache to kiss away.
She blinked slowly. When her stare fused back to his, the fear had been shuttered away. All emotion had.
Why he captured a lock of her hair and gently ran his fingers down its length instead of shuttering his own emotions away, he would never know. “You must be hungry.” She hadn’t eaten a thing that day.
She bit into her bottom lip and gave a small nod.
Twisting the lock of hair around his finger, he wondered how she could look even more beautiful now than when he’d passed her the glass of champagne. The urge to crush his mouth to hers was stronger than it had ever been.
“Go and shower. I’ll have food brought up for us.”
Another small nod, and then she lifted herself carefully – reluctantly? – off him.
It was with great unwillingness that Gabriella stepped out of the shower.
Standing beneath the waterfall, washing her hair and body in toiletries that could have come from her own bathroom, she could close her eyes and pretend that she was home.
Wrapped in a large, soft, fluffy towel, she gazed at the puddle of stained white lace and taffeta lying on the bathroom floor.
If she had the energy, she’d kick it. She hoped it was incinerated.
No joy could come to anyone who wore even a scrap of it.
The last time she’d felt this drained had been the day after her mother died. The ache in her heart, though different, was reminiscent of that day, too, the pain in it like a bruise.
She’d expected the Espositos’ fury and loathing. After all, they wanted her dead. What she hadn’t anticipated was how much it would hurt.
In the years before she’d known the truth, when her infatuation with Tommaso had been at its peak, she’d fantasised about marrying him every single night.
In Gabriella’s fantasies, Lorenzo, the only father she’d known, had walked her down the aisle, Siena, the closest thing to a sister she’d ever had, her chief bridesmaid.
Once the truth had been revealed, she’d never experienced another pang of love for Lorenzo, but Siena… Trying to stop herself from loving her had been nearly as hard as killing her longing for Tommaso. And just as impossible.
“They’re all evil,” her mother had told her. “The apple never falls far from the tree – never forget that, Gabba.”
How many hours had she spent over the years agonising whether her mother was right in this?
Weeks’ worth, she supposed. Hundreds of hours agonising whether her best friend and the sole object of her desire could be anything like their murderous father, only to watch them glide into the shadowed parts of Lorenzo’s empire without a second thought.
The apples had willingly glued themselves to the tree’s trunk.
Siena, whom she’d never been able to stop herself from loving, wouldn’t have shown Gabriella mercy. Siena would have shot her dead in a heartbeat. If Tommaso gave the go-ahead, Siena would be first in line to kill her.
He wouldn’t do that, she reminded herself, a tendril of their spent desire pulsing through her and diving into her heart to remember how tightly he’d held her and pressed his cheek to her breasts when he’d come...and in the aftermath.
She felt a sudden urge to scream at her own stupidity.
As if she could predict what Tommaso would or wouldn’t do!
He hadn’t spared her life; he’d taken it, and it didn’t matter how many orgasms he gave her, she must never, ever, ever allow herself to forget that, and as she screamed all this in her head, she noticed a new robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
The beats of her heart accelerated.
Where Tommaso’s robe was thin and dark grey, the new one was a dusky pink and looked even softer and fluffier than the towel currently wrapped around her. It didn’t look in the least bit sexy. It looked warm.