Chapter 10 #2
She felt his gaze on her, but when she looked up, there was none of the coldness that had been a constant when they were alone since she’d told him the truth about their fathers.
It was something that hadn’t been mentioned since, not in words.
To let himself believe his father had murdered his best friend in cold blood was to accept his father hadn’t been the man he’d portrayed himself as to his family.
It meant accepting that his father had lied to them, that the family honour that allowed no untruths to pass between them had been violated by the man who’d imposed that honour on them all.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you okay?”
She sniffed back tears and nodded, and then, without any warning, another memory danced into her vision, of Lorenzo, Valeria and Siena collecting her from the hospital after her mother had finally passed to take her home with them.
The two girls had clung together the whole drive back.
Gabriella had walked into the Espositos home with so many emotions she could hardly breathe, and Tommaso had appeared.
He hadn’t said a word, just padded over, wrapped his strong arms around her and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head.
How had she forgotten that?
She’d grieved her mother for nine years. Tommaso’s father had been dead only weeks.
“I’m sorry that you’re hurting,” she whispered. “Truly sorry.”
The power of his stare intensified.
She swallowed. “The pain never leaves you, but it does get easier to breathe through it. I promise.”
His shoulders slowly lifted, strong neck extending. Whatever he might have said was lost by the loud knock on the office door, and then Fiorella came beaming in with their coffees, followed by what seemed to be the entire staff delivering a congratulations card as big as Tommaso.
For the ninth morning in a row, Gabriella awoke to the most heavenly of sensations. Instead of fighting her body’s responses, she left her hands on Tommaso’s smooth, broad shoulders, kept her eyes closed and pretended she was still dreaming.
Except no dream had ever felt like this.
In her dreams, she always woke with the desperate burning ache of unfulfillment in her core.
In this waking dream, her body was already readying itself for the climax, and when he pushed her thighs back further, she wrapped her legs around him and embraced the thrills of pleasure shooting through her.
Only once he’d come too and slumped on top of her with his cheek pressed against her neck, his hot breaths burning through her skin, did she detach herself from the waking dream.
She would not wrap her arms around him and run her fingers through his hair, no matter how much her heart ached for her to do so. She would not turn her face to press a kiss to the side of his head. She would not give any affection.
And nor would she wish for it. She would not wish for Tommaso to raise his head and press a gentle kiss to her lips. She would not wish to feel the scratch of his beard around her mouth. She would not wish for him to stroke her face or thread his fingers through hers.
And when he rolled her off her and onto his back, she would not wish for him to roll her with him so they could just lie in each other’s arms.
The cramps Gabriella had felt on and off the day before returned with a vengeance an hour later when they were eating breakfast in the sunroom.
Tommaso had finished eating and was talking on his phone.
She knew he was talking about the shadowed side of the business because he was speaking in code. It was a code she’d learned long ago.
He ended the call and drained his coffee. “Go and get dressed. We need to go out. Some trouble I need to deal with…what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You’re as white as my mother’s bedsheets.”
A cramp fisted in her guts, making her gasp and doubling her over.
“Gabba?”
Gritting her teeth, she tried to breathe through the pain, and as she did so, became aware of a warmth between her legs.
“Gabba, what’s wrong?”
She hauled herself to her feet and gripped the table. “I’m fine. Just my…” Her cheeks reddened in embarrassment. She’d never spoken of her menstrual cycle with a member of the opposite sex before. “I don’t think I’m pregnant.”
He stared at her a long moment. “Your period has started?”
Her embarrassment tripled. Turning her gaze from him, she mumbled, “I think so. I need to use the bathroom.”
Oh, God, she didn’t have any sanitary products.
What the hell was she going to do? Knowing she was likely to come on at any moment, she’d nearly asked him to stop at a pharmacy or grocery store on the way home from the office the day before, but had been too embarrassed and decided to ask Katya to get her some instead, forgetting Katya had the weekend off.
All the other on-shift staff had been men. They still were.
She felt Tommaso’s eyes watching her as she shuffled out of the sunroom bent over like a little old lady.
When she made it to the top of the stairs, she caught the flash of movement from her vantage point on the mezzanine and turned her head in time to watch him leave the villa.
The door slammed shut behind him. From the bedroom window, she saw his Ferrari disappear through the electric gates.
Gabriella didn’t want to get out of the shower. She’d cleaned herself up, but now had the dilemma of how to dry herself without soiling a towel with her blood. Leaking through her dressing gown had been mortifying enough. Tommaso would have seen it.
She needed to get to a shop but couldn’t go anywhere without him, and nor could she ask his permission seeing as he’d gone to his meeting without her and without a word of goodbye. He’d slammed the front door as if he were angry.
Probably he was, she thought miserably, sinking to the floor and hugging her knees while the waterfall of water continued to shower over her.
Gabriella had always hated having periods.
When they’d started, she’d gone to great lengths to hide them, especially with the boys she’d hung around with.
They’d all thought the idea of women bleeding each month disgusting.
She remembered being twelve and at the local skatepark with a load of them, and suffering excruciating cramps.
Rather than admit the truth, she’d deliberately fallen off her skateboard at speed so she had an excuse to go home.
She still had a scar on her knee from that fall.
But Tommaso wasn’t a twelve-year-old boy.
He was a thirty-four-year-old man. He’d been with so many women over the years that even an unreconstructed sexist pig like him must know how the female body worked.
Gabriella’s period would be an unwelcome reminder that she was human.
She didn’t want to believe that his anger came from his sex-slave being out of action for a few days.
Oh, what was wrong with her? Why didn’t she want to believe that?
But it cut at her, just how upsetting the thought of him walking out in disgust and anger made her.
The bathroom door opened. A scream flew out of her throat then died when Tommaso’s huge frame emerged. He had a bulging carrier bag in his hand.
He gazed down at her. His broad shoulders rose before he placed the bag on the ledge by the double sink.
Without a word, he stepped into the shower and hit the button to turn the water off. His eyes locked back onto hers. A beat later, he extended a hand down to her.
Her heart and stomach churning, her hand engulfed in his giant paw, she let him help her to her feet.
Keeping a firm hold of her hand, he stretched out and snatched a towel off the heated rail. Instead of passing it to her, he released her hand so he could open it up and wrap it around her in the same way her mother had done when she’d been a little girl.
To her distress, tears she had no control over spilt out.
Tommaso forced air down his closed throat. Feminine tears had never had any effect on him. Gabriella’s tears, though…
He’d witnessed a young teenage Gabriella flip off a skateboard while doing stunts and slash her arm open without shedding a tear. She must have taught herself not to cry over physical pain.
He remembered how she’d held herself with such bravery when she’d believed he was going to kill her.
Her tears had been involuntary then, and they were involuntary now.
He could see it in the way her beautiful face was contorting.
She was trying to hold them back, and it was this stubborn bravery combined with the way the towel drowned her that pierced him far more deeply than any open weeping would have done.
Gently, he guided her to the bathroom bench. She shook her head, her body tensing when he tried to coax her into sitting on it.
“Gabba, it doesn’t matter,” he said quietly, understanding why she was reluctant to sit, “It will wash off.”
Blinking rapidly, biting into her bottom lip even as her chin wobbled and more tears poured down her cheeks, she sat.
There was a bundle of towels on shelves by the bath, and he took a smaller one than he’d wrapped her in and knelt. First covering her head with it to soak the worst of the excess water, he took a wide section of her hair and began to gently rub it dry.
“We should be at your meeting,” she whispered when the tears finally stopped falling.
“Yes.” He’d called Mattia and told him to start without him, told him he’d join him as soon as he could.
Alfredo, one of the lower-hanging fruits of their organisation under suspicion, had been recorded passing on details of a shipment expected the following week.
They’d been unable to discover who he was working with, but that didn’t matter.
Alfredo was on his way to what he believed to be a meeting, but in truth would be an interrogation. “I’ll go without you.”
Her beautifully arched eyebrows drew together in question.
He gathered another section of hair. “You would have had to stay in the car for it. Better you stay here and rest.”
“I’m not ill.”
“Maybe not, but you’re in pain.”
“It’s just cramps. They’ll pass.” Her gaze finally darted to his. “I thought you were angry with me.”
“I was.”
Something spasmed on her face.
“I was angry with you for not telling me,” he clarified.
Her eyebrows drew back together.
Lightly clasping her chin, he turned her face so he could reach the back of her hair. “I’m not a woman, but I know how your cycles work. You must have known you were due to start your period, yes?”
Embarrassment colouring her cheeks, she gave a tiny nod.
He swallowed a sigh and continued drying her hair. He could not understand why he felt so wretched or why he felt such a compulsion to do something for her.
“It’s such a private thing for me…” her quiet voice tailed off.
“You’re not used to talking about it?”
“Not with men,” she agreed.
“Not with your lovers?” he asked casually, moving her face back to him so he could work on the left side of her hair.
Tommaso knew nothing about Gabriella’s past lovers.
When it came to her sex life, she’d always been the modicum of discretion.
He’d asked his sister over the years for info on Gabriella’s love life and had always been answered with a variation of, “What love life?” Of course, whenever he’d cheekily probed Gabriella about it, he’d always been answered with a middle finger.
After a long pause, she said, “There was only one.”
Now he was the one to pause before speaking. “Only one lover?”
Her voice dropped even lower. “Yes.”
“How long were you with him?”
“Not long.”
“How long is not long?”
She gave an unexpected laugh, her face lighting with a beguiling mix of amusement and sadness. “So not long that it makes all your past relationships look like marathons.”
“Who was it with?” he asked in the same casual tone, even though the beats of his heart had grown weighty. “Anyone I know?”
“No.”
He didn’t know if he was relieved or not when she failed to elaborate.
Tommaso had never been the jealous type, had never cared about the sex life of past lovers.
But none of those past lovers had been Gabriella.
None of them had elicited a fraction of the desire or anger she so effortlessly drew out of him.
Or a fraction of whatever it was that had compelled him to wrap her in a towel and compelled him to continue drying her hair.
Inhaling deeply through his nose to drive out the feelings swelling in his chest, he started rubbing dry the last segment of her glorious dark chestnut hair.
“I can understand why you would not have felt comfortable discussing something so personal with a fleeting lover, but that’s not what I am. I’m your husband.”
Chin wobbling, her eyes closed. “If you were my husband, Masino, I wouldn’t be locked away from the world. I wouldn’t be reliant on your goodwill and charity for personal necessities.”
It was the first time she’d called him Masino since he’d forced her to choose between life and death.
“Gabba…” He swore under his breath and put the towel he’d been using on the floor.
Placing a finger beneath her chin, he waited until she’d opened her eyes to quietly say, “You know this is how it’s got to be.
I can’t let you walk around with all the freedom in the world.
This is the deal we made and the deal I made with my family to keep you alive. ”
Now her lips were trembling too, her eyes refilling with tears. “I know.”
“Then know this – I will never withhold anything that you need.” Skimming his fingers over her cheekbones, he dove them into her hair and brought his face to hers. “I can’t give you your freedom, Gabba, but anything else you want that it’s in my power to give, tell me, and I will make it happen.”
Her plump lips trembling harder than ever, he did the only thing that made any sense and kissed them.