Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Maybe they flew up the stairs because when they reached their bedroom, Gabriella had no recollection of being carried up them. Her eyes refused to look anywhere but at Tommaso. And his eyes looked nowhere but at her.
He lay her down on the bed and kissed her. Kissed her with the tender passion her heart had always ached for, even in the years she’d known it shouldn’t.
“Don’t cry, my heart,” he whispered, wiping away a tear from her cheek she hadn’t felt fall.
Too choked to speak, she palmed his bearded cheek.
He bent his head and kissed her again. His tongue moved softly against hers, his fingers trailing down the gap in her robe until he found the sash. Undoing it with the same effortlessness that he’d lifted her, he parted the robe, sucking in a breath to find her naked beneath it.
Running his hand over her taut, aching peaks, he kissed the tip of her nose and, his voice strained, murmured, “I need to feel your skin on mine.”
With her swollen heart in her throat, Gabriella watched him strip naked, no longer capable of hiding just how insanely beautiful she found him. No longer capable of hiding just how badly she wanted him. No longer wanting to hide it.
She sat up and lifted a hand out to him.
His beautiful throat moving, he threaded his fingers through hers and knelt in front of her.
Wordlessly, he slid her robe off her arms and discarded it onto the floor with all the clothes he’d just shed.
She cupped his cheeks and savoured the sensation of his beard rubbing against the palms of her hands. “Masino…” She sighed, unable to say anything more than his name.
Tommaso gently took the wrist of Gabriella’s left hand and turned his head to kiss the delicate inner skin.
The fragrance he inhaled deep into his lungs was just as delicate.
The perfume he so loved was missing, but he didn’t miss it.
Now he could smell only Gabriella, and when he put his mouth to hers, could taste only her, too.
It was the only taste and scent he needed or wanted.
Lying her down, he stretched himself on top of her, careful not to put too much of his weight on her, and just gazed at her.
“You are so beautiful,” he repeated in a whisper.
“So very beautiful.” Without her makeup, her smattering of freckles shone for him.
Dipping his head, he kissed the freckles on her nose, then slowly kissed the freckles on the apples of her cheeks.
All her beautiful freckles kissed, he brushed away the silky hair by her ear so he could reach the sensitive hollow beneath the lobe, shuddering at the sensation that flickered through him when she sighed and slid her fingers through his hair.
His addiction to Gabriella was more like an unbreakable spell, he thought dimly as he grazed his mouth down the side of her graceful neck.
Addiction or spell, there was no cure. No escape.
She was in his blood and in his heart, and when he moved his mouth lower, he rested his cheek to her breasts and felt the cantering thud of her heart.
Addiction or spell, his beautiful wife was caught in its web too.
And she was his wife. Not for the piece of paper they’d both signed or because of the ring she wore on her wedding finger, but because his heart and his life belonged to her.
Her life already belonged to him, and as he kissed her breasts, he swore to himself that he would prove himself worthy of her heart, too and that he would protect it and keep it safe forever.
Gabriella kept her eyes closed, afraid that if she opened them, the dream she’d fallen into would end. She didn’t want it to end.
The way Tommaso was touching her…
His hand was between her legs, caressing her secret flesh, his mouth kissing her breasts, taking each aroused peak in turn.
All the other times he’d bestowed these sensuous delights on her had been for punishment. He’d been ruthless in his intent to bring her to climax, using her body and the desire that thrummed in her veins for him as a weapon.
The way he was touching her now was how it had been in her dreams.
Lightning was flickering all through her body, her flesh shivering, and she moaned a protest when he finally abandoned her breasts and moved lower, her protest cutting off on her tongue at the trail of fire his tongue made on her ribcage and the plane of her stomach.
When his mouth replaced his caressing hand, she gasped at the thrills that burned through her.
Where before he’d been merciless in his rousing of her most intimate, feminine part, now he was tender.
So very tender. His tongue a gentle, flickering flame, he brought her to full, swollen arousal, but instead of increasing the pressure so she came quickly, he reverently drew it out with limitless patience until she was consumed…
tormented…by sensation. Deep inside her, the fizzing heat throbbed and burned, building to a crescendo that broke like a giant wave crashing onto the shore, flinging her into a shimmering void of pleasure so raw and undiluted that she cried out his name with no consciousness.
The waves were still rippling through her when Tommaso made his ascent, his tongue flickering back over her belly and breasts, his skin brushing hers as his mouth found hers, and she was pulled into a kiss of deep, tender hunger.
Stretching herself beneath him, Gabriella became consumed with the need to touch him, and as their kiss deepened and the weight of his arousal jutted hard into her inner thigh, the fizzing in her core danced back to life.
Mouths fused, she ran her hands over his shoulders, freely exploring the smooth flesh in a way she’d never allowed herself before, while he slid his hands beneath her thighs and lifted her.
Circling her hips so he was right there, exactly where they both so desperately needed him to be, she scratched her fingers up the nape of his neck, almost breathless with anticipation.
He lifted his head and gazed into her eyes. “You’re my world, Gabba.”
Her heart twisted painfully for the words she could never say. Gazing right back, wishing harder than she’d ever wished for anything that dreams weren’t destined for dust, she clasped the back of his head and drew him down to her trembling mouth.
Lips and tongues entwined, he entered her slowly, filling her so completely that when their groins locked together, it came with a heart-stopping sense of completion, as if this was the moment she’d waited her whole life for.
Raising his head, their eyes locked with the same wonderment and intensity as their fused bodies.
They moved together, completely as one, giving and taking with equal measure. The driving rhythm they created swept her away to a land of untrammelled sensation that belonged only to them.
Almost delirious at the bliss of it all, Gabriella clung to him, her breath sobbing from her lungs as the pleasure built, and when Tommaso took her over the edge and she plunged into the shattering convulsions of ecstasy, she cried out as she clung even tighter, hearing the crack of her name a beat before he shuddered powerfully and warmth spilt deep inside her.
And then there was silence.
Later, much, much later, Tommaso carried Gabriella to the bathroom. There, he stood her in the shower and soaped every inch of her body before drying her and carrying her back to bed, where he made love to her all over again.
The morning sun filtered through the bedroom’s drapes before Gabriella fell into the most contented sleep of her life.
When she woke some hours later, she was still curled into Tommaso, her forehead pressed against his chest, her hand on his side.
His arm was slung over her hip, his breathing deep and even.
She lay there for the longest time, not moving. Not making a sound with anything but her heart, which was pumping with painful fury at what she’d done, the bright light of day driving out the last of the dream they’d fallen into that had lasted the whole night long.
She’d spent the night making love with Tommaso.
It had been the most beautiful night of her existence.
It had been the biggest betrayal of her life.
She’d made love with Tommaso. Let him make love to her. Made love to him. And in the process, betrayed her father’s memory and the promise she’d made to her mother.
Swallowing to clear her constricted throat, she gently moved his arm off her and carefully lifted herself onto an elbow to stare down at his sleeping face. Bone-deep longing and a tidal wave of misery suffused her.
Later that day, Tommaso would dine at his mother’s home and, with his siblings, decide who would step into their father’s shoes and become head of the Esposito family.
When Gabriella next went to bed, it could be with the man who wasn’t just the son of her father’s murderer but his replacement.
Lorenzo’s replacement had to be as ruthless as he’d been.
One day, the time might come when Tommaso would justify a decision to betray a friend to start a war.
And she would be at his side. Sharing his bed.
Sharing his life. Compounding her heinous betrayal.
She closed her eyes and breathed back the tears stabbing her as fear ticked in her heart and the future unfolded itself in grimly vivid colour.
This marriage…
How could she live it? How could she step into a future built on threats, blackmail and betrayal?
Betrayal would be in her future, too. His betrayal would be of a different kind to the one she’d planned, but she’d had a taste of how it would feel.
A man like Tommaso wasn’t built for monogamy.
The longer she stayed, the deeper the betrayal would cut.
The fear now morphing into panic, she looked again at Tommaso’s beautiful face. She shouldn’t care that he would one day cheat on her.