Chapter 10 #2
Pulling her legs out of the water, she got to her feet and downed the rest of her drink. With barely a thought, she threw the empty glass into the pool and headed back inside, leaving her husband at the poolside, as still as a statue.
* * *
Elio climbed the stairs on legs that felt strangely weighted. When he reached the bedroom door, he found he needed to take a deep breath before opening it.
The room was empty, but he could hear the shower running.
Sinking onto an armchair, he dragged his fingers through his hair.
Strangely, it wasn’t the story Siena had just relayed to him that was playing on his mind, but the way she’d asked Carlo if his carbonara contained onion the first time he took her there.
At the time, he’d thought it a strange question, but then forgot about it.
Now, he guessed she’d asked because if anyone were dumb enough to put onion in the dish, it wouldn’t have time in the quick cooking process to cook down. It would still taste pungently raw.
He tried to remember Siena as a fourteen-year-old, but her teenage years had suddenly become hazy in his mind. All those years watching her, and it was like she’d turned from an angelic-looking child to the beautiful young woman on her eighteenth birthday in the blink of an eye.
He remembered Elvira’s teenage years. She was six years younger than Elio, four years younger than Bruno.
By the time she’d hit adolescence, Elio was coming out of it and more than aware of the dangers she would have to navigate where horny males were concerned.
He’d been protective of her. Too protective at times.
“You are not our father!” she’d screamed at him on more than one occasion.
“No, but I’m the only father you’ve got,” he’d retorted furiously.
The bathroom door opened.
He lifted his head and felt his heart twist to see Siena all clean and human, and he was glad that her soft blue eyes were stony when they briefly found his and that she stalked to the bed in her usual truculent manner.
Glad, too, when she pulled her robe off and climbed naked beneath the sheets in her usual prim fashion, pulled them to her shoulders and turned onto her side; the position she always took, ensuring that when he joined her, her back was to him.
Taking himself off to the bathroom, he stepped into the shower that was filled with the marshmallow steamy scent of Siena, and scrubbed himself raw.
By the time he’d dried himself and brushed his teeth, his insides felt a bit less turbulent, but it was a turbulence that kicked off again when he stepped back into the bedroom.
He didn’t think she’d moved an inch of her body since he’d gone into the bathroom.
Climbing in beside her, he gazed at the back of her still head. This was usually the point where he put his hand on her shoulder and turned her onto her back. Usually, he kept the bedside light on so he could see her face. He got as much out of watching her face melt for him as he did her body.
Swallowing the huge lump that had formed in his throat, he turned the light off.
The room in darkness, they lay in a silence so thick with tension he needed only swish a finger in the air to cut it.
“If I’d known my sorry little story would stop you putting your foul hands on me, I’d have told you two weeks ago.”
He closed his eyes. Icily delivered though her words were, there was no mistaking the tremor ringing through them. “Is that why you told me?”
When she finally answered, it was with a whisper. “I don’t know why I told you.”
More tense silence passed. His eyes had become adjusted to the dark, and he stared at her tight little form with a matching tightness in his chest and throat. “Why did your mother protect him?”
Lorenzo Esposito had been a monster, but family had meant everything to him. If he’d known what Stefano had done to his daughter, he would have killed him without blinking.
She took a long time to speak. This time, there was no emotion in her voice.
“In her eyes, her teenage daughter had been drinking and draping herself over the grown man she’d once had a crush on in a swimming pool, and had been taught a valuable lesson about men in return.
Stefano’s father was part of my father’s original crew from way back when he was just a small-time drug dealer.
Stefano was always a part of our world. In her mind, why waste a loyal, valuable asset for one indiscretion? ”
Elio whistled lowly. Sexual assault on your young teenage daughter relabelled as an indiscretion? Stefano had to be over forty, which would have made him at least thirty when he’d assaulted her. “That’s cold.”
“In her mind, practical. My mother rarely thinks with emotion. I assume she had a quiet word with him because he never went near me again.”
“He got away with it,” he stated flatly.
While Siena still lived with the damage he’d caused her, the man who’d assaulted her when she’d been little more than a child had got away with it. Her own mother had seen to that.
She didn’t answer.
Memories of Siena at fourteen still a blank, Elio thought again of Elvira at that age. She’d brimmed with hormones and attitude, but also with vulnerability.
Closing the gap between them, he pressed his nose into Siena’s hair and inhaled her soft, marshmallow scent.
Feeling her body close in on itself even more, he put his hand on her shoulder and gently turned her over, but instead of climbing on top of her, rolled her into him so her cheek pressed against his chest, and then wrapped his arms around her unyielding form.
For the longest time, they just lay there, Siena rigid in his embrace, not the flicker of a muscle in movement.
Spearing her hair, he gently ran his fingers down its silky length, his other hand making tiny patterns on her back. When he felt the first tiny nuzzle of her nose against his chest in response, he clenched his jaw and breathed in slowly. His guts felt like they’d been punched.
He’d never looked at her like a slab of meat with a hole to fuck. Not ever.
But he’d treated her like one. He might despise her, but she was still a human being capable of pain. A human with skin like butter and who smelled of marshmallows.
To know someone had once hurt her so badly made his heart pump with a fury that vibrated in every cell of his body.
* * *
It didn’t matter how hard Siena fought to stay rigid and contained; she was no match for Elio.
Not when he was stroking her back and hair so gently.
There was nothing sexual in it, just one human giving unspoken comfort to another.
Except this human was Elio, and his body was so warm and hard and his touch so tender that she was helpless to stop herself from melting into his embrace.
With a deep sigh, she slipped her thigh through his, wrapped an arm around him and pressed her lips tight to his chest. Filling her lungs with his scent, she pressed herself even tighter to him.