Chapter 20 Valentina
VALENTINA
The narrowed slit of Giovanni’s eyes can’t hide how stormy they are, and his jaw is set so rigidly I’m surprised it hasn’t cracked.
He stands in the doorway, blocking my path, unmoving and unspeaking.
He’s angry, there’s no doubting that, but a gentle softness also emanates from him.
I might be mistaken, but it resembles relief.
His eyes remain on me as he takes out his phone and calls someone. “I’ve got her,” he states curtly. “Tell Matteo to send thanks to Nikolai. Our crew eventually would have spotted her walking home, but it was nice to have a heads-up of her last known location.”
Without saying goodbye, he disconnects his call, then steps inside. The door shuts behind him with a finality that makes my heart thud. Even though his composure screams for me to submit, I refuse to back down. My mother is God knows where, and unearthing her location trumps everything.
Lifting my chin, I align my eyes with Giovanni’s. I’m about to demand he step aside when he blindsides me by proving he can read me like no one else has.
“Your mother is fine.” His pressed lips don’t match the sympathy in his tone. “Well, as fine as her condition allows.” My spirit lifts considerably when he states, “And she’ll only improve now that I’ve enrolled her in the program Dr. Russo suggested.”
“What?” That’s it. That is all I can get out.
Giovanni’s angry mask briefly falters when he smirks at my bewilderment. “She’s being transported for treatment as we speak.”
His words echo in my head, crowding out everything else. The anxieties that have been gnawing at me for months loosen their clutch, freeing me to breathe in unriddled air, yet I still feel uneased.
“It’s too much.”
Giovanni doesn’t agree with me.
While shaking his head, he steps closer.
I hold my hand in front of myself, wordlessly begging him to stay where he is.
He pays my request no attention, so I use words. “If this is about the IVF bungle—”
“It’s not.”
I continue as if he didn’t speak. “You don’t owe me anything. You’re as much a victim of their error as Valeria and I are.”
He stops a mere foot from me. “It’s not about that.
” The sheer actuality in his tone pricks tears in my eyes.
“That has nothing to do with this,” he says, jerking his hand between us.
“I helped your mother because I wanted to.” His anger surges.
“And because access to life-saving healthcare should be available for everyone, not just the wealthy fucks who probably have a cure for cancer but are too greedy to release it.”
He’s speaking words I’ve wanted to hear for years, but sometimes the truth is a bitter pill to swallow. “I can’t afford to pay you back. I’ll try, but—”
“You owe me nothing.”
“Giovanni…”
“You owe me nothing,” he repeats, sterner this time.
Relief crashes over me in slow, trembling waves.
I can’t believe after all this time, Mom is finally getting the medical treatment she desperately needs.
Fresh tears fill my eyes as I imagine her in a clean hospital bed, moaning about the nursing staff fussing over her.
She hates feeling like a burden, but if it brings back the color in her cheeks and makes her voice a little stronger, I’m all for it.
I’m grateful for the relief, but I know it will be short-lived. I’m not off the hook just yet. Giovanni’s shoulders are still high and taut, and the tension emitting off him is palpable.
He’s angry, and my actions this morning are the sole cause of his fury.
He fixes me with that stare again as his tone shifts from brutish to wounded. “You ran…”
Before I can offer him a stream of excuses, he slices his hand through the air, cutting me off. He doesn’t want excuses. He wants restitution for my mistake. And he wants it now. The lust detonating in his eyes announces this, as does the growing bulge below his belt.
“What happens when you run from me, dolcezza?”
He’s asking a question, but I keep quiet.
I can’t speak. It’s impossible to do anything but stare.
Giovanni is a brutally beautiful man. Every inch of him radiates confidence and power, but my attraction to him stems from more than that.
Even in an empty room, his movements and the energy he projects are palpable.
And the fact he helped my mother without truly knowing her has me drawn to him like a magnet.
He’s unaware that her smile rescued me from the dark when it became too much, or that it made my boo-boos seem nowhere near as dire. He has no clue my mother is my world, yet he still helped her.
When Giovanni hovers close, a part of me wants to avoid confrontation, but I stand my ground. He’s too enigmatic to crave a woman who bows out at the first sign of trouble. He wants someone brave enough to stand by his side, not two steps behind him.
“What happens when you run from me, dolcezza?” Sparks zap across my face when he grips my chin and lifts it to align our eyes. “When I catch you, I get to—”
“Fuck me,” I interrupt, too turned on by the chemistry hissing between us to act nonchalant.
I don’t need to lower my eyes to his mouth to confirm his smirk is smug.
I can feel it in my bones.
His agreeing hum clusters in my clit. I’m wet. Already. And unashamed.
How could something so right ever feel wrong?
Instead of seeking answers to questions I haven’t asked yet, I propel onto my feet and seal my mouth over Giovanni’s.
I kiss him until my lips are swollen and red as if I’m wearing lipstick.
Then I kiss him some more.
Lust bubbles in my blood when his hot breath ghosts over my ear. “How wet are you? Do you think you can take me now?”
I nod without thought before tilting my head so he can shower my neck with sloppy kisses. He licks, sucks, and marks me with his mouth before he drags his tongue along the column of my neck.
“Prove it. Wrap your legs around my waist and make a mess on the front of my pants.”
With one hand on my ass, he hoists me up his body. Shudders tremor along my spine when the head of his fat cock rubs at the opening of my pussy.
Giovanni doesn’t waste a moment before showing me he is a god both in and out of his clothes. Again and again, he rubs his erection along the lines of my pussy, and his swollen head finds my clit with every perfect grind.
Seconds later, I bury my face in his neck when tingles blister through me without warning. They coat my skin with goose bumps and make me breathless.
I’m still striving to recover when Giovanni steps us back until my ass lands on the dining room table. Although my thigh muscles tense when he stands between them, my morals won’t stoop this low.
I attempt to veer him away from the table my aunt and now my mom eat at every night, but his firm hold on my hip pins me in place.
“We… can’t… do… that… here…” Big breaths separate my words. Giovanni is only toying with my breasts while peppering my skin with tiny, purposeful kisses, but the sparks his attention creates could be devastating during a drought. “My… aunt… eats… here.”
He nods slowly, as if he understands, but instead of plucking me off the wobbly wooden legs, he pushes on my shoulder until my back flattens on the tabletop.
“Giovanni…” I swallow to lessen the husky delivery of my words before trying again. “My mom eats here.”
His voice is like liquid ecstasy, and it sears straight through me. “And now I’m going to eat here, too.”
In one quick maneuver, he tugs off my panties, stuffs them into his pocket, and then suspends his mouth above my clit.
I buck against him when he sucks the nervy bud into his mouth.
I’d like to pretend I’m rearing up because I don’t want to desecrate my aunt’s furniture with my arousal, but that would be a lie.
I’m endeavoring to stave off an orgasm that’s so ferocious I can feel its spasms in my toes.
“Gio…”
I moan louder when two blunt fingers pierce the entrance of my pussy. He pushes them in tortuously slow, curling my toes and forcing me to mark my lower lip with my teeth. His fingers are so thick that even after being taken by him a handful of times, it’s a stretch to accommodate them inside me.
The combination of his fingers and mouth instigates an immediate detonation. I come with a roar as fireworks shoot in the sky.
Giovanni’s greedy licks vanish my concerns about my aunt’s table. He laps up every drop of my climax before he shifts his focus back to my clit as if he craves more of my taste.
My fingers rake his scalp as his name falls from my lips over and over again. I can’t stop coming. Orgasms roll through my body on repeat, each one more blinding than the last.
Whoever taught this man how to eat pussy was a genius, and I can’t even be jealous. He’s a god, and he’s using all his best skills on me, so you won’t get a single complaint from me. Yet.
Giovanni licks, tongues, and sucks at my clit and pussy until I can’t take it anymore. I need him inside me. Now!
When I say that to Giovanni, his teeth close around my clit, and he tugs it gently before he stealthily rises to his feet.
We were too impatient to undress again. I don’t mind. His stained-at-the-crotch pants, sweat-dotted face, and seductively undone-at-the-third-button dress shirt are a good look for him. He looks like sin and seduction rolled into one delicious package.
He’s so outrageously handsome that he makes me forget my own name.
His jaw is sharp and dusted with stubble that looks both effortless and intentional.
His hair is dark and thick and always tousled from him running his hand through it multiple times a day, and his stacked abs are a testament to his discipline and strength.
Like I could get any more captivated, his insides are as compelling as his outer appearance.
They announce that he’s dangerous in every sense of the word, and that he has both the muscle and the smarts to trap a hunter in his own trap.
You’d think the knowledge would be scary, but my body acts the opposite. It doesn’t receive the orders sent by my brain, nor does it care how fast he entraps me in his world. It wants to be claimed by him. Owned. It wants him in any way it can get him.
Giovanni knows this. He’s as cocky as he is confident, exposing this afternoon’s foray will be an hours-long event.
With my ass dangling off the edge of the table, and my legs wrapped loosely around Giovanni’s waist, he teasingly pushes the tip of his cock inside me.
I suck at him, begging him to stay, when he commences retreating before he’s even given me three inches.
“Tell me again, dolcezza.” He rewards me with another teasing push. “What happens when you run from me?”
I’m already on the verge of begging, so I don’t hold back the words sitting on the tip of my tongue. “You fuck me.”
“No.” His one word is a growl, and it scorches my skin. “I have to catch you before I can fuck you.” He stuffs his cock in further this time, doubling the sweat coating my skin. “Is that why you ran? Because you want me to chase you?”
I shake my head, too overwhelmed by how good he feels—even with only taking part of him—to portray calm.
Giovanni thrusts in halfway, then withdraws to the tip. “Then why?”
“I…” I stop, unsure I can have this conversation while vulnerable. Jealousy is an ugly disease, and I let it control my emotions once already today. It won’t happen again.
“You?” Giovanni pushes, never one to back down. When he spots the determination building in my eyes, he lowers his hand to my clit and circles it at the same dangerously slow speed he enters me. “Why, dolcezza? Why did you run?”
“Because you…” I raise my hips when those two words reward me with another two inches, trying to take more.
Giovanni slaps down my hips before he pulls out entirely.
“No!” I shout, devastated. I want him. Need him. I feel empty without him, both in my pussy and my chest.
I can’t tell him that, though. I hardly know him, so how can I expect him to believe I’m already developing feelings for him without making it seem like I only want him for his money?
“Tell me why, dolcezza!”
“Because you… because you…” I stumble while trying to think of a lie. Nothing but the truth formulates. “Because you didn’t come home last night! That’s why I ran. You told them to put me in your room, but then you stayed out all night!”
He slams home with one thrust, and the table legs groan in protest of our combined weights. I lean into his tight, muscular body as it drives into me on repeat. He fucks like a wild animal, his hips pistoning as fast as bursts of air puff from his nose.
He pounds into me. Over and over. Taking everything and giving me just as much.
My vision blurs as an orgasm more powerful than any I’ve felt before gathers inside me.
Giovanni seems pleased by my response. Euphoric.
Anyone would swear I handed him the keys to the castle.
And then it dawns. I told him he didn’t come home.
Home. The place where someone lives permanently, particularly with a family member or spouse.
Like a coward, I attempt to backtrack on my confession. “I… I… I…” Giovanni’s brutal pounding won’t let me. He screws me senseless, readjusting my position every time the sweat on my neck dampens a smidge.
He never stops. He pushes me over the edge with a beautifully brutal intensity that proves what my head doesn’t want to acknowledge.
He owns me.