Chapter 25 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
As one of the many corridors of the Caruso compound stretches before me, I retrieve my phone from my pocket and bring up the surveillance feed for my room.
It’s instinct now—habit. The screen flickers before it presents an empty room.
The sheets look rumpled, as if Valentina left in a hurry.
Before my panic gets away from me, I notice the steam curling under the bathroom door.
It licks at the wooden floorboards like smoke and switches my unease to need.
Valentina is showering.
What more incentive do I need than that to shake off my restless mood?
As my pulse kicks up, I increase my pace. I love taking Valentina hard and fast in the shower, but I also like taking care of her. I crave her shy smiles when she’s lavished like a princess as equally as I do the fiery vixen who emerges when she wraps her lips around my cock.
I’m about to enter the wing where the bedrooms are when Valeria steps into my path. She gleams at me like a predator detecting the fresh blood of a virgin as her hand shoots up to my chest like she barreled me over.
“Vanni,” she purrs, her smile too over the top for the hour.
When her nails graze my chest, the dangling charms hooked on them cool my skyrocketing temperature. They’re similar to the charms you find on a bracelet, and they clink together when I snatch up her hand, yank it off my chest, and then drop it faster than a bomb.
She acts ignorant of my fury about being manhandled without permission.
It’s a performance she knows well. “The charms are meant to boost fertility.” Her eyes gleam with fake sweetness, and her voice is syrupy.
“Despite everything that’s happened, I’ve been praying with a local minister for Valentina’s pregnancy to be successful.
You deserve an heir. It means everything to you. ”
My veins ice over as I work my jaw side to side. “No,” I say flatly. “It doesn’t.”
Her brow lifts, exposing the surprise glittering in her eyes. “Of course it does. It’s all you’ve ever wanted.”
“Not with Valentina,” I bite out. “With her, it’s about more than that.”
Her smile falters as confusion clouds her perfect face.
There’s no denying Valeria’s attractiveness.
She’s a beautiful woman who could have more than one schmuck eating out of her palm.
I’ll just never be one of them. I’ve dated self-absorbed women before.
They’ve never held my interest long enough to go back for seconds.
God invented kindness to be given freely, not traded. There’s strength in a woman who is both kind and confident—especially when she proudly owns every inch of herself.
Just thinking about Valentina’s luscious body and the confidence it yields thickens my cock. I love how her beauty feels alive under my hands when I grip it during a marathon fuck, and I’m done pretending otherwise.
“Giovanni—”
Valeria’s pleading tone rots in the air behind me when I sidestep her and continue down the hall.
I’m not solely racing away because the longer I converse with Valeria the less time I’ll have to clean Valentina’s skin with my tongue.
It’s to show her she has no power in this situation. No influence.
Even if she is the mother of my child, she is not the narrator of my story.
Sunlight spills across the floorboards when I enter my room at the speed of a rocket launching into space.
Then disappointment hammers me when I spot Valentina in the corner of the space.
She’s already dressed. Her hair is damp, and her skin is glowing from the shower products the head maid purchased specifically for her.
My cock hardens while recalling how many times I’ve tasted her bodywash over the past week, but the euphoria it instigates is short-lived since her eyes won’t meet mine, no matter how hard I strive for eye contact.
“I need to go.” She speaks fast, like the words might vanish if she doesn’t spit them out. “Work called. I finally got a shift. Because I missed so many last week, Alessandro rostered me on for a day shift. The tips will be less, but anything is better than nothing, right?”
I grit my teeth, stunned she’d lie to me. We have blockers up to stop our phones from being tapped. She can FaceTime her mother and get messages via the same app, but standard calls are impossible to receive within the compound’s walls without a specially designed phone.
Her boss also told her to take all the time she needs when we popped into the pub to rearrange a handful of shifts that didn’t correspond with her mother’s new treatment plan. He might have been fearful of my warning glare, but that doesn’t alter the facts.
Valentina is lying to me.
Lying is usually punishable by death. Valentina won’t suffer the same consequences.
Doesn’t make my frustration any less, though.
“You don’t need to work.”
“I can’t pay you back if I don’t work.” My knuckles crack when the unease in her expression places my anger on a very steep cliff. “I also can’t just sit here while you—” She bites back the remainder of her reply, but I hear it anyway. While you do everything.
Not wanting to push our exchange anywhere close to how I usually conduct an interrogation, I tread carefully. “What’s going on, dolcezza?”
Her eyes glisten, and for a second, her armor cracks. “I need to make sure I can still stand on my own.” Angrily, she brushes a tear off her cheek. “And that I can survive without you.”
Her admission guts me. She doesn’t have to consider a life without me in it. I’ll carry the world on my shoulders for her if she asks.
But then I remember I can’t control her.
I can only support her.
So instead of pushing, I nod. “Fine.” My voice is rough and low. “We always have a driver on standby. He’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”
The relief that blisters across her beautiful face is painful to watch. Turmoil replaces her relief when she grabs her bag and brushes her lips against mine. She whispers, “Bye,” like she’s leaving forever, before she disappears into the hallway.
I reach for my jacket two seconds later. The chase won’t be as exciting since Valentina’s fear is genuine this time, but I’ll never skip an opportunity to catch her.
Valentina is already at the car when I catch her. “I’ve got it, Marco.”
After dipping his chin, the driver stops rounding the hood to open Valentina’s door.
When I open the door for her, Valentina’s lips part as if she wants to argue, but not a word spills from her plump mouth. Maybe she knows better. Or perhaps she knows even with the chase being short, it will have the same result.
She ran, and I caught her.
That will only ever end one way.
After assisting Valentina into the back seat, I slide in behind her and close the door. The scent of her rapidly building arousal fills the SUV’s cab when I jab the button above our heads.
The privacy partition hums until the driver’s head disappears behind tinted glass.
Privacy.
Control.
Just the two of us.
I yank at my tie when the heat blooming from Valentina becomes too stifling to ignore as she finally returns my gaze.
“I didn’t run from you.” Her tone is steady like she’s laying down a truth that can’t be bent. “You gave me permission to leave.”
“Semantics.”
“Giovanni…” There’s no conviction in her husky delivery of my name. No power. This is exactly what she wanted. She wanted me to chase her. Now I merely need to work out why.
“What happened between last night and this morning that made you believe you need to ponder a world without me in it?”
She shifts her gaze to the scenery whizzing past her window. “Nothing.”
Almost cruelly, I seize her wrist and yank her across the cab until her chest flattens against my shoulder and our teeth clash. I kiss her hungrily. Violently. I take, take, and take until the healthy rise and fall of her chest grazes my arm with her erect nipples and she’s breathless with need.
My lips on the shell of her ear send a trail of goose bumps down her spine, not to mention the words I speak. “Take your panties off. I’ll never make it through an entire shift without reaching for my gun if I ruin them so badly you have to work without them.”
“Gio—”
“Now, Valentina.”
She’s torn but also horny. The rapid incline of her pulse announces this, as does the scent that plumes into the air when she slowly rises to her knees to answer my demand.
With my hands stabilizing her sways, she pulls up her skirt until it resembles a belt, then tugs down her panties, which are shadowed with wetness.
I love that my kisses drench her so much that I can take her without preparation and not feel guilty about hurting her.
Once her pussy is bare and glistening, I jerk my head to her long-sleeved shirt. “Now your shirt. Let me see those fantastic tits.”
Dark locks swish against her back when she shakes her head.
I’m about to remind her that she can have the control anywhere outside of the bedroom, but her every want, need, and desire inside it are mine, but her backbone rises too quickly.
“No.” I’m so obsessed with the confidence in her tone that I can only stare at her in awe when she adds, “The drive to town only takes fifteen minutes. I want your cock pounding inside me for every one of them.”
I wordlessly confirm I’m on board with her plan by rocking my hips upward, stroking myself against her wet heat. The yearning glowing in her eyes hides the restlessness I’ve yet to combat. Still, I act oblivious.
I’ll get the truth out of her. I just have to be buried a minimum of nine inches first.
With my cock hurriedly removed from my pants, which are now huddled around my ankles, and her knees hugging my thighs, Valentina grips the grab bar she reached for earlier before slowly lowering herself onto my cock, inch by fucking inch.
My thighs bunch when she swivels her hips, opening herself up to me. It feels amazing, but since she’s a couple of inches off the nine required to push the narrative of our exchange, I clamp my hand over her mouth, then use my free hand to tug her down two more inches.
She’s almost too snug, but the sparks the tight fit prompt are deliciously arrogant.
Valentina’s mangled scream dots my hand with condensation when I flex my cock, ensuring she knows exactly how deep I am, and then I lower my hand to her clit.
Her whimper when I roll the nervy bud with my thumb tingles through my balls.
It’s the desperate noise of a woman who hasn’t climaxed in months, as if the endless orgasms I’ve given her the prior three days were merely a prelude to how combustible our exchanges can be.
“Go slow,” I order when she gradually ascends, withdrawing at the same painstaking pace she used to welcome my cock inside.
She follows my command to a tee… until she reaches the wide girth of my crown. Then she slams down like the monster dick her sexy curves will forever inspire isn’t girthy enough to slice her in two.
“Christ, dolcezza.” My hands shoot for her hips as cum gathers at the base of my dick.
I love when she loses control and isn’t ashamed by it, but this isn’t how our exchange was meant to be.
I’m meant to be bending her will, not the other way around.
“You feel so fucking good sucking at my cock and wordlessly pleading for its cum.” Her expression reveals the luscious soreness rocketing through her core when I meet her movements, pump for pump.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? My cum coating the walls of your pussy and ass. You want me any way you can get me.”
I palm her ass and squeeze when she nods.
“But that isn’t all you want, is it, dolcezza? You also want me to chase you and bow at your feet.”
Again and again, Valentina rises and falls on my cock, accepting a little more each time. Her pelvis grinds against my V muscle as the hue of her excitement spreads from her cheeks to her neck. She’s almost too tight, but my body ignores the bite of discomfort.
“Answer me.”
Our moans align when I fuck her harder and faster. I drive in deep, stuffing in every hardened inch of my cock until pain flitters in her eyes along with desire.
“If that’s what you want, there’s no shame in admitting that.
If you want me to burn the castle, I’ll burn the castle.
If you want me to terrorize the world, I’ll terrorize the world.
” I grunt when the walls of her pussy clamp around my thrusting cock.
“If you want me on my knees, kissing your feet, I’ll do that, too.
You don’t need to run to achieve any of those things, Valentina. You only need to ask.”
My confession has her body going pliable under my touch and her head thrusting back.
Or was it because I said her name instead of her nickname?
As her hands brace the roof of the SUV and she thrusts her fantastic yet still-covered breasts in my face, shudder after shudder works through her wary muscles.
Her body convulses for several long seconds before the most beautiful expression I’ve ever seen crosses her face. She’s caught in the throes of ecstasy, and I’m barely one step behind.
I just have one matter to take care of first.
Returning the confidence a soon-to-be dead man stole from her.