Chapter 12 #2
Astonishment flared. “What, you could kill someone you gave an orgasm to?”
“No, that I gave you your first.”
“Why would that be a surprise? I was a virgin.”
“That doesn’t mean…” Incredulous, he lifted his head. “You’ve never brought yourself off?”
He loved that her cheeks coloured so deliciously. “It… No.”
“Have you tried?”
“It never occurred to me to. I always think of it as something men do.”
He was about to assure her that women could enjoy it too, but stopped himself. She would ask how he knew, and his answer would upset her. He never forgot the upset in her eyes when she’d thought he was comparing her to his past lovers after they’d had sex the first time.
That Francesca was still a virgin in the art of self-pleasure…
Lacing his fingers through her hair, he imagined her making herself orgasm for the first time. Unbelievably, the image alone was enough to make his loins tighten. “You should try it.”
“One day,” she muttered.
Rolling her onto her back, he captured her eyes in a sensuous gleam. “I can teach you.”
Her cheeks burned into another delicious flame. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’d be too embarrassed.”
“To masturbate in front of me?” Bending his head, he captured a beautiful breast in his mouth and languidly sucked it.
God, he didn’t think he could ever resist sucking her breasts.
They were exquisite, not just in their beauty but in the effect they had on Francesca when he took them in his mouth.
She was just so damned responsive, as sexually needy of him as he was of her.
“And yet you are not too shy to let me kiss you everywhere…”
“That’s different,” she protested weakly.
“Of course. But you were shy to start with.” He moved his attention to her other breast, encircling the peak until she’d hardened, and trailed his fingers down her abdomen, and brushed through the soft hair between her legs. Gently, he rubbed a finger on her hidden nub.
Lifting himself onto his knees, he spread her legs and knelt between them. “Would you find it less embarrassing if I were to go first?”
He’d thought he was spent. Thought she was spent.
The hardening of his cock and the arousal flickering in her eyes proved how very wrong those assumptions had been.
Gripping his burgeoning erection, he leaned forward a little to rest a hand lightly over one of her gorgeous, succulent breasts, and began to masturbate himself.
As he made himself fully hard, her eyes widened, the pupils dilating.
“You find this erotic?” he asked huskily.
Her plump lips pulled in and released.
He drifted the hand on her breast back down to her pubis. Her nub wasn’t so hidden now…
His lascivious stare locked on hers, Gino continued to masturbate while using languid precision to bring her to swollen arousal. Only when she began to squirm and writhe did he move his hand away from her.
“Now you must touch yourself,” he whispered as he tightened his grip around his shaft and increased the pressure. “Let me see you give yourself pleasure as you’re seeing me.”
Her breathing heavy yet shallow, her eyes not leaving his, she slowly lifted her hand and caressed her belly before tiptoeing her fingers lower, dipping between her legs.
“That’s it, Chicca…” He groaned. Suddenly it was a struggle to speak. “Touch yourself as I touched you.”
Her fingers fondled between her legs, tentatively exploring until her shoulders made the slightest of jolts and her eyes pulsed.
“Feels good?” he managed to drag out.
Her lips parted and made the lightest of moans. The hand between her legs was moving rhythmically.
Eyes half-closed, she lifted her thighs a little. Another moan escaped her mouth.
He groaned and pumped his fist harder, placing his palm next to her arm to hover over her. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he breathed tightly.
A hand locked on the back of his neck and then she lifted her head, bringing her face to his. Gazing at him with glazed eyes, she began to rock against him, her soft moans deepening as she pleasured herself with more assurance.
Gino was now masturbating his cock furiously, the head jabbing into Francesca’s belly, fully aware that just below where he was masturbating, she was caressing herself, fully aware that she was getting closer and closer…
And so was he. His loins were on fire, the flames burning through him. He fought the release his body clamoured for, fought it and fought it right until she went rigid and her lips parted in a wide O.
With a strangled groan that seemed to come from the base of his throat, Gino let himself go, releasing himself over her belly while her body convulsed with the force of her climax.
Their mouths fused for a barely-there kiss before he was sagging into her arms, his cheek on her breast, breathing heavily as the thrills from his orgasm continued to thrum through him.
Francesca was on Gino’s office sofa pretending to read her book again, and trying very hard to forget that she only had two more nights left with him. The hours of night sped by, but the hours of day, the hours when any hint of their private feelings was forbidden, crawled.
It had to be this way. If her family learned what had gone on between them…
“Are you okay?”
His softly delivered question had her darting her stare to him. She tried very hard not to stare at him. Sometimes it was like trying to fight the tide.
She smiled. “I’m good, thank you.” Because she was. For all her fears over the future and her mushrooming feelings for him, she would rather be in an office unable to touch him than anywhere without him. Very soon, she would be everywhere without him.
In a few days, it would all be over. They would be over. She would return to her family and spend the rest of her life praying before bed for Gino to still be breathing when the sun came up.
Stop it, she chided herself as he returned the smile before putting his attention back on the screen in front of him.
It was only because he was so flipping wonderful in bed that she felt the way she did about him, and he was only so flipping wonderful in bed because of all the women he’d been with.
She was just one of many, so many he didn’t remember half their names.
When he returned her to her family, her face would quickly fade from his memory. He’d told her that himself.
And yet, for everything she continually reminded herself of, when they were in bed together, it felt like being in heaven. Not just the sex side of things, either.
Did he do that with all his lovers, she tortured herself by wondering.
Did he hold them in his arms after making love and just talk?
Did he knot his fingers in their hair? Stroke their arms?
Tell them about his parents? Tell them about the grandfather he was named for, who died from heart disease before he was fifty? Ask them questions about themselves?
But all talk firmly rooted in the past. The future was something neither of them mentioned. Not in any context.
They had no future together. It increasingly destroyed her to think Gino might have no future at all.
“What are we going to do when we finish eating?” Francesca asked brightly as they ate their dinner in the kitchen that evening. “I’m assuming poker is still off the table?”
The biggest torture, she’d come to think, was eating in the kitchen together.
It was the only time they were physically close together publicly.
In the office, he stayed at his desk, and she stayed on the sofa.
His time was occupied with calls and reports and with his men coming in and out.
When they were alone, their gazes would continually find each other, but they never encroached the other’s personal space. It was just too dangerous.
Dining at the breakfast table was torture because physically, one stretch of her hand would allow her to touch him.
And she always wanted to touch him. The only way to get through it was to force brightness in her mind and conversation, but even that was dangerous because whenever she caught amusement in his stare, her heart warmed and heated the rest of her in a glow that felt so different to the glow of desire she carried like a never-ending candle inside her.
She felt the glow now, when the dark eyes she was coming to adore so much caught hers and crinkled at the sides, and he gave a low rumble of pained laughter. “I’m thinking of swearing off poker for good.”
“That’s a shame as I was thinking of turning professional.”
He had a drink of his wine. “Miss Marino, you would make a fortune.”
“I would, and it would be more exciting than being a tour guide.”
“I thought you enjoyed it?”
“Oh, I do, very much, but I have a feeling that when my evil kidnapper releases me, I won’t have a job to go back to, so it seems wise to prepare for an alternate career.”
His lips quirked at the sides. “Only a small difference between tourism and professional gambling.”
“That’s what I thought. The transition will be easy. My fluency in English means I’ll be able to make a killing in all the American tournaments too!”
Although the smile was still playing on his lips, the crinkles around his eyes had lessened. For all that Francesca was jesting, they both knew she would have to fight for any autonomy over her future. She’d had to fight for any autonomy she’d ever had.
“I’m sorry if my actions cause you to lose your job,” he said quietly.
“Don’t be. It’s not like I’ve been there very long, and if my family get their way, I’d have to give it up soon anyway…” Her words trailed off. The future she didn’t like to think of was inching ever closer. “It’s funny when you think about it,” she said with a small shrug.
“What is?”
“That I spent all those months after graduating begging to be allowed to go out and work, and then weeks after my parents finally gave in, I’m all set to lose it.”
“Why did you have to beg? You’re a fully grown woman…” A flare of amusement came into his eyes. “…and we both know you’re extremely good at getting your own way.”
She smiled wryly and had a sip of her wine.
“Gino, we live in the middle of nowhere, with no public transport. I had no way of getting anywhere without my parents’ help.
” She shook her head and expelled a sigh.
“I was only allowed to go to university on condition that my father escorted me to and from the lectures, and even that took me the whole of my last year at school to get them to agree to. Every bit of freedom I’ve ever had has been a fight.
My father taught me to drive on our land, but they wouldn’t let me have a car or drive any of theirs when I passed my test. I was never given an allowance.
I’ve always been entirely dependent on them and… ”
Francesca stopped short as a thought hit her.
“What is it, Chicca?” he asked into the hanging silence.
“How long have the talks between my family and the Ranieris been going on for?” she asked slowly.
His eyes narrowed. “To my knowledge, a month or so.”
“And my parents’ involvement?”
He hesitated before answering. “From the start.”
She felt the whole of her body sag.
“What’s wrong?”
She laughed bitterly. “Now it makes sense.”
“What does?”
“Their sudden agreement to me working.” She couldn’t believe it had taken her so long to work it out.
“I was so happy and relieved to have got my own way that I never stopped to think that their change of heart came overnight. I got up one morning, and they told me they’d arranged for me to start working at a local chateau as a tour guide.
They even bought me a car so I could drive myself there and back.
” Her eyes blurred with tears as the truth filled her in all its non-majestic glory.
“It was all a sop, wasn’t it? A tiny taste of freedom that just happened to get me out of the house while they worked out the details of the trade that’s my life. ”
He didn’t answer. He already knew all this.
A tear spilt down her cheek. She wiped it away and swallowed a breath in a futile attempt to keep the rest at bay.
“You know why I always buy my clothes online? Because my parents think it’s too dangerous for me to go shopping.
They’ve always wrapped me in cotton wool, much worse than they ever did with Artu.
All my life, I’ve had to deal with their paranoia that something bad would happen to me, and now they’re the ones colluding to sell me into marriage with a monster.
” The tears wouldn’t stop falling. “All I have ever wanted is my freedom, and when I think I’m finally getting it, it’s all a lie, just smoke and mirrors to distract me. ”
Rubbing the tears away, Francesca had a gulp of her wine and closed her eyes, breathing deeply to calm herself. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
His mouth was set in a grim line. “You have nothing to apologise for.”
“What’s he like? This Elio Ranieri? Please tell me. Would you allow your daughter to marry him? Your sister?”
“I don’t have a daughter or a sister.”
“But if you did? And please don’t tell me I shouldn’t care about your opinion; we have long passed that stage. If you had them, would you allow your daughter or sister marry that man?”
His sigh was heavy, and when he looked back into her eyes, she swore she could see a weight in his. “No, Chicca. If you belonged to me, I wouldn’t let you anywhere near him.”