Chapter 37 Now & Forever #2
“Ah,” he breathed out. He kissed my head, and in the next breath, he had me in his arms, carrying me to the bathroom. I rubbed my arms while he ran hot water, the steam clinging to me like a lover—like he did. He stared at the water, his eyebrows pulling in.
I grinned at the perplexed look on his face and asked, “Something wrong?”
“I am not sure if Epsom salts are safe for you while pregnant. I will call Dr. Ponte to be sure.”
Ahh, yes. The good doctor, Alessandra Ponte, who met us in Switzerland as a favor to Uncle Tito.
For as much as she despised the family, she decided to join as my personal doctor after she set eyes on Massimo Leone Fausti.
I was sure he noticed her, but he was focused on reuniting with Chloe, the woman who was the mother of his son and almost his wife.
I wasn’t sure how this was all going to play out.
The doctor was clearly smitten with him.
Hundreds of men in the family were taken by her.
She was not only beautiful, but extremely smart, except maybe in love.
She didn’t realize, or maybe she had and didn’t care, that the one man she wanted was off the market—which made her stick around, and it seemed like the more Massimo ignored her, the more determined she became about stealing his attention.
I caught Rocco by the arm before he left the room to grab his phone. “It’s all right,” I said. “I can do bubble bath. That’s good enough to soak in.”
He nodded seriously and went to grab it from a cabinet I kept it in. He tipped the bottle over, and the pearlescent soap poured into the water. The gourmand scents of almond, brown sugar, and fig floated through the air while pearls bubbled to the surface.
He helped me into the massive clawfoot tub that we had commissioned to match the stone of the bathroom. It fit the two of us. I slowly sat in the water, and when the warmth of it touched my sore thighs and between my legs, a breath left my mouth in a hiss before I sighed in pleasure.
Rocco only let my hand go after I was fully down, and my breasts were submerged in the fragrant water. He went to my vanity and grabbed a hair tie. I didn’t have much to put up, as far as length, but he tied it up for me. Small tendrils fell around my face and stuck to my skin.
I waved my hand over the bubbles softly. “Will you join me?”
He made a motion toward the tub. He was making a space gesture. “You will have to control yourself, my wife.”
I threw back my head and roared with laughter.
He blinked at me before he smiled.
“I’ll try.” I sighed. “But you’d understand how hard it is if you were me.” I was being totally serious. “Get in.” I scooped some bubbles up and blew them at him. “This tub is too big without you, and the water feels too cold because of it.”
He nodded and stepped in.
My mouth fell open a little.
I’d never seen anyone like him before, anyone who could measure up, and in a family that all resembled each other, I knew he was someone special to me.
But not even Adonis could do his form justice.
I’d seen all the statues and portraits depicted of him, but…
I was certain no artist had ever seen Rocco Fausti before.
He was muscular in all the right places, not an ounce of fat on him, and his face was heartbreakingly gorgeous.
His eyes?
Those eyes…
They brought into our tub the Mediterranean Sea during summer, when the water shimmers and becomes a color to dream peaceful dreams about.
Paired with his dark hair and olive skin…my breath picked up.
He slipped down into the water, and the suds came to his chest— his seat opposite mine was deeper.
Our legs commingled underneath the water, and our skin slid easily against the others.
I swam over to him some, keeping most of my body underneath the water.
The steam was heady in the air, as was the scent of my bubble bath and his rich natural scent, but I wanted to be submerged in the warmth.
It was relaxing my muscles, and until Rocco pointed it out, I’d had no idea how much I needed it. I moved my arms like a swimmer would.
He slid his hair back on each side, then got to work on washing me.
It was his turn next, and I made him turn around so I could wash his back.
Using a loofah, I gently slid the rough plant from one side of his shoulder to the next.
All his muscles worked as he held onto to the rim of the tub and allowed his head to hang.
“You have a lot of weight on your shoulders,” I whispered.
“The shoulders do not matter to me,” he whispered. “My back was created to not bend or break. My heart? The heart in my chest thrives off love, but without it, it was starving—close to death. This.” He touched his chest. “This is where I felt my weakness the most.”
“Now?” I whispered.
“My heart is even stronger than my shoulders, Amora.”
“Bene,” I barely breathed out. His skin puckered, and he shivered.
I’d been meaning to ask him a question, but after everything we’d had to deal with, and then the holidays with the family…the right time just hadn’t come. I could’ve brought it up when we got home, but…I hadn’t felt like talking about it.
We only had a week until the meeting with Francesco, and this was one I wasn’t attending. But it made me think about the future and what we hadn’t discussed since it happened.
I concentrated on the loofah and the strokes my hand was making as I said, “When are we going out to formal events again, Rocco? I know you have to attend them. Even Maggie Beautiful goes along with Luca.”
I’d never seen them fling rotten fruit at her before, but…that was probably because Luca’s “for show” wife, Bonfilia, hadn’t been all that loved.
Still, I demanded to go back, to hold my head up like I did before and look them all in the eyes. I wouldn’t cower from those people or my husband’s life. Those people didn’t know me or what my husband’s life looked like from the inside.
My husband rolled his shoulders, and in this moment, it was almost a flinch. Like I’d hauled off and hit him between the shoulder blades, close to where the neck meets the spine.
He huffed but said nothing.
“We are going back, right?” I pressed.
He rolled his shoulders again. “No one even breathes wrong in my wife’s direction. No one disrespects my wife.”
“I get that, but…” I didn’t know if it was something in his tone or just a wife’s intuition, but…the way he said, no one even breathes wrong in my wife’s direction, no one disrespects my wife, stopped me from continuing down the conversation path I was going.
Slowly, I set the loofah to the side and took a deep breath, exhaling. I wasn’t sure if I was ready or not for his truth.
It hadn’t even dawned on me until then that…some of the angry faces in that crowd, that I’d never forget, I would never see again because my husband handled the issue in the only way he saw fit.
By bloodying his hands for me.
Then the night in Switzerland came back to me, the night Thandie showed up, and Ermanno’s positioning was mentioned.
Positioning.
Rocco was using Ermanno to keep tabs on me.
I said this out loud.
He stood from the tub, hot water sluicing down his body, steam rising from his skin like his temper had become a physical thing.
“Ermanno belongs to the Fausti family. He wears the last name. He is a solider.”
“Not yet!” I shouted and it echoed around the bathroom.
My husband wrapped a towel around his waist and stood in front me like a solider would, except his eyes weren’t straight ahead but directly on me. The intensity in them was unnerving a bit, but I held my ground.
Hazel against a green so spellbinding, it was hard to keep my focus, but a maddening pulse in the background told me I had a right to feel the way I did, just like he had the right to feel the way he did.
“He’s young, Rocco,” I said. “I understand being a Fausti. He has to grow up with rules and learn to obey them.” I waved a band. “But he also has to know people care for him, even the men in his life. He’s lost so much!”
“Sì, he lost his mamma, and that is something for him to grieve privately, in a space in his heart that is protected and hidden from the rest of the world, but he is a Fausti.”
“So you keep saying! But does being a Fausti mean the men in this family can’t have a little compassion toward a…
smaller Fausti who needs it? If you would’ve made him my chaperone—fine, he needs that!
But you went beyond that. He’s one of my protectors.
Oh, and you didn’t even bother to ask me about Thandie! ”
“Explain this to me.”
“She’s my friend, and I get that she needs to still do her job because it’s all she knows and it’s fulfilling to her, but it worries me that she’s putting her life on the line for mine.”
“She requested this of me. We do not have women soldiers. It is not traditional in my family. We honor women. It goes against what we stand for to put them in harm’s way.
This is why her husband is battling within himself.
His love for his wife is at war with her needs.
This situation pleased everyone—everyone except for my wife. ”
“Because you didn't even ask me. I don’t feel right about her putting her life on the line for mine. She’s my friend.”
He couldn’t seem to grasp why that would worry me even more.
“You will speak to her then. Either way, you will be protected, and so shall she. Her husband will be her security.”
That made me pause for a moment.
Rocco cared enough about Thandie to have her husband watching her back while they all watched mine.
But it didn’t detract from the fact that he hadn’t talked to me before deciding.
Also, the Ermanno situation. I felt he was more than a tag-along to run back and tell my husband my everyday routine.
Rocco easily knew that sort of thing anyway.