Chapter Twelve #3
He pressed his palm to my cheek. ‘Your mamma sounds very selfish,’ he murmured, the stormy expression softening with sympathy. ‘I am sorry for this. My mother was selfish too, but she paid a heavy price.’
‘How did she?’ I asked, surprised and moved by his outraged reaction to what I’d confided about my childhood, but also eager to learn more about his.
I had once assumed he’d led a charmed life, been spoilt and indulged as the son of a mafia boss.
I knew now he hadn’t been… But I wanted to know so much more about what had made him choose this life so I could begin to understand it.
He frowned, and I knew I’d crossed a line I was not meant to cross. But when he just looked at me blankly, I made myself push.
‘Why did she run away from your father?’
‘Because she discovered herself pregnant with me…and my father was Salvatore Rocco, the boss of the Rocco Syndicate before me. She was scared for the safety of her unborn child.’
So Vito’s father had been a mafia boss, too. Was it possible Vito had regrets about the life he’d been born into?
I soon realised I was way off the mark there, though, when his features hardened.
‘She ran from the man who loved her and would have protected us, into the arms of a man who beat us both,’ he sneered, his expression flat and unmoving. But the muscle in his jaw tightened, which meant he was struggling to control his reaction.
‘This man hurt you? And your mother?’ I asked, horrified, as I recalled the scars I had noticed on his body. So many scars, which I had dismissed as an integral part of the violent life he led. But what if they had been inflicted when he was still a child?
‘I’m so sorry, Vito,’ I murmured, devastated not just by the picture he had painted, but how wrong my assumptions had been about his past.
‘Sorry means nothing, Mia,’ he said, his tone brittle, his expression carefully devoid of emotion.
‘She was sorry, too, for running to him—uno poliziotto.’ He spat the word—which I assumed must mean policeman—as if it tasted foul.
‘She thought he would protect her and me. But he was not a man. He was a monster. She killed herself to escape him.’
‘Oh Vito…’ I whispered, distraught at what he was revealing.
That he still looked so unmoved only made the horror of his childhood more disturbing.
Was this the real reason Vito had no respect for the law?
Not because he profited from living outside it, but because a man who had been sworn to uphold it had hurt him and driven his mother to suicide?
‘I can’t even imagine how terrifying that must have been for you…
’ I whispered, tears sliding down my face now. To have no one? How had he survived?
He brushed a tear away with his thumb, the wary expression making my heart break even more.
‘I do not require your pity, Mia,’ he said. ‘My father found me and showed me how to make him stop.’ I had no idea what he meant by that, and I didn’t want to guess.
‘How old were you when your father rescued you?’ I asked.
Was it any wonder he had grown up to be such a ruthless man if his formative years had been spent in hell? But did this also explain why he had been so determined to protect me and our baby? Because there had been no one to protect him?
He shrugged, the movement stiff. ‘Ten, eleven. I do not know for sure. We did not celebrate birthdays in that house.’
I pressed a hand to my mouth to stop the gulping sob that wanted to come out, which I knew he wouldn’t appreciate.
My mother, however careless, however selfish and thoughtless and foolish, had never hurt us intentionally.
And she’d never forgotten to celebrate our birthdays—even if it usually meant a last-minute dash to the corner shop to buy a kids’ magazine with a toy attached.
By the time she’d run off, she’d had a serious substance abuse problem, and while that didn’t excuse her carelessness, it did explain it.
He ran his thumb across my collarbone where my pulse pounded, his eyes darkening.
‘Why are you sad, Mia? This was long ago. And I made him pay.’
I nodded, aware he was uncomfortable with having told me so much. I didn’t want him to regret it, though. So I forced a smile to my lips. ‘I’m glad.’
His eyebrows rose, and he chuckled. But when his hands moved down to slide under the T-shirt he’d given me after our shower, I lifted my arms around his shoulders.
He pressed his lips to my neck, kissed the pulse point, even as emotion bombarded me.
I threaded my fingers into his hair and brought his mouth to mine, suddenly keen to lift the boulder off my chest that was making me think of him as a child, alone and brutalised. He wasn’t that boy anymore, and I needed to remember that.
‘Nothing matters now,’ he said, his hands rising to cup my bottom under the shirt. ‘Nothing but this,’ he added.
I drew back to lift the T-shirt over my head, leaving me naked but for my panties.
His gaze became dark with need, his expression hard with hunger as he caressed my stomach, then cradled my breasts, thumbing the rigid tips into hard, aching peaks.
‘Yes…’ I sobbed, relishing the feel of those possessive hands on my body.
He scooped me into his arms and strode to the bed. Placing me on it, he reached behind him to tug off his own shirt, then dragged down his sweatpants. The heavy erection bounced free.
‘On your knees, Mia,’ he growled. ‘I want your mouth on my cock.’
I did as he demanded, the heat building fast, knowing he was trying to control the situation by bringing our connection back to the sex, by dominating me again.
But as I scrambled onto my knees, wrapped my fingers around his thick length and swirled my tongue over the tip, gathering the salty drops, I revelled in his shudder of response, no longer afraid of the emotions battering me.
This wasn’t the only thing that mattered. He’d trusted me with information I suspected he rarely revealed to anyone. And that meant something.
Now I understood that his ruthlessness, his dominance, his arrogance and cynicism were all skills he’d needed to destroy a monster. How could I judge him for them when he’d used them to survive?
He plunged his fingers into my hair to press himself deep. I let the heat take me, envelop me, enjoying my ability to make him ache the way he made me ache.
He drew back moments later, positioning me on the bed to plunge to the hilt, stretching me wide, and forced me to another earth-shattering orgasm as he rode us both to completion…
Afterwards as I held him, my fingertips grazed the scars on his back.
So many scars.
Emotion swelled as it occurred to me his dominance was one of the things I had come to love about him—and not just in bed.
Now I knew why. A part of me, that secret part of me who was still the abandoned little girl, had always wanted someone to protect me, even though I’d learned to protect myself.
That need had felt like a weakness I had to hide or ignore, but with Vito, it didn’t feel like a weakness anymore…
Our connection had always been strong physically, and all the more overwhelming because of it. But why couldn’t our connection be a part of something more, now we had the beginnings of trust?
So much had happened in the past five months—and especially in the past twenty-four hours. I needed time to process it all. But why not use the weeks ahead to nurture the bubble of hope now lodged under my breastbone?
The glimmering cloud of afterglow made anything seem possible.
Perhaps we’d both always needed someone to nurture us. To protect us. And if Vito could protect me, why shouldn’t I protect him—from the darkness he had lived in for so long?