Chapter Ten #3
“That woman Chiara invited tonight… Rosa, I think,” Mimi mumbled, impressions from the evening coming back to her now.
Instantly, Renzo tensed. “What about her?”
Mimi pulled back casually, though she kept her cheek on his arm.
“You could barely stand to look at her.”
“You read me well, cara.” He turned to lie on his back, though one arm stayed wrapped around her. “I couldn’t stand to look at her.”
“May I ask why?”
“Rosa was my best friend once. My first lover. The woman I loved. The woman I thought I would marry and build a family with.” There was no bitterness in his words anymore, though. Only a strange resignation, even emptiness.
“Oh,” Mimi said, as if the one word could convey her quaking insides. Clawing fingers of jealousy gripped her. The sensation was so alien to her that she rubbed a hand over her chest.
And then she remembered what she had just said. Renzo hadn’t even looked in this woman’s direction. He hadn’t left her side even for a minute. He was nothing like his father, she reminded herself.
And yet it was his highly developed sense of duty, his version of honor that would forbid him from even looking at the woman when he was married. Didn’t matter if his feelings had been revived for her or not.
“I’m sorry I asked about her then,” she said, trying so hard to not probe further.
“Don’t be. Your curiosity is natural. She’s Chiara’s close friend. She got divorced a couple of years ago. My sister’s been trying to set us up again.”
“And she invited her tonight even though you’re now married and have a son,” Mimi said, her own fury creeping into her words.
It was one thing for his sister to tell Mimi that she didn’t like her.
A whole other to ambush him by inviting the girl he’d loved once.
“And Chiara dared to call Pia manipulative.”
As fast as it came, her fury tapped out, leaving her with more questions. To hell with Chiara. All she wanted to know was why Renzo had been so angry at the sight of that girl.
She scooted up into a sitting position and dragged the duvet to her chest, suddenly feeling far too restless. Damn her sister-in-law for ruining her first post-orgasmic haze with her husband.
Renzo followed her, his movements far more graceful than her jerky lumbering. “It will not happen again.”
“I’m angrier on your behalf than mine.” Mimi bit her lip, hating that she needed to ask the question. That she needed to know beyond doubt if he had any remnant affection for Rosa. “I… Did you consider getting back with her, Renzo, before Luca and I ruined your plans?”
Dark anger flashed in Renzo’s eyes as he turned to face her. Even amid the muddle of her thoughts, Mimi couldn’t not notice the sculpted musculature of his chest. Or how his olive skin gleamed and rippled when he moved.
God, she wanted to worship him with her lips and tongue and fingers and all of her. She wanted to whisper her admission of love into every sinew and bone, until he was overflowing with it.
“You are asking the wrong question, cara.”
The darkness remained in his gaze as she hurriedly pulled up hers. Though the anger transformed to a self-satisfied smirk. “You don’t have to preen that I’m drooling over you, Renzo. This is the first time in my life that I’m so completely and utterly…horny over a man. Give me a break.”
Grabbing the duvet toga-style, she tried to get off the bed when instead she found herself in his lap, his arm a steel band under her breasts. She squirmed, felt his hardness poke at her behind, heard his near-pained grunt and settled in with a huff.
“Stop moving, bella.” His desire colored his words with rich texture.
Sinking into him, she thought back to his comment. Past the new current of anxiety and awareness in her belly that reminded her she was so vulnerable against him now. Wrong question, he’d said… “Why did you and Rosa break up?”
He chuckled softly at her ear. The sound traveled through her, settling deep into her core, planting roots. “Have I ever told you that I find your mind as arousing as your body?”
Mimi turned, kissed him and mumbled, “No. Tell me, please. I will never mention her again.”
He dipped his head until his chin rested on her shoulder.
“When I was twenty-one, it came out that our family was in massive debt. The business was crumbling. Investors were pulling out. My father, whether through sheer stupidity or negligence, ran everything to ground. Rosa’s father found out and told her.
She sent me a message through her brother that she was canceling our engagement. ”
Mimi turned in his arms again and pressed her cheek to his bare chest. His heart thudded under her ears in a steady beat while hers…
ached for him. No wonder he’d been so predisposed to dislike Pia too.
While her sister hadn’t worshipped status and wealth particularly, she had cared about the superficial stuff more than her own or Santo’s happiness. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Rosa taught me a valuable lesson I never forgot, motivated me enough to clean up my father’s mess. It took me more than a decade, but I fixed everything. Rebuilt the resorts into a luxury brand.”
“I don’t understand it,” Mimi said, her confusion seeping into her words.
“From what Massimo told me at the party, it seems Rosa’s and Chiara’s husbands went into business together, and it all sank.
You literally had to rescue your brother-in-law.
Weren’t you at least a little happy to have her see you like this?
To rub your success and power and wealth in her snotty face? ”
He laughed so hard that Mimi shook along with him. “What a bloodthirsty little heart you have, cara. I like you more and more.”
Mimi shrugged, even as every inch of her thrummed at his praise. At the glint of admiration in his tone. “Instead, you were…distressed to see her. You’re sure you have no lingering feelings for her?”
His teeth bit down on her earlobe, sending a lick of flaming sensation down to her sensitized core. Mimi gasped and writhed in his lap as he followed it up by licking at the hurt he caused.
“No feelings for her, cara. I will not have you doubt my word or my commitment to this.”
“I don’t, Renzo,” she said, mouth falling open in a long gravelly moan as he cupped her breasts. “But I—”
She never got to finish her thought or the sentence as he spread her thighs wide open on his lap and dipped his fingers into her core.
“The way you’re dripping, I’m not sure this can be termed as punishment, Mimi.” One swipe of a long finger followed, from her clit to slit, and Mimi sobbed at the sharp avalanche of sensations pooling there. This time, his teeth dug into her shoulder. “Maybe I should stop.”
“Please don’t,” she said, grasping his wrist, making his palm fall flat against her mound.
“Then we’re agreed that there will be no discussion about that woman?”
Mimi knew, in the back recesses of her mind where a figment of rationale persisted, that he wasn’t answering her question. That he was seducing her into forgetting the small niggling doubt she had raised.
But, God, she was helpless against his voice, against him, against the skillful strokes of his fingers. Against loving him so completely that all she wanted was the moment to go on forever.
His fingers pulled away with a tap against her clit that had her angling her hips into his hand. “I didn’t hear your answer, Mimi.”
“No talking about her ever again,” Mimi whispered, falling back against him. Every cell in her, every inch of her being seemed to dwell at the point where he stroked her again. In clever, mindful circles that drove her out of her skin. So skilled already at what would push her to the edge.
Her climax shimmered out of reach, teasing her, taunting her. “I don’t know if I can, Renzo.”
“Yes, bella, you can. Your body sings for me, Mimi. Do you know what a turn-on that is? Do you know what it does to me when you don’t hide your desire for me? When you respond to my every touch like you were the most sensitive instrument ever crafted?”
With each searing word, he played her like a maestro. And Mimi followed him up the spiraling steps, her mind, her body, her soul all his to control.
His to protect.
His to…love. If only he wanted to.
Raking her fingers through his hair, she sobbed at the intrusive thought. Reality ruining her jagged climb toward completion. “More, Renzo. Please.”
He gave her everything she begged for and more.
A heady cocktail of sweat and sex filled her nostrils.
“Come for me, bella. Because then, I’m going to take you up on your offer and use your hands.
Right on this bed. You’ll be too sore for the rest of the night, sì?
So maybe I’ll paint your breasts with my—”
Mimi clutched his wrist, arched up and off him like a bowstring pulled taut, and shattered into a thousand fragments of nothingness. And the man she utterly adored held her through it, praising her, soothing her comedown, kissing her.
As if she were precious to him too. As if she were the woman he had chosen for himself and not by a cruel twist of fate.