Chapter Six
Gaetano
As morning’s light streamed in through my bedroom window, I lingered in bed, admiring Gabriella’s hair splayed over her pillow and half of mine.
The feathery tips contrasted sharply with the white linens, dark and glossy as ink, like her impossibly full lashes against her pale cheek.
When I’d first seen her at Buono Come Il Mamas, her rich chestnut hair had been stacked on top of her head, clearly full, but hiding its full length.
Seeing her hair down, I was surprised such a small woman could carry so much weight on her head.
I stroked the loose silky strands, smoothing them into a design down to her snug waist. My eyes continued to travel, taking in the wide flare of her hips and her strong, shapely legs.
She was tiny but not frail, robust but not heavy, and although nurses’ hands were generally rough from work, hers were soft.
Her flawless skin had a natural blush, her kiss-swollen lips were pink and softly curved in a sleeping smile, like a doll’s face.
Her feet were so small and perfectly shaped, maybe a size five with high arches, and she’d painted her toenails a playful glittery pink.
I could see the child in her, the playful brat she had been and still was, beneath this woman’s body she wore so well, and it awakened something in me, something other than a man’s carnal urges.
I wanted to protect the innocence she held onto, to hold her and comfort her. To feel her holding me.
These urges were…disturbing. How had she so easily broken through my carefully controlled exterior and found a part of me I truly thought I’d buried long ago? Desire wasn't the problem. It was simple.
A man saw a beautiful woman and wanted her. There was nothing dangerous about that. Lust could be satisfied, indulged, and eventually forgotten.
Protection was different, but still understandable. Gabriella was vulnerable. She was alone, frightened, and clearly running from something. Any decent man would feel compelled to shield her from harm.
But this was something else entirely.
I found myself wondering if she'd slept well. If she was warm enough. If she would smile when she woke up.
The thoughts came uninvited and settled beneath my skin.
Dangerous.
Wanting a woman in my bed was one thing.
Wanting her happiness was another.
My father had spent a lifetime teaching us that attachments created weaknesses. Love made a man predictable. Predictable men could be manipulated. Manipulated men made mistakes.
Mistakes got people killed.
Yet here I was, lying in bed beside a sleeping woman, wondering whether she preferred cream in her coffee and whether she would laugh if I made a joke.
The realization should have alarmed me.
Instead, I brushed another strand of hair from her face.
I didn’t want to feel anything more for any woman than simple, disposable lust, yet something far more dangerous had begun to take root—desire.
And trailing altogether too close behind desire was want and need, emotions that could be used against me. No. Inevitably would be used against me when the relationship ran its course. And it would, because how could such a warm, playful creature actually love someone as heartless as me?
There was the lie. I wasn’t heartless. I could be cruel when required and a certain amount of emotional distance was necessary in a job like mine, but my very essence desired to care for and heal people and so it had been ever since I was a boy.
But my father knew that in this life, it was dangerous to let people see who you were.
My thoughts strayed to Romeo, and his relationship with Vittoria.
She was a wicked little brat, but even I couldn’t deny that my brother had been more human since she’d arrived.
Maybe if Romeo could find a way to balance being a cold controlling Don and a loving husband, he could be the first among us to have a happy life, and if he could do it, there was hope for all of us.
As boys, we'd been taught there were priorities in life.
Family.
Duty.
Business.
In that order. Love never made the list.
Not because our father didn't love our mother. He did. Fiercely. Anyone with eyes could see it. But he also understood something that every man in our world eventually learned.
Love was dangerous.
The moment someone became important enough to hurt you, they became a vulnerability your enemies could exploit.
A weakness.
A target.
Growing up, I'd watched my brothers learn that lesson in different ways. Romeo embraced responsibility until it became part of his skin. Gio hid behind laughter and charm. The younger boys still carried enough optimism to believe they might somehow escape the burdens waiting for them.
As for me, I chose distance. It was safe, with no promises. No expectations or heartbreak, at least until Vittoria arrived.
Romeo had fought the marriage from the moment it was arranged. Now he watched her the way a starving man watched a feast.
Protective.
Possessive.
Hopelessly attached.
If you'd told me a year ago that Romeo Vitale would willingly smile at a woman in public, I'd have questioned your sanity.
Yet Vittoria had done the impossible.
She'd made my brother human again.
The unsettling part wasn't that Romeo had changed. It was that, for the first time in my life, I found myself wondering what I might be missing.
I thought about it. Not just picking up a woman at the club for a few hours of stress relief, but loving and caring for a woman.
I was intrigued, if only by the novelty of it, but even in my fantasies, I couldn’t quite believe in it.
We’d see how Romeo made out first, and I for one would be watching to see if guys like us really could have a life beyond blood and duty.
“Mmm.” Gaby sighed in her sleep. She rolled onto her back and cocked one leg out to the side, giving me a view of her swollen pink pussy. We’d had sex long into the early morning light until she’d passed out after her last orgasm. She didn’t wake up even while I’d cleaned her and tucked her in.
But I didn’t join her, despite the exhaustion nibbling away at me.
I was used to long work hours and often found it difficult to sleep.
Rolling onto my back, I considered my options.
I could keep her here for a while for her own protection, or at least until I decided what to do with her.
Should I allow her to take back her job at the hospital?
If I did, there would be no going back to the way things were before I tasted her, no way in hell I’d be able to keep my hands off her. She’d be spending her breaks in my office getting her ass tanned and her pussy fucked until her legs turned to rubber.
She’d be a huge distraction, too much so. However, I reasoned, if she wasn’t there, then how would I keep her safe, and worse, away from other men? Bloody women! This was exactly what I didn’t want, complications!
Her knee slid higher, her slick lips parting like a coy invitation I could not help but accept. Sliding down onto my belly, I slipped my arms around her thighs. Keeping her legs spread, I drove my tongue inside her delicious pussy.
“Oh!” Gaby lifted her head, gazing down at me through her lashes, her face still flushed with sleep and now glazed with pleasure.
She rose up onto her elbows, getting a better view of me eating her out.
I was laser-focused on all the telltale signs of her excitement.
The increased pulse at her neck, the way her lidded eyes dropped to slits, but by far my favorite tell was her nipples.
They darkened when she was excited, the tips becoming so hard and pointed, as if straining for my mouth.
I had never known a woman so responsive. Watching her moan and writhe as I teased her was better than any porn I’d witnessed, and even her taste was sweeter than anyone I’d fucked before. She was special, and one day, she’d make some other lucky bastard happy and whole. That thought hit hard.
I told myself as a reminder not to get too attached, but it backfired on me.
The idea of her being with some other purely hypothetical man spurred me to a fury of jealousy I could hardly imagine, much less contain.
Flipping her over and pressing her chest down into the bed, I shoved my cock deep inside of her.
I knew what this was, me owning her, marking her as mine like an animal marking his territory, and far from protesting the rough handling, Gaby gripped the sheets in her tiny fists and let me take her however I wished.
As I pumped my seed deep inside of her, I considered setting her up in her own apartment by the club and letting her work for my brother. That way, he and his goons could keep an eye on her, and I could go back to work without her being a distraction.
It was a sensible plan. Practical. The realization that I was planning her future like she already belonged in it should have alarmed me.
Decided, I pulled out and slapped her ass hard.
“Ouch! What was that for?”
“Your pleasure, of course.”
“My pleasure?” She glared at me over her shoulder. “More like your pleasure.”
I sat back on the bed and gripped her hips, pulling her over my lap. “Is it?”
I lightly tapped out a beat on her rounded globes, loving how they bounced back with each strike. It wasn’t long until she was bucking her hips and spreading her legs.
“Whose pleasure, cattiva piccolina?”
“If I say mine like a good girl, will I be rewarded?” She was practically panting and drenched not only in my cum, which was leaking down the insides of her thighs, but her excitement as well.
“I have been known to reward naughty girls,” I teased.
She didn’t like that, clearly. Her legs closed with the finality of a vault door and she did her best to climb off my lap, but I was having none of her attitude.
My spanking picked up in earnest. “What are you upset about, bambina?”