Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GIA
The bath is too hot and I don't care.
I slide down until the water reaches my chin and I stare at the ceiling, making a deliberate, conscious and fully committed decision not to think about anything in that dressing room.
Not the photographs. Not the ring on the velvet tray. Not the perfume that is probably still in my hair.
What I think about instead is my sister.
It's been three days since the wedding and I have not spoken to her once. She could be back in that room with the plain walls, scared, asking for me and being told I'm busy, I'm settling in, I'll call soon, all the soft untrue things adults say to children when the real answer is too complicated.
But fuck it, I’ll find a way to contact her. I'm not going to be a fucking prisoner here.
Laura hates sleeping without a nightlight. She's had one since she was four and she will not admit it because she's nine now and nine is apparently too old for nightlights, which is nonsense, but she will lie in the dark and not say anything about it rather than ask.
My chest pulls tight.
I close my eyes.
I have a burner phone in my jewelry box and a father waiting for information, a sister somewhere I can't reach and a strange husband who kneeled to put a slipper on my foot tonight.
I cannot fix a single one of those things right now, so I am simply going to lie here and—
Only, my mind won't cooperate.
It keeps going back to the dress. His hands at my back, working the laces with that infuriating patience.
The warmth of him behind me. The specific moment when the last lace gave and I exhaled and his fingers stilled, just for a second, like he was deciding something.
I told myself I imagined it. I've been telling myself that for two hours.
I shift in the water. The heat of the bath has nothing to do with what's moving through me right now and I know it and I hate it.
I hate that it's him. Of every possible person in every possible version of my life, it is this man, in this house, in this marriage I didn't ask for, who makes my body do this.
Who makes me lie in a bath at ten o'clock at night with my thighs pressed together and my breathing wrong.
My hand drifts down through the water without me deciding to let it.
I stop it. I press it flat against my own thigh and stare at the ceiling and feel the specific shame of a woman who just caught herself about to do something she absolutely cannot do, because doing it means it's real, means he did this, means I am lying in his bath wanting his hands instead of my own and that is not something I am prepared to be true about tonight.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
Slowly my hands reach down again and this time I brush the aching bud of my clit and shiver, I start to slowly circle, my lower lip caught between my teeth and—
The bathroom door opens.
I yelp and sit up so fast the water sloshes over the edge of the tub.
Rafael.
He stands there, framed in the doorway like a storm cloud in his dark suit pants and white shirt.
He’s undone the collar, the tie gone, and the sight of his bare throat makes me gulp, suddenly parched.
He eyes the scene: the foggy room, the massive tub, me submerged and naked.
His expression gives away nothing, but his eyes do a slow, heavy sweep that feels so physical, like a rough palm dragging over my skin.
Omg, omg, OMG!
"Out!" I shriek. "Get out, you brute! I'm in the bath! You can't just—"
He walks in as if he’s not hearing me, his focus shifts to the glass-walled shower stall beside the tub. He set his phone on the vanity with a soft click.
“I’m fucking naked,” I hiss, pulling my knees to my chest, the swell of my breasts breaks the water’s surface, the movement making them sway.
Water laps at the undersides, and my nipples tighten instantly from the chill of the air, pressing hard and visibly against the wet skin.
I catch his gaze settle on them for a split second, before snapping back to my face.
"Rafael." I grab the edge of the tub with one hand like it's going to do anything useful. "I am naked in here. Do you understand what naked means? It means no clothes. It means you need to leave."
He starts on his shirt buttons. One. Two. Three.
"I will scream," I gulp. “Rafael, I swear to god—”
"There's no one in the east wing but us," he says. “And even if there were, they all work for me.”
The shirt falls open. He shrugs it off his shoulders and let it drop to the floor.
I snap my eyes to the ceiling immediately, which is the correct and dignified response, and I hold them there with great discipline for approximately four seconds before they move back down completely against my will.
Oh.
He looks like a god.
Broad, thick shoulders corded with muscle that moves under his skin like stone sliding over stone.
A dense mat of dark hair covers his chest, trailing down the hard planes of his stomach.
A scar on his side, pale and wicked-looking, makes my throat tighten.
My gaze snags on it, then on the deep V of his hips disappearing into his pants.
Oh God.
I am staring. I am absolutely staring and I cannot stop and I have no defense for it except that I am only human and he is standing right there.
He reaches for his belt.
I look at the ceiling again.
Don’t look. Don’t you fucking look.
The sound of his zipper is obscene. The rustle of fabric as he steps out of his pants and briefs. The soft thud of clothes hitting the tile. Then the sliding sound of the shower door. The hiss and rush of water.
My heart hammers hard against my ribs. The heat of the bath is nothing compared to the fire in my cheeks, my chest, between my legs. I am painfully aware of my own body—the slickness of the water on my skin, the heavy, sensitive weight of my breasts, the empty, aching throb building at my core.
This is insane.
I sit in my bath with my knees pulled up, my eyes fixed firmly upward and I have a very serious conversation with myself about self-control and dignity and the importance of not looking.
I look.
I can't help it. The shower is glass and it is right there and he is right there.
Wow.
He is under the spray, his back to me, water sluicing down the powerful slope of his shoulders, over the dip of his spine, down the firm, rounded curves of his ass. He braces a hand against the tile, head bowed.
Oh my world…
He turns.
Full front. Directly facing the tub. Directly facing me.
I make a sound that I will be taking to my grave.
He is… hard. Not just semi-hard, but fully, aggressively erect, jutting out proudly. Thick, the head flushes a dark red. The sight of him sends a violent, liquid pulse straight through me.
He makes no move to cover himself. He just stands there under the spray, letting me look, his face an impassive mask, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere above my head. But I know. I just know he turned on purpose. This is a show. For me.
I genuinely consider slipping below the water and staying there.
I am going to die, I think. I am going to die in this bathtub and it will be his fault entirely.
"Stop looking," I bite out.
"I'm not looking at anything," he says, eyes still on the wall above me. “You’re the one looking aren’t you, Little Gia?”
True. I’m the one staring like a starved woman.
"You turned around on purpose."
"It's my shower."
"You turned around on purpose and you know it and I want you to know that I know it and I am completely unaffected."
The corner of his mouth moves.
"Completely," I repeat myself just in case he didn’t hear it.
A muscle feathers in his jaw. The corner of his mouth, just for an instant, twitches.
My face is an inferno. My nipples are so hard they ache, tight little pebbles pressing against my own arms where I hold my knees. My core throbs, a steady, needy beat. I am completely, utterly affected, and he can definitely see it.
I look very seriously at the faucet, which is an excellent faucet, very well-made, very interesting, absolutely worthy of my complete and total attention.
It’s of no use though. The image is burned into my soul: the length of him, the thickness, the way it looks so fucking heavy. I imagine how it would feel in my hand. In my mouth. Pushing inside me. A full-body shudder wracks me.
Five years. It has been five years since I have wanted anyone.
Since the wedding, the blood and the aftermath, I shut that part of myself down so completely I'd started to wonder if it was just gone, if the wanting had been buried with everything else from that day.
Five years of proposals I refused, men I smiled at and felt nothing for, a body that was numb.
And then Rafael fucking Caruso walked in.
I can’t stay here.
I stand up so abruptly I almost slip.
Water pours off me in sheets. My breasts, full and heavy, swings free, the water running in rivulets down the deep valley between them, over my tight, dark nipples. I feel his gaze on me, hot and possessive, as I reach for the white robe.
Don’t think about it. Ignore him.
I shove my arms into the sleeves, the thin, soaked silk clinging instantly to every curve, plastering itself to my wet skin.
Everything is clearly outlined, the peaks of my nipples pushing against the fabric as I yank the belt tight.
The robe does nothing to hide me. It makes it worse, a translucent second skin.
I want to scream.
I turn around.
Rafael is stepping out of the shower and we are suddenly approximately one foot apart.
Water drips from his hair, down the hard line of his jaw, over his collarbones, tracing paths through the hair on his chest. A towel is wrapped low around his hips, but the thick outline of his cock is still visible, a prominent bulge pressing against the terrycloth.
My breath catches. Heavens help me.
Steam rises between us, hot and thick, with the scent of his soap, my bath oils.
His eyes drop to my face.
My eyes drop to his mouth and my tongue darts out, wetting my own.
He growls lowly and tilts his head down. Just slightly. Enough.
My head tips back of its own accord, lips parting on a shaky breath I didn’t meant to release. My hands, stupidly, come up to rest lightly on his chest. His skin is hot and damp, the muscle beneath unyielding. I felt the strong, steady beat of his heart under my palm.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
I want him to kiss me. I want him to tear the robe off and pin me against the vanity and take me right here, right now. I want his hands on my breast, his mouth on my nipples, that thick cock filling me up.
The want is a physical pain.
And for whatever reason it is that pain that gives me the last shred of sense. I step away.
My hair is plastered to my head and neck, my lips parted, my eyes huge and dark with a hunger I don’t recognize.
Behind me, he goes still for a second. Then I feel him move. He doesn’t touch me. He just walks past, a slow, deliberate stride that carries him to the bathroom door.
I watch him in the mirror. He doesn’t look back. Not once.
The door opens and closes with a soft, definitive click.
I grip the edge of the vanity, my knuckles white.
My whole body is shaking. The ache between my legs is a sharp, persistent throb.
I am so fucking wet I can feel the slickness running down my thighs.
The image of his hardness won’t leave my mind.
I can still feel the phantom warmth of his skin under my hand.
A low, frustrated sound breaks from my throat, a raw, wanting moan that echoes in the silent, steamy room.
My hand slides down, over the wet silk of the robe, over my stomach, and dip between my legs almost of its own will.
The fabric is soaked there, too. I press my palm hard against and my hips jerked forward, seeking friction. My head falls back.
Goodness. Fuck.
I want to touch myself. I want to chase that feeling, to make the ache go away or make it worse. My fingers itches to push the fabric aside, to slip inside myself and imagine it’s him.
I squeeze my thighs together, trapping my hand, a wave of shame and desire washing over me so fiercely it makes me dizzy.
I grip the counter harder.
I am in so much trouble.