Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GIA
The guilt is the worst part of this whole stupid arrangement.
Not the fear, not the logistics, not the specific mental gymnastics of living two lives inside the same skin.
The guilt is the part that doesn't switch off no matter how hard I try.
It sits in the base of my chest like something I swallowed wrong and can't shift, and it's been there since breakfast.
I give up on sleep at half past four.
Rafael is not here tonight and I have the feeling that he’s working and probably sleeping in his study.
The house is completely still when I come downstairs. I move through the corridor in bare feet, robe pulled over my nightdress, and I don't turn on the main lights, just the small one above the range that Marco leaves on overnight. It gives the kitchen a low amber glow. Warm. Private.
I fill the kettle, set it on the hob and lean against the counter while I wait.
This is the reality of what I'm doing. Not the version my father frames as duty, not the version I frame as survival, the actual version, stripped of justification.
I am inside this man's house. I sleep next to him and I smile at his staff and I am building a map of everything he has so I can hand it to the person who wants to use it against him.
And Rafael Caruso, who walked out of a bathroom rather than touch me without permission, who told me to be careful in his kitchen like it mattered to him whether I was safe, who took a stack of linens from an old man's arms without making it a thing, he doesn't know any of it.
If he finds out, I'm dead. I'm not being dramatic.
That's not fear talking, that's just the arithmetic of this world and I have known it since I was old enough to understand what my father did for a living.
There is no version of Rafael discovering a spy in his bed that ends with a conversation.
Men like him don't negotiate with betrayal.
So forget the bathroom, forget what he looked like in the shower. Forget the feel of his chest under your hands. Forget all of it, because the alternative is a shallow grave in the grounds of a very beautiful estate and Laura grows up without you.
The kettle starts to whistle. I make the tea, wrap both hands around the mug, and sit at the island.
The nightdress under my robe is thin, a slip of ivory silk. It's not designed for anyone's benefit but mine, just fabric and lace at the hem and straps too narrow to be practical.
The kitchen is warm from the residual heat of the range. The robe is suddenly too much. Everyone is asleep, the house completely quiet, so I shrug it off my shoulders and let it drop onto the stool beside me.
The cool air hits my skin and I close my eyes and just breathe for a moment.
A sharp intake of breath comes from directly behind me.
The sound that comes out of me is not dignified. I spin on the stool so fast my elbow catches the mug and the tea goes sideways and hits my forearm in a wave of heat and I yelp, genuine and loud, and nearly go off the stool entirely.
Rafael.
He's in the doorway. Dark trousers, a shirt hanging open, barefoot.
His eyes are on me and they are not going anywhere.
They move down the ivory silk, the lace hem, back up, slow and thorough, with the focused attention of a man who has decided he is allowed to look and is going to take his time doing it.
I grab for the robe.
"Your arm," he says.
"I'm fine—"
He's already across the kitchen. He takes my wrist before I get the robe, his grip careful but absolute, and turns my forearm to the light. The skin is red in a stripe from the spilled tea, not blistered, but angry-looking and hot to the touch.
"Cold water," he says, and steers me to the sink.
“I-it’s really fine, I don’t—”
“Stay still, Gia.”
I freeze.
The tap runs cold and he holds my arm under it, his fingers around my wrist, and I stand there in my ivory nightdress that hides approximately nothing and try to think about literally anything else. His hand is large. His thumb sits over my pulse point without appearing to notice it's doing that.
"It's not bad," he finally says.
"I told you I was fine." I grumble under my breath.
"You also told me you slept well." He looks at me. "You're a consistent liar."
He dries my arm with a clean cloth, careful around the reddened skin, and I watch his hands because it's easier than watching his face.
He has good hands. I've noticed this before and I wish I hadn't because it is not a useful observation, noting the specific way a man's hands move when he's being careful with something.
The nightdress strap slipped off my shoulder at some point. I reach up to fix it. He watches me do it and something in his jaw tightens.
I become very aware that my nipples are visible through the silk.
The kitchen is warm but my body is reacting to something that has nothing to do with the temperature, the peaks of them pressing forward, impossible to miss in fabric this thin.
I watch his eyes drop there for a single, deliberate second before he slowly drags them back up.
Goodness…
The ache starts low in my belly. Deep and specific. The slickness that follows is immediate, a secret flood between my thighs that I have no control over. I press my legs together on the stool, a futile attempt to hide what my body is screaming.
A sound in the doorway.
One of the night staff, young, wide-eyed, clearly not expecting either of us to be here, takes one step into the kitchen and stops.
What happens to Rafael is instantaneous.
He turns. The careful, controlled man from thirty seconds ago is gone. What replaces him is something with edges, something that takes up the entire room.
"Get out!” He snarls and the young man disappears like he’s being chased by a ghost.
The kitchen turns very quiet.
I look at Rafael. His shoulders are set, his jaw hard, his eyes still on the doorway the man just vacated. There is something almost territorial in the line of his body that I have not seen before.
"Why are you so tense?" My voice comes out smaller than I intend it to.
He turns to look at me. The rawness doesn't go anywhere.
"No one looks at what is mine," he says. "Not while I can't fucking touch you myself."
The room tilts slightly.
I open my mouth. I close it. There is genuinely nothing in my vocabulary that feels adequate for this moment, while I'm sitting in silk that hides nothing and he's standing there like he's made a decision about something.
He picks up my robe from the stool and holds it out for me.
I take it with shaky hands and put it on.
“Come.” He turns and walks out of the kitchen and I follow him because my body is apparently a sucker for commands from Rafael.
We go up the stairs, down the corridor, through the door to the suite, and the air between us is so thick with everything unsaid and everything undone that I feel it physically, a pressure across my chest, a heat along my skin that the robe does nothing to cool.
He goes to the bed. My side. Pulls the covers back and waits with his eyes on me until I get in.
I get in and he tucks me in. Leaning so close to me that I immediately hold my breath.
He walks around to his side. Gets in beside me. Under the covers.
I jerk up. “Hey!”
“Go to bed, Gia.”
“But…” What do I say? You always sleep on the cover and now you’re sleeping in it and it’s bad for my health?
I huff in annoyance and lie on my back again.
I feel the shift of the mattress, the warmth of him suddenly present through the sheets, closer than any distance I know how to manage right now.
I stare at the ceiling. The warmth of him seeps through the sheets between us, steady and impossible to ignore. My body is still on fire, the low persistent throb that will not let me alone. I lie here completely rigid and accept that sleep is simply not going to happen.
The man beside me breathes. Slow and even, like the darkness is a decision he made.
Minutes pass. The room is silent except for the sound of our breathing.
His is deeper, slower. Mine is shallow, trying to be quiet.
The heat between my thighs has become a persistent ache, a physical demand that my mind is trying to ignore.
My guilt is still there, the swallowed stone in my chest, but it’s competing now with something sharper, something hungrier.
I shift on the mattress, a tiny movement to relieve the pressure. The silk of my nightdress slides against my skin. The lace hem brushes my thighs. I feel every thread.
“Stop moving,” he says into the dark.
His voice is quiet. It lands in the silence and spreads.
I freeze. My heart kicks against my ribs. “I wasn’t—”
“You were.”
I don’t answer.
I thought he was sleeping.
The silence stretches. It becomes a thing with weight. I can feel him beside me, not moving, just existing, a presence so large it feels like it’s pressing against me from across the sheets.
Another minute passes. The ache is worse. I need to move. I need to press my thighs together tighter, to shift my hips, to do something to relieve the building tension. I try to do it slowly, imperceptibly.
The mattress dips. He moves. Not away. Toward me.
His hand finds my hip under the covers. His palm is hot, large, spanning the curve of my bone through the thin silk. He grabs my hips and just stays there. “Stop. Moving.”
My breath stops entirely.
Well, fuck me.