Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Giovanna
T he intensity pouring off the man stood at the bottom of the vast bed I was sat on, was inexplicable. Many times, over the previous few years, whether at night while I slept, or in my daydreams, I’d imagined how it would feel to once again be in his company, and to have his whole attention focussed on me. Now, experiencing it for real, I understood that what I’d managed to imagine was so far off the mark. Since we were small children, Dante’s eyes had always held me spellbound, but here, alone with him with no risk of interruption, the intent held within the bright blue orbs was powerful in the extreme.
His eyes, which had drifted up and down my near naked body, finally fixed on mine; holding my gaze, my soul and like I’d always known, the whole of my heart. The hand I offered him began to shake as slowly he began to remove his clothes, and I lowered it back to my body, understanding he wasn’t ready to accept it yet. Suddenly, a noise hit my ears making me jump in response. He’d released a gold cufflink and dropped it where he was standing. Dante smirked as he understood the edge I was travelling on, with all my senses concentrated wholly on him. I watched as he released its opposite number and I saw the colour of the stone flash out its brilliance as he turned his wrists. The simple green stone that was set completely flush on the gold beneath it. I knew without looking it would match his jasper signet ring, the Giordano family ring, that he was wearing on the little finger of his left hand. All men of prominent families wore them in our region. They signified their lineage, social status, and the stone worn confirmed their identity.
‘Do you love him?’ Dante questioned. I knew instantly who he was talking about.
‘No…’
‘Did you love him?’
‘He’s a good man, but no.’
The relief I watched spread over Dante’s face was incomparable.
‘You’ve shed your ties with the rest of the world, so I’m shedding mine.’ He pulled his signet ring off his finger with a quick jolt of his hand, and after dropping his arm, I heard the dull sound of it apparently hitting the rug he was standing close to. ‘Tonight, we’re just two people who want to be together. There’ll be no thoughts of family or loyalty, or what’s expected of us. For tonight, we are just us. We have no country and no family. All we have is us, this cabin and the sea we’re floating on.’
‘I’d like that.’ I nodded. ‘But what about after tonight?’ I grimaced as I voiced the thought I’d tried so hard to shelve.
‘We’ll work that out tomorrow, but listen to me when I say… I won’t let you go again.’ He shook his head, and his jaw stiffened as he contemplated what he’d just imparted. ‘There is a place for us, even if it’s through force.’
‘We tried that before,’ I countered.
‘We did, and now we’re older and wiser. The two of us deserve a life, like the rest of our siblings.’
Pain consumed me at the thought of our families once again at war with each other and, as if he recognised that, Dante brought my focus back to him and him alone. Feeling completely out of control of my own body, I jumped again when he finally pulled the loose cufflink from his shirt and it hit the floor like its predecessor. The sound ringing out in my head brought me back from my concerns, to focus on the beauty of the man in front of me, like he knew it would.
‘You have no need to be scared, love,’ Dante voiced in concern, after watching my reaction.
I shook my head at him as I tried to quell the fire that was building inside me.
‘It’s the thought of having to use force that scares me,’ I confirmed. ‘I’m not scared of you, of us… But I’m a bit… well, I’m apprehensive of my own needs.’
‘I’m going to take good care of you, Giovanna.’
‘I know,’ I whispered back, unable to fully focus as I prepared to see the beauty that was Dante Giordano. Studying him, I took in his strong hands, his tanned, olive coloured skin, and the well-kept, but longer stubble on his face. Dante might have once made a stand against the devil himself, but he had come away from that altercation with an even greater arrogance than the young man I remembered having. In fact, it was his arrogance I wasn’t sure of all those years before, but now I found it part of the attraction I had for him, that and his undeniable confidence.
As he shrugged his shoulders out from the expensive dress shirt he was wearing, I could see that the lean, muscular boy I’d once known, had grown broader. In the middle of his chest hung the dog tags I presumed he’d been given when he enlisted, and a silver chain off which hung what looked like a St Christopher. Moving my gaze, I found well-defined muscles I couldn’t name, on his shoulders, arms, and chest. With my eyes travelling greedily downwards, I allowed them to go over the undulations of his abdominal muscles. There, right above the black leather belt of his trousers, I found the start of what I knew would be a perfect V of muscle. The same muscle I’d seen only recently on Michelangelo’s statue of David, in Florence, and I felt myself hold my breath.
A deep rumble left him.
‘Do you like what you’re looking at?’ he questioned, as a smirk made the corners of his mouth twitch.
‘Yes.’ The one solitary word was all I could force out. My throat felt tight, and my head was light. Between my legs was beginning to feel damp and my core muscles were tightening in anticipation. I had needs and wants I couldn’t put a voice to. I only knew it was him and only him that would be able to sate them all.
So, this is how I am meant to feel.
‘Good, cause I’m all yours, love.’
The sudden snap of Dante’s belt as he unbuckled it and pulled it abruptly through the air, made me gasp. He released the top button of his trousers and after pulling his zip down, he allowed his trousers to drop and pool at his feet. With speed he discarded what was left of his clothing and shoes, and once again stood tall, in front of me. His cock bobbed between us, leaving me in no doubt just how much he wanted me. His cock was beautiful; large, with distinct veins circling his wide girth. I felt my breathing becoming shallower as I watched his need for me bead onto his smooth crest, and instinctively my tongue darted out from my mouth to wet my lips, as I desperately attempted to taste him on the air around us.
‘Dante.’ His name was all I could voice as I took in the completely naked body of my husband.
As though me voicing his name was a starting gun, finally, he was moving. He fell onto his knees, and slammed his elbows into the mattress, making it dip with his weight.
‘Eyes on me, Giovanna.’
Reaching up the bed, he roughly took hold of my ankles, before pulling me down the soft comforter to meet him. When I was where he wanted me to be, with my ankles still in his hold, he pushed them back towards my backside, and in doing so caused my knees to bend and my legs to open wide.
‘Relax.’ As he spoke, and as if my body was no longer under my control at all, my knees fell open on the bed, leaving me completely exposed to him.
Releasing an ankle, he pushed a finger into the side of the thin piece of elastic at my hip. Pulling suddenly, I felt and heard the elastic rip, and he pulled my panties away. Balling them up in his hand, he inhaled the smell of my arousal before throwing them away to the side.
‘Fuck… you’re more than I could have ever imagined. Your beautiful pussy is glistening with need. The smell of you is sweet, and just as I remembered.’ I heard his exhale and witnessed him close his eyes. Then I allowed my head to fall back, embarrassed by the fact I liked the way he was speaking to me, when I wasn’t sure if I should or not.
‘Giovanna,’ he encouraged, and immediately I brought my head back up to witness him between my legs. ‘Why are you embarrassed?’
‘I’m…’ I attempted to answer. ‘It’s just that no one has ever spoken to me like you are.’
‘Good fucking job.’ He blew sharply against my wet lips and my now engorged clitoris, and I jumped and mewled in response. ‘No one will ever know you like this, amore mio… no one.’
Guilt hit me fast.
Does it matter that I’m not a virgin?
Will it matter to him?
We had been apart years, and he knew I was engaged, but more than that I understood what he was saying was true. I had lost my virginity, but in the few times I’d had sex, I already knew that there was no intimacy there at all. No one would ever see me like this, touch me like this, only Dante would and could. So, was it necessary, especially at this very pivotal moment?
‘Dante…’ Thinking again, I started to tell him, to be honest with him, when he started moving and all coherent thoughts were lost to me. Dante trailed his mouth over each of my legs in turn, as he began to kiss and nibble his way up, scuffing my skin with the stubble on his face. Ridiculously, with that minuscule amount of contact, my arousal heightened. As inside my head I imagined his mouth travelling nearer, and at last encountering the place in between my legs that was now soaking wet and throbbing in time with my heightened blood pressure, which I could hear behind my ear drums as it sounded out its demands.
‘Those shoes you’re wearing are such a fucking turn on, love.’
‘Please,’ I begged, as Dante lifted both of my legs and he began to caress and kiss the sensitive part behind both of my knees. And the words I had tried so hard to conjure up were lost to me on a sea of pleasure.
‘Please what?’ he teased.
‘I don’t know…’ I truthfully answered, knowing I hadn’t the experience of what I was feeling to answer.
‘Then let me worship you. I’ll get you there.’ As he spoke, I focussed once again on the ever-darkening blue of his eyes as his pupils dilated with his arousal.
With my legs beginning to shake, Dante placed them over his shoulders and pushing both of his hands under my backside, he cupped my cheeks. With his eyes still holding mine captive he lowered his face between my legs. His tongue instantly swept in between the soaking wet folds of my skin as he lapped at my pussy, feasting on the arousal my body had released for him. The moan I released reverberated around the cabin. In response to feeling so out of control of my own body, I placed a hand on my lower stomach to try and curb what was building inside me. Once again, he moved his tongue through my folds and encountered my clitoris. My hips bucked in response to meet him and sparks of sheer, unadulterated pleasure journeyed to every part of my body.
‘Oh… oh, my… Dante, Dante.’ My body shook with pleasure, and muscles I knew I’d never felt before tightened in expectation of just where he was taking me. As his tongue pushed inside of me, I was aware that my body was beginning to tremble, and my breathing was becoming shallower. What I was experiencing was the stuff I had only read and dreamt about before. And it was almost too much.
‘It’s too much,’ I voiced without thinking, looking down my body at him.
‘Giovanna, do you want me to stop?’
‘No.’ I answered him with an almost pleading tone, and I watched as the corners of his eyes creased with amusement.
‘Have you never had an orgasm, Giovanna?’
‘No.’
‘Then relax and trust me. An orgasm is intense. But we’ll take it slow. I’ve got you, my love.’ Even feeling his breath hit my sensitive flesh as he spoke was helping to carry me to a place I hadn’t been before.
No wonder Serafina has so many children. The thought hit me, followed by a small laugh. Dante watched what must have seemed like a strange reaction to him. But instead of questioning my weirdness, he carried on.
Unable to hold my head up any longer, I allowed it to sink back into the softness beneath me and I let my body follow its natural instincts. His experience showed as he lapped up and down my folds. When he thought I could cope with the intensity he circled my clitoris a few times, and my body followed his lead climbing higher and higher until my hips were bucking off the bed with the rhythm he’d created.
Just as I thought I would explode, Dante slowed, causing my body to come away from the edge of the cliff he’d taken me to, and I followed him downwards. After him doing this twice more, desperation and a feeling of hopelessness consumed me.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You’re doing well, amore mio.’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked.
‘I’m edging you, Giovanna. When you orgasm, it will be so damned intense, every muscle you own will relax. Then I will take you as mine.’
‘Please. I need the release,’ I begged.
He nodded his acceptance of what I was asking.
‘Give me your hands.’ Dante reached up either side of my body and linked his fingers with mine. Then pulling on them, he manoeuvred me towards him, pulling me closer to his face and unable to move away. Once again, he began the relentless rhythm, but with an added speed and I knew I would be able to feel his tongue on my flesh for days. Now in his hold, I had nowhere to go as the intensity built again. My head thrashed from side to side as I mewled out his name. His expert tongue plundered and sought and took me crashing towards the edge I knew I’d seen before, the one that no longer held any apprehension for me.
‘Dante, oh, Dante,’ I cried out loudly.
Suddenly, I collided with the edge of the cliff and I went into freefall as I finally crashed over it. My body convulsed, untethered and demanding. Bright light hit the back of my eyes and my body shuddered as I rode wave after wave of pure pleasure.
Finally, I stilled. Opening my eyes, I took in the man I had loved for nearly the whole of my life, the one who completed me. His eyes held so much I couldn’t identify, so in that moment I released his hands, and opened my arms out wide for him.
He raised one amused eyebrow at me and grinned.
Not one to accept orders, Dante kissed his way up my overly sensitive body, stopping at each of the hardened buds of my nipples. Then he moved up and into my awaiting hold and lowered his mouth to mine as we sealed our unspoken thoughts with a kiss.