He pauses, contemplative. His surface is calm, but I can sense something hot roiling within him. “Clara, I have to ask you. The way you reacted just now. It makes me wonder… Has anyone ever hurt you?”
A ripple of fear runs through me. No no no.
“I’ve never… I’m a virgin, if that’s what you mean.” At least that much is true. He seems like he’s going to push the matter, so I reach up and press my lips against his. “Gio. I want to be with you.”
Part of me knows I’m falling into my old habits, pleasing someone out of fear. It’s not the same as it was with my father, but in some ways it is. He trained me to be the perfect Italian wife, and I’ve learned my lessons well.
Giovanni shifts, and I think he’s going to kiss me. Or maybe bear me down onto the bed, take what we both want him to. Instead he sets me gently on the cool sheets. Then he reaches down for the blanket, tucking it around me.
I shove away the butter soft cotton. “Wait. No.”
He’s already walking away from me, showing his broad shoulders and trim waist. God, he must have put on fifty pounds of pure muscle since I saw him last. He’s different in so many ways, vital ways. I can’t love him as the boy he was before. I can only love the man he is now.
He flips off the lamp, casting the room in pale shadows. “It’s late,” he says gently, heading for the door. “You need to rest.”
And I know suddenly that I can’t let him walk away. Can’t stand to lose him.
Not Giovanni, the boy who grinned with abandon. He’s already lost. Now there’s only a man of intensity and passion, of determination and fierce loyalty. My husband.
“Gio.”
He pauses at the door without turning to face me. “Sleep.”
I cross the room and circle him, taking in the dark gleam of his eyes and the bronze skin revealed by his shirt. Moving a finger down his chest, I revel in the raised muscles that slow my path. When my finger touches the empty belt loop, he grasps my elbow in a taut grip.
“Clara. You don’t have to do anything.”
I keep my eyes on him as I fumble with the button. He makes a low sound as my fingers brush hardness underneath. The placket strains against his erection. With careful deliberation, I slide down the zipper and push the soft cotton briefs down. He makes quick work of his shirt, unbuttoning it and shrugging it to the floor.
We’re both naked now, both clasped in moonlight. Both of us vulnerable.
Standing in front of him, I run a finger through the coarse patch of hair beneath his flat belly. Then I touch something achingly hot and smooth. He shudders but makes no move to stop me. His shaft pulses with life, as strong as a heartbeat. I trail my finger down the length and around his girth.
Then I touch my fingertip to the cool damp on the tip.
He sucks in a breath. “God, bella.”
I fall to my knees, knowing another way I might please him.
He catches me with a hoarse sound and returns me to standing. “If you kiss me there, I won’t be able to hold back, and I want to be inside you when I come.”
A flush subsumes my cheeks, as hot as the hard flesh of his erection. “Oh.”
With a knowing look, he takes my hand. When he lays me down on the cool sheets, I stretch out. His body reaches over me, large and dark and powerful. He plants soft kisses on my eyelids, my nose, my chin. Wordlessly I spread my legs for him.
He notches himself against my sex, heat against heat, wet against wet. I hover on the precipice of something both carnal and divine, knowing that the next few moments will change me forever.
His hands are gentle as they gather mine above my head, my wrists held loosely in the cage of his fingers. “Is this okay?” he asks softly.
I know he’s thinking about earlier, wondering if it was the restraint that upset me. But that was something else. The feel of being spread open to him, unable to stop the press of him, the push, excites me. My hips roll against him, more proof that I want this. “Gio, please. I need more.”
He enters me in slow inches, a stretch I feel deep inside. I gasp as he reaches farther, and he pauses. His head lowers to kiss my chest, my breasts. He sucks my nipple until a sharp pleasure-pain lashes my core, and I relax enough to let him in.
It feels like he’s impossibly deep. “How much more?” I ask, trembling.
He slides his free hand down my stomach to the slippery skin. Gently he teases my clit until I sigh in pleasure. It still feels full, but if he keeps touching me like that…
“About halfway,” he says, his voice like falling rocks.
Oh God. I hadn’t seen before how his muscles ripple, hadn’t seen how hard he’s working to hold himself back. He wants to thrust all the way in, I can tell, but that would rip me apart. Halfway? How is that possible? A laugh of incredulity and wonder rends the air.
Then he laughs too, soft and bemused. “Your body, Clara. It haunts me.”
“Turnabout is fair play,” I say, voice tight. My whole body feels tight, stretched to the limit. I’m not sure I can fit any more of him in. His hips are narrower than his shoulders, but even so my hips have to open wide to accommodate him. My arms are above my head. And inside, I’m incredibly full.
His fingers work at my clit in lazy circles. He swoops down to kiss my lips, his tongue matching the rhythm of his hand, the short pulses of his erection. The orgasm comes upon me like tendrils of ivy on ancient stone, slow and inexorable, taking over until I’m caught in its grip. Tremors shake me from the inside out, grasping at him, pulling him deeper.
He groans softly. “I’m not sure I’ll survive you, bella.”
“Let go,” I whisper, but I’m the one who has to let go. To relax into his hold, conform around his body. It feels a little like splitting apart, like breaking and being re-formed in some new way.
When he presses all the way inside, I feel the rough hair of him against me. I feel the choked gasp he makes, the shudder deep inside him. “I won’t last,” he gasps.
“Then don’t.”
His hand tightens on mine, keeping my arms up. His other hand plants on my hip, holding me steady. Then he pulls back and surges into me, the fullness so intense I bite my lip. His thrusts grow faster, harder, the force of him shaking the bed. I rock with him because it’s the only thing I can do, my body rising to meet him, reaching for his peak more than my own.
His body stiffens, and he grinds against me, pulsing deep inside. His expression is harsh, pain lining every feature. He clasps at me as he’s falling, as if I’m falling and he’ll never let me go.
When the clench releases him, he slides into me with languid strokes. His lips grow soft against mine, almost playful. His hips drop, changing the angle inside me. He finds some secret place that makes me push up on my toes.
I’m breathless. “Gio. Aren’t you…”
“Finished? Christ, I’ll never be done with you. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to leave your body.”
I thought that men had an orgasm and were finished. That’s what Amy told me, anyway. He still feels hard inside me, though less urgent. His hands release mine, and I hold on to his muscled shoulders.
He presses that spot, watching my face with dark cunning. My mouth opens on a silent cry. I don’t know what’s happening. This isn’t like when he touched my clit, nothing like when I touched myself. It’s a forced surrender, this orgasm, wrenched from my body like it belongs to him instead of me. Pleasure blankets me in muted waves, turning the whole world shades of purple and bronze, midnight eyes and hot skin in an endless expanse.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I wake up with pale yellow across my pillow and something hard nudging my back. The memories come back to me in a rush, the dark shape of him moving over me, hours and hours, relentless, pleasure that morphed into pain and then back again. I moan, sore and aroused in a luscious cycle.
“You’re awake,” he murmurs.
He thrusts inside me, his way smoothed by a full night of his spend. My breath catches at
the fiery ache of salt on abraded skin. Then he finds the spot that makes me moan, and my body rocks into him.
“I’m surprised you waited,” I manage to say in a sleepy drawl.
“I said I wouldn’t take you again. After the marriage was consummated.”
A lazy smile touches my lips. “And the middle of the night?”
He pauses, his fingers tightening on my hips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I take the measure of my body, the whisker burn between my thighs, the tender flesh of my breasts. The bruises that circle my hips. He’s awakened something inside me, something firmly woman, something powerful. “What if I want you to?” I ask, rolling my hips.
At that he pulls out and lays me flat on the bed. Pushing one leg aside, he thrusts into me. His eyes fall shut as if in intense relief. “I want you to like it.”
“Then find that place inside me again.”
His lips curve in a brutal smile, one of both surrender and domination. He pulls out of me and works his way down, over aching muscles and reddened flesh. Two fingers explore the inner wall of my body until I gasp. With a wicked glint in his eye, he bends his head and kisses my clit. His fingers and his mouth work in tandem, bringing me to the brink again and again until I’m wrung out, collapsed on the bed, unable to move a muscle as he slides inside and thrusts hard.
The sun has boiled into peak afternoon by the time he withdraws from the bed. His expression is regretful as he heads for the shower. “I have some work that can’t be postponed.”
I sit up and pull the sheet to cover me, a little cold without his body. “To call New York?”
He pauses. “Yes.”
Of course he’ll want to let them know that the marriage is complete. That it was consummated. The family values marriage and blood ties. Now he has both. He’ll be able to continue the search for his mother, which is important. So why do I feel suddenly hollow?
I wish he didn’t look so strong, so virile. Shouldn’t nakedness be a position of weakness? He looks like a warrior, as if he could take on an army without a single piece of armor.
“You can sleep here,” he says, gesturing to the bed. The room. His room.
I shouldn’t ask questions I don’t want to know the answer to. “Will the door be locked?”
He hesitates only a moment. “Romero will escort you anywhere you want to go.”
* * *
We fall into a pattern of sex and absence. He spends most of the night inside me, moving, thrusting, pulsing in the clasp of my body. In the daytime he’s mostly gone, either working in the office or visiting one of the businesses.
I feel changed in some elemental way. Maybe because I’m married. Or maybe because I’ve fallen in love. Either way, dread creeps through me every hour I spend alone.
My sister is coming for me on Saturday. Romero still shadows my every movement, more vigilant now after my first escape attempt. And I think he’s mapping the tunnels of the house. I’ll have to think of a new method to get away from him on Saturday.
No matter how Giovanni has changed me, no matter how much I love him, I’ll meet my sister in that pool house. Because of all people, I know that love doesn’t conquer everything. Living as a prisoner in the house of my nightmares isn’t a foundation for a marriage.
All I have to do is wait until Saturday night.
In the meantime, I need a new way to escape from Romero.
But Giovanni fights against my plan without even knowing it.
On Tuesday he takes me to one of the sitting rooms in the guest wing. The dusty furniture has been cleared out, the floor replaced with hardwood, heavy draperies torn from the windows and replaced with breezy white linens.
On one side of the room, large blocks of stone of various sizes and colors catch the light. I recognize soapstone and granite, and a particularly large prism of red alabaster that takes my breath away.
“I didn’t know what kind of stone you prefer,” Giovanni says, sounding hesitant. “If you like any of them, I can get more.”
Distantly I see an antique wooden hutch with gleaming tools arranged inside. My eyes are all for the stones. Most of them come only to my ankles, a few to my knees. They’re small pieces, but even a cursory inspection tells me they’re rare—and this variety could never be local.
Granite and sandstone are plentiful at a quarry about an hour south of here. I went there before on a rare outing with Honor. But all of these types and colors and striations couldn’t be found in one place. Even the selection at my art school isn’t this wide.
It would take me years to sculpt all these pieces, and I can’t wait to start.
I turn to face him, heart beating wildly. “Gio, these are amazing. Where did you get them?”
One large shoulder lifts, dismissing the effort. “Here and there.”
Circling the red alabaster piece, I see the remnants of a sticker. El Amarna, it says. Customs. There’s no way he sourced this stone and had it flown in since I’ve been in this house. “You ordered this before I got here,” I say, running my finger along a jagged edge, deep red striated with black.
His cheeks darken faintly. “I started collecting them when you entered art school.”
* * *
On Wednesday we take his Shelby convertible to the Rock Canyon National Park, Lupo in the backseat beside a wicker basket. A thirteen-mile scenic drive with the top down puts a thousand knots in my long hair and a goofy smile on my face. Giovanni doesn’t quite smile—I’m not sure he’s capable of regular emotions like happiness anymore. But he does seem far more relaxed than he does at the mansion.
We take an easy hike route and avoid a large rainwater pond. I give him a questioning look.
“I don’t like the sound of water,” he answers.
When our legs are tired we find a plateau overlooking the valley and eat chicken-salad sandwiches while a gray northern harrier glides high above us. Lupo chases a chorus frog into the brush and comes back with nettles in his fur. These are the moments I would have dreamed of when I imagined the old Gio and myself together.
It’s almost, almost enough to make me stay.
Except that we have to go back to the mansion, to the life. To everything I despise.
He gets a phone call on the way back. I only hear his half of the conversation. “Hello? Tell him no, absolutely not. He knows what the alternative is. I wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly. If he wants to commit suicide, that’s his business.”
* * *
Every night he teases and tortures me with an ever-increasing erotic skill set. And I surrender with abandon, forgetting what he does during the day, ignoring the violence, pretending not to know who used to sleep in this room. It bothers me, though, especially in the clear light of day. I try to spend most of the time Giovanni is away from me in the studio, sculpting or sketching.
On Thursday brown paper bags stuffed with acrylic paints and high quality brushes appear in Giovanni’s bedroom. I unpack the colors with glee, running my fingers over the cream hog bristles.
“I love them. But why did you put them here?” I would have thought he’d put them in the studio.
“There’s more in that room, and an easel set up by the window. I thought you might want to paint the walls in this room.” He pauses. “Only if you want to.”
Tears prick behind my eyes, and I launch myself at him, throwing my arms around his neck. He catches me with a soft exhalation of breath. His arms clasp me to him, squeezing tight enough to steal my air.
I could stay here, I think.
At least until Giovanni leaves and Romero appears to stand guard at my door. Then I remember I’m a prisoner. How can I be bribed so easily with rocks and paint? But then again, if I have everything I ever wanted, how can I leave?
I spend the rest of the day painting the plateau where we ate lunch yesterday, remembering how it felt to have the wind on my face and Giovanni at my side.
* * *
On Friday Giovanni appears at the bedside, freshl
y showered and wearing a sharp custom suit.
“I’m up,” I say sleepily, eyes barely open.
Giovanni has gotten into the habit of walking me to the studio before he begins working for the day. I don’t love getting up early, but I do love the ritual.
Gio gives me an almost tender look. “Sleep.”
I also prefer to be escorted by Giovanni rather than a guard. It’s a little dampening to the creative spirit to be reminded that I’m not free. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I still don’t know how to break away from him.
Even if I decide to stay, I rationalize, I would go meet my sister. She’ll worry about me if I’m not there. And it would only endanger whoever comes to get me, whether Kip or Blue or someone else from his security company, if they have to break into the mansion itself.
I scrub at my eyes. “No, Romero will be here soon for the morning walk.”
Lupo snores softly at the foot of the bed, his small body curled into a nest. He doesn’t appreciate early mornings any more than I do, but we have to operate around Romero’s availability for walks.
A light clink sounds as Giovanni sets the blue leash on the nightstand.
Awareness comes to me suddenly. I sit up, using the sheet to cover my naked body. “What’s this?”
A muscle works in his jaw. “For you. Romero can still walk the dog if you prefer, but you can too.”
My eyes widen. “Without a guard?”
“When you’re outside, you need an escort. It’s a security issue. Even with the fences and the patrols, I can’t be certain you’ll be safe.” He pauses. “In the house, though, you can go as you please.”
My heart stops beating for a full minute. This is it. He trusts me. He really trusts me, and I’m planning to betray him. I close my eyes. I can’t think about it like that. I only want to see my sister, make sure she’s safe and show her I’m safe too.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
But he’s already turned away, heading for the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’m anxious and restless throughout Friday night. Nightmares wake me up twice, once with a nameless, faceless person pinning me to the wall. The second one holds me in a cage, laughing demonically as I pull at the spindle bars.
Modern Fairy Tale: Twelve Books of Breathtaking Romance Page 73