by Leslie North
Toe to toe, chest to chest, they stood with their faces mere inches from each other.
“I don’t want you,” Gianpierre said again, “but you have turned me into a man who has to have you. Before you, I’d been content. I’d been happy. But now all I do is want, and you’re always at the center of it.” Despite his angry words and tone, he brushed a tear away from Luciana’s cheek with a feather-light touch. “You and that little girl, you’re eclipsing everything I’ve worked toward in my life, and it’s killing me. I am not the man I was when I met you. You’ve replaced him and left a person who is torn in two. How can I be in Dubai doing what I must do and still be here with you, making love to you and living my life for you?”
“Kiss me or move out tonight,” Luciana said on a breath. “Stop living on the fence.” She didn’t know where the words came from, but they were there and within her aching heart she knew that she meant them. She couldn’t be half of who she was with Gianpierre anymore. She needed him to need her as badly as she needed him. And it wasn’t a want, it was a need, a painful one.
Gianpierre dipped his head forward so that his lips brushed hers. “I’m going to kiss you, and I still have to leave. Not tonight, but I will leave.”
“Then do it already,” Luciana taunted. “Kiss me!”
That was all it took. Gianpierre’s hands were in her hair and his mouth was crushing hers. Luciana’s hands clawed at his back as she climbed his body to wrap her long legs around his hips. She kissed him back as hard as he kissed her until her mind filled with the sense of him and pushed all thoughts of everything else about her life out. All worry left her. All consequences were gone. There was only him and his body against hers. Visceral. Animal. It was what she wanted from him. Needed from him.
Their kiss never faltered as Gianpierre walked them blindly forward. With one jerk, the door of his small rooftop gym was nearly torn off its hinges, and it was not until Gianpierre had her laying on her back atop the forgiving cushioned gym floor mats that his kiss softened.
She fought him when she felt his body ease against hers. She didn’t want a lover in him. She wanted someone to have sex with. He wasn’t going to stay, and she didn’t want her body to be deceived into thinking that he cared. Someone who cared didn’t just up and leave the person they cared about, and that meant she was nothing to him. She wouldn’t have him fooling her into thinking otherwise. So, she sank her hands into his thick hair and squeezed as she intensified their kiss back into its formerly crushing intensity. But Gianpierre’s hands closed around her wrists and lifted her arms above her head and pinned them to the floor. He then lifted his chest away from hers as he gave more of his weight to his elbows.
“Let me go,” Luciana demanded, struggling to regain control of her arms so that she could rip the shirt off his back.
“Not like this, cuore mio,” he said. She recognized the words. He was calling her his heart, and it made her fight him more. She would not believe he cared about her more than what was convenient for him to do. She tried to sit up enough to take back control of their now-absent kiss, but with her hands pinned over her head, she wasn’t able to. Anger raged within her, and she bit back words designed to cut and injure. “Not like this,” Gianpierre whispered again, as he let his body’s weight gently settle on top of her. He blanketed her with himself, and before Luciana knew what was happening, her lower lip began to quiver.
“She wasn’t supposed to leave me,” she said, her voice full of anguish. “We had our whole lives in front of us. It’s not fair. Why couldn’t she have made the trip to the airport one minute earlier or one minute later? Why did it have to be right then? I was just coming to visit for a couple of weeks. I didn’t know everything was going to change.” Her voice broke, and her breath grew staggered as hot tears fell from the corners of her eyes.
Gianpierre released her wrists and stroked her hair as he pressed his cheek to hers. “Sometimes our lives change when we’re not looking, cuore mio.”
Luciana wrapped her arms around his back and held on as her breath stole away from her body and silent cries filled the air. It was the first time she had cried—really cried—since Sophia had died. She had wanted to before, had needed to, but had always felt too selfish to let go. Somehow, though, she felt allowed to do that with Gianpierre. He made the world calmer and less rushed. He made it okay to be herself. He was strong enough to let her fall apart.
When his lips found hers again, she let him lead her in a kiss that opened her heart despite the scars left on it from the loss of her sister. She held to him, and lost herself in his gentle touch as his lips trailed across her cheek to capture the lobe of her ear. Her pain turned into something else, then. It turned into a hunger, and she moaned as she arched her back to press her breasts into the solid mass of his chest. Pulling at his shirt, she tugged it free from his pants so that she could drag her nails up his naked skin. His body shivered and then his muscles bunched and moved beneath her touch as he found her mouth once more and kissed her deeply.
With a pull on the belt that wrapped around her waist, Gianpierre got her dress open and bliss followed as his hands explored every inch of her flesh. A second later, Luciana was pulling his shirt off over the top of his head.
Sitting up, they helped each other escape from their clothes like a couple of rushed teenagers eager to get to their promised prizes beneath. With herself bared before him, Luciana was surprised to discover that she did not feel naked. She felt at home, but her eyes travelled over him like he was a new favorite gift on Christmas morning. Athletic didn’t begin to describe him. His powerfully muscled body was perfection, and watching him shift and move was poetry in motion. And then, lower down at the end of the little happy trail of hair beneath his belly button, his ready want of her was undeniable… and impressive.
“Protection?” It was all she had to say before he reached for his jeans and pulled his wallet free. A little foil packet appeared in his hand a second later. With a rip to open it, she helped him roll the condom on over his thick girth and ample length.
With that done, Gianpierre picked Luicana up and helped her settle astride his lap with his hard length trapped between their bodies. Sliding her hands behind his neck, she kissed him once and then again before reaching down between them to stroke the tip of his head with a swirling finger.
Gianpierre moaned and pulled her hips tighter against him with a hand flat against her lower back. Instinctively, she lifted her knees and immediately found herself pressed into the hard shaft that would soon sink its length into her. But that didn’t appear to be Gianpierre’s plan just yet. Holding her hips snug, he moved his own so that he ground himself against her, rubbing the underside of his heavy want through the layers of her hot center.
Luciana’s breath hitched when he shifted his angle and the stroke of his head’s ridge over her caught her clit just right. Letting her eyes drift half-closed, she moved her hips in a circular motion as he held her in place to slide and move against her. It wasn’t long before her entire body was trembling and tight as her core clenched with its entire strength and a growing desperation to release its tension in a wave of ecstasy. The thumb of Gianpierre’s free hand brushed across her beaded nipples before he dipped his head to capture one with his mouth and then his teeth.
Luciana whimpered as she held on to the back of his head, completely at his mercy as he teased and tortured the two most sensitive spots on her body. It was more than she could stand, and arching her neck back as she fully gave him her chest, she let herself fill with a blossoming warmth of trust. He held her as her body lost itself to the pulsing pleasure that flooded all of her senses to finally leave her limp in his arms.
He enveloped her in his strong embrace, and Luciana’s body stayed loose and relaxed as he shifted them until she was flat on her back with her knees bent in the air and him laying between her thighs. She felt exposed in that moment in a way that she hadn’t felt since her earliest days of sharing her body with a man. Someho
w, she felt new. She felt as though she was having her very last first-time.
Gianpierre reached between them and she felt the fullness of his head press against the throbbing, ready ache of her center. He kissed her then, soft and sweet, and he waited until she kissed him back before his weight shifted and she felt herself stretched by him. The experience was more than she’d expected… more intense, more gentle, more sensitive. She could feel every part of him, every glorious inch that filled her being with the certainty of his own. She sighed, letting go of all her tension as she took in his strength and opened herself to him as much as she could. His hips flexed and his back bowed, and she cried out as he sank himself to his full depth. He was more than she’d ever known in so many ways. He was infinitely strong and demanding yet also painstakingly patient and coaxing of her body to give up its secrets of how to make her cry out his name.
His hips ground against her and then he thrust hard enough to pulse her body forward. He held her knee high against his side with the tips of his fingers hooked behind its bend. He thrust again and again, hard yet taking his time, a contrast of motions that confused her brain and made her dizzy. Again and again, he reached her greatest depths and made her channel’s pleasure points swell with an overwhelming need to become his in ways she had never been anyone’s before.
Her breathing came in gasps and her body shook, hanging on to her pleasure and refusing to let it flow, but Gianpierre kept on and on, moving inside of her, thrusting and grinding, steady and strong until finally she cried out and held to him with all her might. It was not until then that his pace changed, that he sped up, that he took her harder and faster until the pounding pace that he needed for his own release triggered a rolling orgasm to overflow from her core as she clamped herself tight around him yet again. With a ragged cry of his own, Gianpierre lost all that he was inside of her. The walls he’d built around his heart crumbled. She could feel it, she was sure of it. And, just as she’d been at the start, he was now naked with her. Truly naked, bare and vulnerable.
She held him tight. She held him until his labored breath slowed and the shields of his heart seemed to reconstruct themselves. She could tell when the distance between their souls increased even though the heat of their bodies, flesh against flesh, was still entangled.
He will never be mine, she reminded herself again, and this time she believed it.
11
Gianpierre
“Natalia, your designs for the fairy castle are so good!” Gianpierre praised.
But the little girl held up Gianpierre’s design in front of her and held her head cocked to the side as she assessed it with squinting eyes. Finally, she let the paper fall back to the table and said with definitive certainty, “Yours is better. I want that castle.” She poked her finger at it.
Leaning forward, Gianpierre looked over his design with a fresh eye. It had spires, a curving staircase that travelled up the side of a cliff, a winding road, a moat with a working drawbridge, an inner and outer courtyard, a dragon’s nest, a hidden entrance, and a wizard’s tower. He had to admit, it was a rather ambitious undertaking. “Do you think we can do it?” he asked her with a conspiratorial wink, earning a giggle from the little girl.
She nodded her head emphatically while dancing in place in excitement.
Gianpierre nodded his agreement. “I think so too. Let’s do this.” With the clock ticking down to his departure and the work hours at the resort ramping up, he knew that they had no time to waste.
The nanny, Signora Esposito, was working out better than he’d ever imagined. Natalia was happier and his darling Luciana was looking more rested. The two of them even got the chance to sneak away to the rooftop for some private time many of their evenings together. They were discreet about the relationship that was evolving between them. It was almost as if they had an unspoken agreement to keep what they were becoming to each other private. Since it was temporary, there was no reason to involve anyone else, least of all Natalia. She didn’t need the confusion. As ever, the clock was ticking and Gianpierre was leaving. Every day the inevitable drew that much closer.
Gianpierre heard the apartment door open and close and then he heard the familiar steps of Luciana. With her arrival, a tension he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in his shoulders left him. It happened every time. He would realize she was near, and his body would relax. He’d never experienced anything like it before with any other woman he’d been involved with. Always before, they would walk into the room and his neck would tense or he would need to get up and aimlessly pace the room. It was as though he’d been afraid of being trapped, but that wasn’t how it felt being with Luciana. She put him at ease. She made him glad to be where she was.
“Hi, honey,” Luciana said in greeting as she stroked Natalia’s strawberry-gold hair and kissed her head.
“Look, Mama!” she said, holding up the drawing of the fairy castle that she and Gianpierre had plans to build.
“Very nice!” Luciana exclaimed but flicked her gaze to Gianpierre from the corner of her eye.
Understanding her concern, Gianpierre assured, “We’ll make it happen.”
“Sweetie, why don’t you go help Signora Esposito. I hear her in the kitchen.”
“She’s making dinner,” Natalia announced with an abundance of enthusiasm.
“We are in for a treat then! Okay,” she said, steering Natalia to turn around and then giving her a gentle send-off push to get her moving. “You head on in there and I’ll be in to help in a few minutes.”
Gianpierre felt as though he was being called into the principal’s office at school when Luciana sat down in the chair adjacent to him. He had the distinct feeling that he was in for a “talk.”
“I spoke with Gerald Clement. He said that he’d heard back from you and that you’d told him that we were going in another direction at this time. You told him that he wasn’t the right fit to take over the Romano del Mare renovations on the courtyard, cellars and catacombs.”
“So,” Gianpierre said, shrugging his shoulders. He knew what was coming next, but he would not make it easier on her. If she wanted to berate him for being picky on who he handed the job over to, that was her problem and not his. He didn’t care if he only had two and a half weeks before he had to report to Dubai, yet had four and a half months’ worth of repairs to work through at the resort. The Romano del Mare was his family’s most indelible legacy, and he would not turn over its restoration to a hack.
“Gianpierre,” Luciana hissed in an agitated whisper as she leaned forward, “he is one of the best medieval architects in the world! How could he not be a good fit? He’s worked on more medieval monasteries than anyone else, even you!”
Gianpierre’s temper flashed at the implication that there was someone to whom he might be second best, but he kept it in check. “He wasn’t right for the job. He would have come in and done everything to his own vision. He would not have listened to the Romano del Mare and asked her who she wants to be. He is too heavy handed in his restorations. He is too autocratic. Everything would be his way or no way at all.”
Luciana arched her brows at him. “Really. He’s too autocratic?”
Gianpierre grunted and waved off her challenge but then watched as her shoulders sagged and she took a deep breath then let it out as if she were defeated. It made him regret his hard headedness, yet he could not back down. He had to go, that was true. He had to be in Dubai, but he could not bear the thought of seeing another man in his place… with Luciana standing at his side. She would have her little computer tablet ready to jot down anything he said, and she would hang on his every word. That image… that thought, it was eating him alive.
“I cannot. He is wrong for the job. I’m sorry, Luciana, but I cannot leave”—he paused, stopping short of saying that he could not leave her but swallowed that down and said—“the Romano del Mare to anyone else’s care.”
Luciana threw up her hands. “That’s it then. Let’s call the project a wr
ap and shut the whole thing down. We’ll cover the holes with tarps, put caution tape around the entire courtyard, and tell the tourists next year that those sections are out of bounds. It will still be here when you get back in four to six years.”
Luciana’s expression was stony, harsh even, and her words made him ashamed of the position he was putting her, his brothers, and the Romano del Mare in. Yet, he wasn’t able to make himself budge.
“I’m sorry, Luciana. Gerald Clement is a good man but he’s not right for this job.” He stood up from the table. “Keep looking. There’s someone who can take over, I’m sure.” Just as long as that someone was, say, an eighty year old woman and not anyone who could ever replace him in Luciana’s life.
Half a week had passed and Gianpierre had watched as Luciana scoured the globe in search of a medieval architect who could replace him. Time after time, she crossed the person off her list all on her own without any input from him as she recognized that their skill was not of a quality needed to continue the work that he had started.
There were few people left in the world who would have the necessary qualifications to even be considered for the position, and he sympathized with her predicament. She needed a way to continue to pay her bills, and she wanted their part of the Romano del Mare restoration to continue uninterrupted. He wanted her to stop pushing him away and rushing him out the door. He knew he had to leave, but she had begun treating him like he’d already gone. Most hurtful was the way she always found excuses for Natalia to go and be somewhere else when he was around.
But he had come up with a solution, and it was a brilliant one. He would be able to leave for Dubai and she would be able to continue in her role as Project Manager. He’d arranged it all. He would leave Paolo behind to lead the team with which Gianpierre had worked with for years. They knew the job. They understood the techniques. Starting on the enormous new project in Dubai without his personal team by his side to help oversee the activities of hundreds of others would be far less than ideal, but it would be doable. Meanwhile, Gianpierre would guide Paolo in how to proceed at the Romano del Mare through video calls, photographs, schematics and any other tools necessary to get the job done. He would even fly back to oversee the project in person every chance he got. In fact, he would continue to sublet the room from Luciana in his—in her, he corrected—apartment. Nothing had to change. Now all he needed to do was to find her and tell her the good news.