He let go of her arms to grab her head, sink his fingers into her hair—and felt metal on his fingertips. Hairpins. In quantity.
Tearing his mouth from hers, he spun them both and pushed her against the wall, then grabbed her arm and turned her to face it. She gasped in surprise but not fear.
Paolo sank his fingers into her hair and found every pin, pulling each as gently as his blazing body would allow, tossing them away without a care where they landed. Finally, her wondrous mane was loose and cascading in a wild fall over her back and shoulders, and Paolo indulged in a need he’d felt for months. He lifted all that coiling silk into his hands and let his face fall in.
God, her scent … “The scent of you will drive me mad,” he groaned. “You’re like a confection, tart and sweet.”
She chuckled softly. “It’s from the shop next to Campanelli’s. Soaps and lotions. We made a deal. I do her mending, and get my pick of her stock.”
She was so like him, navigating her life through transactions. What she wanted, what she had to offer, what she could make of it. He pushed her hair over her shoulder and set his mouth on her neck, just below her ear. “I will buy you every bar and bottle of this scent. Never wear anything else.”
“Paolo,” she whispered, and he could hear an intent in his name. There was something she wanted to say, no matter that he’d slid his hands around her waist and was about to ease them up to her bosom.
“Yes?” he asked and bit at her throat as his hands reached their goal. Her breasts were small and firm, and she arched into his touch with a soft gasp.
“Only me.”
He stopped and turned her to face him again. Her hair, loose around her face, was a glory that stole his breath and sense. “What?”
“I don’t have flowery hopes and dreams about what this means. I’m here with you because I want to be, because I want to feel your body on mine, inside mine. I don’t care about my reputation, but I do care about my pride. I don’t share. I’m greedy and selfish, and you already know I’m jealous. As long as you want me in your bed, it can be only me.”
He’d had no thought otherwise. But now he considered her demand, the marvel that she was making it, setting terms for herself, without regard for his power and monstrous reputation.
“And it can be only me,” he returned. “I am jealous, too. What’s mine is for no one else.”
In English, she said, “Then I am yours, and you are mine.”
There was danger in that statement, another warning sign he should heed before he stumbled off a cliff, but he ignored it like all the others. He had what he wanted in his hands.
“Come to bed,” he said and pulled her to his bedroom.
Though no one would dare enter his rooms without invitation, he closed the bedroom door, making the moment as private as he could. Then he turned her again and began to release the hooks and buttons at the back of her gown. Each one revealed a bit more of the black lace corset beneath.
Paolo leaned in and pushed her hair to the front again so he could taste the smooth skin of her back, each bead of her spine, like a strand of pearls. She bent her head, making her body an offering, and he pushed the gown down until it pooled at her feet.
She wore no camisole beneath the corset, and her petticoat was a mere slip of black silk. He found the tie at her waist and released it until it pooled with her gown.
Beneath that petticoat, she wore only black stockings and the corset. Paolo stared at her bare bottom, his mouth arid and his breath stalled.
Reaching out, carefully lest it be a dream, he set his hand on the subtle swell of one small cheek, and she moaned. He let his fingers sweep along the path of that swell, inward, and she shifted on her legs and made room for him.
His fingers grazed soft, hot, yielding flesh, and she moaned again, leaning forward a bit. Ah God, she was wet for him, and there, she was right there for the taking. His fingers slid through her folds, playing through her wet heat, finding the button of her pleasure.
She flinched as if he’d touched her with electricity, and her body rocked back to collide with his. He caught her with an arm around her waist, feeling the bones and lace of the corset through his sleeve, and slid a finger into her. When she moaned, he added another.
She’d told him she was experienced, and everything about her responsiveness proved it true, yet she was tight around his intrusion, a wet clench holding him in place.
“Paolo,” she gasped. “God.”
“Let me have you,” he gritted, forcing his mind to remember how to speak. “I don’t mean to hurt you, but let me take you the way I need it.”
Her head turned, and she looked back at him sidelong. He saw a rosy bloom of flush on her cheek. “I trust you,” she said.
Those words were a lance through his chest and a torch to his need.
Still holding her inside and out, he walked forward, pushing her to the bed. When they got there, he shoved her forward, letting his hand slip from her as she fell to the mattress.
Seeming to understand, she climbed on, rising to her hands and knees, offering herself exactly the way he wanted.
Paolo couldn’t get his trousers open quickly enough. He fumbled and tore at the buttons until he could grab hold of his cock and pull it free. Then he grabbed her hips, yanked her backward to the edge of the mattress, shoved her knees wider so she fit his body where he needed her, and he shoved himself in—one forceful thrust, as deep as she could take him, as hard as he needed to take her.
The impact forced a cry from her lips, but now that he’d freed his ravening need, Paolo was nothing else but that. He gripped her hips, feeling his fingers digging in around those sharp bones, holding her like he could pull her body into his, could subsume her, devour her. Each of his thrusts forced a cry from her, or a grunt, a gasp. He saw her hands twist into fists, pulling his coverlet into knots, he could feel the way her body flailed and thrashed with his force and knew it was too much.
He’d told her he didn’t mean to hurt her, he didn’t want to hurt her, not because he didn’t hurt women but because he didn’t want to hurt her, she trusted him though he’d given her no reason to do so, she’d trusted him to take care of her even when his own family had not, and he didn’t want to hurt her, but he couldn’t stop, he was chasing something he’d forgotten he needed, he’d always needed it and now that he’d remembered he had to have it, was dying for it, would die without it.
He chased it and chased it, faster and faster, trying to gain on it and failing, needing it more, needing it like water or air or food, he would die, he was dying.
The climax came on him like a great eruption of fire, burning through him, making his bones and muscles and blood molten and then setting them like steel. His vision dimmed and his mind went dark.
When it was over, Paolo felt flayed, every nerve exposed and bleeding.
Mirabella was on her hands and knees, perfectly still, except she was shaking. He still held her at the hips, and he forced his fingers to release her.
Already, bruises were forming in the shapes of his hands. He’d told her he wouldn’t hurt her, and he thought he’d tried, but he’d certainly failed.
Again, he’d failed to protect someone he cared about.
And they were still joined. He was still inside her. He’d come inside her.
Slowly, he eased back until she was free of him.
Slowly, she moved away, crawling to the far side of the bed and shifting to sit there, moving gingerly. Because he’d hurt her.
“Bella,” he said, not knowing any other word he could say.
Her back straightened, but she didn’t answer.
He’d broken her trust the moment she’d given it.
He should apologize, and he felt the regret keenly. But how did one apologize for such a thing? Paolo almost never apologized to anyone, and couldn’t imagine how he would now.
Knowing she didn’t want him near her, he closed his trousers and left the room.
He was standi
ng at the liquor chest, working on his second brandy, when she came from the room. She wore his black silk dressing gown. It was vastly too big for her and dragged on the floor, but he could tell by the way the silk lay on her skin, and the peek of bare leg as she moved through the room, that she’d taken the corset and stockings off and was bare beneath that silk.
His cock swelled again.
There was no fear on her face, no hurt or sorrow. She hadn’t been crying, that he could see. Her expression was calm and resolute, but her dark eyes held fire.
He thought of the gun in the chest on his bureau and wondered if she’d found it.
Silently, he watched her cross the room to him. Her eyes held his. When she got there, without shifting her gaze, she took the snifter from his hand and drank down the rest of the brandy.
“What if you put a child in me?”
He thought of his sister, the unwanted baby that had been raped into her on their first night in America. He’d tried to help her, to bring her medicine to release her from that burden, but she’d spurned his help and turned to a stranger instead.
She’d named after their mother the daughter she’d borne. And the man who truly had saved her called that daughter his own.
He would not fail this woman, or his child if he’d made one.
“I would help you get rid of it, if you wanted it to go away.”
“And if I didn’t want to do that?”
“Then I will marry you.” He’d had no intent or desire to marry, but he would not abandon his child—or its mother. He would not fail them.
Now she looked away. She turned to the chest and poured brandy into both snifters.
“What if I don’t want to marry you?”
She’d asked with her back to him. Paolo didn’t know how to answer; would she rather raise a child on her own? What life could she possibly make for herself and the child? No doubt Luciano would support her, but her child would be a bastard, and the world would not be kind to either of them.
“I won’t abandon my child. I would take care of you, whether you married me or not.”
“And I can trust that?”
“Yes.”
Her scoff was so soft it was barely a whisper, but Paolo heard it.
“I’m sorry,” he said without thinking. Without thinking, without her eyes on him, the words weren’t so difficult to say.
Then she turned to him again. She handed him a snifter and had one for herself. She tapped his glass with hers and took a long drink.
“You owe me,” she said.
“What?” He didn’t know if he was asking what she meant, or what he owed.
“I gave you my trust, and you did that with it. You owe me what I thought we’d have tonight. If you want my trust again, prove to me you’ll keep it dear. Come back to bed and show me.”
“You still want that?”
“I want what I came up with you to have. I want the man who kissed me in the park, and in the carriage. I want the man who sets his hand at the small of my back and leans in at my ear to whisper about silly rich people and make me laugh. I want the man who almost smiles when I throw him sass. I want the man who is so wrapped up in me he buries his face in my hair. I want fierceness when it’s passion, but I don’t want to be torn apart. I don’t want to be forgotten in the middle of a fuck. I am more than a hole, Paolo.”
“You are not a hole to me, Bella.”
“Then show me.”
He finished his brandy and nodded that she should do the same. When she had, he took her hand and drew her back to his bedroom.
He hoped the beast in him had been sated.
In the bedroom, again he closed the door. Mirabella turned and put her hands on her hips.
“Take your clothes off,” she said. Her voice was demanding, not sultry. But as she was nearly naked and he was still wearing a tie, he took no umbrage.
While she watched, he removed his tie, collar, cufflinks, cuffs and set them on his bureau. He shrugged from his suspenders and began to unbutton his shirt. Mirabella watched, her usually expressive face inscrutable.
When the buttons were open, he shrugged from the shirt and tossed it to the chair by the door. Then he pulled his undershirt off and tossed it to the chair as well.
As he went for his trouser fastenings, she came to him and stopped him. He let his hands drop to hang at his sides, and she put her hands on his bare chest, pushing her fingers through the hair, making bold sweeps across the top of his chest and down, until he felt her fingers on his scars.
They were many. Three terrible ones from his first night in America, after which, while he’d lain delirious and dying in a place his memory had never made full sense of, the wounds had festered and the flesh had begun to die. Dr. Goldman had sliced the dead away, but he’d left behind wide, puckered scars. Three of them—across his belly, at his side, over his ribs.
Ribs that had been broken, and one had pushed through the skin. Another scar.
And the four that Mirabella herself had left. The others were silvery white, but those four were still deep red. Short and thick, the size of the closed jaws of a pair of heavy scissors.
He didn’t want her to fixate on any of these marks or the stories they told of his weakness and failure. However, laboring under his debt to her, what he’d done to her, he couldn’t bring himself to stop her.
She traced the length and breadth of every scar she could see, hers and the others, on his belly, his sides, his ribs, up and up, her fingers leaving light trails of fire as they brushed through the hair over his chest, up to his throat, to his face. As she had earlier in the evening, she traced the shape of the slash through his mouth, the nasty hook beneath his eye. As she got to the last, across the bridge of his nose, she paused and met his eyes.
“What a life you have lived. What pain.”
That was pity. She’d seen his weakness in his scars, and now she pitied him. He lifted his head from the reach of her seeking hands.
“Paolo,” she said. “Don’t draw away.”
Her hands dropped from his face and took hold of his trousers. He let her open his fly and push the rest of his clothes from his hips. When they fell, he stepped from them and kicked them aside.
Now she, still in his dressing gown, was more dressed. Until she opened the tie and let the silk fall open. Paolo watched her body emerge as she shrugged the gown from her slim shoulders. She brushed her hair back, and he could see all of her.
He drew in a deep, slow breath before the sight of her could take it.
Her breasts were small and high, with tiny dark nipples. Her stomach was perfectly flat. Her hips weren’t much to speak of, which was unusual among Italian women he’d known. He saw the marks of his hands, the red deepening toward purple and sure to bruise. What a damned monster he was.
But he shook that burst of self-loathing away. He owed her this and would make good on the debt.
God, she was beautiful. Lithe and seemingly hairless—also unusual among the women of his intimate acquaintance—except for a small black wedge at her sex.
“Bella,” he breathed. “God.”
Before she could move or speak, he swept her into his arms and carried her to his bed.
This time, he didn’t shove her or toss her onto it. He put his knee on the mattress and eased her down, setting her head on a pillow and stretching out beside her.
After so many years of dallying with whores, transactions in which he was serviced and they were paid, Paolo was, for a moment, at a loss about how to begin to make Mirabella feel the way she wanted to feel, the way he wanted her to feel. She was the first woman he’d kissed in years, and now was the first woman he’d lain with to give pleasure.
Before such thoughts could become doubt, he acted, electing to follow his own urges and hope what he did also gave her pleasure this time.
He wanted to taste her breasts, so he did, pulling her close, holding her tightly as he set his mouth on a small, taut nipple and sucked.
She moaned and wrapped her arms around his head, arched her back to press herself more firmly to his mouth. With each suck she writhed more, rocked her hips against him, whimpered and moaned in perfect tempo.
With a force of will, he tore himself away from that delight and laid a trail of kisses across her chest to the other, took that nipple into his mouth and put his fingers to the one he’d just left, swirling the lingering wet of his mouth with his thumb, closing the tip between his fingers and pulling.
“Yes! Oh yes! Harder!” she cried, and Paolo obliged.
He was so hard he ached, even the touch of the coverlet was an agony, and her thrashing body was a torment to his need. But he’d hurt her that way, been far too rough, far too caught up in himself. She wouldn’t welcome him back so easily.
Wriggling out of the vise of her arms, Paolo shifted downward, leaving kisses behind as he went, replacing his mouth with his hand on her other breast.
Understanding where he meant to go, Mirabella shifted under him, so her legs framed his body. Her legs were long and thin, but he could feel the powerful bunch and release of her thigh muscles as she writhed.
Seeming frail but truly strong.
Settled between her legs, his hands still teasing and exciting her nipples, finding the firm pinch and pull that drove her up without crossing into the wrong kind of pain, Paolo gazed down at the gift between her legs.
She was swollen and red. Not bruised like her hips, but abraded. Abused. He’d done that.
He lowered his head and put his mouth on her—lightly, gently. He kissed her reddened folds, brushed his nose through her hair there, let his tongue out to bestow feathery flicks over her swollen flesh. Her citrus scent was all around him, as if it came from her body itself and not a soap or lotion applied to it. As if she herself were the fruit.
He had been entirely in earnest when he’d told her he’d buy out the stock. He wanted this scent in his head for the rest of his life.
Her hands slid into his hair and made fists, and her body rocked and trembled.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 17