It didn’t matter. Paolo moved over her, lifted her leg to urge her to hook it around his hip. She did, and he pushed in, sliding easily as far as she could take him, rearing his head back with a groan as he reached her limit.
He brought his head forward and locked his gaze with hers. He rocked back, then forward, and again, again, again, again, never shifting his eyes from hers. He was wide open in this act, she could see everything of him—his pain, his losses, his struggles, his need. His drive and ambition, his dreams. And his love—she could see it; he loved her. Even if she’d dreamt the words, or if he’d said them but never would again, she knew it was true. He loved her.
Writhing beneath him with his every thrust, working with him to drive their shared pleasure, she cried, “Ti amo, Paolo. Ti amo!”
He went still, stared down at her, flushed and panting, and Mirabella held her breath. Would his defenses go back up? Would he turn to stone while he was inside her, on the brink of their explosion?
He didn’t. After a moment’s stillness, his gaze shifted from her eyes to her mouth, and he bent to claim it with his as his body moved again. He kissed her fiercely, almost brutally, as if he meant to devour her. When her climax came and she needed breath, he refused her, holding her mouth with his, swallowing every cry and gasp.
Not until his own climax came did he release her, arching back to release a groan like a beast as he shoved himself powerfully deep a final time and then pulled quickly out to spend on the covers between her legs.
Then, as if his bones had all gone soft, he relaxed at once and fell atop her, letting his face fall into the pillows beside her head.
Mirabella lay under him, dazed and breathless.
What a night this had been.
Eventually, Paolo got up and went to the bathroom. Mirabella rose too, discovering a lot of tender places on her body but minding none of them. She used her torn pants to clean herself up a bit, and to wipe up the spot where he’d spent. Then she arranged the bed for sleeping.
She was propped up on the pillows, still naked but tucked under the covers, when he came back. His sex was nearly as enticing when it was soft, hanging before him, swaying as he strode into the room and took up the place beside her. He offered her his arm, and she rolled to him, tucking herself against his side.
After a few moments’ quiet, time spent in intimate proximity, Paolo combing his fingers through her hair and Mirabella tracing mindless patterns across his chest and belly, he asked, “Did someone teach you to sing like that?”
The question reached so far back into a night that was seeming to last an eternity, Mirabella was momentarily confused what he meant. When she caught up, she answered, “Yes and no. My mother was an opera singer. She sang every day, but she never really taught me. I learned, I suppose, by listening. But the way I sang tonight—I’d never sung like that before. I almost felt as if she were inside me, singing herself.”
“You don’t speak of your mother.”
“Nor do you speak of yours.”
“No, you’re right. I was a disappointment to her. She died despairing for my soul.”
“I’m sorry.” She turned and put her lips to his chest. He kissed her head in answer.
“Is it the same for you?”
“No. I was only eleven when she died. I hadn’t had a chance to disappoint her—and the way my father speaks, she wouldn’t have been. He says I’m very like her.”
“Then she must have been magnificent.”
Oh yes, obviously he loved her. Mirabella hooked her arm around his waist and squeezed.
An impulse struck her, and she followed it. “My father is not my father,” she said. The words at the end of the sentence faded to barely a whisper as her nerve quailed. She had never in her life spoken that truth aloud to anyone but her father. It had been known, of course, among certain circles in Firenze, but she’d been raised to believe it immaterial—until recently, when her father worried for her with Paolo.
Paolo went still. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Now that she’d offered that complicated truth, however, she didn’t shrink from it. “The man who put me in my mother’s belly is not the man I call father.”
Paolo sat up higher against the headboard and pushed her gently back to look her in the eye. “She was raped?”
There was a fire in his eyes, a frightening heat she didn’t understand—until she remembered what he’d told her when he’d explained that it hurt to smile. His sister had been ‘savaged,’ he’d said. Any woman knew what that word meant. Had it made her pregnant?
She hadn’t heard much gossip about Paolo’s sister, except to know that she was ‘Beauty’ to his ‘Beast’—a twist of the fairy tale that focused on their character rather than their relationship. She knew his sister had married a baker in Little Italy and they’d all moved to Long Island.
Which was probably why Paolo was so interested in Long Island.
“No,” she replied to his question. “Not raped. My mother did what she wanted, and she took the lovers she wanted. The man who sired me was an aristocrat who admired her beauty and talent. He was also married. When she told him he’d made her pregnant, he severed all ties. Then she told everyone who would listen that he was the father of the child she carried. She was ruined in the scandal. He suffered nothing, except perhaps an uncomfortable time with his wife.”
“And your father? Luciano, I mean?”
“My father is a kind-hearted man. He had dressed her for years. When she lost everything and had me on the way, he offered himself in my sire’s place. He promised to take care of us both as if we were truly his. She agreed.”
“Not a marriage of love, then.”
“Maybe not at first, though I think he loved her a little when he made his offer. But a great love grew. I was witness to it. They loved each other very much.”
“Until she died.”
“Yes.” Mirabella sighed and rested on his chest again. “Until then. And after, for him.”
“How did she die?”
“Infection. She cut her foot open dancing barefoot with me in the courtyard, and it went to rot quickly. It filled her blood and killed her.”
“I’m sorry.” He hugged her snugly.
“Will you tell me of your mother?” she asked, pushing the thought of her mother’s death away.
He didn’t answer, but in the sudden tension of his body around hers, Mirabella could feel the pain her question caused him.
“You don’t have to say.”
“I know I don’t. She died on the crossing. She’d been bitten by something, a spider, before we left, and we didn’t know. She went to sleep and didn’t wake up. They pushed her over the side of the ship. The last thing of substance she ever said to me was that I was damned.”
A change in his tone, from soft and caring to hard and chilly, told Mirabella that this moment of disclosure and discovery was over. She’d nudged at a boundary he wasn’t ready to bring down. Now he was erecting all his defenses again and pushing her back to a place he considered safe.
He wasn’t unkind; he still held her closely and showed no sign of wishing not to. He kissed her head again, lingering there to take in her scent. But the battlements were definitely up again.
Mirabella had been considering the merits of asking him directly if the words he’d said at her ear in the throes of desire were real. Now, she decided not to. Now, she would get the answer he felt safest to give, whether or not it was true.
He still wasn’t ready.
She hoped he would be ready someday. Her whole life could not—would not—be spent pining after a man whose bed she shared. If he couldn’t let her all the way in, she would eventually have to leave him behind.
“Are you ready for sleep?” he asked, making it clear their moment was truly over.
Mirabella lifted from his chest. She leaned in and kissed him. “Yes,” she said, and rolled away. After a moment, Paolo turned off the light and rolled to her, pulling her into the curve of his bo
dy.
She hoped he would be ready someday.
During the days, Paolo was either gone, or ensconced in his office, or in his parlor with a group of his men. In any event, she was not invited to join them. He’d wanted her to stop her work at Campanelli’s, and she had, without feeling much loss.
Now that her father was opening his own shop, she’d meant to work with him, but Paolo still didn’t like it. He wanted her home, at his beck and call.
That had sat poorly with Mirabella, so they’d negotiated a deal. She would work three days a week with her father, and spend the rest of her days at, in Paolo’s words, ‘leisure,’ her schedule open to accommodate his.
In return for her flexibility, he assigned her a driver of her own, and a small buggy, encouraging her to go out into the city and find the thing that would be hers. Mirabella had taken him at his word, exploring the city with Gus at her side. She hadn’t yet found her thing, however.
On this day shortly after their disastrous dinner at the March mansion, and a few days before Natale, what the Americans called Christmas, the weather prevented her from leaving. Snow had started falling the afternoon before and hadn’t let up yet. The morning had added a vile wind that whipped down the streets and alleys, making hanging signs swing and tearing holiday decorations away to float and fly through the air.
Paolo was out, and the house was nearly empty, except for herself and Teresa, Paolo’s secretary, and Maria, who seemed never, ever to leave. Neither woman liked her—most women did not, in fact—and she wasn’t in the mood for their half-hidden sneers, or to confront them straight on, either. So she spent the first part of the day in the apartment, curled up in a chair beside the fireplace, reading one of Paolo’s books.
He had an astonishingly extensive collection of them—a whole room, albeit a small one, beside his office devoted to books. Many were histories and political treatises, which Paolo read most nights before bed. Those bored her silly, but one whole case was literature—fiction and poetry, and plays, in both English and Italian.
Born with her mother’s rich imagination, Mirabella had always loved to read, and her discovery of that tucked-away library, and Paolo’s offer of her free access to it, was a great treasure. The books she’d been offered during her captivity came from this room, and there were hundreds more. It was impossible to be bored with so many stories around her. Also, it helped her practice, when she chose an English book.
Now, she was working her way through Shakespeare’s plays. In her schooling, she’d read Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. Her mother had performed Otello, and she’d sung for Mirabella and told her the story. These books were in English, and she was finding it exceedingly difficult to parse out the strangely structured sentences. But there were footnotes, and she was managing.
Finishing As You Like It, she took the book downstairs to re-shelve it. As she studied the spines of the other plays, she heard a commotion and went to the window. This room was at the back of the building, and the window faced the alley and the scruffy space that was neither courtyard nor lawn. Nothing but an expanse of dirt and a row of privies. Though the house had indoor plumbing, the basement did not have a bathroom; the boys and young men who lived there used the privies.
Some of those boys and young men were playing in the alley, throwing snowballs at each other. They laughed and shouted, hurled snow and tackled each other, thoroughly reveling in the winter weather. A snowfall right before Christmas was the very best kind.
Those boys were largely mysterious to Mirabella. Paolo firmly insisted that she never go down to the basement, and she was savvy enough to agree it wouldn’t be wise. By all accounts, Paolo’s and the neighborhood gossips’, some of those boys were practically feral. And they all were being trained to do Paolo’s work. Though she was the don’s mistress, she knew better than to jump into a lion’s den—or a basement full of wild teenaged boys and young men.
However, watching them playing in the snow, she saw they were only boys. Children. Some nearly her age, but in their exuberance they seemed younger. She watched until someone called from the basement, and they all headed in, leaving the snow to tell the story of their great battle.
With a snap decision, Mirabella left the little library without a new book. She went to the closet in the front hall and drew her heavy cloak from it. There was a door to the basement on this floor, but Paolo kept it locked with a key; he didn’t want the boys traipsing through this part of the building.
Wrapping herself in her cloak, she went through the kitchen and out the back door.
The door to the basement was lower than the ground, tucked into a stone well. A drift of snow had partially filled it, but the boys’ stomping feet had packed enough down that she could descend the short set of stairs to the door without being buried to her knees in snow. But her legs and feet were definitely soaked and chilled after the short journey across the little yard.
She could hear the boys talking excitedly and laughing. From inside the house, very few sounds rose up through the floor. Feeling a little silly, she knocked. After a few seconds, the door creaked open a few inches and a set of suspicious eyes peered out, at the height of a man. Seeing her, those eyes widened. “Ma’am?”
“Hello,” she said, speaking English; she didn’t know if these boys spoke Italian. “You know me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The door opened a bit wider, and she saw a boy who was man-size but not mature enough for hair on his face. “Is there trouble? Do you need help?”
“No, not that. I—may I come in?” She didn’t quite know what she was doing. Following an urge. An instinct. Maybe simple curiosity.
“Ma’am?” he said again. These boys weren’t so wild after all. “I don’t—I think—why?”
Her English was improving, but it required a lot of focus, a constant sorting through the words she’d learned to find ones had the proper nuance. “I … like to know you.”
The boy looked back, seemed to carry on a silent conversation with someone in the room behind him, then turned to her again. She realized that the commotion in the basement had stopped.
“Is it okay with the don?”
“Of course,” she said, though she doubted it would be true.
“Okay,” the boy said and opened the door all the way. When he stepped back, Mirabella went in.
It looked exactly like a place where unparented boys lived together. The basement took up the whole footprint of the building and seemed to be divided into three rooms and five discrete spaces. One door was closed, so she didn’t know what it was, but another door was open, and she could see rows of bunks there, at least two high. In the very large room where she stood, there was a roomy alcove that served as something like a kitchen, with two long, rough tables framed by long benches. Another nook held boxing gear and something like a boxing ring—mats arranged on the floor, their boundaries marked off with string. The rest of the room was a hodgepodge of castoff armchairs and sofas, a collage of ratty rugs on the stone floor, a case of pulpy books, and some smaller tables that seemed meant for games.
It was a playroom where these boys also slept.
“Can I take your cloak?” the boy who’d answered the door asked.
“That’s all right. I won’t bother you for long.” She held out her hand. “I am called Mirabella.”
He stared at her hand as if it might bite him. “I can’t—we can’t—ma’am?”
Understanding what he didn’t know how to say, she smiled. “You can call me that—Mirabella.”
“I don’t think the don would like it. He would want us to respect you.”
“He is so terrifying?” She made her tone light and teasing.
“No, ma’am.” The young man’s expression was earnest. “But we owe him a lot—including our respect.”
“Well then,” she said, conceding, “I am Miss Montanari.”
His smile was pure relief as he shook with her. “Pleasure, Miss Montanari. I’m Ted.”
“Hello,
Ted.” She turned to another boy, this one several years younger. About her age when her mother died. “Hello.”
He was wearing his cap; he pulled it from his head and made something like a bow. “Ma’am. I’m Mike.”
“I am glad to meet you.” She offered her hand again, and he took it and gave it a shy squeeze.
Then all the boys—a dozen or so—came up and made a receiving line, each taking their turn to meet her. Each one was reserved and polite. Whatever Paolo had worried about in her encountering these children, he needn’t have.
In their own rough way, they were perfect gentlemen.
She spent an hour in the basement. The boys showed her their little domain, as proud of it as if they lived in a castle. They talked about how they’d come to live here—they were all of them orphans or castoffs, left to fend for themselves until Paolo had offered them shelter. Some had sisters who lived elsewhere, also under Paolo’s protection. Ted, the man-size boy with the rosy, smooth cheeks, had lived here long enough to remember the don Paolo had ousted, and he spoke in a rapturous tone about Paolo as the better benefactor.
The boys told her about the way they lived, how they spent their free time. They showed her their small treasures. They didn’t speak of the work they did for Paolo, but she didn’t ask them to. Finally she asked them if they went to school.
They could if they wanted, but few did. They preferred to learn here—but what they learned was only what the older boys could teach, and that was, for the most part, the tools of their trade. Though she didn’t ask them what that meant, she could imagine: how to pick a pocket, how to grift, how to watch and not be noticed—and how to fight.
When Mirabella left that basement, she had three new things: a fuller understanding of Paolo Romano, a deeper love for the man he truly was, and, at last, the thing that could be hers.
She could be part of Paolo’s world, have her influence, find her power.
She had taught a peasant don society manners. She could teach his child army more than that.
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 24