That lot on the beach, where he meant to build a house for his family someday—what was that but a big bright beacon of hope?
He heard Mirabella come back into their apartment, but he stood where he was, marveling at this epiphany.
It changed everything he understood of himself. His heart and lungs seemed to swell so big his ribs ached.
“Paolo? You are well?” Mirabella set her hand on his back and leaned close, peering up at him.
Turning from the bright view at the window and inside his soul, he looked down into her lovely dark eyes, narrowed with worry.
“Very well, amore mia. Just thinking.”
“Of?”
This new understanding was too new and raw to utter, he needed to live with it alone for a while, so he said, “What Dr. Goldman told us of Miss Barton. I don’t understand why someone like her would do it.”
Her expression changed slightly, lost its worry and gained a different kind of edge. “Because you a man.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Men not …” with a huff and a shake of her head, she switched to Italian. “You can’t understand what it’s like to be a woman. We must rely on men for everything that keeps us safe and well. A woman like her, born to luxury, she has no chance to survive without it. Even here in Little Italy, where things are hard and everyone works, to live without a man is a danger. I don’t know Miss Barton, what struggles she faced or what she did to cause them—if she did anything at all—but I saw some of her fall. I don’t think she could live in any way open to her. For a lady like that, if she didn’t want what she was supposed to have, there was nothing for her at all. Nothing but death.”
He answered her in Italian as well. “I don’t believe that. There is always a way to live, if you have the strength and will to keep going, keep fighting.” He pulled her close. “You’d never give up.”
She smiled and brushed her fingers over his beard—a new habit she’d picked up since the beard had grown full. Yes, he would likely keep it through the wedding.
“I’d fight, yes. If it came to it, I’d do anything and everything I had to. I’d go to Carmela’s if I had to and be a whore, and I’d keep a lookout for a better way. I wouldn’t hate myself for doing what I had to do to survive. But you tell me all the time that I’m unusual, and I know it’s true. No one ever taught me to care so much about propriety. My mamma didn’t care about it herself, and my pappa cared too much for me to trim my wings. I learned to do what I wanted, to fight for it. Do you think Miss Barton was taught that? Do you think she’d see one of Carmela’s girls and think it was possible to fall so low from the heights she’d known and survive it?”
He brushed from her face an errant curl that had slipped from its pin. “It sounds like you aren’t surprised she did it.”
She shrugged. “I’m not. Maybe it’s for the best—she had no hope for a life she wanted, so why have a life at all?”
There was that word again: hope. Suddenly, it was all around him. He was suffused with it.
“What life do you want, Bella?” he asked in a whisper. “I want you to have the life you want.”
Her smile broke wide and shone. “I do have it, my love. With you, at your side. Everything you want, I want, too. I hated leaving Firenze, I’ve hated being away from it, I don’t like this city, but now I see I needed to be exactly here, where you are, to have everything. Together, we’ll have everything. At your side, in your arms, that is my life. My home.”
That swelling in Paolo’s chest became a great tide rolling through him, a sea change, and his hands shook as they framed this remarkable woman’s lovely face. He bent to her and put his lips lightly on her new scar—a sign of her strength and her fight. Her bravery. Her survival.
Just as his scars were signs of his. Not his weakness but his tenacity. From a low, dark place, he’d risen to this.
Mirabella wrapped her arms around his neck, slid her fingers into his hair, pushed his head so that his lips came to meet hers. She opened her mouth, and Paolo fell in, dropping his arms from her face so he could wrap them around her, clutching her body as tightly to his as he could, diving deep into her mouth, claiming every inch of her as his own, and giving every inch of himself in return.
She made the sound he loved best in the world, the tiny, growling mewl that spoke her need for him more clearly than a shout, and Paolo turned them both and walked her toward the bed. Their bed.
They’d been chaste with each other since their night in the hospitality of the Pinkertons, but Paolo had had enough of chastity. He had Mirabella, he had everything, and he wanted it all right now.
But when her legs hit the mattress, she slipped her hands from his neck and pushed on his chest, making a hairsbreadth of distance—too much—between them. “Paolo, no,” she gasped in her favorite language. “We should wait more.”
“No,” he growled like the beast he was called. Knowing it would hurt and not caring, he moved to lift her, but she skittered out of reach.
“Paolo!” Flushed and breathless, she clearly wanted him with the same heat he felt for her, but she slammed her hands on narrow hips and frowned. “The doctor say—”
“I don’t care.”
“I do. I want you well.”
“I won’t be well if I don’t have you now. I’ll burn to cinders from the inside out.”
She laughed at him, but he was mad enough with lust and love that he thought it possible he hadn’t exaggerated. “Bella. Per favore.”
Her pretty mouth twisted up as she considered him. “Well, then,” she finally said and came back to him.
Relieved, he grabbed for her, but she eluded his hands and reached for his trousers. His suspenders still hung at his hips from when he’d stripped to the waist for the doctor’s examination. As her fingers flipped open the buttons and then slipped into his trousers and drawers, the muscles in Paolo’s belly shuddered and turned to steel.
He was already so hard his cock felt as if it might shatter at the first touch—and then Mirabella grabbed hold of his clothes and yanked them from his hips as she folded to her knees before him.
Holy Lord.
She’d tried to give him pleasure this way before, but Paolo always deflected it, preferring to have her in his arms, to be in control of the pleasure they both felt. Too many years with whores between his knees had turned this into a whorish act, and he didn’t like to think of his woman that way. It had unsettled him, honestly, that the woman he loved was so comfortable with it she’d make the move herself.
But the woman he loved was this woman. Unusual. Free. Unencumbered by concern for what was proper, far more interested in what was right.
Anything borne of the love between them was right.
With an impish little smirk, she put her lips lightly on his tip, and yes, he though he might really shatter. The groan that left his mouth seemed to crawl up from the skin her lips had touched.
She helped him all the way out of all of his clothes, pushing the heap out of their way, and Paolo expected her to take him in her hands and mouth. She didn’t.
Instead, she stood again and pushed at his chest. “On the bed.”
He obeyed, willing to do anything, let her do anything. As usual, his chest complained about the movement, and, also as usual, he ignored it. He’d been truthful with the doctor: his pain was manageable. Noticeable and steady, but manageable.
Especially now.
When he lay on the bed, atop the counterpane with his head on the pillows, Mirabella stepped back and put her hands to her hair.
Slowly, with her eyes locked tight on his, she pulled a pin out and set it on her dressing table. Then another. And another, until her wonderful wild hair was loose all around her head and over her shoulders.
Then, still holding a gaze with him, she worked the buttons on her blouse, slipping each one through its hole with indolent slowness.
The realization dawned on him slowly: she was stripping for him, making a
show of her body, making him wait. He groaned again and took his cock in his hand. “Bella,”
Her smile grew horns.
With the same deep focus and leisurely pace, she opened her shirt and slipped it off, drew her belt from her waist, opened her skirt and slid it off her hips until it dropped to the floor. Then her petticoat. Shoes. Stockings—a piquant flip of each garter fastening. Corset—one that closed in front, as she preferred. Each hook got the same alluring attention.
Paolo wanted to get up and grab her, but he also wanted to stay right were he was, stroking himself lightly, with a tempo that matched her tease, and experience every moment of this unexpected delight.
After her chemise and drawers were showily discarded, she stood before him, slim and perfect. She pushed her mane behind her shoulders and set her hands on her small breasts, playing there for her pleasure and his, tweaking her own nipples, making herself moan and bite down on her bottom lip. Then her hands slipped lower, over the ladder of her visible ribs, to her flat belly, lower.
God, the vision she was, touching herself, pleasuring herself, with her attention fixed on him.
“Bella. Per favore,” he said again, his voice now a reduced to guttural grunt and full of pleading.
Smiling, she climbed onto the bed and settled on her knees between his legs. She took his cock in her hands and bent low, taking him into her mouth.
The sound he made then was more like a beast’s howl than any sound a human should make.
Her hands and mouth worked him together, not expertly but certainly efficiently. Far back in his mind, Paolo was pleased to feel, to know, that though she was bold, she was clearly not well practiced at this. It wasn’t her first time, but she hadn’t done it often. The occasional touch of her teeth or awkward shift of her fingers was an enhancement, because it meant it was special between them.
Those unpracticed touches also served to help him keep control over himself.
But it didn’t take long for Mirabella to understand what she was doing, what worked and didn’t, and change her moves accordingly. With each move of her mouth, she gained experience and confidence, until she had him groaning with every breath and fisting the counterpane in both hands.
Her hair was a black cloud over his belly and hips, obstructing his view of her, and he wanted to gather it in his hand and hold it away, but he couldn’t make his fists open and let go of the counterpane.
“Bella,” he groaned again, and she lifted her head and looked up at him.
Her cheeks were rosy and her lips wet, her eyes wide and black with her own need, and Paolo thought he could die right now and consider every hope, every dream, every goal fulfilled.
“Don’t come,” she murmured with a smile. “Not yet.”
He didn’t want to come in her mouth; that was too far, too coarse. A dishonor to her.
And he wanted her to come, too, but truly he wasn’t sure his chest could quite withstand that much exertion yet.
Then he knew the solution. “Mount me, Bella.”
Smiling that wonderful, devilish smile, she rose at once, clambered up to straddle him, took hold of him again in one hand, pulled her hair back with the other, and eased her perfect slight body down on him with an earthy sigh that said everything about all there was between them.
Between them, in their love, was the life he wanted, the life she wanted. Everything.
She moved on him with sinuous grace, her hips rocking and twisting, her back arching, her breath moaning. Paolo tightened every muscle, even those holding injured ribs, and bargained with his body for more restraint. She’d strummed him to a frenzy already, but he wanted her to come before he had to pull out.
He put a hand on a breast, sighing at the beautiful small heft of her, at the perfect pearl of her hard nipple, and slipped his other hand into the hot wet between her thighs, finding that other pearl, where her best bliss dwelled.
Her head dropped back and her hair brushed his legs, she moaned with a deep, earthy rumble, and she began to move with more urgency. Her body clamped around him, holding him more tightly, drawing him more deeply, and he felt her rise.
“That’s it, my love, come for me. God, Bella, come, please come.” He pressed his finger hard to her sex, rubbed frantically, an intensity to match the desperation inside him, until she was bouncing on him, each inhale a shocked gasp, each exhale a needy cry.
“Sì! Sì! Sì! Sì! Oh, sì!” she cried and went rigid, completely immobile in a rictus of release, until, still clamped fiercely around him, she began to quiver. She cried out, an inhuman, guttural, almost painful exclamation, and then collapsed on him, only avoiding crashing onto his battered chest by throwing her hands out at the last second.
He hadn’t come yet, but his vision had gone dark and glittered with the need of it. He gritted his teeth and let her have a moment of respite before he gasped, “Bella.”
It was all he could manage to say, but she understood. Still fragile with her lingering throes, propped on her hands, staring down at him, she began to rock again, slowly this time, drawing him through her sheath with slow purpose.
Mere seconds had him near his peak, and he grabbed her hips. “I’m close, I’m close.”
“Stay,” she whispered, forcing her body to break his restraining hold. “Don’t leave. Finish in me.”
With the shameful exception of their first time, when he’d been too rough, too desperate, he never had come inside her. They’d spoken of children and wanted them, but they hadn’t discussed when. They weren’t yet married.
“Bella?”
“I want everything of you, Paolo Romano. Everything.”
This woman had changed him from his soul outward. He was so much more than he’d ever been before. Everything he was capable of being, he now was. Everything he could have, he would have.
The whole world was different now.
He moved his hands from her hips, clasped her face, drew her to his mouth, and gave her everything.
XXV
Luciano gave Paolo’s shoulder one last swipe with his brush and considered Paolo’s reflection in the mirror. His gaze lifted to Paolo’s reflected face. “There. Is good, yes?”
Paolo focused on his reflection. The suit was solid black—he thought the bright plaids and wide pinstripes some men of fashion wore these days were dandyish and unserious—but the wool, a summer weight, was soft and sleek, with the slightest touch of sheen when the light hit it just right.
It was a beautiful suit, made beautifully by the man who would be his father-in-law in two days.
“Good, yes. I’m impressed, Luciano.”
The man who both was and was not Mirabella’s father smiled with pride. “You two make beautiful couple.”
Still examining his look, Paolo smiled a little. His shirt was bright white, a good thick cotton with a tight weave, and his collar and cuffs were crisp and smooth.
Luciano set the brush aside and draped several silk ties over his arm. “Now. Which?”
Paolo was not a man of fashion, but understanding the styles of powerful men’s clothing had been one of this first deep studies. He’d wanted to look the part even before he could inhabit the part. But as he’d learned, and as his influence and means had grown, he’d also understood that he didn’t have to look the part. He could find his own style and would wear those clothes far more powerfully.
He liked solid suits in dark colors—black, dark grey, navy blue. Black shoes, black hats. He liked white shirts and a Princeton collar. And he liked black or grey ties.
Luciano had been his tailor now for several months, and he knew what Paolo liked. But draped over his arm were four ties, and not one of them was black or grey.
Paolo met Luciano’s eyes. He let the look say what he meant.
There had been a time when this man had feared Paolo, but that time was past. They were family now. Luciano knew who he was, what he did, what he had done, what he was capable of doing. But only one thing mattered: Paolo loved his daughter
and treated her like the gift they both knew she was.
“It’s your wedding suit, Paolo. Mira carries red flowers. You will make such lovely sight together with little red.”
To Paolo, red was violence. But it was Mirabella’s favorite color.
As he had that thought, another came on its heels—that perhaps the ‘but’ wasn’t so accurate. Mirabella liked red because it was passion and fire and violence. She was bold and hot-blooded. His violence had never frightened her; she’d faced him toe to toe from the start.
And she’d opened his life to so much more passion than the kind bred by rage.
He lifted a swath of crimson silk from Luciano’s arm. “This one.”
“Excellent, yes. I too would say that one.” He set the other ties aside and handed the crimson to Paolo. As he watched Paolo slide the silk under his collar, Luciano said, “You know, I leave my home as young man, even before I come to America. I know what is to feel alone.”
Paolo stilled his hands and shifted his gaze to Luciano’s reflection. He said nothing but grew instantly wary. He and Luciano had become friends of a sort, they’d become family, but they were not confidants. It seemed, however, that the man had chosen this moment to deepen their bond.
Paolo wasn’t sure he wanted that. There was only so much of himself he’d offer to anyone who wasn’t Mirabella.
Luciano must have noticed Paolo’s sudden chill. He turned to the table, away from Paolo’s gaze, to put the other ties back in their boxes. “I born in Sicily, you know this?”
“Yes.” He remembered puzzling lightly over the mystery of the brothers’ different dialects and accents. Fredo had spoken like a Sicilian. Luciano and Mirabella spoke like Tuscans. That minor mystery had lost his attention a long while ago—probably around the time he’d been stabbed outside a clothier’s, and his life had taken a hard turn.
“My father, he a …” Paolo could sense him searching for the word. He lifted his hands, which were solid and blunt, like the rest of him. “Muratore?”
Il Bestione (The Golden Door Duet Book 2) Page 31