Breathing heavily, she swallowed her suddenly constricted throat and finally lifted her stare to his.
His eyes hooded with lust, his breaths as heavy as her own, he gave a short incline of his head.
She swallowed again and set to work cleaning him, and though she did her best not to look at it, to judge her way by feel alone, she was coming close to being mesmerised. She’d never imagined a cock could be so smooth and warm and yet so glassy and hard all at the same time. Lathering around the straining head, she could do nothing to stop herself imagining what it would feel like to have him inside her. The pulsing flame in her pelvis burned brighter at the shamefully wanton thought, and she reflexively tightened her grip.
A hand cupped her cheek. His black eyes boring into hers, he rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip and slipped it into her mouth. “Your turn to return the favour,” he whispered. “On your knees.”
Her throat constricting all over again as she swallowed the panic shooting through her that she would have to perform an act she’d never done before, Gabriella obeyed. She was at his mercy. She had to obey his every directive, no matter how degrading.
On her knees in front of him, she fisted his length again and tentatively brought her lips to it.
With the water falling on them in a gentle trickle, she mentally braced herself by squeezing her eyes shut and imagining the day she took her revenge on him. She didn’t know when that day would be or what form it would take, but it would come. Tommaso bored easily and got through lovers quicker than an impatient child trying to master a yo-yo. It would be no different for her. He would bore of her and seek other lovers, and when that happened, an opportunity for escape would present itself, and she would grab it. Grab it and then find a way to take revenge for his degradation of her.
Thoughts of revenge and escape slipped away when she covered the rigidly smooth head with her lips and he sucked in a sharp breath.
The statuette-like stillness in his huge frame had returned. While she slowly fed him into her mouth, he made no movement or sound. But there was tension. It vibrated off him. She could feel it as acutely as she felt the throb of his erection against her tongue.
She was the one to tense when he finally moved, reaching out to cradle her head.
He could choke her. He was volatile enough and hated her enough to, and it would take no effort on his part.
For the first time since she’d walked into her apartment and found him sitting on her sofa, Gabriella felt truly vulnerable. Even when she’d believed he was going to kill her and her fear had come close to consuming her, she hadn’t felt such stark vulnerability.
But there was no choking. The fingers cradling her head tightened, but only to pull her head back. “I’ve changed my mind,” he said roughly. “I want to fuck you instead. Clean yourself.” And then he gripped her shoulders, helped herupright, hit the switch to increase the water pressure, and, without giving her another glance, crossed the space to help himself to a towel off the floor-to-ceiling heated towel rail.
While he dried himself with brisk efficiency, Gabriella stared at his back, wondering what the hell she’d done wrong and why he wasn’t making her dry him. And then she wondered what the hell she was wondering all this for. With Tommaso, there was no rhyme or reason.
Rubbing the towel in his hair, he turned back to her. “I said to clean yourself. The next time I have to repeat an order, there will be consequences.”
Instead of reacting to the hate she was incapable of stopping herself from throwing at him with her eyes, he returned it, his stare full of mirrored loathing before he turned his back again and stepped out of the shower.
Shaking inside and out, Gabriella used the shower gel she’d slathered all over him to clean herself with. Not only was he intent on degrading her in every possible way, he was going to force her to smell like him, too.
But he’d had his chance to kill her, she reminded herself as she washed her hair with his shampoo. She’d known since embarking on her plan to bring the Espositos down that she would likely die for it, but Tommaso had spared her life. She had to remember that. He wasn’t going to choke her to death. They’d made a deal. Her life for her life. He wasn’t going to take it from her now. It would put him in breach of his word, something no self-respecting Esposito would allow.
He was going to put her through hell, make her wish she’d chosen death, but hewouldget bored of her. That was the thing she needed to cling to.
He didn’t need to kill her to make her life hell, but the hell wouldn’t last forever.
She finished rinsing her hair at the same moment he finished brushing his teeth. Staring at her without expression, he handed her a towel. “There’s a hairdryer on the wall by the sinks. Dry your hair and clean your teeth, then join me. You have fifteen minutes.”
Tommaso looked at the time on his phone. Gabriella had exactly two minutes left to join him in the bedroom.
He took a drink from the large glass of whisky he’d poured while waiting for her to finish in the bathroom. Exhaustion seeped through his veins. He felt weighted down by it. He’d barely slept since the first night of his father’s death, and now, with enough alcohol to tranquilise a horse sloshing through his system, his body was close to calling time and demanding sleep.
But not yet. Sleep could wait a little longer. First, he would do what he’d spent four years fantasising about doing, and screw Gabriella…but not in the way he’d fantasised. This would be straightforward and perfunctory, just enough to expel some of the fury of emotion gripping him and reinforce to her that she belonged to him now. The beats of his heart would accelerate as they always did during sex, but he would feel nothing more. He would force her to look in his eyes and feel his hate while he brought her to orgasm.
Tommaso had felt all kinds of sensations in his sexually active years, but the sensation of Gabriella’s touch on his skin was nothing he’d been prepared for. The only time he’d felt such a visceral response to a touch had been at his thirtieth birthday party when she’d run her fingers down the nape of his neck.
He’d been even less prepared for the sensation of her lips around his cock. The first press of her lips to it had blowneverything else away. While he revelled in losing control during sexual games, it was always on his terms. He chose when to lose it.
When Gabriella had taken him in her mouth, he’d come perilously close to coming before she’d even got started, like he was some damned inexperienced teenager who’d never touched a woman before.
It was her treachery causing all this virulent emotion in him. Learning she was a rat had added betrayal-fuelled rage to his grief, and he needed an outlet for it. Her body would be that outlet. He would purge himself in her, and then he would switch off his mind and sleep.
The bathroom door opened. Fully naked, the light behind her casting her in a glow like she was some kind of warped avenging angel, she stepped into the bedroom. Her spine straight, chin bullishly lifted, she padded to the bed with none of the disjointed movements of earlier, as if she’d knitted herself back together.
This was the fearless Gabriella he’d fantasised about for four years, but in his fantasies, she’d walked towards him with desire and not disdain in her eyes.
