His shoulders slowly lifted, strong neck extending. Whatever he might have said was lost by the loud knock on the office door, and then Fiorella came beaming in with their coffees, followed by what seemed to be the entire staff delivering a congratulations card as big as Tommaso.
For the ninth morning in a row, Gabriella awoke to the most heavenly of sensations. Instead of fighting her body’s responses, she left her hands on Tommaso’s smooth, broad shoulders, kept her eyes closed and pretended she was still dreaming.
Except no dream had ever felt like this. In her dreams, she always woke with the desperate burning ache of unfulfillment in her core. In this waking dream, her body was already readying itself for the climax, and when he pushed her thighs back further, she wrapped her legs around him and embraced the thrills of pleasure shooting through her.
Only once he’d come too and slumped on top of her with his cheek pressed against her neck, his hot breaths burning through her skin, did she detach herself from the waking dream.
She would not wrap her arms around him and run her fingers through his hair, no matter how much her heart ached for her to do so. She would not turn her face to press a kiss to the side of his head. She would not give any affection.
And nor would she wish for it. She would not wish for Tommaso to raise his head and press a gentle kiss to her lips. She would not wish to feel the scratch of his beard around her mouth. She would not wish for him to stroke her face or thread his fingers through hers.
And when he rolled her off her and onto his back, she would not wish for him to roll her with him so they could just lie in each other’s arms.
The cramps Gabriella had felt on and off the day before returned with a vengeance an hour later when they were eating breakfast in the sunroom. Tommaso had finished eating and was talking on his phone. She knew he was talking about the shadowed side of the business because he was speaking in code. It was a code she’d learned long ago.
He ended the call and drained his coffee. “Go and get dressed. We need to go out. Some trouble I need to deal with…what’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You’re as white as my mother’s bedsheets.”
A cramp fisted in her guts, making her gasp and doubling her over.
“Gabba?”
Gritting her teeth, she tried to breathe through the pain, and as she did so, became aware of a warmth between her legs.
“Gabba, what’s wrong?”
She hauled herself to her feet and gripped the table. “I’m fine. Just my…” Her cheeks reddened in embarrassment. She’d never spoken of her menstrual cycle with a member of the opposite sex before. “I don’t think I’m pregnant.”
He stared at her a long moment. “Your period has started?”
Her embarrassment tripled. Turning her gaze from him, she mumbled, “I think so. I need to use the bathroom.”
Oh, God, she didn’t have any sanitary products. What the hell was she going to do? Knowing she was likely to come on at any moment, she’d nearly asked him to stop at a pharmacy or grocery store on the way home from the office the day before, but had been too embarrassed and decided to ask Katya to get her some instead, forgetting Katya had the weekend off. All the other on-shift staff had been men. They still were.
She felt Tommaso’s eyes watching her as she shuffled out of the sunroom bent over like a little old lady. When she made it to the top of the stairs, she caught the flash of movement from her vantage point on the mezzanine and turned her head in time to watch him leave the villa. The door slammed shut behind him. From the bedroom window, she saw his Ferrari disappear through the electric gates.
Gabriella didn’t want to get out of the shower. She’d cleaned herself up, but now had the dilemma of how to dry herself without soiling a towel with her blood. Leaking through her dressing gown had been mortifying enough. Tommaso would have seen it.
She needed to get to a shop but couldn’t go anywhere without him, and nor could she ask his permission seeing as he’d gone to his meeting without her and without a word of goodbye. He’d slammed the front door as if he were angry.
Probably he was, she thought miserably, sinking to the floor and hugging her knees while the waterfall of water continued to shower over her.
Gabriella had always hated having periods. When they’d started, she’d gone to great lengths to hide them, especially with the boys she’d hung around with. They’d all thought the idea of women bleeding each month disgusting. She remembered being twelve and at the local skatepark with a load of them, and suffering excruciating cramps. Rather than admit the truth, she’d deliberately fallen off her skateboard at speed so she had an excuse to go home. She still had a scar on her knee from that fall.
But Tommaso wasn’t a twelve-year-old boy. He was a thirty-four-year-old man. He’d been with so many women over the years that even an unreconstructed sexist pig like him must know how the female body worked. Gabriella’s period would be an unwelcome reminder that she was human. She didn’t want to believe that his anger came from his sex-slave being out of action for a few days.
Oh, what was wrong with her? Why didn’t she want to believe that?
But it cut at her, just how upsetting the thought of him walking out in disgust and anger made her.
The bathroom door opened. A scream flew out of her throat then died when Tommaso’s huge frame emerged. He had a bulging carrier bag in his hand.
He gazed down at her. His broad shoulders rose before he placed the bag on the ledge by the double sink.
Without a word, he stepped into the shower and hit the button to turn the water off. His eyes locked back onto hers. A beat later, he extended a hand down to her.
