She stilled a moment before looking away and sliding the heaped spoon into her mouth. She was holding it with such tight control he could feel the metal’s resistance not to snap, and with it he felt the truth. Her casual attitude was a front. Beneath it, Gabriella was tight and brittle. She was hurting. Badly. Feeling the resistance she was exerting not to snap too, something inside of him broke.
He moved a step closer to her and starkly said, “I shouldn’t have left you behind.”
She ate another spoonful without responding.
“I’m…” He sighed heavily and tilted his face to the ceiling. Words were collecting at the base of his throat, but he couldn’t put them in order to get them out. He didn’t even know what order to put them in, knew only that the ache that lived in him for Gabriella had never been stronger. “Finish the dessert, Gabba, and let’s go to bed.” Maybe if he wasn’t looking at her, the words he was trying to put into order would arrange themselves for him.
“Is that an order?” Her stare whipped back to him. Colour darkened her face. “Is it? Because if it’s an order, then I have to obey, but if it’s merely a request, my answer is go fuck yourself. I’d rather sleep in the bath than share a bed with you reeking of another woman.”
Whatever had broken inside of him splintered. “There was no other woman…”
She moved so quickly he didn’t see her hands grab the bowl or see her lift it off the table; saw nothing until it flew in an arc past him and smashed onto the tiled floor.
He jumped back, out of the way of the shards of glass and splodges of dessert flying in all directions.
“Youliar!” she screamed, no longer on the stool but on the glass-ridden floor in her bare feet. “You come home smelling of another woman’s perfume and with lipstick smeared on your cheek and tell me you haven’t been with anyone else? What kind of fool do you take me for?”
His feet moved before his brain did. Capturing her cheeks, he brought his face close to hers, drinking in the anguish he could feel vibrating through her skin. “Nothing happened, Gabba, not with anyone, I swear.”
Her face twisting in his hands, her body wriggling like a captured eel, she kicked his shin. “Stop lying! It’s the whole reason you left me behind.”
“I’m not lying,” He pressed her thrashing body against the kitchen island. “Look me in the eye. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m lying.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yes, fuck me. Fuck me for thinking I ever had an ounce of control over my feelings for you.” Cradling her head, he held her steady until she had no choice but to open her eyes.
The pain in them lanced him more deeply than he’d have believed an emotion could.
“I did leave you behind with the intention of screwing someone else.”
The whimper that came from her throat at this hurt like the wound from a knife.
Pressing his forehead to hers, he pulled in a long breath and then let the words that had formed at the base of his throat run free. “I have no control over my feelings for you, Gabba. I try to hate you for what you were planning to do to me and my family, but I can’t. It’s impossible. What I feel for you is impossible. I try to fight it, but it’s there –you’rethere – in every part of me, a sickness that has no cure. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted with more than my cock, and I know that sounds crude, but it’s the truth. I want you with every part of me, and Ihatethat you’re only mine because you chose life over death, and I hate that I’m only yours because I’m all you’ve got left. I want to be your everything just as you’re my everything, because youaremy everything. You’re my whole damn life, Gabriella.”
Gabriella tried to resist. She tried to resist believing him. Tried to resist the longing infused in the whole of her being, but with the solid heat of Tommaso’s body pressed against hers and the warmth of his breath on her skin, the fight for resistance wasn’t with him but with herself.
How could she believe him? Worse, how could shewantto believe him? She gazed into the black eyes burning with wild, emotion-fed passion, and her heart ached for the unthinkable. If what Tommaso felt for her was impossible, then what she felt for him was so hopeless she did not dare put a name to it, not even in her most private thoughts.
Deep lines furrowed on his brow. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, words that sounded like they’d been torn out of him. A breath later, his lips slanted onto hers, and with a groan that came from the same tortured place as his words, he was plundering her mouth.
Incapable of doing anything but yield to the demanding passion of his kisses, Gabriella closed her eyes. Her resistance going into free fall, her heart exploded and sweet, heady sensation burned through her.
His hands skimmed away from her hair to frame her face, their hunger deepening into a kiss so deep and meaningful that when he pulled his mouth away, she swayed.
Lips trembling…her whole body trembling..., she met his searching stare.
Gazes locked together, he pressed the tip of his nose to hers and smoothed her hair at her temples. “Will you come to bed with me, Gabba?” he asked hoarsely. His sensuous mouth twisted. “Not out of any obligation to the deal we made, but because you’re as crazy for me as I am for you.”
Her chest clutched in on itself, and now she was searching Tommaso’s stare, not even knowing what she was looking for until she found it.
Her heart exploded all over again.
This was how she’d imagined him looking at her when her adolescent dreams had been the fuel that got her out of bed each day, before the truth about their fathers had broken her heart and shattered her dreams.
She’d dreamed of him looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
Her heart clutching and her pulses soaring, Gabriella placed her hands flat on his chest and absorbed the strong, rapid beat of his heart, and suddenly the world melted away, and all that was left was them. Her and Tommaso, just as she’d spent so many years dreaming of.
