“Tommaso…” Her voice shakes.
I slowly turn to see her kneeling on the bed with her hands over her mouth. “Your back… It’s bleeding. I-I hurt you.”
The scratch marks down my back burn, but I love it. “I made you bleed, wife, so it’s only fair.”
Her eyes lift to mine as she lowers her hands. “But those scars…”
It’s a fight to keep my expression even. “Old wounds.”
“From what?”
“Something I’ll tell you about soon.”
Her chin lifts. “Did I know before I lost my memories?”
“Yes. I never hid who or what I was from you.” She bites her lip, and I walk back to the bed to cup her chin, tilting her head back. “Remember your vow.”
My voice and words are laced with a possessive darkness that I can’t hide.
She shivers. “No matter what you do or what happens, or what I discover, I’ll never leave you.”
“You’re mine, Gina Santoro.”
Then I wrap her in the sheet to keep her warm while I run the bath, taking her with me instead of leaving her on the bed. I’m not giving her any chance to doubt her vow or to try to erect a wall between us if her self-preservation is warning her that I’m all sorts of walking red flags.
Nothing will take her from me. And nothing will come between us.
Chapter 25
Gina
Thewarmwaterenvelopsme as I sit between Tommaso’s legs with my back to his front inside a massive tub. He hasn’t given me space to be away from him, constantly touching me, as if stopping me from spiraling as my mind whirls.
I stare down at his hand resting over my belly and his other on my thigh. Of course, I’ve noticed the scars on his hands since I woke up with amnesia. A ragged one between his thumb and forefinger. A diagonal one across each hand, plus a few smaller ones.
Why didn’t I ask questions before, when I had seen them?
Is it because my subconscious knew how he had gotten them, those memories just an automatic part of the fabric of the trust I innately seem to have when it comes to him, so my mind never thought to question it? Just like it hadn’t questioned that I felt that I was his and he was mine?
Or is my injured brain just limiting what I can process while I recover, and knew that I wouldn’t like this conversation and the discovery it would reveal?
No matter what I do or what happens. No matter what you discover, you willneverleave me.
His words then had made my heart damn near burst. But now? They feel ominous. Foreboding.
Red flags warning—no,screaming—that I should get the hell out of here.
But I don’t.
Not because he’s holding me tight and I could never overpower him, let alone make it out of the enormous house and the guarded gate before he stopped me. But because IknowI want to be here; that I wanted to be with him prior to my amnesia. That I desperately want him as my husband.
“Talk to me, Gina.” His low, deep voice fills the ensuite.
It, like the sight of his large, powerful body, does things to my insides that make me melt and squirm.
“Are you afraid of me now?”
I try to turn in his embrace to look at him, but he holds me in place. So I relax against him and stare down at his hands—hands that must have done things to get those scars. They aren’t the hands of a CEO in the business world.
