Francesca woke to a room bathed in sunlight filtering through the heavy drapes. There was a heavy arm slung over her waist. A warm body pressed into her back. The warmth of breath dancing on the top of her head.
A swift swell of emotion filled her chest and lodged in her throat.
The night was over.
Holding her breath, trying not to let the tears clamouring behind her eyes fall, she gently covered the hand attached to thearm around her and lifted it enough that she could slip out. Gino didn’t stir.
Her watch was in the bathroom. Only nine a.m. The sun had already started to rise when they’d finally given in to their bodies’ demands and fallen into an exhausted sleep.
Only hours since they’d been entwined together, and already it felt like a dream. A beautiful, beautiful dream. If not for the strange, satiated weight low in her pelvis and the lethargy in her limbs that was unlike any lethargy she’d known before, she could fool herself into believing it had been a dream.
In the shower, she tilted her head and closed her eyes as the hot water poured over her face. Snapshots of their night shimmered through her mind.
He’d been sopatientwith her.
He’d kissed and caressed every part of her. Brought her to orgasm with his fingers. His mouth. And then he’d taken her again, with the same gentleness he’d taken her the first time. Held himself back. Made it all for her.
He’d asked for nothing in return.
She wished she’d found the courage to do it all to him in turn, and now it was too late.
He would never know he’d given her the best night of her life, and when she rinsed off the shower gel she’d lathered herself in, she tried not to cry at the feeling she was washing him off her skin. Washing the last ofthemoff her skin.
It had never been about feelings. Not proper feelings, anyway. It had been about sex. Desire. Not real feelings.
After brushing her teeth, she looked in the mirror and gave herself a stern talking to. She’d lost her virginity and had very little sleep, things that were undoubtedly affecting her mood. In a day or two, after she’d caught up on her missed sleep and her hormones had settled down, she would feel like her old self again. In a decade from now, she would look in a mirror, and shewould smile at the joy she’d known for one night in her life. She would think back on Gino with fondness…
That’s if he was still alive, a cruel voice in her head suddenly interrupted her internal monologue with.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she gripped her arms tightly and tried to shake off the cold panic that had snaked into her bloodstream.
She’d won their bet, she reminded herself. This was the loss that logic said he was due. Gino would win the gamble he’d made against her cousins because he was the consummate gambler. Her win had been a lucky fluke. Lucky for them both.
She opened the bathroom door quietly.
Her heart punched hard to find him sitting up in bed, tapping on his phone.
He looked over to her. Their eyes connected. Her heart ballooned.
“Good morning, Mr Vicario,” she said with all the brightness she could muster. “The bathroom’s all yours.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe?
She didn’t stop to dissect it, speeding her way to the dressing room and praying her walk didn’t betray any of her internal feelings.
Under no circumstance would she let Gino know of the disconsolation weighing so heavily in her. It would all be gone soon, anyway. It had to be.
Gino shaved his neck, trying to block out the scent of toothpaste and shampoo that hung in the air. They were scents that were more than familiar to him. They were his own scents. But these weren’t his. The scents clinging to the bathroom’s air had been made by Francesca.
He’d brushed his teeth but could still taste her climax on his tongue. Could still hear the tiny mews of pleasure she’d made as she’d come apart for him. Not fully apart, though. Neither of them had let themselves go completely. Him, because to have let himself go would have scared the life out of her. For Francesca, it was because it had all been brand new.
For all that their night together had left him feeling untethered, he was glad it had been him. Elio Ranieri’s reputation with women was worse than his own. At least Gino liked his lovers to enjoy themselves too.
He’d never been so concentrated on a woman’s pleasure as he had for Francesca.
If he closed his eyes, he could feel the tight squeeze of her fingers knotted in his when he’d first driven himself into her. Feel, too, the loosening of them when the pleasure had overridden the fear.
Better for it to have been with him than with a man who cared only for his own gratification, a man who could easily have hurt her. Better that she go into marriage with Elio Ranieri or whoever she ended up marrying, with her hymen a thing of the past and the fear of the unknown erased.
