Eyes half-closed, she lifted her thighs a little. Another moan escaped her mouth.
He groaned and pumped his fist harder, placing his palm next to her arm to hover over her. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he breathed tightly.
A hand locked on the back of his neck and then she lifted her head, bringing her face to his. Gazing at him with glazed eyes, she began to rock against him, her soft moans deepening as she pleasured herself with more assurance.
Gino was now masturbating his cock furiously, the head jabbing into Francesca’s belly, fully aware that just below where he was masturbating, she was caressing herself, fully aware that she was getting closer and closer…
And so was he. His loins were on fire, the flames burning through him. He fought the release his body clamoured for, fought it and fought it right until she went rigid and her lips parted in a wide O.
With a strangled groan that seemed to come from the base of his throat, Gino let himself go, releasing himself over her belly while her body convulsed with the force of her climax. Their mouths fused for a barely-there kiss before he was sagging intoher arms, his cheek on her breast, breathing heavily as the thrills from his orgasm continued to thrum through him.
Francesca was on Gino’s office sofa pretending to read her book again, and trying very hard to forget that she only had two more nights left with him. The hours of night sped by, but the hours of day, the hours when any hint of their private feelings was forbidden, crawled.
It had to be this way. If her family learned what had gone on between them…
“Are you okay?”
His softly delivered question had her darting her stare to him. She tried very hard not to stare at him. Sometimes it was like trying to fight the tide.
She smiled. “I’m good, thank you.” Because she was. For all her fears over the future and her mushrooming feelings for him, she would rather be in an office unable to touch him than anywhere without him. Very soon, she would be everywhere without him.
In a few days, it would all be over. They would be over. She would return to her family and spend the rest of her life praying before bed for Gino to still be breathing when the sun came up.
Stop it, she chided herself as he returned the smile before putting his attention back on the screen in front of him.
It was only because he was so flipping wonderful in bed that she felt the way she did about him, and he was only so flipping wonderful in bed because of all the women he’d been with. She was just one of many, so many he didn’t remember half their names. When he returned her to her family, her face would quickly fade from his memory. He’d told her that himself.
And yet, for everything she continually reminded herself of, when they were in bed together, it felt like being in heaven. Not just the sex side of things, either.
Did he do that with all his lovers, she tortured herself by wondering. Did he hold them in his arms after making love and just talk? Did he knot his fingers in their hair? Stroke their arms? Tell them about his parents? Tell them about the grandfather he was named for, who died from heart disease before he was fifty? Ask them questions about themselves?
But all talk firmly rooted in the past. The future was something neither of them mentioned. Not in any context.
They had no future together. It increasingly destroyed her to think Gino might have no future at all.
“What are we going to do when we finish eating?” Francesca asked brightly as they ate their dinner in the kitchen that evening. “I’m assuming poker is still off the table?”
The biggest torture, she’d come to think, was eating in the kitchen together. It was the only time they were physically close together publicly. In the office, he stayed at his desk, and she stayed on the sofa. His time was occupied with calls and reports and with his men coming in and out. When they were alone, their gazes would continually find each other, but they never encroached the other’s personal space. It was just too dangerous.
Dining at the breakfast table was torture because physically, one stretch of her hand would allow her to touch him. And she always wanted to touch him. The only way to get through it was to force brightness in her mind and conversation, but even that was dangerous because whenever she caught amusement in hisstare, her heart warmed and heated the rest of her in a glow that felt so different to the glow of desire she carried like a never-ending candle inside her.
She felt the glow now, when the dark eyes she was coming to adore so much caught hers and crinkled at the sides, and he gave a low rumble of pained laughter. “I’m thinking of swearing off poker for good.”
“That’s a shame as I was thinking of turning professional.”
He had a drink of his wine. “Miss Marino, you would make a fortune.”
“Iwould, and it would be more exciting than being a tour guide.”
“I thought you enjoyed it?”
“Oh, I do, very much, but I have a feeling that when my evil kidnapper releases me, I won’t have a job to go back to, so it seems wise to prepare for an alternate career.”
His lips quirked at the sides. “Only a small difference between tourism and professional gambling.”
“That’s what I thought. The transition will be easy. My fluency in English means I’ll be able to make a killing in all the American tournaments too!”
Although the smile was still playing on his lips, the crinkles around his eyes had lessened. For all that Francesca was jesting, they both knew she would have to fight for any autonomy over her future. She’d had to fight for any autonomy she’d ever had.
