She turned and curled her trembling body into his.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “Go back to sleep. I’ve got you.”
Francesca was too frightened to go back to sleep. Nightmares had haunted her early childhood, but since she’d confronted the fears driving them, they’d become a thing of her past.
She’d forgotten how terrifying a nightmare could be, how the ice you wake with in your chest lingers for as long as the worst of the images linger.
Not even the warmth from Gino’s body could melt the ice. Nor the strong, warm arms holding her so securely to him or the beat of his heart beneath her ear.
This nightmare had been nothing like the ones from her childhood. Those had all involved monsters hidden in shadows, closing in on her. This one…
She’d been running, not from danger but to it, racing to her cousins’ home, screaming for them to stop, but the words not coming out.
She’d been too late to save him. Gino had been propped against their front door. There had been no life in his sightless stare. His skin had been pale and cold.
It was a long time before she fell back to sleep.
“Can we just stay in bed today?” Francesca whispered forlornly after they’d made love some hours later.
Gino, his face hot in her neck, laughed roughly and rolled off her onto his back. “I wish.”
She turned and nestled into him. “This is our last full day together.”
“You should be glad of it.”
“Well, I’m not. Can’t you extend the deadline?” She was only half joking. She still had images of that awful dream stuck in her mind. The ice that had been in her chest from it had gone, but in its place, an awful, crushing weight.
He laughed again. She didn’t know if it was wishful thinking that made her think his laughter sounded strained.
“Whatever happens, I’m not marrying that man,” she said quietly, cuddling tighter to him.
“If I know you, Chicca, you’ll convince your family very quickly that marrying him is wrong for everyone.”
After a pause, she tentatively said, “I think I should marry you.”
She felt him freeze before he groaned. “I am the last man you should want to marry.”
“If you marry me, you will be a part of my family. My cousins…”
“Your cousins will put a bullet even more quickly into my head.”
“They won’t. Not if you’re my husband. That will make you family.”
“You’re not naïve enough to believe that. I’m sorry, Chicca, but it is out of the question, so put the thought from your mind.”
“But the danger you’re in...” She tried to keep the panic she was feeling from her voice. Knowing that in little more than twenty-four hours she would have to say goodbye to him, probably for good, felt increasingly unbearable.
“Danger that I’ve contained and mitigated. I appreciate your concern for me, but you don’t want to marry Elio because you fear he’s a monster. All you would be doing is swapping one monster for another.”
“You would never hurt me.”
“Not physically. Emotionally, I would destroy you, worse than anything Elio would put you through. I told you before, serious relationships are not for me. I live my life on my terms, which is what you need to do too. You don’t have any independent financial resources, but you have a quick brain and a stubborn streak. If you harness those traits against your family in the way you harnessed them against me, you can’t lose. You know the future that you don’t want, so now you need to figureout the future you do want and go out there and get it.” He pressed a quick kiss to the top of her head and sat up. “I need to get rid of the condom.”
Closing the bathroom door behind him, Gino flushed the condom down the toilet, closed his eyes and swore.
Francesca’s suggestion they marry had landed like a bucket of ice on his head. She’d suggested it as if she were thinking only of him and the danger she perceived him to be in, but his gut told him something else. The last thing he needed was for Francesca to develop feelings for him that went beyond sex. Things already felt much too heavy as it was.
After a deep breath, he stepped into the shower. As he cleaned himself, he cleaned his thoughts onto firmer ground.
