Hold You Against Me (17 page)

I could keep running, but I’m mesmerized by the flat circle of dirt. So much about this mansion remained the same. Even things I would think a man would prefer to change, to make himself more comfortable, to decorate to his tastes. It’s almost as if it’s been preserved like a museum.

Except for this. “Where did it go?”

He doesn’t pretend not to know. “I didn’t like it.”

My room, the same. My father’s office, the same. The ballroom with its parquet floor and orchestral booth, the same. “Not a fan of pineapples?”

“Maybe you can sculpt something for it.”

The soft, almost diffident way he offers it makes my voice catch. This is real. The wedding tomorrow that I still can’t quite comprehend. Giovanni standing behind me. This life he thinks we’ll build together. All of it is made real by his hesitant offer to let me sculpt something for the mansion. In this he is totally unlike my father, who dismissed my work as a child’s scribbles.

“You would let me?”

“I would love it,” he says, his voice hoarse.

A shiver runs over my skin. Could I really make a marriage out of this? Could I really accept the life I’d always fought because I had no other choice? Part of me wants to forget about the drugs and the limo. To pretend like I’m here because I want to be here. The other part of me knows that a man holding power over a woman can never be a partnership. I would always be his prisoner.

I take a small step to the side, skirting the patch of empty earth. The brick walkway is cold under my feet. “What would I sculpt?”

The beads on my dress catch the faint light, shimmering like the drops of water on leaves. I feel a little bit unearthly, the way I’m shining in the dark. A little bit beautiful, the way he can’t seem to stop looking at me.

He remains where I left him. “Anything.”

Something gnaws at me, the question of why that one random thing offended him enough to remove it. “But not a pineapple?”

A pause. “If you like.”

“On top of a fountain?”

“No.” His tone doesn’t invite more questions.

I continue walking the circle, considering the space, considering
him.
They’re not so different. I want to figure out what to sculpt for the space. The process feels less like creating and more like whittling away, taking away bits of air in my mind until the right shape forms. I’d never actually have sculpted a pineapple on top of a fountain, but it’s curious that he doesn’t want me to.

Giovanni is another puzzle I have to chip away at until I find the shape of him, whittle away at this cold, powerful exterior to find what’s underneath.

“I found your obituary.”

He blinks, faintly startled. “You looked?”

“I loved you, remember?”

The shadows at his neck move as he swallows. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“Or I guess it shouldn’t have been written. It wasn’t true.” I’ve come full circle around the plot of dirt. There are paths leading away in multiple directions, walls of black alternating with walls of ivy. It creates a kind of intimacy between us, something even more private than when we’re alone in my room.

“It was true enough for my mother. She wrote it.”

I come to a stop in front of him, heart aching. I never spent much time with his mother, but he talked about her. She was pious and dutiful, the way a good Italian wife should be. Very religious. “She thought you were dead?”

“I was gone for a long time. She didn’t know where.”

I hear the pain in those words, and anger rushes up. “But you would have me disappear from Honor without a trace? So she can put my obituary in the newspaper?”

“It’s better that way,” he says sharply. “Dying is the easy part. Coming back…it hurt her.”

I think she wasn’t the only one hurt. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You were gone for a long time.”

He laughed shortly. “I didn’t go far.”

I put my hand on his chest, feeling his heartbeat. So steady, so sure. Such a miracle, after believing he was dead. It still feels miraculous, even if I’m not sure I like who survived. “They hurt you.”

The sight of those whip marks are burned into my brain.

“Do you feel sorry for me?” His question is harsh, angry.

Yes, but he wouldn’t want to hear that. “How long?”

“Does it matter?”

“You were gone long enough that your mother believed you were dead. She loved you. She wouldn’t give up in a day. A week. Not without a body to prove it.”

“Three months.”

Everything in me comes to a halt, the world slowing down around me. Three months. I saw those whip marks. They beat him for
three months.
My stomach clenches, and it takes everything in me not to turn my face to the dirt and throw up. No wonder he’s changed.

With trembling fingers I reach up to trace the shape of his face, to run my fingertips along his clenched jaw. A miracle, not only because he’s alive. He survived three months of torture. God.

And then I don’t care if this makes me weak. For this one moment, I don’t care if he’s my kidnapper. I have to be close to him. I have to touch him.

I push up on my toes, but it’s still not far enough. I have to wind my arms up to pull him down. He comes, barely, lowering enough that I can press my lips to his.

He lets me kiss him, moving my lips over his, the gentlest caress.

A low rumble runs through him. “Don’t,” he says, his lips moving against mine.

I pull back enough to meet his dark, turbulent gaze. “Why not?”

He grasps my arms and gives me a little shake, more meaning than violence. “I’d rather have your hate than your pity.”

I want to hate him. I want to pity him. But I’m afraid that I love him instead, that I never stopped loving him, not even when he died, not even when he came back to life. No matter what happens tomorrow or in the days after, he deserves a kiss from me—a real kiss, as a woman who knows what she wants. Maybe I deserve that too.

So I shake off his hold and reach for him again, pressing my lips to his in unschooled abandoned. As if unable to resist any longer, he groans a refusal before kissing me back. His lips move over mine as if he were part of the shadows around us, reaching every part of me, velvet and sure.

His body pushes against me, insistent, backing me up. Soft dirt cushions my feet, and I know I’ve stepped off the path. A wall curves behind my back, ivy tickling my neck, and I know I’m well and truly trapped. I’m breathing harder now, taking in more of that earth-dampened air.

He looks down at me, his face a mask of shadows. “So beautiful,” he says roughly. “I dreamed of you like this. Dreamed of touching you, tasting you.”

So did I. “Is it like you dreamed it would be?”

Slowly his head shakes. “I haven’t tasted you yet.”

I would ask what he meant, but he shows me instead. He bends his head to nip at my neck. I squirm away from the sting before pressing back for more. He doesn’t give it to me, though. Instead he works his way down my neck with too-light kisses, a brush like the leaves of ivy. It inflames me, making my body burn hotter than I knew it could. For all that I felt grown up at age fifteen, I was still a girl. I’m a woman now, with all the strength and desire that comes with it.

His mouth opens over the exposed skin of my breasts, the soft slope left bare by the dress. Without thought, without intention, I press myself toward him, offering myself, begging. As if to torment me, he pulls away. I moan with frustration, with unsated arousal.

Then he drops to his knees in front of me.

I haven’t tasted you yet.

“Gio?”

“Let me,” he says darkly. “Don’t fight me now, bella. Not about this.”

And it seems he understands about tonight, about this gift I’m giving him, giving myself. It’s a white flag, a temporary truce. We might take up the fight again tomorrow, but for now I won’t fight.

It’s a good thing, because I’m not sure I have the strength to fight this. Not when I’ve wondered for so long. When I’ve wanted for so long. Desire has made my limbs heavy. I let the wall hold me up as he lifts the hem of my skirt. His hands stroke my ankles, my calves. He caresses me everywhere, appreciation in every brush of calloused palms. There’s no time to feel self-conscious, not when every inch of skin seems to entrance him.

“Hold this.” His soft voice is laced with command as he presses the beaded fabric into my hands.

I clench my fingers tight, so tight, until the beads dig into my palm.

And then wait, while he runs his hands up the outsides of my legs. Then down over the fronts, his thumbs brushing the insides. My knees are weak, legs shaking. I must waver, because he holds my hips with a firmer grip, looking up. His eyes hold mine as he drags my panties down to the ground.

“Tell me you want this.” His voice wraps around me like stone and dirt and ivy, textured with need, a command and a plea.

“Tonight,” I whisper.

He nods, once.

Then he shrugs off his jacket and tosses it to the side. It lands in a dark heap on the stone path. “My dress,” I say faintly. “It’ll get stained.”

“I don’t care.”

He presses a kiss to the top of my mound, almost chaste. I shiver from that soft touch, anticipation like a light inside me, blinding even in the dark space.

Rough hands push my legs farther apart, my feet pressing farther into the dirt.

Then his mouth is on me
there
, his lips slick with my moisture, his tongue sliding into the secret space between. A sharp cry escapes me, shock and want and denial all at once. I’ve never had this done before, but I’ve imagined it. And every time it’s been him.

I could never have imagined the way he would eat at me, the ferocious intensity of it, the sharp almost pain of it. The desperation makes him clumsy, exploring one part of me, moving to the next, and then back again. It’s like he wants to devour all of me at once. My body can’t distinguish between the sensations, aching and overloaded. I gasp, trembling, holding on to the crush of my dress.

The first swipe of his tongue against my clit makes me sob. “Gio!”

His growl is pure triumph. He does it again and again, relentless in the way he gives it to me, merciless with the pressure and the pleasure of it. It’s too much, and I arch away, but his hands hold my hips in place. It’s cruel, the way he forces me to accept this, to
feel
this.

Climax slams into me, hard and sudden. I make a choked sound as pleasure rockets through me. Every muscle in my body clenches hard. Even then he doesn’t release me, doesn’t give me a break from his wicked tongue on my slit. He drinks up all the wetness he can find, lapping at me while I rock over his face.

“Stop,” I say, breathless. “Stop. Stop.”

His voice is unforgiving. “You gave me tonight.”

That’s the only thing he says before pressing his face into my sex again. I push up on my toes, trying to escape the aching brush of his tongue on my oversensitive flesh, but I just sink deeper into the earth. He mouths at my clit while his fingers play with my folds, teasing the entrance with maddening patience. I think I liked him better out-of-control and clumsy, almost careless. But that first orgasm seems to have taken the edge off, even though it was mine. He’s more leisurely now, taking his time. I’m the one who’s worked up beyond understanding, the climax doing nothing to sate me.

The second orgasm rises up like a wave. I can see it coming, but I can do nothing to stop it, nothing but hold my breath as it crashes over me. He licks me through my climax, using his hands and mouth to make it last even longer. At the end of it, I’m panting and begging.

“It’s too much,” I tell him.

In answer he lifts one of my legs over his shoulder, opening me to him. I’m wet enough that two fingers can slip inside me with ease. He curls them until I whimper.

“Please,” I say, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

“Please what?” he says, voice dark and knowing. “Do you want me to stop?”

I do want him to stop, because then I could breathe again. Then I could go back to thinking of him as my enemy. My body overrules logic, overrides thought. All I can think about is the way his tongue feels. It’s my hips that answer him, rocking forward in silent plea.

He laughs softly. “I thought so.”

The arrogance should be frustrating, but I don’t feel anything but pleasure when he teases my clit. Don’t feel anything but desire when he uses his fingers in that timeless rhythm. I want more of him,
all
of him, and the words are on the tip of my tongue. His naked body against mine. Something other than his tongue and fingers inside me.

Imagining him, hard and thick, pushes me over the edge. He laves my clit with rough, brutal strokes while I shudder and cry out in his arms. He makes me come over and over again, until I’m crying, wordless, incoherent—until I’m sliding down the wall of ivy.

He catches me with gentle arms, using his jacket to create a dry nest for me, laying me down in the cradle of his arm. I think it must be over then, and part of me is sad for that, even though I have nothing left to give. He could do anything to me like this and I would be helpless to stop him, unable to speak.

His fingers toy gently with my folds, exploring the wet skin.

I let him touch me because I can’t do anything else. The darkness covers us like a cocoon, keeping me safe even though my legs are spread open, one hooked over his legs. Then his fingers find my clit, drawing circles, faster, faster.

Weakly I push at his hand.

I couldn’t possibly move him like this, but he stops anyway. “No?”

I swallow, struggling to find my voice. “Can’t.”

My body can’t possibly come again, whether I’ve given him tonight or not. I’m wrung out. Finished.

His expression is stark with tension. “I didn’t get to see your face.”

My breath hitches in my chest. But it doesn’t matter that he didn’t see my face, doesn’t matter how sweet it sounds that he wants to see me come that way. I’m used up, the sparks of pleasure almost painful now.

Except then he begins to whisper to me in Italian. I never learned, so I don’t know what he’s saying. The words blend together, a harmony of sex and love, the tenor of his voice shifting somehow. My hips rise up to meet his hand, drawing the strength from him, from the words I can’t understand but somehow do.