“I thought you didn’t do angry sex,” Cara said from her perch on the edge of Gian’s bed. “Wasn’t it you who said that was unhealthy?”
“I’m not angry.”
She might be.
He sure as hell wasn’t.
How could Gian be angry when, at the moment, he had Cara stripped down to nothing but her skin, in his penthouse, on his bed? How could he possibly be angry?
“You’re not even a little bit mad?”
“About what?” he asked, shedding the final bits of his clothing.
“I did hit you.”
He shrugged. “I did provoke you.”
“I knew you did that on purpose.”
“And look where you are now, my sweet girl.”
Cara’s eyes flashed with her desire and irritation. “Yes, how stupid of me, I fell right back in your bed.”
“Where you belong, Cara.”
Her red lips curved at the edges in a half-hearted smile. “You’re impossible.”
“So you’ve said a few times before.”
Gian shoved his boxer-briefs down, not missing Cara’s gaze dropping to his prominent erection. He’d been as hard as fucking steel from the moment he’d touched her at the restaurant.
It was a serious problem. He intended to rectify it as soon as possible.
Gian crossed the small bit of space between him and where Cara sat on his bed. She stared up at him, still and waiting. He wanted nothing more than to feed into the dark, debasing shit running through his mind. All the urges he couldn’t fulfill elsewhere, and the needs that weren’t helped with his memories of Cara.
He held back.
Barely.
“Could you snap your fingers for me?” she asked sweetly.
Too sweetly.
“Why?”
“At least then I can say I came running for something when you called.”
Fuck.
Gian let out a hard breath. “Cara, stay or go.”
She didn’t move, neither did her blue gaze—the window into the most beautiful soul he had ever had the pleasure of knowing.
“But don’t sit here and make it seem like I’m not giving you a choice,” he continued when she stayed silent. “I want you here. I have wanted you here since the day I let you walk out, but don’t make this into some hate-fuck session. It’s never going to be that and if you need that to justify how you’re going to feel tomorrow, then leave. Right now.”
Her stare slid away from his. “You can’t let me have anything, can you?”
“Not when I can see right through your shit, bella.”
“You’re making this hard on me.”
“From where I’m standing, it seems pretty fucking easy.”
“Of course it would, to you.”
Gian opened his mouth to respond, but his air caught in his throat when Cara’s hands reached for him, her fingers circled tight around his cock. She slid her palm under his sac to cradle his balls. Firm, long strokes of her hand—tight as fuck at the base, and a little looser at the tip—had his head falling back, and a thick groan escaping his chest. His cock jerked in her hand, when her thumb rolled one of his balls between her soft palm and her fingers. Gently, and not too rough, but shit if that didn’t make him flex his hips forward into her strokes for more.
He didn’t give a shit if it was her hands, her mouth, or her cunt. As long as his dick was on it, in it, or soaked by it. As long as she was touching, fucking, or doing something to him, all was well in his world.
Whatever it was, she was his heaven.
It was his drug.
How long had it been since she touched him?
Too damn long.
“You were right,” Cara said, “at the restaurant, I mean.”
“Do tell.”
“There’s been no one since you. There can’t be. They’re not you, Gian.”
“I’m not sorry for that,” he murmured.
“I didn’t think you would be.”
He was far too pleased about it, actually.
“Don’t be nice,” Cara said softly, making him look down at her. “Don’t be soft, and sweet, and good. Don’t do that tonight because you want to fuck with my head after everything that happened. We don’t do that, Gian.”
“Cara—”
“Don’t.”
“Cara,” Gian murmured in a half-groan, his fingers weaving into her hair and tugging firmly enough to make her stop. He found a familiar lust and love swirling in the blues of her eyes, but he saw a wariness there, too. It cut him deep. “When have I ever done that to you?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Never.”
“And I won’t.”
A single nod answered him back.
“Now … Jésus Christ, get that mouth of yours on my fucking cock. I better see those goddamn lipstick stains of yours where I like, Cara. Be a good girl, like I know you can be, and suck my fucking dick.”
She did what he demanded, and it was glorious. A warm, wet familiar bliss that cleared his mind and made him silent in one single second. All she had to do was wrap her pretty red lips around his cock, suck him hard and deep enough into her throat that her muscles contracted along his length, and he was done for.
God, did she know how to suck cock.
It made Gian crazy.
Her tongue flicked against the throbbing vein on the underside of his dick, while her sharp teeth scraped along his length on the withdrawal. Gian didn’t need to urge or help Cara on when it came to sucking him off. She knew exactly what to do. That didn’t stop him from tugging harder on her hair to feel her happy little moans vibrate his shaft. It didn’t stop him from flexing his hips forward when she took him deeper, just to see her sly grin form around his dick as her eyes watered.
“You’re so good with that mouth, mon ange. Succhiami il cazzo.”
Suck my cock.
Suck my cock.
He said it three times—once for each language he spoke.
It was only when his spine started to stiffen and his balls got too fucking tight that he finally pulled Cara away. As much as he wanted to watch her suck him dry, he needed to be buried as deep as he possibly could be into her cunt when he finally came.
Too damn long, he reminded himself.
Cara was already reaching for him before he could push her back to the bed, her thighs opening for his body to fit against hers as his mouth slammed down on her parted, wet lips. She sighed when he pulled her hair, making her head tilt back so he could kiss her throat, and bite her shoulder hard enough to leave a mark. He could feel her heart race like thunder when she slipped a hand between their bodies and fitted his cock to her cunt. The wetness of her arousal soaked the head of his dick, and he thrust in.
Home, and heaven, and bliss.
Those were the things he found when he finally buried his cock balls-deep inside Cara Rossi for the first time in months.
Love, and selfish, and more were the words that slipped through his mind when she shuddered under him, and her nails raked stinging lines along his back.
“Fucking take me,” he ground out against the hollow of her throat. “Take all of me, Cara, and show me how much you want it. Show me how good you are for it, sweet girl.”
Cara only mumbled a broken cry of his name. Her back arched hard from the bed while her legs opened even wider. She pushed her head back farther into the sheets, and her teeth clenched around another whine as he fucked her harder.
He couldn’t get deep enough.
He couldn’t fuck hard enough.
Not enough to feel like he was ever going to satisfy how much he needed, loved, and wanted this fucking woman.
“I want … I want …” Cara’s words melted together in a gasping breath that he couldn’t understand. But with every thrust of his body against hers, with every slide of his cock inside the wet clenching heat of her cunt, he knew what it was. She wanted to come, and he needed that too. More than his own pleasure, he needed hers. “Please.”
He knew what she wanted for that, too.
Not nice, not easy, and not soft or slow.
She wanted his hand on her throat, taking away her air, and a brutal fucking that would ache when she was finally done coming. He gave her exactly that, reveling in the way her cunt clamped down on his cock when his fingers curved tightly to her throat and how the blues of her eyes sparkled with bliss when his rhythm turned harsher.
Shit, her orgasm came on fast.
Even with his hand on her throat, her scream was beautiful.
Gian thought he might be able to hold off his own need to come long enough to fuck her through it, and then get her on her knees to finish him off.
He was wrong.
He came hard, emptying every bit of cum into her cunt as the last shudder racked its way through Cara’s body. His fingers loosened their hold on her throat—he’d never trusted his control to choke her while he came and he wasn’t about to start testing the waters right then.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Gian mumbled.
He was too fucking sensitive and too damn weak all of the sudden. Pulling out of her warm pussy was the hardest thing he ever had to do, but he needed to so he could breathe.
Cara’s light, breathless laughter echoed into the room. His cock—covered in their fluids—rested semi-hard against her thigh. He felt her fingertips slide along his length, and looked down to find her using their mingled cum to lubricate her clit as her fingers started stroking fast circles.
“Shit,” Gian breathed. “That’s fucking hot, Cara.”
Her smile was sinful. “Watch me come again.”
Jesus Christ.
His cock was already perking up.
“Watch me, Gian,” Cara whispered.
All. Fucking. Night. Long.
“Tabernac.” Gian’s curse came out as a low rumble, his irritation rising as he was forced to roll away from soft, naked skin in his bed. He couldn’t let go of Cara completely, so he picked up the ringing cell phone on the nightstand and stroked a hand up her spine with his other. All of his frustration leaked into his tired voice when he answered the call with, “Do you know what goddamn time it is, and what in the fuck do you want?”
“Yeah, it’s after nine and Sunday, Gian. Since when do you sleep in and where in the hell are you?”
Dom’s voice made Gian sit up in the bed, but he still didn’t stop touching Cara as he moved. She grounded him—her presence calmed him. He had been a mess for months and for a moment, he was okay.
“It’s Sunday, Gian,” Dom repeated. “Mass started already. Elena put out a call to a couple of people when you didn’t show up this morning at the mansion, though you were supposed to be there last night. What the fuck?”
Saturday at the mansion.
Sunday at church with his wife.
Merda.
Gian had entirely skipped those plans after seeing Cara the night before. He hadn’t intentionally done so, but something better came along, and those plans no longer mattered. He was surprised that Elena cared enough to call anyone and ask around about him, but that was probably because she was hoping his body showed up somewhere.
“Weren’t you having dinner with her father last night?” Dom asked.
“Yeah, I had dinner with Gabriel.”
“And?”
“And nothing. I forgot, I guess.”
“You for—”
“Gian, is everything all right?”
Cara’s question came out too loud in the quiet bedroom to be hidden. He shot her a reassuring smile, and stroked her back again, saying nothing. She tucked back into the blankets, happy as could be, but Gian knew his brother had heard her.
“Oh, well, shit,” Dom said quickly.
“So, something came up,” Gian muttered.
“Someone, you mean.”
“Semantics.”
“If you say so. Cara Rossi?” Dom asked.
Gian sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I’m not in the mood, nor do I have the patience, to listen to anyone’s bitching this morning, man.”
“Yeah, sure. When did that happen again? How long?”
“Or your questions,” Gian added. “I answer to God, my priest, and the Pope, but certainly not to you. Don’t expect me to.”
And Cara …
Gian answered to her, too.
“What do I tell Ma and Dad … or your wife, for that matter?”
“Apologize, say I wasn’t feeling well. I’ll be at the mansion before noon to deal with the other bit, since I need to grab some stuff anyway.”
“Sure, sure,” his brother said, sounding anything but sure.
“Au revoir, Dom.”
Gian didn’t bother to give his brother the chance to say goodbye back, before he hung up the phone. Setting it back to the nightstand, he immediately went back to Cara, his arms ensnaring her warm body and bringing her closer to him under the white sheets.
He didn’t want to talk or think.
He just wanted to be for a while.
Cara’s rhythmic breathing was too light, telling Gian that she hadn’t fallen back asleep. He waited out her inevitable questions, but what she eventually said was not what he expected.
“I don’t want to be that woman, Gian.”
“Cara—”
“I don’t want to be the other woman.”
He swept her wild curls off her shoulder, giving him soft skin to kiss. He felt Cara’s shiver work its way through her body, and so he kissed her again, just to feel it once more.
“I know,” he murmured, his lips still pressed to her body.
“But here I am.”
“Those are details, and I know they’re the kind of details that matter to some, but they are only details, bella mia. You’re not the other woman for me. You’ve always just been mine. There is no other here. There’s one man and one woman. One man who loves one woman—I love you, Cara. That’s it.”
“One man with a wife,” Cara said softly.
“She’s certainly not mine, not in that sense,” Gian said dryly. “On paper, maybe, but the rest … no.”
“I’m not sure if that makes it better, but I want it to. I wish it did, and I’m pretty sure that makes me a horrible person.”
He pulled her closer still, letting her legs tuck in around his under the sheets, while his arm tightened around her midsection to keep her in place.
“Do you want to know anything about her or the—”
“No,” Cara interjected swiftly, shutting him down.
Gian kissed her shoulder again. “All right.”
“Do you have to go?”
“In a while, yes. I have to go to the mansion and grab some things for the week. I missed church, too, so my mother needs a visit now, to be sure I’m not dead.”
“So, the mansion. Is that where … Elena, right?”
“Mmm.”
“Is that where she lives?”
Gian let out a slow breath. “Yeah.”
At his quiet confirmation of her suspicions, Cara stiffened in his arms.
“Would you stay, though?” Gian asked.
“For what?”
“I’ll be back later today or tonight sometime. I’d like to come back to see you. We should talk, or something. Just talk, Cara. Without yelling or slapping, or fighting and fucking. Just talk.”
“I don’t want to be that woman, Gian,” she repeated.
She hadn’t refused his request, though.
Gian took that as a win. “But?”
“But I love you, too. I love you, and I want to hate you.”
Yeah, that was the hard part.
It was every single reason why she was in his bed, instead of in her own. Because had he loved her even a little bit less, or perhaps in a better way, he would have left her alone to her business and life the night before.
Except he couldn’t.
Because love.
Or, that’s what he was going to keep telling himself. Otherwise, he would be forced to admit how selfish of a fucker he truly was.
“Stay,” he said, kissing along the curve of Cara’s shoulder. “Stay for me.”
“Maybe.”
It wasn’t a no.
Gian grabbed one of the five new garment bags hanging in the walk-in closet. He used the second largest bedroom in the mansion, while his wife used the master bedroom, just across from his. He only kept clothes when it came to personal effects at the mansion, so that he could come and go as he liked, and it actually appeared as though he lived there.
Occasionally, he did business at the mansion, too. He had dinners for the men, and other nonsense that invited people into his “personal” space, though it was complete bullshit. Home was his penthouse, not this mansion.
He stripped down from the jeans and leather jacket he had tossed on before leaving the penthouse. He’d called his mother and promised dinner to make up for missing Mass, but she wouldn’t appreciate him showing up in jeans.
A suit it was.
He had just pulled the shirt up over his head, when a clearing throat froze him in his tracks. Turning slightly to face the opened doorway of the walk-in closet, he found Elena standing there, staring at him.
“Do you need something?” he asked.
“It’s good to see you’re still alive.”
“Is it?”
She just shrugged.
“Where were you when I came in?”
Elena flicked a loose, blonde curl over her shoulder. “Changing out of church clothes. I saw your car, so I came looking for you. Also, I could ask the same, Gian. Where were you last night and this morning?”
“Busy. Something came up.”
Gian turned back to the suit he had set out, picking up the pants as he said, “Ma is expecting us for dinner. You don’t have to go, but I would appreciate if you did.”
“Whatever. How did dinner go with my father last night?”
“Same as it always does. Gabriel is … Gabriel.”
Elena made an agreeable sound under her breath. “Did he want anything specific?”
“You have more contact with him lately than I do, so you tell me.”
“He asked you to dinner, not me.”
Gian rolled his eyes. “Like I said, it’s the same shit it always is. Business, family, and you. Nothing new, nothing to worry about. He isn’t about to climb through a window and steal you back in the night.”
Elena didn’t respond immediately and Gian shot a look over his shoulder to find she was staring at the floor, silent. She was as cold as ice, but there were buttons that a man could push, and she reverted into a shell of herself.
Gian had pushed that button.
“I could have phrased that better,” he said.
Elena shrugged one shoulder. “I choose not to underestimate my father. He used me from the time I was fifteen to do his bidding and play his games, right up until the day I met you. It’s only because he believes I’m no longer useful to him that he keeps a distance now, you know.”
Gian grunted, displeased. “Yes, and then you used me. So how different are you two, really?”
“I used you to get away.”
“It doesn’t justify the mode, Elena.”
She only smiled. “It got me what I wanted. I never needed to fuck another man to benefit my father, I only needed to fuck you. And after that, I didn’t even need to do that, Gian. So yes, I got what I wanted.”
“Yes, stuck in a marriage with me. Where we despise one another, where you lied to me about everything and tricked me with a fake pregnancy, and then losing—”
“I apologized for all of that!”
Gian spun fast on his heel, not hiding his anger. “That’s the problem. You think because you spit out a few sad words, that it fixes what you did. It doesn’t fix it, Elena. You’ve trapped me into this fucking hell with you. I’m so goddamn happy that you don’t mind because of all the wonderful things you have, because fuck me, right? Fuck me and everything I might have wanted from life, Elena.”
“I was taught that feelings didn’t matter in this life, Gian. Only the end goal. Perhaps you should learn the same. My bad, that I happened to meet my goals before you did.”
Feelings only mattered when they were hers.
That was what she meant to say.
Gian was not stupid.
“Get the fuck out, Elena.”
“In a minute.”
Gian snarled a warning at his wife over his shoulder, done with her nonsense and games for the day. Elena barely reacted. In fact, she continued standing in the doorway with her arms crossed and her eyes nailed to his back.
“What do you want that you haven’t already bothered me with?” he asked, reaching his limit of patience.
“Who were you really with last night?”
Gian’s shoulders stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”
“Who were you fucking?” Elena carefully enunciated each word. “That’s why you didn’t come here last night or to church this morning, right? You’ve got scratches all down your back. Jesus, she must have liked whatever it was you were doing to her. Doesn’t that hurt? That’s one thing you’re quite good at—making a woman come again and again, I remember that well. Did she scream your name like a good little whore? Was it loud enough to drown out me and everyone else filling your thoughts?”
Gian reacted only to the fact Elena used the word whore. He spun fast on his heel. Elena took a giant step back, far enough out of the doorway that Gian was able to grab the door and slam it closed without hitting her.
Her voice stopped him before he closed it completely.
“Oh, someone’s touchy. Is it her again, Gian, the one from before?”
Gian let the door slam in her face, determined not to give Elena a thing unless she pried it out of his dead hands. When a man gave her an inch, she took a mile and ran with it until he was a bleeding, useless, broken mess trailing behind her. It was just what she did, it was what she had been taught and Gian refused to ever play those games with his wife again.
The last time he had, he’d lost. Lost his freedom. Lost his rights. Lost what he thought was his child. He just fucking lost.
So no, fuck her, and her games.
“Cara, right?” Elena asked from behind the wood. “That’s her name, isn’t it? Are you screwing that whore again?”
“Go to hell, Elena, before I fucking send you there.”
She laughed at him.
He wasn’t surprised.
Story of their life …
“Elena didn’t want to come?” Celeste asked as Gian kissed his mother’s cheek.
He readied to speak the lie he had prepared, but whether or not his mother would fall for it was another story.
“She’s not feeling well,” he said.
Celeste frowned. “She was fine at church this morning. Wasn’t she, Frederic?”
Gian’s father nodded. “Seemed so, Tesoro.”
“Well?” Celeste looked to Gian. “See, even he—”
“She’s not feeling well,” Gian repeated, “and I can’t make her come to dinner when she isn’t up for it, Ma.”
“Fine.”
His mother didn’t sound particularly happy about it, though. He wasn’t about to complain that Elena stayed home.
“What’s for dinner?” Gian asked.
Celeste waved a hand, beckoning her son and husband to follow. Gian walked alongside his father, a few paces behind his mother, as Celeste described the meal that was waiting for him. As good as it sounded and for as hungry as he was, he only wanted to eat, spend a few minutes talking, and then get the hell out of there.
Cara would be waiting at his place for him.
Maybe …
He’d sent her a text earlier and gotten a reply. She had been at the penthouse then, but whether or not she still would be was another story.
Cara had a bad habit of overthinking.
Not that Gian blamed her.
“Sounds delicious, Ma,” Gian said.
Celeste preened over her shoulder. “Of course it does.”
The family had just sat down for their meal when the phone call came in. His parents’ maid handed the phone over to Gian with wide eyes before she bolted out of the room. Celeste and Frederic watched him like two hawks as he put the phone to his ear.
Gian tried to hear what Elena was saying through her panic, but he could only make out a few words.
They were enough.
They were too much.
Cops.
Warrants.
The mansion.
Get here, now.
Gian only made it outside of his parents’ place. The cops were already waiting for him there, too.
Apparently, the mansion was one of many places served with warrants, and he was just one of many men to find themselves in hot water with police. His father-in-law’s house that was just an hour outside of Ottawa was another. Gian found himself in the back of a police cruiser and his hands cuffed, before he could even tell his father what to do.
“The charges?” Gian demanded from the officer.
The man shrugged, but before he shut the door, he said, “Ask Seeley when you get to the station. He said you two had missed your meeting this week.”
Gian realized then that he was fucked.
He just didn’t know why.