“The truth.”
“Ten.”
I stroked her belly. Aria’s admittance didn’t sit well with me, even if I reminded myself that she had a different pain level than I did. I never wanted to be the one who caused her that much pain. “Next time will be better.” I hoped it would be. I wasn’t sure how to make this easier for her. She was petite and nervous, and I was an asshole that burned with the need to have her.
Aria gave me an apologetic look. “I don’t think I can again so soon.”
“I didn’t mean now. You’ll be sore for a while.” I still wanted her, maybe more than ever. Claiming her definitely hadn’t sated my desire for her, or the need to have her as close as possible. It was unnerving.
“On a scale of one to ten, how fast and hard did you go? The truth,” Aria asked in a teasing voice.
I considered lying, but for some reason I didn’t want to. I wanted Aria to know the truth about every aspect of me, the bad, the worst. I wasn’t even sure why. I’d never bothered sharing anything with anyone except for Matteo.
“Two,” I said, watching her closely as I did. She tensed, shock flashing across her face. I’d gone as gentle with her as I was capable of. I’d never been this close to someone while sex, never gone as slow, or tried to pay attention to a woman’s facial expressions to make sure she was okay.
“Two?”
“We have time. I’ll go as gentle as you need me to.” Fuck, and it was the honest to God truth. If Aria needed me to, I’d go the vanilla route for months.
Aria smiled in a way that went straight through me. It was a look I wanted to see as often as possible. “I can’t believe Luca—The Vise—Vitiello said ‘gentle.’”
My men wouldn’t believe it if anyone told them I could be gentle. And my father, my fucking father, he’d lose his shit. He’d demand I fucking grow a pair and beat my wife into submission. He’d never understand that it didn’t show strength to abuse someone who couldn’t protect themselves, someone meant to be under your protection. A man should know whom to treat with care and whom to crush. I touched Aria’s cheek and leaned in, murmuring, “It’ll be our secret.” It had to be. Nobody could know. If my father considered Aria a risk to my ruthlessness, he’d kill her immediately. I’d end his miserable life, would show him that the same sadistic streak he had ran deeply in my veins, but it wouldn’t save Aria.
Nothing would ever happen to her. Not as long as I was alive. I’d kill anyone who dared to consider hurting her.
Aria nodded, her expression softening. “Thanks for being gentle. I never thought you would be.”
“Believe me, nobody’s more surprised about this than me,” I said. Gentleness wasn’t in my nature, never had been, and I doubted it would ever be something anyone else but Aria would get to experience.
Aria turned to me and pressed against my side, her head on my shoulder. I tightened my hold on her. She let out a small sigh as if I’d given her a fucking gift for allowing closeness. I lightly stroked the soft skin of her waist, feeling a sense of calm.
“You’ve never been gentle to someone?”
I wrecked my brain for a moment in my life when I’d shown a softer side of me, but the only memory I came up with was when I was a boy of five. I’d found my mother crying in her bed and had walked over to her even though I wasn’t allowed in her bedroom. I had been scared by her wailing and had touched her hand to stop her. My mother had jerked her hand away and Father had come in a moment later. He’d dragged me out and beaten me for trying to cater to the silly whims of a woman. “No. Our father taught Matteo and me that any kind of gentleness was a weakness. And there was never any room in my life for it,” I said. All the sentimental baggage from my past wasn’t something I wanted to lay in the open, not even to my wife.
“What about the girls you were with?” Aria asked. Her voice shook with a hint of worry and jealousy. I peered down at her blond crown, her naked body stretched out beside mine, elegant, breathtakingly gorgeous, mine. It was understandable that she worried about other women after the Grace incident, but I didn’t have the slightest intention to ever touch another women again, and all the women of my past had meant nothing. I didn’t even remember most of their names or faces.
“They were a means to an end. I wanted to fuck, so I looked for a girl and fucked her. It was hard and fast, definitely not gentle. I mostly fucked them from behind so I didn’t have to look them in the eyes and pretend I gave a shit about them.”