“You let me worry about what we can and cannot do.”
A flash of those beautiful eyes like beacons in a storm. “I’m not a brainless female, Santo, who caves to you. I don’t give my submission away to anyone, and you know that. Sure, we played, and it was fun, but…”
My heart thumps, my pulse races, and I can barely hear over the pounding of blood in my ears. I love it when she fights me. I grasp both wrists in my fingers and pull her arms by her side, then march her backward to the bed until her ass hits the edge.
We played, Rosa and I.
Like it was a childish game we outgrew.
“Don’t you lie to me. You know you like it when I boss you around. Damn near fuckin’ came the first time I spanked your ass and pulled your hair.”
“That was years ago,” she whispers, but she can’t hide the way her pupils dilate, and she shifts on the bed. “Santo—”
“This a game to you?” I whisper against the shell of her ear. “You think I’m fuckin’ playing, Rosa?”
“We can’t—you know we can’t. You can’t touch me. We can’t… touch each other.” She shakes her head, her voice trembling.
“Romeo’s in jail,” I whisper, laying her on the bed. “Your father’s dead. And any goddamn minute, I’ll get shipped off to Tuscany and you’ll get sent wherever the fuck.” I can’t tell her the truth.
She presses against me when I try to lay her on the pillows, but I overpower her.
She lets me.
Her thick, damp hair splays on the pillow, and her face, free of makeup, looks almost innocent.
Almost.
“Santo,” she whispers.
Slowly, like I’m peeling back a layer of a Christmas gift, I remove her towel and feast my eyes on her perfect body. The trim waist with its little dimpled belly button, her shapely legs, the full breasts that heave with excitement.
“Yeah, baby?” I whisper back.
She reaches for me slowly, as if asking permission. She knows I don’t like to be touched unaware. I give her an almost imperceptible nod. I watch her as her fingers trace my forehead, down the side of my face, then over my lips. She runs her hands over my beard and groans.
“I missed you,” she whispers. “God, I missed you so bad.”
I nod. I do know. She wasn’t happy in Tuscany with Marcadio, any more than I’m happy in Tuscany watching grapes grow. The two of us aren’t like the rest. Fierce almost to the point of being uncivilized, we never pretended that any of what The Family does is normal, or acceptable. We didn’t make the best of the cards dealt to us.
We embraced the life of corruption.
I like to think I understand her better.
I like to think the feeling’s mutual.
“Then don’t try to stop me,” I whisper back.
I don’t think of the past, what lays behind us. We were only kids then, with a lifetime ahead of us and rules that bound us tightly.
Before we knew who we really were.
I don’t respond at first. Gently, I glide my finger over her shoulder, relishing the soft, silken skin beneath my touch. I trace a path from her shoulder across her collarbone and circle the hollow in her neck. Feeling her breathe. Watching the way her breath hitches, her pulse racing. I trace my way to her right shoulder, over the curve, then down the slope to her elbow. She watches me, mesmerized, as I gently trace the length of her body.
Down to her fingertips. Up the inside of her arm. Down past her breast, but I don’t stop to linger, before I go lower, down her side to where her hip swells. Down the top of her leg to her knee, then down her calf to her foot. She giggles when I trace the soft, delicate arch of her foot.
“That tickles,” she whispers. I bend my bearded face to her thighs and gently tease.
“Does that tickle?”
“Santo,” she whispers, squirming. “Oh my God.”
I sit up straighter and go back to touching every inch of her like I’m memorizing each cell, every membrane.
When I trace my way back up her side again, this time I graze the tops of her breasts, but I don’t touch her nipples. Still, her breasts get fuller, and her nipples harden. She closes her eyes and squirms. I bend and kiss the fullest part of her breast. First one. Then the other.
My dick’s aching, hard as fuck, but I don’t care. I don’t want to fuck her, not tonight. I want to remember her.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispers, her voice thick with arousal.
“Because a woman like you deserves to be worshipped.”
I kneel over her, and her eyes come to where my jeans are tight. She doesn’t miss my raging hard-on.
After I’ve traced her, I decide to kiss my way down her.