It was the talking that was causing the unbearable pressure in his chest. There could be no more talking.
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please.”
He pushed his underwear down his hips and positioned himself, testing her readiness, sliding into her slowly, so slowly he thought the pain of want would kill him before he was all the way home.
Then he lost himself in her. In her body, her breath fanning against his cheek, wet kisses on his neck, her nails in his shoulder blades. He lost himself in Julia and he never wanted it to end. Here with her it made sense. Life seemed to make sense. And he felt more at peace, he felt more whole, he simply felt more, than he ever had before.
Orgasm rushed over him like a wave and as she arched beneath him, crying out her release, he found his own.
When it was over, he held her against his chest, smoothed her hair. Wondered if his heart would ever slow down. If it had slowed down at all since that first night they were together.
Julia reached down and picked up the blanket, drawing it over their bodies.
“We should go in,” he said.
“I don’t want to,” she said. “Too sleepy.”
“The only alternative is sleeping out here.”
“And what’s wrong with that? It’s a beautiful night, and we can look at the stars.”
Terror expanded in his chest, pushing out the comfort and well-being he’d felt only a moment before. “I don’t like being cold.”
“I’ll keep you warm.”
“Julia,” he said, sitting up. “I have not spent one night outside since I could first afford to put a roof over my head.”
“But you’re not back there, Ferro, it’s not the same. You’re not in Rome. You’re not on the street. And you aren’t alone.” She sat up and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, her breasts pressing into his back. “I promise I won’t let you get cold.”
Ferro relaxed, followed Julia’s gentle tug back down to the divan. He lay on his back and looked at the stars, while Julia rested her head on his chest, her body heat seeping through his skin.
Her heat chased away the cold. The fear. And he slept.
* * *
It wasn’t until he was in the office the next day that he realized what he’d done. He’d been so desperate to get Julia to stop talking, to get her to stop making him feel, to be inside her, that he’d forgotten about condoms.
That had never happened in his life. Never. Condoms were the most important thing in his sexual encounters when he’d been a prostitute. Dio, but he hated that word. It still had the power to flay his skin from his bones. To make him feel like less than a man.
And yet it was the truth about him. A truth he was trying to ignore, by replacing those memories with memories of Julia. He clung to her as if her touch had the power to clean all the dirt from his skin.
But far from that, he was starting to wonder if he was just spreading the dirt to her. No matter what she said. No matter what she claimed to see when she looked at him.
Actions like his didn’t come clean.
I wish you could see how amazing you are.
No, she was wrong. He wasn’t amazing. He was just a man selfish enough, without conscience enough, to do whatever he’d had to do to get where he wanted to go.
And now he’d brought her into it, compromised her. After all that had already happened to her…would he hurt her, too?
Damn. They had the meeting with Barrows today, too. He stood up and stalked out his office door. “No one calls me,” he growled at his assistant as he walked past, contacting his driver from his phone as he did so.
He got into the elevator and took it down to the lobby where his car was already waiting, idling against the curb.
“Julia’s,” he said to the driver. He didn’t have to say more. Everyone knew now that they were lovers. Everyone knew who Julia was.
The drive across town in the afternoon traffic was unbearable. Too hard to wait that long. He couldn’t wait. When his driver was a block away, Ferro jerked open the door and got out, striding the rest of the way down the sidewalk, his focus straight ahead. He ignored the tourists, the few people who recognized him who were gaping, the sun, the palm trees that lined the walk. He ignored them all.