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But here, at the estate—Delilah and I only traveled here a few times together. The vast majority of my memories here are of my childhood, of my parents, of the parts of my life outside of the ones where I was a husband and a father. Despite the looming threat of Igor, whom I know will come to call sooner or later, I can’t help but feel as if I can breathe here. It’s a feeling that I haven’t had in years—that I didn’t even realize I was missing until we arrived.
I still have work to do, remote meetings to handle, emails to keep track of, and business to conduct even an ocean away, but it still feels as if I have more time here. I’m technically busier—I’ve been involving myself more and more in the runnings of the estate day by day so that I can understand what it is that’s been done here over the past years—but time seems to move at a different pace here. Even with those responsibilities, the afternoons where I’ve broken away to take the children to the lake or out for riding lessons, the slow dinners in the bright and sunny kitchen, the Italian countryside vista spreading out all around us—it makes me feel a peace that I’d forgotten was possible.
It makes me wonder if I really want to sell this off to someone who will see it as no more than a commodity. Not a place full of the rich history of my family, but a means to make money and nothing more.
But surely, what I’m feeling here is temporary. My life is in New York. My children’s school, their friends, their lives are back in New York. As is Bella’s.
If being at the estate makes me feel like I can breathe again, the thought of her makes me feel like that air is being sucked out of my lungs. I want her with a ferocity that I’d forgotten I was capable of feeling, and what happened in the library a few days ago only compounded that. I feel a throb of embarrassment every time I remember it—coming in my jeans as I ground up against her like a fucking teenager—but the sight of her pinned against the shelf, gasping and moaning as she came just from that, too, sent me over the edge.
Everything about her makes me feel like I’m on the verge of going over the edge.
She’s fit in here so naturally. Just like she did when she moved in, back in New York. She and Agnes are making progress on the house. My children love her. Even though I know she’s still terrified of Igor, she’s thriving, too, and I can see it. She’s put on a little bit of weight, the too-skinny edges of her from when she was sick beginning to soften and fill out. Her olive skin is more tanned, freckles popping out along the bridge of her nose. Sunlit highlights in her chestnut hair.
Just thinking about her makes me half-hard as I drive out to the estate office, my body thrumming with a strained desire to go back to the house, pull her into the nearest room, and devour every inch of her.
And I can’t. She reminded me of that, while we were both still panting and breathless in the library. We agreed.
But I don’t know if the reasons that I agreed to it are still the same any longer.
I told her that I couldn’t fall in love again. That I had too much baggage, too much grief from the past. That I was too afraid of loss to open my heart to another woman. But here—here, things feel different. Here, I feel lighter. Like I might be able to escape the shackles of the past after all. Like I might be able to hope for a fresh start—the kind of fresh start that Bella has hoped for.
And my reaction to seeing her with that damned man in the gelato shop tells me that I’m going to have a hell of a time handling the idea of her being with anyone else in the future. That seeing her with another man, even if it’s for the best, is going to feel like I’m being ripped apart from the inside out. Consumed with jealousy I have no right to.
No matter how many circles I go around and around in when it comes to Bella, I can never find a solution.
She occupies my thoughts for most of the day. I take Cecelia and Danny out for another riding lesson in the afternoon, driving them out to a further paddock that’s larger and lets Cecelia have more free rein—she’s a natural rider, and I want to encourage it—and as the sun is starting to lower in the sky, I see Bella jogging over.
My heart instantly trips in my chest. She had to have come out here on purpose this time—this is out of the way of her usual running path. I see Aldo behind her, one of the other Land Rovers parked near the outbuilding, and I force myself not to let my gaze rake over Bella in an entirely inappropriate way.
But god, she looks fucking gorgeous. She’s wearing a pair of tight jeans and a loose black t-shirt that still somehow manages to cling in all the right places, a pair of boots on her feet. I wonder if she’s come out to take me up on riding lessons of her own, and I feel an entirely inconvenient throb at the thought of what I’d rather be teaching her to ride.
One of the many things we didn’t get to do. One night wasn’t enough to do all the things I’ve imagined with her, and now the thought of Bella atop me, riding my cock while I look up at the gorgeous expanse of her body, is just that. A fantasy.
Bella walks up to the railing, leaning against it. I unclip the lead line from Danny’s pony, letting him take a few turns around the paddock on his own. He’s already shown that he’s confident enough to do it, but I can’t help being overcautious. My first broken bone was out here on the estate when I was just a little older than him, getting thrown from a spooked horse.
“Bella asked me to bring her down here,” Aldo says cheerfully, hobbling towards the paddock. His gait has gotten slower since we left New York, and it’s yet another reason I’m glad we ended up coming to the estate. There’s not much that he’s needed for here—the estate already has a fully functioning staff and all the workers we need—and it’s been a much-deserved vacation for him.
“I thought you could give me a driving lesson on the way back,” Bella says. Her hair is up in a ponytail, swishing against the back of her neck, and I have to immediately drive the image of wrapping it around my hand out of my head.
For a man whose sex life was all but dead in the few years prior to meeting Bella, she’s re-energized that need in a way that feels barely controllable, and is highly inconvenient.
“I can drive the old one back,” Aldo says, leaning against the railing. “So you can teach her on the automatic. I’ll take the kids back up when they’re done.”
Every bit of common sense I have tells me that being alone with Bella is a bad idea, if we have any intention of sticking to what we reaffirmed in the library. Being alone with her in a car, on the expansive estate, where it would be easy to find someplace where no one could catch us, is an even worse idea. But she’s smiling, her expression hopeful, and that alone makes it impossible for me to say no to her.
“Alright,” I relent. “We’ll be done here in a few minutes.”
A half-hour later, the ponies are untacked and returned to the barn, and Aldo and the kids are headed back up to the mansion in the old Land Rover, leaving Bella and me alone.
“Ready?” I ask, tossing her the keys, and she nods. I can see a flicker of nervousness in her face, but she opens the driver’s side door to the newer Land Rover, and climbs in.
“It’ll feel a little different from the one I was teaching you back home,” I tell her as she starts the engine. “This is a bigger car, and it’s meant for rougher terrain, so it will handle a little differently. But you’ll get it.”
“I barely got the other one to drive,” she says, a nervous laugh making the words a little shaky. “But I want to try.”
“That’s all that matters.” I slide into the passenger’s side, buckling my seatbelt. “There’s no rush.”
I know for Bella, it’s the independence that she wants, though. The feeling of not needing to rely on anyone else. And there is something of a rush, for that. With every day that the threat of Igor’s retribution hangs over her, she needs things to make her feel as if she has some control over some part of her life.
