AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Gabriel steers me away from the dance floor, saying his good nights. I look for Clara, but she’s still dancing with the handsome Italian man, and I don’t want to interrupt them. I feel my face heat a little as Gabriel leads me to the back door of the house, knowing that anyone still outside knows where we’re going, and why. But for some reason, that thought makes my heart beat a little faster, too.
It’s not the first time. Not even the second.
But it feels like it’s going to be different from all the rest.
17
GABRIEL
Ihave no reason to be nervous as I lead Bella upstairs to my room. But something twists in my stomach all the same, an anxious anticipation at what’s ahead of us.
This is just sex. Even as I try to tell myself that, I know it’s a lie. Regardless of the reasons for our hasty marriage, Bella is my wife now, something she’s never been before when we’ve gone to bed together. And I’ve never felt more certain of how I feel about her.
I’ve also never felt less sure of what I’m meant to do about it.
She all but said she plans to leave once Igor is no longer a threat. I know that can’t have been an easy decision for her to come to, either—I know how much she cares for Cecelia and Danny. I also think we both know that, after this, there’s no going back to how things were before. There’s no world where we can go back to being an employer and his nanny, while Bella dates other men and builds a future without me, while my place in her life is only as her boss. Just the thought makes me feel hot all over, down to my bones.
I can’t blame her for it, either. She was destroyed by one arranged marriage, running from another when we met. Now, I’ve talked her into a third—for her own safety, but that doesn’t change how I know this feels for her.
Whatever there is between us, it’s always been muddled by something else. Complicated by things outside our control. This is no different.
Soon, I’ll have to tell her about the threats from Igor, what Gio told me today. But I couldn’t tell her before the wedding, when I knew it would make it impossible for her to get even the smallest bit of happiness from the day. When I knew it would make her even more terrified to come to the church. And I don’t want to tell her tomorrow, when she’ll have a day to spend with Clara before Clara goes back to New York. But I can’t keep her sheltered from it forever.
I know she wouldn’t want me to, either.
I push the thought from my head as we step into my bedroom, closing the door behind us. When I turn back to look at her, she looks nervous, and I step forward, gently reaching out and brushing a piece of hair away from her face.
“We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to,” I tell her quietly. Every part of my body protests that statement—I’m aching for her, and I have been for every second since the last time I was inside of her, in the library. After having her in my lap on the car ride home, grinding against me, I felt like I was going to lose my mind waiting for tonight.
But I never want her to feel that she has to do anything that she doesn’t want to. That I would ever ask anything of her that she doesn’t want to give.
She nods, swallowing hard, and for a moment, I think she’s going to agree. That she’s going to say it’s better if we don’t do this at all.
A throb of frustration ripples through me.
“I want to,” she says softly, and for a moment, I’m afraid I’ve misheard her. But she steps closer, her hand reaching up to touch the bare skin where the top buttons of my shirt are open, and I suck in a breath at the feeling of her warm fingers against me. “Just for tonight,” she adds, and my heart slams against my ribs.
I catch her hand, folding mine over hers. “I understand why,” I murmur quietly. “And I’d never force you to do anything you didn’t want to do, Bella. But even if we’re not—intimate after tonight…I want you sleeping in my bed with me. I want you next to me. I don’t want to sleep in a separate bedroom from my wife.”
She blinks, looking up at me. “Why not?”
Why not, indeed. There are a dozen ways I could answer that, and they all involve things I’m not ready to admit yet, not even entirely to myself. Feelings I don’t think she wants. Desires that are at odds with what this marriage is, at its core.
An arrangement. A necessity. Not a union of love—no matter what I’m feeling right now.
“I want to know you’re safe,” I say instead—the closest thing to a lie I’ve ever told her. Not because I don’t want to know that she’s safe, but because it’s far from the first reason I want her sleeping next to me at night. She can be protected even if she’s sleeping in a bedroom down the hall. We don’t need to share a bed for that. “I’ll feel better if you’re next to me at night.”
That’s closer to the truth.
She nods, slowly. “I trust you,” she says softly. Her fingers tug at the buttons of my shirt, slowly undoing them. I divested myself of my jacket and tie earlier tonight, and I bite back a groan as her fingers trail down my chest, over the soft, dark hair there as she undoes the buttons all the way down. When my shirt is hanging open, she reaches to undo my cuffs, her lip caught between her teeth. I want to reach out and touch it, to feel that soft plushness under the pad of my thumb.
Her fingers running down my chest already had me halfway to hard, but that thought seems to send all the rest of the blood in my body south, straight down to my cock as it stiffens, straining against my fly. Bella is still fully dressed, and I want to rip that wedding gown off her body, but I can’t seem to move. It’s as if I’m afraid I’ll startle her if I do, that she’ll come to her senses and stop touching me. And the feeling of her hands on my chest, my abdomen, her palms sliding over my shoulders as she pushes my shirt off and lets it fall to the floor—it’s as if my entire body has become an erogenous zone, her touch everywhere almost as good as if she were touching my cock.
When her hands drop to my belt buckle, I almost reach for her. But she undoes it, letting it fall open—and then she drops to her knees.
Instantly, all of my better sense comes back online. I reach down, cupping her cheek in my hand as I tilt her chin up, looking intently down at her.
“You don’t need to do that,” I tell her gently, even as, once again, my entire body rebels at the idea that I’m telling this gorgeous woman—my wife—that she doesn’t need to put my cock in her mouth.
