“You said yourself your grandfather took care of you. Your father is his son.”
“In which case I have to ask myself if it was my mother. If some people are destined to drag down those who they love. Just another reason to stay away from me.”
Her heart thundered, and she felt dizzy. He was so convinced he was toxic. And that was why they couldn’t... She wasn’t even entirely sure what they couldn’t. Knew only that he was saying they couldn’t, and she knew whatever it was that she wanted to. “But what about what I want?”
“You don’t know what you want.”
She blinked. “Of course I do. I’m a grown woman, Alessandro. You don’t know what I want more than I do.”
He got out of the chair, dropping to his knees so that he was down in front of her. He lifted his hand, brushing his thumb over her lower lip. He looked raw. Desperate. And she had to close her eyes, all of her focus going to that slow, sensual touch. “Gabriella, I have seen so much more of the world than you have. Believe me when I tell you that I know what you should want. What will keep you safe.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“It cannot happen,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if he was telling her or himself. “I cannot kiss you again,” he continued. “If I did, I would only sin greater.”
She opened her eyes, looked down at him. At the creases on his forehead, the deep grooves that bracketed his face. Those lines made him all the more devastating. Without them, he would be too beautiful. But those lines—the evidence of years lived—gave him texture. Took him from mere beauty to devastating.
She ached. For him. With need for him. “All sins can be forgiven, can’t they?”
“Not all, Gabby. My life—my childhood—is a testament to that. Some sins cause damage that is irreparable. That wound so deeply they will never heal. Ask my half brother about that. I would tell you to ask my parents, to ask my mother, but she’s dead.”
“But, Alex... If we both want each other...”
“You don’t even know what it means to want, Gabriella.”
Her chest felt tight, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. “That isn’t fair, Alex, you don’t get to tell me that I don’t know what desire is when you’re the one who showed it to me. When you’re the one who made absolutely certain that I learned what it was.”
“I have already hurt you.” He shook his head, his tone filled with regret. “I would not like to do it again.”
“Then don’t.” She was on the verge of begging for something she had never imagined wanting with this much ferocity.
“I won’t.”
“Must you be so honorable? Must you choose this moment to be a man of your word? To be sincere?”
He nodded slowly. “If there is any moment where I must choose it, it is this one.”
She slid out of her chair, joining him on the floor. She took his hands in hers, leaning forward, touching her lips slightly to his. “But if you didn’t?” she asked, her mouth brushing his as she spoke the words.
He reached around behind her head, sifting his fingers through her hair and drawing her head back slightly, his dark eyes intent on hers. “If I did not, Gabby,” he said, his special nickname for her sending shivers along her spine. “If I didn’t, then I would lean in and I would kiss you, more deeply than you kissed me just now.”
“What else?” she asked, knowing she would burn for this. Past the point of caring.
“I would run my tongue along the line of your top lip before delving inside. I would taste you. So deep and long neither of us would be able to breathe. We wouldn’t want to breathe.”
She was shaking now, trembling with need. “Alex,” she whispered.
“I would pull your T-shirt up over your head, so that I could see you,” he said, resting his palm on her stomach, his touch scorching the material of her shirt. “So that I could feel how soft your skin is.” He left his hand there, his other still buried deep in her hair. “Then I would remove your bra. Get a good look at those beautiful breasts. They are beautiful. You are beautiful. I have said it many times to you now, but I need you to understand how true it is. It is the deepest truth I know, Gabriella. Your beauty. As real as the night sky.”
Tears filled her eyes and she made no move to wipe them away.
“I would trace your breasts with my tongue,” he continued, “before moving down to kiss your stomach. Then I would strip off your pants, your underwear. For a moment I would just...look at you. I would be afraid to blink for fear that I would miss a moment of that beauty. I would taste you, tease you, touch you, until you were sobbing in my arms.”
Gabriella closed her eyes, going still beneath his touch, focusing all of her attention on the pressure of his hand against her stomach, on the erotic words that were flowing from his mouth and over her like heated oil. “What then?” she asked.
“Oh, my darling, I would send you to the moon and back. I would make you scream with pleasure. Then, and only then, I would enter your body, slowly. I would be as careful with you as possible. But I fear it would not be as careful as I ought to be. Because by then...then I would be desperate for you. Beyond thought. It is important that I make you scream before that, because I will not last long once I’m buried deep within you.”
She let her lips fall open, her head drawn backward. “Yes,” she said, the word a sigh.
“It would be heaven,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “To feel you all around me. You would be so tight, so hot and wet. For me. Only for me, Gabby. It would only be for me.”
“Of course,” she said. “It would only ever be for you, Alex.”
She found herself swaying forward, her heart beating so quickly she thought she might faint.
Suddenly, Alex released his hold on her, standing up and putting as much distance between them as possible in one fluid movement. He was breathing hard, and she could see the press of his arousal against the front of his slacks. Could see that what he said was true. That he wanted her with a ferocity that he could not deny. That he would in fact love nothing more than to do everything he had just said.
And she wanted it. So badly that it echoed inside of her. An empty, aching need that only he could ever fill.
“We cannot, Gabby,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, the word torture.
“Because I have committed so many grave sins already. I have hurt so many people. Gabriella, I will do nothing but hurt you. And it is the last thing on earth I want to do.”
That was why she let him go. That was why she didn’t press. Because of the desperation in his voice. Because of how much he wanted to turn away from this. Because of how difficult it was for him. She would not add to his torture. Not after what she knew about him. Not after what he had told her about his parents, about his brother.
So she did nothing but nod slowly. Did nothing but watch him turn and walk out of the room all the while she sat there, shaking.
She felt cold suddenly. Where before she had only been hot.
She thought back to an earlier conversation they’d had as she sat there on the floor of her library, shivering. She had told him that one was much less likely to get scarred if they stayed in here. She almost laughed. Because she would never forget this. His words, his touch, was branded into her, a scar that would never heal. One that she had acquired—of all places—on the library floor.
It had been her place. The place she had always felt safe. Her refuge.
But it was his now. Irrevocably.
She