AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I don’t know when he finally lifts me onto his lap. I don’t remember him doing that, but he’s cradling me, and I’m limp in his arms, my head against his chest and this is what I want. For him to hold me like this. Safe and sound. Protected.
“I like how you taste,” he says. He tilts my face up with one finger beneath my chin and kisses my lips. I taste myself on him and I want more. More of him. My hand slides to his stomach, to the hard muscle of it. He takes my wrist and pushes it lower and I blink my eyes open to look at him when he closes my hand around himself over his jeans.
He’s big. Big and thick.
“Squeeze,” he tells me.
I do and he makes a sound and the way he looks at me, it’s dark and dirty and it makes me want him more.
“I want you to say my name like that every time you come,” he says, his voice a hoarse breath against my ear.
I close my eyes, not sure what I feel. So many things.
He tucks me closer into him, wrapping his strong arms around me, and I rest my head against his chest and think how I wish I could stay here forever, like this.
When he rests his hand against my thigh, I open my eyes and look at that hand. It’s the one he spanked me with. The one he touched me with.
That’s what I’m thinking when he interrupts me.
“We have some business to settle between us.”
My reckoning.
I turn my gaze up to his.
“Are you ready to answer my questions or do I need to take you back over my knee?” he asks.
We’re not finished yet. Did I think for a second, we were? That he’d given up asking me questions I don’t want to answer?
I shake my head.
“Good.” He draws back and I try to burrow into him, but he pulls away and I’m suddenly cold.
When he perches me on the ottoman, he keeps his hands on my knees and I look at his watch, big and masculine and his hands, big, too.
What did Rafa tell me? To stay in his good graces? I understand that as I look at those hands and remind myself of what he can do with them—good and bad.
I give a shake of my head to clear the fog from my brain. What am I doing?
“Eyes on me, Gabriela,” he says.
I look up at him, at his mouth, it takes all I have to not look away. What did he just do? What did I just let him do?
I hug my arms to myself, shivering, and I sit there, mute.
Who am I? I’m a fighter. I don’t cower to men. And yet, here I am and look at me now. Naked and trembling.
But this game Stefan is playing, it’s new to me. And he’s a pro. I’m out of my element. So far out of my league.
“Were you in Rafa’s car when he was sideswiped?” he asks.
No point in lying anymore. I have no loyalty to Rafa, after all. “You know the answer, or you wouldn’t ask the question.”
“Answer me anyway.”
Silence.
“Is that where the bump on your forehead came from?”
I blink, not denying, not affirming.
“Words. Tell me now.”
“Yes.” He knows. It’s not news to him. It can’t matter anymore.
“The man at the well, who was he?”
“He was the one who sideswiped us. One of them, at least. There were two cars. One on each side.”
“Where were you?”
“Taormina.”
“Why?”
I shake my head. “He invited me along. It was after you and I…after our fight.” I look at this hand, the one I sliced open with my stolen knife. It’s healed mostly. I wonder if it will leave a scar, though. I shift my gaze back to his. “He said he had a meeting and felt bad that I was cooped up. We had lunch. We were on our way back when it happened.”
He doesn’t like this. I can see it in his eyes, in his posture.
“Meeting with whom?” His eyes narrow a little.
“Can I get dressed? I’m cold.”
He looks around, gets up, picks up a throw from the arm of a chair and wraps it around my shoulders, then resumes his seat.
“Meeting with whom?”
“I don’t know. I stayed on the beach.”
“Unprotected?” Now he looks pissed.
“No, there were two men.”
“But he took you there without soldiers?”
“I don’t want to get him in trouble, Stefan.”
He gets up, shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair, and I think how just moments ago, I had my hands in that hair, was gripping handfuls of it and pulling him to me.
“Did he tell you not to tell me?”
This question, it’s the one I don’t want to answer.
“Gabriela?”
I nod. “He was just doing something nice.”
His jaw tightens and when he resumes his seat, I see the effort it takes him to keep his voice controlled and calm, even though I know calm is about the farthest thing from what he is.
