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My hearing was shorting out. It was as if steel wool had been pushed between my ears, cushioning everything but the manic beat of my heart.
He swore again. “Give me your pussy.”
I gasped. Not because he’d asked—well, sort of—and not because I was some newb who wouldn’t do that. Hell, I’d wanted that very thing, hadn’t I? But he wasn’t a boy who would stumble through a couple quick tongue stabs and finish up by trying to rub off my clit as if it were a magic button.
Odds were good he knew what to do to not just get me off, but spectacularly.
“You gotta stop doing that,” he muttered, and I blinked, looking down at my lax hands. “Not that, the gasping thing. You do it all the time.”
Narrowing my eyes, I lapped at his cock. Mouth wide open, tongue flat. Deliberately, I brushed my breasts up his tensed thighs, waiting for him to gasp himself. When it didn’t work, I took him between my lips, forcing back my gag reflex as I tried to accept more of him. I hadn’t given a ton of blowjobs, and he wasn’t the best practice dummy.
Head pressed to his groin, eyes shut tight and watering, I started to choke. My lungs seized up, the memories from earlier swirling behind my eyes. I heard Marco’s voice, felt his fingers on my leg as he pulled off my shoe.
“No fucking Cinderella here,” he said with a sneer, dumping the shoe in a garbage can.
“Carly.”
My hands shook and I fought to steady them while I struggled to breathe through my nose.
“Carly,” he said again, and my head came up, my eyes fastening on his.
This time when he cursed, low and in Italian, he also undid his hands. Two twists of his wrists, and my skillful knot came apart as if he were freaking David Copperfield. “This is why I didn’t want to do this. Not like this. You’re still reliving—”
“No.” The last of my bravado slipped and tears popped into my eyes. I’d done so well all night. I hadn’t cried at the club, hadn’t cried on the way home, hadn’t even cried in Gio’s shower. I hadn’t been raped, not technically. Not the way my sister had been. This was different.
So why were my eyes stinging and my hands shaking and my stomach pitching so hard that I was afraid I might be sick?
“Come here,” he said, and all of the anger had disappeared from his voice. He sat up and opened up his arms and I lurched into them, mindlessly seeking the comfort I’d found there earlier in the midst of our shared hell.
“You’re fine. You’re safe.” His hand stroked my hair, up and down, up and down. “I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”
I pressed my damp eyes to his neck and breathed him in—expensive cologne, the faint tang of sweat and rain. Cleansing rain.
“We should’ve done this outside,” I said, clutching his ropey arms as if he might vanish. And he just might.
He’d never stuck around long before.
“What?” Something that might’ve been a laugh rumbled through his chest. “Why?”
“Rain makes everything clean.” I looked up at him, my lower lip quivering. “Even me.”
“You listen to me.” He cupped my cheeks in his big hands, his thumbs catching my tears. “You aren’t dirty. You’re perfect. What happened tonight wasn’t your fault. You were caught in something bigger than you—”
“Don’t you mean caught by something bigger than me?” When I glanced between us, he jerked my face up again. “Sorry. It’s not the time for jokes. I just…I don’t want it to be the only time we have. I want to stamp it out with a better memory.”
His throat moved. “You’ll regret it in the morning. After you sleep…”
I reached up to trace his lips. So wide and sensual, so reluctant to smile. “I could never regret you, Giovanni Costas.”
He shut his eyes. Then he opened them again and smoothed away the last of my tears. “See that lock right there?” He indicated the skylight slanted over the bed. “Go ahead and open it up.”
It took me a moment to understand. Rain. He was giving me—us—the rain.
I went to my knees, and he gave me a boost with his arm around my waist. Supporting me while I fumbled with the lever and slid away the glass. Behind it was only screen, and a fine mist of rain squeezed through the specially reinforced weave.
“The bed,” I asked, looking behind me.
“It’s fine. The sheets can use a wash.”
