AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes,” he says simply. “I will make sure you have time, Gianna. The Family won’t wait forever for you to be married, but theywillwait.”
I nod, grateful for that, at least. My heart trips in my chest as I look at Alessio sitting there. He looks so handsome in the light, sitting at the head of the table, and I can’t help but think of what it might be like if he stayed—if he decided that he belonged here, if he chose not to leave.
If he ever were to decide to do what my father wished for him to, and marry me.
“I’m—going to go upstairs,” I say thickly, emotion welling up in my throat and making it difficult for me to speak. “I need some time, I think.”
“I understand.” Alessio smiles gently at me. “I’ll be getting my things arranged today, but if you need me, you can come and find me, Gianna. And I will relocate the office, as you asked.”
“You don’t have to—”
“It’s no trouble,” he says firmly, and I nod, turning quickly on my heel to flee back up to my bedroom before I burst into tears.
I spend the rest of the day in my room. I don’t trust myself to speak to Alessio without either saying something I shouldn’t ordoingsomething I shouldn’t, which would be so much worse. I feel knotted up inside with grief and worry and other, stranger feelings that I can’t put a name to, and guilt floods me every time I think of Alessio in the house, and I feel a sharp prick of excitement at the idea that he’shere, and that for now at least, he’s staying.
No matter how I try to distract myself—with books, music, even re-watching one of my favorite shows for a few hours—nothing works. My thoughts keep drifting back to Alessio, to what I had thought was nothing but a silly and inappropriate teenage crush, and I can’t stop myself.
I’ve never felt anything like this for anyone else. I’ve never seen any other man who makes my heart leap into my throat when I see him, who makes my blood race, who makes my lungs feel as if all the air is being squeezed out of them. I’ve never imagined kissing anyone else, touching them, never wondered what any other man would be like if I took them to bed—a prospect that I’m not entirely able to imagine, but can’t help but try to envision.
Only Alessio. And he is the one man who seems to not onlywantto refuse me, but is almost eager to hand me over to someone else. It could almost be insulting, if it didn’t make me feel so strangely disappointed…even sad.
I rarely ask the staff to do favors for me—even growing up with them always there to tend to any need I might have, I rarely have any that I make known. It’s always made me feel guilty to have others at my beck and call, but today, as I have a few times since my father’s death, I make an exception. I ring for someone to bring me up dinner instead of going down, since I skipped lunch, and I pick at my food in my room, wondering if Alessio will come up and check on me. He doesn’t, which makes me feel worse. Eventually, when it’s late enough, I drag myself into a shower and then into bed, lying in the dark and staring at the ceiling, trying not to envision Alessio in a bed somewhere down the hall, in whatever room he chose to stay in. Not my father’s, I don’t think—I think that would feel strange for him—but I wonder if he went back to his old room, the one he stayed in when he was here before, the one that was his before me, when the mansion was his home.
My cheeks flush red, remembering the afternoon three years ago when I snuck into that room and found a t-shirt left on his bed. I’d picked it up and smelled it, breathing in the spicy, woodsy scent of his cologne, feeling both as if I were doing something terribly wrong and exciting all at once. The smell of his cologne and his own natural, warm scent on the fabric had made my heart beat faster. It made me want to put the shirt on and curl into it, imagining that it was his body, his arms against me instead. I’d stolen the shirt, keeping it in my dresser drawer—and I’d forgotten it was there, for a while, once he’d left. Now, the memory comes flooding back, and I have to resist the urge to get up and retrieve it.
It wouldn’t smell like him any longer, anyway. By now, it smells like the expensive laundry detergent the staff uses and my own perfume from my other clothes, not Alessio any longer. And if, for some reason, he should come up and peek in to see if I’m alright—my face heats up even more, imagining him looking into my room and seeing me in bed, sleeping in his shirt.
There’s something a little exciting about that idea, too, though—a flood of butterflies in my stomach that I do my best to ignore—the idea that he might come up and find me like that, shake me awake, demand to know why I have something of his. That he might even punish me for it.
The unexpected thought startles me, and I go very still, my heart beating a quick rhythm in my chest.Is that something that happens?Is that really something people enjoy? I test the thought again, unsure of quite what such a punishment would entail, but I feel that small thrill again, the trip of my heart in my chest, a strange warm feeling flooding through my stomach and making the small muscles in my thighs tremble in a way I haven’t felt before. My thoughts keep drifting back to Alessio, likely lying in bed down the hall, flickering through images of what he might wear to bed—or not. Pajama pants with no shirt, just boxers—I imagine what his chest might look like, smooth and muscled or dusted with fine black hair, feeling more and more restless with every thought that passes through my head, and less able to sleep.
It feels stranger than I expected, having him here. It all feels strange. I don’t entirely understand what it is that I’m feeling, or what any of it means, or what I’m expected to do about it—except simply see how it all plays out.
But that, I think as I close my eyes and do my best to fall asleep, is going to be much easier said than done.
Alessio
Iwake in the morning unsettled, with an aching erection and a sick feeling of guilt flooding me from the last shreds of the dream that I do my best to shake off.
I dreamed of Gianna, something I tried very hard to avoid any chance of. I tried to push every possible thought of her out of my head before falling asleep. I tried not to imagine her in bed just down the hall; how easy it would be to look in on her and see her sleeping there. I tried not to imagine just how easily I could have her inmybed, if I just gave in to what it is that everyone around me seems to want me to do and married her. Lying there in a room in the same house, under the same roof, proved to be more of a temptation than I could have imagined. It was all too easy to conjure an image of her in the bed with me, pale skin against smooth white sheets, those liquid blue eyes looking up at me with innocent desire.
This is going to be more difficult than I realized,I thought as I lay there, recalling what it had been like just to sit across the table from her. The crush she once harbored for me hasn’t gone away with time; that much is clear—I could feel the nervous tension coming off of her like a wave, and even though she pulled her hand away after a moment when I touched her, I felt her wanting that contact, that touch.
Maybe she’s just a grieving girl who wants comfort, I tried to tell myself, but I haven’t made it to thirty-six years on this earth without knowing when a woman wants me. Or, in Gianna’s case, a girl, because I can’t bring myself to think of her as a woman. If I do, it means acknowledging that she’s old enough to want, to desire, to feel—old enough to make choices that I can’t condone the consequences of. Old enough to tempt me into things I know I shouldn’t do.
I’d lain there sleeplessly for a long time, trying to think of anything else—of old flames, of the woman I fucked just before I came to Chicago, of the things I’d need to attend to in the morning…anything at all. Eventually, I fell asleep to the thoughts of going over the household ledgers—only for Gianna to invade my dreams.
She was, so far as I can tell, the last thing I dreamed of before I woke up—and the evidence is lying hard and thick against my thigh, demanding attention as I lie there cursing my wayward thoughts and my anatomy all at once. I try not to recall it—the way I’d dreamed of walking into my bedroom to find her already under the sheets, naked with the soft material clinging to her breasts, sliding down to show me, inch by inch, the body that I can’t seem to stop wanting to see. I’d stood at the foot of the bed, gently demanding that she lower it more slowly, drawing out the anticipation, the pleasure, for us both. I’d been rock-hard by the time the sheet had pooled around her hips, revealing full breasts and a narrow waist—both in the dream and reality, it seemed—instructing her to slip her hand beneath the sheet, to the last part of her that hadn’t been revealed to me, to touch herself until I told her to let me see. My cock had throbbed and ached, my hand drifting to it of its own accord, and now—
I grit my teeth, flexing my hand next to my thigh, trying not to touch myself. I woke up before the dream could go further, before I was able to see her most intimate flesh. Still, my thoughts are all too quick to want to fill in what might have come next, to imagine the soft dark hair between her thighs and how wet she might be for me, the sight of her fingers slowly stroking pink, warm flesh that would twitch and flutter under her fingertips, flesh that she might not have even touched before.
Oh god.That thought is enough to make my cock lurch dangerously, threatening to leave a mess over my thighs and the sheets without having even touched myself. The idea that Gianna might besoinnocent that she’s never even let her fingers stray over herself before, that she might be completely unaware of pleasure of any kind—it shouldn’t turn me on. It shouldn’t make my jaw clench, and my muscles flex in an effort to hold back the urge to—
My hand closes around my cock before I can stop myself, the shaft so slick with pre-cum from my arousal that there’s no uncomfortable friction, only the hot glide of my palm over my over-sensitive flesh, enough to make the muscles in my thighs quiver, and my toes curl. I try to put Gianna out of my head as I stroke;god, I try, but she keeps flickering into my head no matter what I do—her wide, innocent blue eyes and her soft smile, those plush, rosy lips that would look so beautiful wrapped around the head of my cock as I fed it between them, teaching her just how to lick, how to suck, how to give the perfect blowjob that no other man would ever get to experience from her—
“Fuck!”The curse comes out as a hoarse, muffled growl as I clench my teeth against the sudden burst of my orgasm, my cock hardening and throbbing in a rush of pleasure so intense it’s almost pain, that last image of Gianna on her knees with rosy, puffy lips around my cockhead sending me over the edge before I know what’s happening. I manage to throw back the sheet just in time to avoid drenching it, hot cum spurting thickly over my fingers and hand as I thrust up into my fist, groaning between clenched teeth as my other hand fists at my side, my strokes hard and erratic.
I lay there panting for a long moment afterward, eyes closed, feeling that wave of guilt all over again.What kind of man are you?I ask myself with bitter rancor, my stomach knotting as I sit up, disgusted with myself as I feel the sticky, cooling cum on my fingers. I stride to the bathroom, turning on the hot water for the shower, and stepping inside before it’s fully warm, eager to try to wash away the way both the dream and my subsequent loss of control made me feel.
