Page 73 of Forsaking All Others

I would have been free to be me, perhaps. A wealthy widow left to her own devices for the first time in my life.

So why didn’t it sound as beautiful as it should have?

A pair of glacial-water eyes appeared in my mental vision. The phantom touch of a rough, wide palm trailing between my breasts down my belly to cup my sex after he’d filled me with his cum.

I thwacked my head back against the door as if it would dislodge the unwieldy memories.

No matter the emotional distance between us, I couldn’t deny that something elemental in me called out to Dario and was answered in turn. As if we were made of the same material, cut from opposite but complementary colors of cloth.

My throat ached as I swallowed.

The sight of that severed ear, wounded like Dario’s had been only a week ago, was branded in my brain. I couldn’t quite reconcile how someone could have known enough to fake the injury in their elaborate game.

Only Dario and I had been at the casino for the showdown with Serena.

It was possible he’d told Cesare and Ciro, maybe even Lando and Carla, but otherwise I couldn’t imagine anyone else knowing that tiny detail.

And if he had divulged the minutiae to any of them, what did that mean?

That they were . . . in on the charade?

What was the point in faking his kidnapping, if only for a night?

Was he even on a plane to Sicily, and if so, why? Or had he used it to cover up something else entirely, a beautiful smoke screen for something nefarious he didn’t even want his own people to know about?

Preferring the puzzle of the last twenty-four hours to the emotions swirling like dirty water in a clogged drain at the base of my belly, I ruminated over the situation as I cranked on the shower to near scalding and stepped inside, tipping my face to the burning spray.

If the wet on my check tasted slightly salty against my lips, I didn’t pay it any heed.

I was so busy warring with myself I didn’t notice the bathroom door opening or the dark figure that entered until the shower door itself was cranked wide and wide shoulders wedged through the opening. It was a large walk-in tiled enclosure, but Dario was so big, he made the space feel like a cage.

Trapped, I pressed myself to the wall and, foolishly, perhaps, covered my wet breasts as I faced him.

“Che cavolo?” I asked. What the hell? “What are you doing?”

In six years of marriage, Dario had not once stepped foot in my bathroom. Not even to clean me up after sex. He liked me to sleep filled with his seed or rub it into my tits or ass after spilling onto my skin. I’d never called him out on the primal spunk kink, but then again, I would have been calling myself out too. I loved his cum on or in any place on my body.

My mouth watered, unbidden, as I thought about the salt-bitter taste of him.

He leveled me with a flat glance as he reached over my shoulder to pump fragrant vanilla soap into his palm. “Showering.”

“In my shower,” I hissed, still crowded against the wall as Dario stepped fully under the rain showerhead.

The wet slicked his dark hair to his skull and neck, a sleek, inky helmet that made him seem like a heathen warrior, muscles bulging like rope under his skin as he soaped up his armpits and scrubbed his nails through his chest hair. Covered in thick lather, he had never looked so untouchable, even though he was just inches from me. Something from a film or magazine, like something a woman could only ever dream up in her imagination.

“In my house,” he countered with a sidelong glance as if he was judging me for being an idiot.

I sighed loudly, dropping my hands to reach for the conditioner only to have Dario intercept me.

“Let me,” he ordered, opening the jar and scooping honey-scented hair mask into one hand. When I didn’t move, he used his other hand to pull me close, then spin me around, so I was facing the back wall with my ass flush to his groin.

He was soft, but I felt the twitch of interest in his dick the moment our skin touched, and I had to fight the urge to wiggle against him.

Cazzo, what was going on with me?

More importantly, what the hell was going on with him?

As his blunt fingers worked the conditioner through my hair, I spoke. “Why are you being like this?”