Another one of those groans left his lips—heady, and deep. So fucking husky, too. Her name followed right after, and his tightening fingers stilled in her hair.
“Fuck, kitten ...”
The pet name made her shiver. He’d used the name the morning after they first had sex. Because you are, he’d said, as soft as a kitten during sex. Because he was rough enough for them both.
“Ginevra.”
He came hard, and she took every drop he gave, letting her throat relax as she swallowed him down. She released him from her mouth, but kept her fingers tight to his base as she stared up at him from his cock.
Corrado grinned back at her. “Look at you, huh?”
She smiled back.
“What’s that mean?”
“You ... There’s something about you like that.”
“Tell me when you figure it out.”
Corrado laughed darkly. “I will. I definitely will.”
She had no doubt.
“Let me clean up, yeah?”
Her lips curled up in dislike of the idea, but he only chuckled, and waved his hand. The action alone was enough to remind her that, yeah, he’d taken the condom off, and needed to handle it. She gave a little huff before rolling off him. The sound of his laugher colored up the bedroom. His hand landed to the palm of her ass with a soft crack, before grabbing the spot, and rolling her over in the sheets.
Corrado dropped a quick kiss to her lips as he climbed over her body to leave the bed. The loss of him seemed substantial as she watched his naked backside disappear into the bathroom. But that was a nice sight, too.
Very nice.
“I have something to do today,” he said, voice filtering out of the bathroom.
Ginevra sat up into a cross-legged position in the bed, dragging the sheets to cover her nakedness. She needed to cover herself. Hide what she had done again. Corrado slipped out of the attached bathroom into the walk-in closet.
“Oh?” she asked.
In his tone she found the truth.
Relief, but wariness.
Love but anger.
“Are you going to see Alessio?”
There, she asked.
Ginevra figured if she had any business being in this man’s bed after everything, then she at least needed to have the courage to ask him outright about the situation at hand. Right? That didn’t mean she would like the answer.
Still, she had to ask.
All the noise in the closet quieted, and the silence echoed. A few seconds passed before Corrado came to the doorway, still naked except now he’d pulled on a pair of clean boxer-briefs. Dragging a hand through his hair, his gaze darted around at everything except for her before finally, he met her stare.
“Yes,” he said. “He wants to meet up at a place two blocks away. A restaurant, my brother’s.”
Ginevra nodded and stared down at the sheets bunched at her waist. “Okay.”
Her voice came out faint.
“Ginevra.”
Her hands became interesting.
The sheets, too.
Anything but his face.
“I hope you figure ... whatever ... out.”
“Ginny.”
There were things she didn’t want to ask. Stuff the two of them didn’t need to talk about yet because she wasn’t sure she would like what happened after. She needed to understand why Corrado would take her to bed again and again, but not seem to have an ounce of guilt. What kind of relationship did those two men have inside their bedroom?
Was this really okay?
She didn’t have a good grasp on her own emotions here.
Dirty.
Blissed.
Ashamed.
Wild.
She felt all of it ....
That’s what held her back; kept her quiet.
Ginevra dragged in a shaky breath and decided changing the topic might get them away from this for now. Oh, it wouldn’t fix the deep ache in her heart, or how the bed suddenly seemed cold.
“Have you heard anything about New York—my sisters?” she asked.
Still, she stared at her hands on the sheets.
Not at him.
“Not yet,” Corrado murmured, “but I can try to get a message through, and see what comes out.”
She sighed. “All right.”
At night, home filled her mind. About her sisters. When no one saw her struggle, or how she cried over things she couldn’t control and the fears keeping her company, that’s when she allowed herself to wonder.
All the things that might happen, and her helplessness. A rock and a hard place.
It was funny, though, how when she crawled into Corrado’s bed at night, and he dared to tell her everything would be okay, she trusted him.
Her worries left.
Sleep came easier.
Or hell, maybe it wasn’t funny at all.
• • •
“The building is secure, no one knows you’re here,” Corrado had told Ginevra before he left, “so you’re fine to stay here alone. I’m trusting you not to do something to change that—yeah?”
And then he left.
For the first few minutes, Ginevra wandered the large penthouse, moving from room to room trying to find something to keep her occupied. She used to enjoy being alone, but not right now.
She didn’t want to consider what Corrado might do with someone else instead of being there with her—where she wanted him to be. Because that was most selfish of her. She didn’t have any claim here, and not over Corrado. She was the other.
She expected nothing from him.
Ginevra wouldn’t wallow on the topic, either. It only hurt her more, and she shouldn’t feel that, either.
Not now.
Eventually, she found herself in the office and library space again. Her fingers drifted along the edge of a shelf, taking in the spines of the books lined up by size. Not a single one was bigger than the other in whatever row she stared at—all matched. She often came back to this space in the penthouse because for whatever reason, this comforted her.
More than the books, and the escape provided by the words.
Something about here ... she craved it; something she didn’t even find in Corrado.
Soon, Ginevra found the book she had been looking for on the fourth shelf up from the floor. A book of poems by an author named only as Anonymous. That’s what had drawn her to the book in the first place; someone didn’t want to put their name on their words. As though instead of claiming their art, they wanted to give the words to people without the pretense of who created them, or why.
She kept coming back to the book of poems, all ranging in topics from everything like love, to the way sunlight looked on a sidewalk in the month of May. There wasn’t rhyme or rhythm to them, but she liked that. She would come into the library, find the book, and read a few pages before sliding it back into the slot.
Someone else had read this a lot before she ever found the book. A cracked spine and the dog-eared pages told the story of someone else’s appreciation of the words inside.
Opening to her last page, she always remembered the page number and didn’t need to dog-ear to find her place, she became lost in words again. Time slipped by when she had a book in her hands, and nothing else to do.
She flipped to a new page—the start of a new poem—when a familiar voice came from behind her, almost making her drop the book.
Goddammit.
“What are you doing in here? Are you supposed to be alone where you might ... oh, I don’t know, run?”