‘This darkness that has me trapped inside of it… I want to tell you about it.’
‘Here?’ I questioned as my eyes flicked around the area we were stood in and the anxiety I had previously been feeling was pushed away as adrenalin flooded my system.
‘Right here,’ he replied. ‘You’re facing your demons and I need to face mine.’
I changed my hold on him, needing to feel the warmth of his body in my arms and not the expensive black fabric I had hold of at the moment. I pushed my hands underneath his suit jacket and wrapped my arms around his waist. I sighed out loud as I felt the warmth of his body escaping the soft, cotton of his shirt and I tried to absorb it to calm the panic building inside of me.
Am I strong enough? I had no answer, but I hoped I could give him what he had so far given me. This was truly going to be a test of who I was inside. I knew how I made decisions for myself for the rest of my life, hung on this very pivotal moment.
‘I killed my father,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘I did it… It wasn’t an order I had carried out for me. I killed him… I squeezed the trigger that ended his existence on earth.’
There was no emotion attached to his words, it was as though he was reading aloud from a badly written script. For a few seconds, I let his words travel around my head as I tried to come to terms with what he’d just said.
Maybe another woman would have dropped her arms and let them fall away from his body, as she felt repugnance travel through her. Then, unable to bear the touch of his hands on her skin, she would then break free from his hold and scream at him that he was never to touch or speak to her ever again.
But I felt nothing like that.
I pushed myself away from him slightly, to encourage him to look back at me. When he felt me move, I sensed him stiffen in response. I presumed that he thought I was going to break out of his hold at any moment, but when that didn’t happen, he slowly lifted his head and turned back to look at me.
I hadn’t a clue what I was expecting to find written on his face when he looked at me, but what I found there when his gaze found mine, was a childhood filled with pain and a look of absolute honesty in his eyes.
‘Why?’ I questioned.
‘To protect those I love… he had taken our mamma away from us and there was no way in hell I was going to let him have Cade or Nonna.’
I lifted my arms up from his waist and placed my hands on either side of his face.
‘Or you,’ I added as I stared up at him.
‘I don’t give a fuck about me…’
‘Well I do… I admire your honesty…’
‘Bee?’ He pleaded with me to put him out of his misery.
‘I appreciate you telling me the truth…’
‘I told you, I always tell the truth,’ he interrupted.
‘I accept you for who you are and for what you had to do, because I love you, Nico Morello, with everything I am.’
One solitary tear came rolling down his face and I brushed it quickly away with my finger. Nico nodded once and bit down onto his bottom lip before moving quickly and hoisting me up into his arms. As my body collided against his, on instinct I wrapped my arms around his neck and placed my head against his frantically beating heart, and only then did I understand the anguish my brash boss of a husband had gone through in a bid to tell me his worst nightmares.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘You have possessed me, angel, and now I mean to possess you.’
Chapter Thirty
Bee
‘Happy four-month anniversary, mio angelo.’ I felt the warmth of Nico’s breath as it caressed my ear. ‘Now, I wonder what my wife would like me to give her as a gift?’
I could hear the tease and ultimately the intention in his voice.
I stopped running my hands over my body and momentarily froze as I tried to absorb everything about the man who was now stood behind me in the large walk-in shower. I opened my eyes and looking downwards I watched as his hands came slowly around my sides, flexing his fingers as he did so. He found my hips first and then as his hands slid over the wet soapy skin on my stomach I gasped at the contact. Finally, he wrapped his arms tightly around me and pulled me into him, jerking my back into his naked front.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I replied in a voice that was already shaking with need for the man.
‘You weren’t meant to…’ he answered, before he placed his mouth down several times onto the bare skin of my shoulders and exposed neck and ground his rock-hard cock into the small of my back. My legs began to turn to jelly as his attention on my neck and shoulders continued.
‘I thought you were by the pool with our guests?’ I questioned with a slightly reprimanding tone to my voice. ‘What’s wrong, was the water no longer inviting?’ I grinned to myself as I teased him.
I could see him in my mind swimming the fifty lengths of the pool as he always did each and every morning before breakfast. Most mornings I took myself out onto our large balcony to sip at my coffee and to secretly watch as his well-defined muscles broke through the surface of the water. His strong, lithe body, as it completed lap after lap of the pool, would forever be imprinted inside my head. He commanded the water like he commanded everything else in his life and witnessing it, while knowing he was mine alone, was the biggest aphrodisiac ever. He was the perfect balance to me, so damned good looking in his well-fitting suits, that he turned the heads of women of all ages, but with an air of condescending arrogance that swirled tightly around him. He was the ultimate package. He was caring to those he loved, but he also exuded blatant danger. This made him sexy as hell, to the point that he turned women on and scared the hell out of them all at the same time.
And he was mine, I couldn’t believe my luck.
His mouth broke away from kissing across the top of my shoulder and I cursed myself for stupidly asking him a question.
‘They’re more like family.’ His mouth contacted with my shoulder again and his teeth nipped at my needy flesh, drawing a long audible inhale from my lips. ‘They can entertain themselves. I have better things to do.’
‘Like what?’ I asked as his tongue connected with my spine and he ran it slowly up to my hairline, making my back arch in response.
‘You,’ he replied.
‘And what if I don’t want “doing”?’ I grinned to myself, knowing I was effectively inciting the devil himself.
‘There’s no escaping me now, Bee.’ I could hear the smile in his voice, even though his tone of voice had deepened.
‘I’m all yours then.’
‘Too. Fucking. Right. You. Are.’ In between each word he bit his way across the top of my shoulders. The pain instantly abated and turned into pleasure. ‘You. Are. My. Wife. My. Love. Mio Angelo.’
With a mixture of relief and pleasure I dipped my head forward, feeling the strong spray of the shower hit my head and the hair that earlier I’d haphazardly piled on top of my head to stop it getting wet. Now it felt like the water was in league with my husband as the strong streams massaged my scalp. Eased by the shower cream that covered my skin, Nico began to move his hands over my body and the pleasure coursing around my system at his touch ramped up several notches.