I look at my brother. Watch him watch her and I want to know what she’s thinking. If she believes him.
If I do.
We’re interrupted by the girl bringing Helena’s dinner, a simple pasta dish with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.
“Thank you,” she says, picking up her knife and fork. She seems different, stronger somehow.
I reach over and pick up the spoon, slide the knife out of her hand and slip the spoon in its place.
She turns her gaze to our hands.
I get up to move behind her chair.
She looks cautiously up at me and I close my other hand over hers.
Gregory finishes his drink, pushes his chair back. “Excuse me.”
Neither of us look up as he retreats into the house. Helena’s eyes are on her plate as I move her hands, taking a forkful of spaghetti and rolling it against the spoon.
“Like this,” I say, turning it, holding the forkful out to her.
She keeps her gaze on mine for a moment, and this gesture, if she accepts this, it means more than that forkful.
Helena opens her mouth and I feel a sense of relief. It’s strange and not what I expect to feel.
I let her slide her hands out from beneath mine and prepare another bite for her.
She opens when I offer it, and takes the next bite too, and the one after that.
“It’s enough.” She says once the plate is half-eaten. She picks up her napkin and wipes her mouth. “Thank you.”
I set the utensils diagonally across her plate and put my hands on her shoulders, rub them, then move them to her arms.
She doesn’t pull away.
“Did you mean anything you said when we were in Verona?” she asks.
I pull her to her feet, turn her to me. I touch her cheek, cup her face. “Every word.”
I kiss her.
It’s soft, this tasting of her lips. Like it’s our first time.
I wrap one arm around her waist and cup the back of her head with the other and I nudge her lips apart, deepen the kiss, slide my hand down to cup her ass. She’s still tender there, I can tell by how she sucks in a breath.
But when I pull back, she shakes her head, wraps her hands around my neck, digging her fingernails into my shoulders.
It hurts, the place Lucinda shot me still tender. I managed to throw her aim off enough that the bullet didn’t do any real damage but it will still take time to heal. It was the lamp she bashed against my head that knocked me out.
But I don’t care about any of that, not right now, and I shove the half-eaten bowl of pasta aside and lift her up on the table and draw her dress up, missing the feel of her skin, the scent of her. Needing to be close to her. Inside her.
She looks down, brings her hands to my belt and unbuckles it, lets it hang there while she works to undo the buttons of my jeans. She slides one hand inside and looks back up at me.
I fist a handful of hair as she wraps her hand around my cock and I kiss her, and she squeezes my dick when I tug her head backward.
“Hard,” she says against my lips, her legs wrapping around my middle as I push her backward, still kissing her, shoving my pants and briefs down with one hand.
I tug her forward so her ass is at the edge of the table and look down at her. She’s shaved her pussy and I miss the triangle of hair I like to grip and tug, but I like this too. I like seeing the seam of her sex and I lean my head down and kiss it.
I missed it. Fuck, I missed her.
“Fuck me, Sebastian. Do it hard. I need you to do it hard.”
I need it too. Now. Tonight. Like this.
With one hand on her thigh, I shove her leg wide, keeping hold of that fistful of hair and watching her when I thrust in to the hilt, hard like she wants it. Hard so it hurts her.
But as much as I want to pound into her, I draw back, my fingers digging into her thigh.
“Hard. Please!”
She grips the collar of my shirt, letting out a cry when I do it again.
“Helena,” I grunt. She’s got one hand in my hair now and is pulling. “I won’t be able to stop.”
I thrust again, forcing the air from her lungs.
“I don’t care. I need you. I need you like this. I need us like this.”
I take the wrist of the hand that’s pulling at my hair and keep it on the table, lay more of my weight on her and look at her, my face an inch from hers as I fuck her. And when she reaches her mouth to kiss mine, to bite my lip, I push her backward because right now I need to look at her, to see her beneath me like this, to have her here again where no one can hurt her.