I nodded.
“You’re a Ferrano now, too. You hang in there with me. We’ll get to the other side of this shit and my goal is that you’ll live easy. You, our baby. I mean that. Somehow.”
I nodded again. God, I really hoped so.
He kissed me slow and sweet and then swatted my butt again, “Breakfast. Go.”
***
I was wearing a little black ribboned dress with thin strips of black crepe material and strategically placed strips that were black and sheer. It fit me like a glove. It was off the shoulder and my belly wasn’t yet showing but I’d pigged out all day long so I figured it wouldn’t be long before I popped. Who knew what this baby would do to my body so this might be the last time I’d feel this foxy in a little black dress.
Tommy didn’t make back in time for dinner but the rest of us ate heartily with a huge spread brought by room service that was again put in chafing dishes so that the bodyguards could eat whenever, which they were doing in shifts.
I wore very high black metallic heels with crisscross straps and emerald cut jade studs and a simple choker with a matching teardrop shaped gem that dipped into my cleavage.
Said cleavage was serious. With my pregnancy, my boobs looked extra big, like all the food I was eating was going straight there.
My hair was silky straight, hanging straight down my back, my usual longish side-swept bangs pulled back away from my face in a couple of little twists held in place with black sparkly jeweled bobby pins.
I’d had my make-up done in dramatic red lips and smoky eyes.
Tess dressed in a red floor-length fitted dress with a plunging neckline, a very high front slit, and long and loose flowy sleeves to hide her bandaged arm. Suzette took one look at her arm and picked the right dress just as she’d done when she’d seen my bruised neck when she dressed me for that night we were here last time. She had a knack for it. God knew what she thought of us, though. She remembered me and was very nice and didn’t act like anything was odd. She was cordial and professional.
Tess had on strappy silver sandals and a gorgeous up-do with some curly pieces loose. We both tried to paint smiles on but it was probably obvious that we weren’t feeling it.
A sex club. A sex club with that asshole there. Tess hadn’t talked about what’d happened, except for one very troubling thing she said to me in the bedroom. I had the feeling she was trying to push it away so I didn’t push for any information.
When she got dressed and inspected herself in the mirror, she had a different look in her eyes. Steeled, hard. I think she’d started getting angry. She was going to be facing her rapist and she was digging deep to find her fire.
“One good thing. At least he raped me from behind so I don’t really have his face burned in my memory.”
That made my belly churn. “You’ll recognize him, though?”
“Yeah. Big ears, bad clothes. Beady eyes. I’ll never smell Polo cologne again in my life without hurling.”
“That’s Leo Denarda. I met him once. He looked at me with this awful sleazy look. I don’t look forward to seeing him again.”
“I do.” She blotted her lipstick on a tissue.
“Yeah?” I was a little, no a lot, shocked.
“Yep. When I see him and meet his eyes, I’ll see fear. He won’t see fear from me. He’ll see a confident smirk on my face, because we’ll both know my brother is going to fucking annihilate him. You gotta be pretty fuckin’ stupid to fuck with Tommy Ferrano. That moron is dead meat and he deserves it.”
She reached for the glass of wine she’d brought in to drink while the girl was doing her hair and downed the rest of it, heading out of the room.
Tommy came in as she was leaving the room. He pulled her into the hall and was saying something in a low voice. He kissed her forehead and whatever he said, I caught the look on her face before she turned and left my line of sight. He’d given her something that made that fire burn even hotter.
He turned and was taking me in and another sort of fire was burning in his whisky-colored eyes as they swept over me from head to candy-apple red toes and then back up to my candy-apple red lips again. He bit his lip and gave me a carnal look. He crooked his finger at me and my feet moved to obey.
He shut the door.
I said, “Did you eat? You wanna grab a shower while I make you up a plate?”
He grabbed me by the hips and pulled me to him. Even though he wasn’t all dressed up yet, he still looked as hot as always. He was wearing a dark button down shirt, dark jeans, and a blazer.
He touched my face with his left hand and I turned into his touch and kissed his wedding ring. His wedding ring seemed to ratchet up his hotness factor for me multi-fold. Despite how I’d felt the night before, how I was still toiling a little bit with my emotions, that ring just did it for me. It always set off emotions deep in my belly.
He kissed me passionately, giving me a little tease of his tongue and then backed away an inch and looked deep into my eyes.