A Shadow of Guilt

In the aftermath Valentina’s brain couldn’t wrap itself around the magnitude of what had just happened. The pain mixed with a pleasure more intense than she’d ever experienced. She was vaguely aware of Gio pulling free of her body and disappearing for a moment before returning. She was vaguely aware of him lifting her body so that her head touched a pillow. He drew a thin cover over her body. When he tucked himself around her, she found that she was instinctively twining her legs around his, holding him to her tightly.

He lifted an arm and she felt his fingers smoothing damp strands of hair from her face. She opened sleepy eyes and caught a glimpse of a mark on the inside of his upper left arm. In the dim light she hadn’t noticed it before. Without thinking Valentina reached up to trace what looked like black marks etched into his skin. A tattoo of some sort. She frowned. ‘What’s this?’

Gio’s fingers in her hair stilled and she felt him tense. After a long moment he drew his arm back from her questing fingers and just said, ‘It’s nothing. rest now.’

He shifted his body so that Valentina was curled into his side, and with her cheek resting on his chest over where his heart beat steadily, she found herself slipping down into a dark dreamless place. She would think about those marks … later. She would think about it all.

As the dawn light filtered into Valentina’s room, bathing everything in a pinky gold, Gio sat in a chair in the corner of her room. He’d pulled on his trousers, leaving them open, and just watched the woman who lay sleeping in the bed.

She was on her front, the sheet provocatively resting just over her buttocks, revealing the long smooth curve of her back. One arm was curled up to her chest where he could just make out the swell of her breast. His body tightened predictably and Gio grimaced at the response.

Her other arm was flung out by her head and her cheek rested on the pillow, long black lashes casting a shadow on flushed cheeks. Still flushed. He remembered how it had felt to sink into her velvet hot embrace, how tight she’d been at first…. His own body tightened even more and Gio gave up castigating himself for such a helpless response.

It had been the hardest thing in the world to extricate himself from Valentina’s embrace but a part of him hadn’t relished the prospect of her expression when she woke to find herself curled around him so comprehensively. And another part of him had needed to get some space … to try and rationalise the sheer scale of what had just happened.

Gio had never experienced sex like that … so intense and primal. His face grew stark—admittedly, many of his previous experiences were a blur from those two hellish years. But even before that … it had never been like this. He’d never lost control, lost himself so completely. Mario had used to tease him mercilessly: You won’t be able to cut yourself off forever, Gio. One day you’ll meet someone who won’t let you stay so aloof….

The truth was, Gio had envied the ease with which Mario had fallen in and out of love. Gio just hadn’t had that capacity. Emotions for him were a dark and dangerous place to explore. Once, when he’d been tiny, he’d gone to his father with something he’d made, desperate to try and get his attention, acutely aware of how his older brothers seemed to effortlessly get and hold their father’s attention in a way he couldn’t.

Gio had stood in front of his father holding out the model airplane he’d spent hours working on. He could remember that all he’d wanted to say was, I made this for you. But under his father’s arctic judgemental glare the words just wouldn’t come out.

His father had snapped at him, irritated at this hesitance, and Gio could remember how his hands had trembled. The less he’d been able to speak, the more angry his father had become until he’d ripped the airplane out of Gio’s hands, thrown it to the ground and stamped on it.

A lot of his father’s vile words from that day were forgotten, but not the acrid sense of betrayal and hurt. Or the way his mother had shrank into the shadows, unable to stand up for her youngest son, too scared of directing that wrath towards her when she was so desperately trying to get back into her husband’s favour.

He’d learnt to draw inwards that day, to protect himself.

A movement from the bed made Gio focus on Valentina again. He welcomed the distraction. She was uncurling her arm from her side and Gio could see the swell of her plump breast. With fire igniting in his veins again he stood up and went over, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed.

Slowly she opened her eyes. He saw her try to focus, to assimilate the information her body was undoubtedly giving her. And then she saw him. Those amber feline eyes widened, the flush on her cheek

s deepened. Gio’s chest constricted when he could see the myriad questions about to come out of her mouth.

Without thinking he put a finger to her lips, their softness making him ache. ‘Shh … don’t think … don’t say anything … just let it be ….’

Gio watched her wary response, and then as if some inner turmoil had been resolved she nodded imperceptibly. He took his finger away and said throatily, ‘How do you feel? Are you sore?’

Even as he watched he could see the glowing embers of desire in her eyes, and his arousal soared. Looking endearingly shy now, she just shook her head against the pillow.

‘Good,’ Gio said and bent down to press a kiss to her mouth. She turned onto her back, opening up her body to him again and Gio fell back into the glorious blaze once more.

CHAPTER EIGHT

VALENTINA WAS IN deeply unchartered waters. She was standing in her shower with her eyes closed and Gio was massaging shampoo into her hair. She felt like purring. She also felt like turning around and pushing him up against the wall and kissing him all over. She could feel his erection brush against her buttocks and had to put her hands out to touch the tiles, afraid she’d fall down in a heap at his feet under the teeming hot spray.

She felt him turn her around and kept her eyes closed, too scared to look and see that gorgeous physique up close. That physique that had taken her to heaven and back more times than she could remember during the previous night and then again that morning. She’d never known the human body was capable of such pleasure, of such base carnal desires. Or that those desires could be felt, and met.

But more than all of that, she was too scared to open her eyes and look into Gio’s. To see the same expression she’d seen in them this morning when she’d woken to find him looking at her so intently, as if he could see all the way into her soul, where she hid her deepest secrets.

But she couldn’t avoid it. Not when Gio pronounced her clean and tipped her chin up with a finger. With the utmost reluctance she opened her eyes and looked up. Gio had stopped the water but they were still surrounded by steamy warm air, like a sensual cocoon. Lazily he put his arm out, hand touching the wall behind her. It was then that Valentina noticed the marks again, on his arm. The tattoo.

He saw where her gaze had gone and in an instant the atmosphere went from hot and sultry to cool as ice. He quickly took down his arm again, reaching out for towels. So fast that her head span, Gio had manoeuvred her out of the shower and was wrapping her in a huge soft towel and hitching one around his own hips.

Curiosity well and truly stoked now, Valentina followed Gio into the bedroom. He’d lifted the towel off his hips and was roughly rubbing his hair before running it over the rest of his body in a very perfunctory manner, clearly doing his utmost to get out of her room quickly. Valentina tried desperately not to let his naked back and those firmly sculpted buttocks distract her. Just looking at his powerfully muscled thighs made her think of how potently masculine he’d felt between her legs.

She hitched her own towel under her arms sarongstyle and ignored the fact that she was dripping water all over the floor. She went over and stood in front of a very naked and damp Gio. She crossed her arms against the betraying rush of heat to her groin.

‘What are those marks?’