Emilia (Part 1)(44)

“I know.” He took a seat next to me. “This is perfect, right? We can fly to London or somewhere else in Europe and explore for a week or two before heading to the conservatory. Or we can skip the conservatory altogether. My nonna lives outside of Napoli, and I haven’t seen her in a decade. She’s too old to travel to the U.S. by herself. She wouldn’t mind if we stayed with her for a while.”

“God, I’d love that. I’ve never been out of the tristate area, much less out of the country.”

“Neither have I.”

“Don’t you think my father will look for me at music conservatories? I mean, we fought about it for days, and I stopped talking to him after he refused to let me go. It’d be one of the first places he’d look. And crap, we’ll need passports, which means I’ll need to leave the house at some point. He hasn’t let me go anywhere in weeks.” My shoulders sagged. “This sucks.”

“Don’t worry about it. I have a contact that can get both of us a passport with new identities.”

“Won’t my father find out?”

“No. He doesn’t know this guy. He’s someone I met a couple of years ago.”

“Speaking of my dad, where is he today?”

My father left the house less and less these days. Either he suspected I was up to something or he was so close to his goal of marrying me off to Marcello and he didn’t want anything to go wrong at the last minute.

“He had some stuff to take care of. He’ll be back in time for dinner.”

Nodding, I stuffed the business card into my back pocket. “So we have three or so hours.”

“Yeah, but we can’t go anywhere.”

I rolled my eyes and climbed onto his lap, straddling him. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything else. Not with how irrational my father is these days. You’d think there was a serial killer on the loose intent on hauling me off to his personal torture chamber before dismembering me piece by piece.”

“Hmm.” Sal glanced to the side, breaking eye contact.

“What is it?” I guided his face back to me so he couldn’t look away.

“It’s probably nothing.”

“No. You’re not hiding information from me. I’ve had enough of that with my dad. He’s got it in his head that he can protect me by keeping the truth from me and I hate it. It makes me feel like a brainless child who can’t put two thoughts together.”

“It’s nothing, Em. Really. Trust me on this. And none of this will matter because we’ll be gone in a month anyway.”

I pushed him onto his back. “Tell me.”

“I’d rather kiss you.”

“You can do both.” I toyed with the top button of his sky blue collared shirt for a few beats before popping it open. I repeated the process until I reached the bottom. I traced the grooves of his hard chest down to his abdomen. His muscles bunched and jumped beneath my fingertips, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in his neck.

“Stop. We can’t do this.”

Smirking, I tugged on his belt buckle, loosening it. “Why? You don’t want me to touch you?”

“Dammit.” His hand clamped around my wrist. “It isn’t a matter of want, Em. You know that. We’ve had this discussion a hundred times. I’m not going to do anything else with you until you’re mine.”

I pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, rocking back and forth so I could feel every inch of him. “I am yours. I’ve been yours for almost a year now, and it pisses me off that you’re still holding back. You haven’t done anything except kiss me since that time in your apartment. Are you sick of me?”

Groaning, he squeezed his eyes closed for a second, and released my hand. “I’m trying to be the good guy here and protect you. There are things you don’t know. Things you don’t need to know. Just know that I have your best interest in mind and every choice I make is for you. You’re all that matters. Don’t ever forget that.”

My heart melted into a pile of mush, and undoubtedly my face was beaming like a light bulb. I loved this guy so much, and while he may not have told me, I could tell he felt the same way. I was so lucky to have found Sal. I may have a shitty father who planned to pawn me off on some random guy, but I won the lottery with Sal.

“You don’t need to protect me.” I peppered kisses over his neck and chest, getting high on his salty taste and masculine scent. “In less than a month we’ll be far away from here. There’s nothing to worry about now. Everything is set. We’ll either get lost in some mountain town or we’ll go to Italy. There’s nothing preventing us from being together. We don’t have to wait.”