~ 7 ~
Her lips were soft and supple, and though she held her body stiffly, she had leaned toward him. The impression he had was of inexperience, as if she was not quite sure what to do. That made no sense, but Carlo was charmed nonetheless. Everything about Bina charmed him.
He thought he’d lied a little to her, just now. He thought he did want to be her ‘hero on the white horse.’ That was stupid and dangerous, and she was right—he should have let her go. Instead, he put his hand up and cradled her face, holding her to him, deepening the kiss, pushing his tongue into her mouth. She moaned, a musical sound that vibrated all through him, and he put his other arm around her waist and drew her closer. Her body relaxed into his embrace, and her hands came up and rested on his shoulders. Overwhelmed by feeling and sensation, his mind spinning like a top, he groaned.
When he and Trey had come home from the Cove the evening following his third birthday party and found Jenny gone from their lives, Carlo had first been stunned into inertia and disbelief. Then he’d gone through the cycle, the rage, the depression, the denial—several times each—and had, for himself, eventually come to resignation. Not for Trey, though. For Trey, he would only have rage. His son had been abandoned by the woman who’d given him life, at whose breast he’d taken sustenance for his first year. Carlo would never be resigned to that. It was that betrayal, not the one he himself had suffered, that had kept him shut down, shuttered and dark, uninterested in making a new connection with any other woman. With any other person, really.
He’d expected that to be true forever. Or at least until Trey was grown. His son seemed fine—he seemed, in fact, to have all but forgotten his mother, nine months since she’d left. After a few weeks of confusion and pining, Trey had woken one morning and not asked for Mommy, and thereafter he’d quickly returned to his normal, ebullient self. But Carlo would never forget the way his son, only three years old, had struggled to remake his world without his mother in it, and he had no intention of exposing him to the possibility of that kind of trauma again. He wanted no new woman in his son’s life.
He’d been sure that was true. In the past couple of months, his sexual need had returned, and often with a vengeance, but he’d been working his way to the idea of hooking up. Taking a page from Luca’s playbook. Or Peter’s. Not connecting, simply enjoying. He hadn’t quite gotten there yet. It flew against his nature, really. But he’d been growing lonely. Physically.
And then he’d met Sabina Alonzo. Sabina Alonzo-Auberon. A married woman. She was quickly becoming nearly all he could think about. Since that morning, watching how easy and kind she’d been with Trey, he’d thought of little else. And then she’d called him. When Rosa had summoned him to the phone, he’d felt like a fucking teenager getting a call from the hottest, most popular girl in school.
She was beautiful and sweet, and there was a fire in her eyes that spoke of strength and intelligence that had been stymied in the life she was living. She was trapped somehow, caged by a man she called a monster. She needed him, and he responded to that with every part of his body and his mind.
Jesus, he’d just offered to use his family to take on James Auberon for her. A woman he’d met two days ago. Not once had he ever asked the Uncles for help, or accepted it when they’d offered. To do that would mean becoming tangled in that part of the family.
For a woman he’d just met? Ludicrous. Or did it not matter how well he knew her? She needed help. What kind of man—what kind of person—would he be to turn his back on that, even if he weren’t so on fire for her he was shaking?
And he was shaking. He wanted her, wanted her badly. Was it merely physical? Was his growing need and her tremendous beauty creating a cocktail of insanity? He didn’t know, but he felt better—more alive, more powerful, happier, in this moment, holding her, kissing her, than he had since months before Jenny had run away from him.
Her tongue was moving with his now, sharing a lithe caress. He was keenly aware that it was ridiculous, but his impression remained that she was learning as she went. If it was, somehow, true, she was a very quick study, and he thought he’d go mad from need. His cock ached and strained against the confines of his jeans.
And then she pushed him away. He felt the pressure of her hands on his shoulders first, pushing, but not hard. Then she tipped her head down, away from his lips, but not away from him. She brushed her cheek against his.