Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
“If there’s anyone in there, you better open this door right the fuck now,” a very furious woman calls through the wood.
The older woman says something I can’t make out. It sounds as if she’s trying to calm the younger one down.
Saverio rubs his stubble over the inside of my thigh, making me shiver. He plants a kiss on my folds before straightening.
“For fuck’s sake,” the woman says. “Can you stop talking and just go get security?”
He drags my dress over my hips and pulls it straight. The skirt is creased, looking as if it just came crumpled out of a suitcase. Saverio brushes down my hair with his hands and flashes me a smile that melts my insides. After handing me my bag, he presses his mouth on mine for a quick but deep kiss. Tasting myself on his lips does things to me. He may like it when I smell like him, but I love it when he tastes like me.
He grins. “Ready?”
I want to say no. His hair is disheveled, and I must look well-fucked, but he doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, he appears proud as he takes my hand and leads me to the door.
When he turns the key and opens it, a woman dressed in a robe stumbles into the room, almost losing her balance. I recognize Elena, although she’s a far cry from the woman I met at the nightclub. The one facing me with black rivulets running down her cheeks and red lipstick smudged around her lips looks a mess.
“What the fuck?” she screams, balling her hands into fists at her sides and throwing daggers at us with her eyes.
The stocky woman behind Elena places a hand over her heart, gaping at Saverio as he pushes past her while dragging me along.
“Congratulations,” Saverio says to Elena. “Nice dress.”
The older woman, whom I judge to be the housekeeper by the uniform she wears, exclaims, “You’re not supposed to see the dress before the wedding.”
Saverio winks. “At least we didn’t see it on the bride.”
He leaves promptly, letting them stew in their assumptions. They no doubt know what we did. Just like at the restaurant in Little Italy. It counts in Saverio’s favor, strengthening the illusion he’s trying to uphold.
I bet Elena will tell her cousin what happened. I cringe inwardly at the thought. Saverio doesn’t care about the opinion of others, but what will people think? I just can’t keep my head straight when Saverio goes directly into the attack, not giving me time to raise my defenses before he razes every one of my inhibitions to the ground. Despite my unfounded jealousy, I don’t want to damage my already fragile reputation. It’s bad enough that Rachele thought I was a stripper.
Wait.
I pull on Saverio’s hand, hanging back on the landing. “Why did Rachele think I was a stripper?”
He looks over his shoulder without breaking his stride. “I used to fuck a few after the divorce.”
“How many?” I ask, not caring for that piece of information at all.
He shrugs. “I have no idea. It was an outlet at the time.”
“An outlet?” I parrot.
He stops at the staircase and sweeps me into his arms. “I had no intention of ever dating again.” Brushing the comment away with careless words, he says, “It doesn’t matter.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, balancing my bag in one hand, and hold on as he descends the stairs.
Oh but it does matter. Very much. He just told me in not so many words that he’ll never date me, that I’m nothing more than a stripper to scratch an itch. Someone to use on the rebound. I already knew that, so why does the verbal affirmation feel like a spear through my heart? The lie we left in the bedroom upstairs only makes the ache worse. What we fed Elena and their housekeeper is just a story, no matter how right it feels when he’s inside me.
I think about what Giorgio said, that he wouldn’t tell Rachele the relationship between Saverio and me is fake if I keep my mouth shut about Mr. Lewis’s murder. He’ll exchange one lie for another. He’d let me have that power, to let the world believe that Saverio loves me, but the illusion turns bitter in my mouth.
Saverio lets me down at the bottom of the stairs. He offers me his arm to lean on, escorting me back outside. As earlier, people stare and whisper, coming to their own conclusions as they take in my ruffled hair and swollen lips.
They may be right about what happened upstairs, but they’ll never guess how warped the story behind it is.
Rachele stands in the middle of the lawn, hanging on the arm of an attractive man with a blond ponytail. She stops in mid-sentence when she spots us, her lips frozen around the word she was about to say.