#5 Chapter 22
Charlotte
I get back to Gabe’s place minutes ahead of him.
I was just starting to worry when the door opened and Gabe came in.
Nick stayed with me the whole time, got me away from the danger and stayed with me to protect me.
“You okay man?” Nick asks Gabe as he walks into the living room.
Gabe’s covered in blood from head to toe, I don’t know how Nick can ask him if he’s okay.
“I’m fine.” Gabe places his hand on Nick’s shoulder and Nick does the same to him. “Thanks for being there little brother. It was a lot to ask when you have a wife and child.”
Another change I didn’t know about. Nick is married with a child. So the blonde woman I saw him with at The Dark Odyssey must have been his wife. That’s why they looked the way they did, in love… and they have a child.
“You know I was going to be there.” Nick nods. “Anything you guys need?”
“I’m good.” Gabe gives him a pat on his back. “We’re okay.”
“Call me if there’s any trouble.”
He leaves us.
Gabe watches me and I find myself staring into the depths of his eyes. My soul shivers when I think of what could have happened tonight, getting sucked into a mad man’s game.
“Are … you okay?” My voice trembles beyond my control.
He moves closer to me and presses his forehead to mine for a few brief seconds.
“I’m okay.”
“Is …he dead?” I have to ask because of all the blood.Exclusive content © by Nô(v)el/Dr/ama.Org.
“No, it was hard not killing him.”
“He won’t stop there.”
“I know, but we’re not going to worry about that.”
“What if –” He stops me with a kiss, the kind of kiss to make my body melt and give in to how badly I want him. He stops kissing me the moment we get going though. Too soon, and instantly I crave more of his lips on mine.
He backs off his bloodied jacket and shirt, allowing it to fall to the ground and shuffles out of his pants and shoes just leaving on his boxers.
I scan over his body, battered and bruised all over, but nothing detracts from the masterpiece he is.
He goes to the table in the corner, grabs some tissues from the Kleenex box and wipes off his hands. As his gaze settles back on me, I look him over and see before me everything I’ve ever wanted.
I don’t see the danger of our world, or the threats always lurking in the background.
I just see him.
Gabriel Giordano.
Gabe.
The man I fell for at hello. The man I knew was mine when I first looked at him.
It’s the same look now and it scares me, the power in it scares me to my core because I see something I want so badly and I don’t know if I can have it.
I don’t know if I can have him.
Today’s events could have fanned the flames for something else entirely. Something as bad as ten years ago, but I want this with him.
I want this month with him and I want to live it the way I would if all the shit wasn’t happening.
Even though it feels like some sort of contract, it feels like it’s for me too.
I want to be his goddess.
Mischief flickers in his dark eyes and I already know what we’ll be doing next.
Before I can take my next breath, he scoops me up and I meet the fiery kiss he captures my mouth with and kiss him back with the same raw passion as I circle my arms around his thick neck.
We kiss as he carries me to the shower and sets me down in there with my clothes still on.
I rest against the smooth granite walls and look at him as he lowers to take off my sandals and tosses them on the floor. Next is my skirt then the little blouse that matches it.
He snaps the clasp open on my bra allowing my breasts to spill out, bobbing toward him.
Trailing down, he kisses the tight skin on my stomach.
Gabe crouches down and presses his face against me. He pushes a little harder and smooths his lips over my skin like he’s relishing me, savoring me, committing me to memory.
I run my fingers through his hair that’s damp with sweat and enjoy him too as I caress the silky fibers and make my way down to the bulge of muscle going over his shoulders. Strong and powerful, just like him.
We had one of the worst days we could have had in a long time but that doesn’t stop Gabriel Giordano from owning sexy in every sense of the word when he secures his teeth to the lacy edge of my panties.
Nothing on earth can stop the little smile that dances on my lips as he tugs the edge and licks over the sun-kissed skin there.
Tugging and pulling, he growls and rips off my panties with his teeth. They tear right off me and what his teeth can’t contend with, his hands do the rest.
I gasp from the excitement that skitters through me.
He stands up again, turns on the shower and sets it to a light spray that sprinkles over us. The cool water that graces my skin is a contrast to the heat in his fingers that brush over my stomach, igniting the tips of my nerve endings. Sparking my soul with need.
He leans close, catches my face with one strong hand and grips it. He guides my chin to him but smooths down on my neck almost tightly, exerting dominance and control and instantly I succumb to him.
“Forget… your thirty days starts now, Goddess. You will forget all the fucked up shit neither of us can control. I want this.” He drops his gaze to sweep over my body. “I want every piece of you. I want you and you will be mine in every essence of the word. Understand?” He tightens his grip a little on my neck in tandem with the emotion in his words.
“I do,” I tell him. I answer the question but it feels like the words are coming from my inner desires which have been struggling to rise to the surface through all those nightmare years. “I understand.”
“Nothing will be off limits to us Charlotte, it’s important you understand that too. I will own your body and own you, but you get to own me too.”
Own him too…
My mouth actually waters at the thought.
The intensity of the heat in his gaze transfers to my body and builds that tension in my pussy. Just the heat in his gaze is enough for me to wipe my brain clean of everything that isn’t him. All of it.
The magnificence of him is so powerful that as I look at him I can’t remember what, where, when, why –nothing and everything.
“Yes, I do.” I say like an obedient servant fallen prey to temptation and as soon as the words fall from my lips he plunges two fingers inside my pussy.
A wicked sinful smile inches over his sensual lips and he starts moving inside me.
Faster and faster he moves and my knees tremble from the pleasure.
A moan slips from my lips and I press into him so he can give me more. And he does. He gives me more. So much more as he truly starts to finger fuck me hard.
“Your deliciously tight little cunt is going to thank me later for the mind blowing pleasure I plan to give you.” He growls and lowers to kneel down.
Lifting my leg over his shoulder he buries his face against my mound and thrust his tongue straight into my pussy.
The walls of my core ache as I receive him and shudder with pure delight when he starts licking over the hard, very sensitive nub of my clit. Hard and searching, he licks with the possession he promises to own me with and I feel it, like I belong to him.
Like there is no other choice but surrendering to the maddening call of him.
He drives me insane with the wild suckle of his clever tongue and one powerful hand rises up to fill his palm with my right breast so he can fondle the nipple as he fucks me with his tongue, eating my pussy out like he can’t get enough of me.
I can’t believe I have a man like him doing this to me. I feel the need ripple between us and I can’t breathe.
His head starts bobbing as he sends a series of short licks over my clit taunting me to orgasm, bending my body to answer to him. He finishes off by sucking hard against my clit and I cry out from the pleasure that lances from my pussy and jolts my brain.
Fucking hell… it’s too much. I start to writhe against his face, moaning shamelessly like a cat in heat to which he answers by giving me more.
Christ, I can’t take it, the tug of an orgasm gets me deep, slicing through my awareness and severing me from reality. When it rises from my core it just takes me and splits my mind in two.
Shattering and claiming all that is me as I climax, coming on his face.
I come on his mouth and he pushes his tongue harder into me so he can drink up the nectar that flows from me.
Gabe doesn’t stop licking until he cleans me out.
Clean and primed for whatever he has next.
The darkness that glitters his lustful gaze reaches out to me with invisible fingers as he looks at me.
My leg slips from his wide shoulders as he stands and my eyes drop to the massive bulge of his cock pressing against his boxers.
“Want to help me out with that?” He smirks with cocky arrogance that makes me melt.
I nod and pull down the band of his boxers, pushing it down his hips and legs so his cock can spring free. Artfully he kicks it to the side and I smile at the sight of us both naked in the floor to ceiling mirror.
I take hold of the base of his cock and drop to my knees to lick the precum that’s formed on the fat mushroom head of his shaft.
I lick it off, tasting the wild essence of him which is danger, and his raw carnal masculinity.
I start to suck his cock and give him pleasure too. I know I’m sucking just right when he laces his fingers through my hair and groans deep and low as I deep throat him, taking him so deep into my throat I almost choke. I give it to him though because I know that’s what he wants me to do.
He starts thrusting, fucking my mouth and then the wildness in his eyes turns into fire.
One powerful hand clamps down on my arm and reaches for me.
“I need to fuck you now.” He growls and spins me around so he can fuck me from behind.
I place my hands on the wall but they slide against the surface.
I look back as he lines his cock up with my entrance and snap my gaze back to the wall when he slams hard into me.
He slams in and starts to fuck me just like he promised.
He pounds into me relentlessly making my pussy walls adjust to take him, him with his length and thickness that fills me up.
His pumps go from hard and sure to jackhammering in seconds and my hair falls forward over my face.
My breasts bounce painfully against my chest and the carnal, primal wildness of the way he takes me pushes me over the edge of reason and reality.
I come again in an instant from the craziness of his movements and then desire takes me and makes me join in the wildness, succumbing to the shameless need to fuck him too.
I move against his cock and his grip tightens on my hips. I move against him and I hear the rumble of his deep chuckle.
“That’s it baby, you fucking take my cock however you want.” He tells me and allows me to move against him.
Then he takes back control and starts to fuck me again, this time rutting into me with the primal craze.
Climax is near again for both of us. His cock plunges into me over and over again and I take him, then the wave of ultimate pleasure we’ve both been riding comes to claim us.
The erotic bliss takes us into its claws and we both cry out with it.
He grips harder on my hips, it hurts like hell but feels so damn good too, better when he thunders into me spraying hot, virile cum into my body. Warm and electrifying.
We both enjoy the high. It’s tingling over my body from head to toe, inside and out. All over and all around me.
When he pulls out of me, he turns me back to face him and gasps for breath.
His lips come down hard on mine and the taste of me in his mouth arouses me all over again.
We kiss but I know this night will be filled with so much more.
The worried faces of my family were the first to greet me when I went home this morning.
Guilt washed through me when I saw them.
It’s with me now as I tell them I’ll be spending a month with Gabe.
I make it sound exactly like that, like I’m going to spend the month with him.
Because realistically I am.
It’s my choice and his terms were clearly laid out to me when he gave me the option.
Life and possibilities beyond belief, or death. Death all around.
He would have killed Tobias and end up getting himself killed too.
So this is the ball in my court and it feels right.
We’re in the living room sitting together as a family. The living room that used to be the sitting room. Pa told me that after Freddo, Tony and Abuelita were killed in there, they moved what they needed inside here and closed the original living room door.
Closed off the memories of death the room was filled with.
It was the next best thing they could do because they couldn’t move.
Pa has an arm around Ma on the larger sofa and Cordelia sits next to me on the smaller one.
“Will we see you?” Ma asks. A tear slides down her cheek.
“Of course.” I nod and Cordelia takes my hand. Hers is shaking.
Everybody is shaking because this morning I not only told them I would be staying with Gabe for the month but I gave them a rundown of what happened with Tobias, and to do that I had to tell them everything else too.
All that Antonio did to me… and the other men.
When I told them though I gave a fuller recount than I gave Gabe.
My good senses told me not to tell Gabe more than I did. What I’d told him so far was enough, he knew all the gruesome parts.
My family just knew that and the in between.
I’d held on to the nightmare for so long, bottling it all inside me, so talking had that freeing effect again.
“I want to come every week and see you, maybe a little more.” I give Ma a smile and she looks hopeful. “Maybe you’ll get tired of seeing me.”
“Never, sweet girl,” Pa answers. “Never. You do what you need to, we’ll do what you need.”
“Agreed.” Cordelia chimes in and tightens her grip on my hands.
“I want to see you and rebuild what we lost. Rebuild what we could have.” I look to Cordelia as I say that and she starts crying too and nods more vigorously.
I decided yesterday that this month can be about them too. I can give them the chance too. I don’t have to make the cut.
Make the cut…
With all that’s happened over the last few days and the intense emotion I’ve shared with Gabe it’s weird considering being away from everyone.
Being away from him. It was him that stood to feel the blow more than anyone else because I told him I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Can you stay for lunch?” Ma asks. “I can make your favorite.”
“I would love that. I’m with you tonight.” I declare and that brightens them up.
I planned to stay because it felt right to be with them for one more night.
I didn’t want to just uproot and leave them like that, so we can have this night together.
“I’m thrilled,” Ma beams.
“That means I’ll cook dinner. Something from Abuelita’s recipe book.”
I smile at the sound of that.
We have a nice day, the kind I used to dream about while I was in Italy. All that’s missing is Tony, Freddo and Abuelita.
I feel their presence though and for once, when I think of them I can cast my mind back to the good times.
It makes me reach for my diary and the little box Abuelita made me.
There are ten years’ worth of mini envelopes to open, all sealed.
Each still waiting for me to break open on my birthday mornings.
I open the first envelope for what would have been my nineteenth birthday.
My hands still over the words Abuelita wrote:
I see darkness my child. I don’t know what it is but it’s so strong I can’t protect you from it. I can’t warn you away from it but I can tell you to remember the people who love you…
God… she was right.
She was so right. That was exactly what happened. The darkness came and no one could protect me.
Darkness is the best word to describe it as.
I’ve come to know darkness as the thing that swallows up hope. It sucks the life from you. Heart, mind, body and soul and destroys like poison taking you whole once it works its way into your system.
I open the others which read the same sorts of messages, all telling me to have hope. Everyone thought her words were just things she said and coincidence made them come true. I never stopped believing in her.
It’s hard reading the notes now and she’s not here.
It’s hard hearing her voice in my head as I read them.
My hands still over the last little envelope.
It’s for my birthday over two weeks ago. My twenty-eighth birthday.
I’m more nervous to open it and almost hesitant, but my eagerness to have the message gets the better of me.
It says:
Love will guide you to the light or it may keep you in the dark forever.
Make sure you make the right decision.
A shiver runs down my spine.
Maybe it would have been better not to have read it.
Christ.
What a thing to have in my mind now, when I’m trying to find my feet.
Love can guide me to the light or keep me in the dark forever.
I don’t want the latter. I don’t want it.
Being with Antonio was darkness. The kind that would kill a person. Suck the life out of you and if it didn’t kill you it would follow you.
That darkness has followed me in the form of Tobias.
So I pray I choose right and what I’m doing is right because I want to find my way out of the dark and leave it behind me.