If he was bothered by her presence, he didn’t show it, dressing as if he was quite alone, unaware the angle of her mirror meant she could seeeverything.No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t tear her stare away, not when Gennaro dropped his towel to slide snug, black boxer shorts up his long, muscular calves and thighs and over his tight buttocks, and especially not when she caught a glimpse of an impressively large manhood. The Lord alone knew how she didn’t blind herself with her mascara wand.
While Luisa somehow managed to apply a second layer of mascara and then sweep bronzer over her cheeks and paint her lips red, Gennaro continued to dress as if unaware of her presence, shrugging his arms into a black shirt that he fastened deftly and tucked into black jeans. Onto the bed he sat to put his feet… feet she was certain were twice the size of her own… intoa pair of polished black boots. Standing back up, he went again into his wardrobe and selected a black leather jacket. Only then did his stare meet hers through the mirror’s reflection.
“I’m going to have a scotch before we go down and join everyone,” he said evenly. “Can I get you anything?”
Praying the heat she could feel scorching her skin… had he been aware of her watching him all along...? was only internal and not blazing on her face, she managed a short nod and had to clear her throat to say, “A white wine please.” Make it a bucket, she almost added.
Even with him now at the far end of the suite, she struggled to refill her lungs with much-needed air. Her thoughts were scrambled, so scrambled that she abandoned her plan to tie her hair into an elegant knot and left it loose. After spraying on perfume, she slipped into a pair of black, strappy heels and then summoned her courage to join him at the bar in the living area.
Gennaro didn’t need the telltale click of Luisa’s heels crossing the tiled floor to know she was nearing him. Hers was a presence he’d been attuned to from the start.
Downing his scotch, he poured himself another and pushed the glass of wine further down the bar so she didn’t need to get too close to reach it.
Taking another drink, he held the liquid in his mouth and breathed deeply through his nose before swallowing. He could still feel the electricity in his skin from when he’d sensed her watching him dress.
He should have followed her lead and dressed in the bathroom, but he’d been determined to prove that their current living arrangements meant absolutely nothing to him, that Luisa’s presence meant nothing to him. Thatsheer willpower alone could make the next six nights tolerable.
The woman he’d married, who rarely drank more than a glass of wine over the whole of an evening, picked up her glass and drank the contents like it was water. “Ready?” she asked, putting the empty glass on the bar.
“Sure.” With the scent of her sultry perfume filling his nostrils, he downed the last of his scotch and was about to sling his jacket over his shoulder when she reached down to pick up the black handbag she’d dropped on the floor, and her glossy hair slid over her bare shoulder. The zip of her strapless top wasn’t fully done up.
Leave it, he told himself firmly. No one will see. Luisa’s hair would cover it.
“Your zip is undone.” The words spilt out before he could stop them.
Startled doe eyes locked onto his.
He forced a tight smile. “I can’t have my wife dining with a half-zipped top. Turn around.”
She held his gaze a long moment before rigidly turning her back to him.
Inwardly cursing himself, his heart suddenly thumping, he filled his lungs slowly through his nose, then carefully gathered her long hair.
In all their time together, Gennaro had instinctively known Luisa’s hair would be soft to the touch but could never have known it would feel like silk. The urge to bury his fingers in it was close to irresistible, and, teeth gritted, he placed it over her shoulder, taking great pains not to allow their skin to connect, blocking out that the movement of her hair had released the scent of her shampoo and that it was mingling with her perfume to create a scent so divine his senses reeled.
Luisa had forgotten how to breathe. In the two years they’d been nominally husband and wife, Gennaro had never stoodso close to her, not in private. Even in public he kept physical contact to a minimum; the occasional hand to her lower back when entering a function the most he could bring himself to touch her. He’d never been so close that she could feel the exhalation of his breaths in her hair, never stood so close that she could feel the heat of his skin, and now her heart had ballooned and was making thrashing movements, and she had to concentrate harder than she’d ever concentrated before to stop her weakening legs from turning into jelly.
Fingers pressed lightly into her back. They didn’t touch her skin. They didn’t need to.
She closed her eyes and snatched a short breath.
When it came, the sound of the zip being pulled up seemed magnified, a ringing to join the white noise already whooshing in her ears.
Done, he stepped away.
They left their suite without another word exchanged.
The Bianchi’s lobby was filled to bursting with glamorous guests. The entire hotel had been turned over for the exclusive use of the wedding party, but that first evening nothing formal had been planned, the guests nominally free to do as they pleased. Tomorrow, the pre-wedding celebrations would start in earnest with four days of forced fun to look forward to until the wedding day itself.
A month earlier, each guest had been sent a gold-leafed booklet with the itinerary for the duration and accompanying instructions. Having pored over it, the only part of the itinerary Luisa was looking forward to was Wednesday’s masquerade ball, but only because the instructions had stated guests were required to make all efforts to disguise themselves and that the evening would start with guests strictly segregatedby sex. A whole evening where she wouldn’t have to be glued to Gennaro’s side, an evening where they could happily ignore and avoid each other.
Unfortunately, he was glued to her side that evening, but she made sure to fix a smile to her face and not give away so much as a flicker of emotion at his closeness or a flicker of her distaste at the members of the Esposito family holding court. There was no sign yet of Lorenzo and Valeria, but their three brutish sons were already there and, of course, their daughter the bride. Siena Esposito stood with Niccolo, her groom, their smiles as big and as fake as the smile Luisa was wearing. It was an open secret that theirs was a business arrangement rather than a love match, and she wondered if they had a contracted end date like she and Gennaro had.
Through the crowd of mostly familiar faces in the main restaurant, she spotted her parents and sister and Gennaro’s parents and maternal grandparents seated together. She could feel the tension from across the vast space, and she pulled an even bigger smile and was more effusive than normal as she circled the table to kiss greetings to everyone, even to her hateful godparents. She’d been too knotted with the sickness of sharing a bed with Gennaro to have time to worry about this particular meal. Small mercies, she supposed.
The great friendship between the Martinellis and the Rossellinis had strained beyond repair. If this meal had taken place three years ago, her parents and Gennaro’s parents would be sat together, laughing and talking in the familiar way that only came through decades of close friendship. That evening, Gennaro’s grandparents sat between the two couples, Marisa, Luisa and Gennaro the other foils to keep them separated.
She noted Gennaro’s greeting to his parents was positively arctic compared to the greeting he gave his grandparents. Luisa hadn’t seen Gennaro’s parents since their own wedding,and not for the first time wondered why he kept them at such a distance. Their mutual distaste towards his parents was about the only thing they had in common, but the few times she’d probed about his relationship with them he’d looked at her as if she’d asked about the health of his prostate. It was the same look she’d received when trying to probe about Niccolo and Siena’s forthcoming marriage.