of her breasts teased me through her shirt. “I don’t know what to do,” Gemma admitted. “Or how to act.”
“How about we start with lying down?”
I stretched out and propped my head up on my arm, then waited for Gemma to do the same. She lay on her side, facing me. “Still strange.”
I reached out and touched her cheek. “How about you come closer?”
Suspicion flickered across her face.
I guessed I deserved that. “Only to cuddle.”
“Cuddle?” she repeated with a small laugh, finally relaxing.
“That’s what Greta calls it.”
Gemma slid over to me and I wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her closer. She tensed briefly when our fronts pressed against each other, probably expecting my cock to dig a hole into her belly, but I had more self-control than that—at least if I wanted to.
She peered up. “For you, this is probably business as usual, having a girl in your bed.”
Being in a bed with a girl, definitely. But this? “You’re the only girl who’s ever been in my bed.”
“Really?”
“Really. This is my place, and I never felt like having anyone invade it.”
“And now I’m here.”
“You are.” I stroked a curl away from her forehead. I didn’t mind having her here, quite the contrary. Gemma’s presence didn’t feel like an invasion of my privacy. “I want to kiss you.”
Gemma gave a small nod and I took her mouth, dipped inside. Her eyes fluttered shut, and I closed mine too, something I rarely did, but fuck, I only wanted to feel. And Gemma felt perfect in my arms. Her body molded with mine, our legs scissoring until the heat radiating from her pussy seemed to scorch my thigh.
My palm pressed into her lower back, tempted to move lower, cup those round globes. I wanted to take this further, all the fucking way, but more than that, I wanted to prove to Gemma that I respected her decision. If this was a test, I would not fail it.
When I pulled out of the kiss, Gemma’s lips followed my mouth until she caught herself and opened her eyes. In her eyes, I could see desire—her body was practically screaming for more, but if I knew one thing about Gemma, it was that she could be stubborn as fuck, and she’d obviously set her mind on punishing me for my track record with other women.
With an audible swallow, she lowered her leg from mine and brought a couple of inches between us. Her heat lingered and my cock throbbed with every beat of my heart.
“What will our life be like?”
That was something I hadn’t really given much thought either. For a long time now, my daily routine had been the same. Workout in the morning, breakfast with someone from the family, then a few visits to restaurants and bars that paid for our protection, seeing how they were doing, making sure they didn’t forget who kept them safe. Meetings with my brothers, making sure the Camorra ran like a well-oiled engine. Fight training. Dinner with the family, then partying and finding a fuck for the night. Rinse and repeat. In the last two months, only minus the fucking part, which led to another evening workout to blow off steam and had made me even more ripped.
“I really wish I knew what you were thinking,” Gemma said quietly.
“No, you don’t, trust me.”
She mulled over that for a while, allowing me to take in her face. Her skin was flawless, every inch of her beautiful. I really liked her face without makeup when in the past with other girls, their morning face if I had been too hung over to disappear right after sex, had made me want to hurl. “Whom do you trust, Savio?” Her eyes were trying to reach deeper, see beyond the mask I showed to people.
I turned off the light because this was reaching a level of personal I preferred to discuss in the dark. “My brothers, absolutely. Fabiano, of course.” Even Adamo. He’d changed since his year in New York and had made up for some of the shit he’d done.
“Are they the ones you go to when you need to talk?”
I didn’t do the kind of talking Gemma was referring to, not even with my brothers. I sorted things out for myself. Humor and sarcasm had been my weapon against any attempt of my brothers, especially Nino, to talk about some of the things we’d gone through in the past. Eventually, he gave up.