The Sicilian Marriage

“I just—I can’t believe—”

“Neither can I.”

She gave a soft sob that tore at his heart. He drew her closer and began to rock her in his arms.

“To think of them both gone…”

“Shh,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her hair. They sat in silence for a few minutes and then Briana looked up at him.

“What about—what about the funeral?”

“It’s over,” he said gruffly. “Tommy’s grandmother made the arrangements. She’s an old woman. I don’t think it occurred to her that Tomasso and Karen had friends in the States who’d want to attend.”

“So we—we can’t even say a proper goodbye.”

The pragmatist in him wanted to tell her that the Massinis wouldn’t know the difference but the pain he felt, the pain he knew she felt, made him offer a different answer.

“They knew we loved them,” he said quietly. “Perhaps they know it still.”

Briana began to weep again. Gianni whispered to her, stroked her cheek, her hair, and suddenly she tilted her face up to his. Her eyes were enormous, as bright as stars; her mouth trembled.

“At least they had each other.”

“Yes. They were lucky.”

“It’s terrible, to be alone.”

“Terrible,” he whispered back, and he would never know which of them moved first, he or Briana, but a heartbeat later his mouth was drinking from hers, her arms were wound tightly around his neck, and his mind was emptied of everything but her taste, her scent, the soft reality of her in his embrace.

He lay her back on the couch and kissed her throat, felt the leap of her pulse against his lips. Her hands were in his hair; her sighs were sweet affirmations of the power of life.

“Bree…”

She drew his head down and silenced him with another kiss. Her lips were soft; her body was warm and alive under his hands and when she moved against him, whispered his name, Gianni was lost.

With a groan, he tore open the knotted towel. Her breasts were beautiful, rounded and small with delicate nipples the color of roses.

“How lovely you are,” he whispered.

“Touch me, Gianni. Please. Please…”

Her breasts. They fit his palms as if they’d been fashioned to do exactly that. She whimpered with pleasure as he cupped them. He bent his head to her and sucked first one beaded tip and then the other into his mouth.

She sobbed his name, raised her hips in age-old invitation, asking a wordless question that could only have one answer and he gave it, spreading the towel fully so he could see all of her: the narrow waist, the rounded hips, the golden triangle between her legs.

He kissed her there, seeking the perfect pink bud nestled between her thighs with the tip of his tongue. She tasted sweeter than honey and when she arched toward him and cried out her passion, the blood roared in his ears.

“Gianni,” she sobbed, “Gianni, please, please, please…”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, and in a single, swift movement he unzipped his jeans, came down to her, lifted her to him and entered her, sinking deep, deeper than he ever had before, and then she tightened around him and he stopped thinking of anything but this, this, this…

Her wild cry of fulfillment triggered his own release.

For an instant, for an eternity, the world hung suspended.

And then it was over.

Gianni’s body sang while his brain recoiled at what he’d done. He rolled away, searching for the right words. Briana scrambled up against the back of the sofa, grabbed for the towel and clutched it to her.

“Oh God,” she said brokenly. “Oh God…”

“Briana. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t say anything. Just—just go away.”

Her mane of golden hair was a wild tangle that obscured her features. He wanted to pull her into his arms, smooth it back, lift her face to his and tell her he hadn’t meant to take her like this, that what had happened in the elevator wasn’t what he’d wanted, either.

What he wanted was to make slow, tender love with her. To kiss her mouth, then trail kisses down her throat to the hollow between her breasts until she was trembling with desire. He wanted to enter her slowly, watch her face as he did, take her with him to the heavens and hold her close as she came back to earth.

But she was glaring at him, disgust and hatred bright in her eyes. He knew that reaching for her would be a mistake. Hell, everything he’d done since they’d met had turned out to be a mistake.

“Damn it, are you deaf? Get out!”

She sounded as if he were a monster who’d attacked her. Gianni felt the first stirrings of an emotion far safer than regret.

“Look,” he said carefully, “these things happen.”

“These things?” she said, and the coldness in her voice was the final touch he needed.

“Sex,” he said bluntly. “It’s an affirmation of life. It’s what people often turn to, in the face of death.”

He was right. Briana knew that. She’d read books, seen films; she wasn’t stupid. People had sex for reasons that had nothing to do with desire.

And that was the worst of it. That she’d done this for all the wrong reasons. Dreamed of being with this man, ugly as that was to admit, dreamed of it since the night in that elevator, and now that it had happened, it had nothing to do with Gianni wanting her or her wanting him; it had to do with the loss of someone who’d been like another sister.

“Briana.”

She looked up. Gianni’s tone was cool. He sounded like a man about to make a speech instead of a man who’d just—who’d just—