Deep (The Pagano Family Book 4) (35 page)

Sassy Sal’s was ready to open. Tonight, Bruce was throwing an invitation-only re-opening party. She’d been at the shop trying to keep herself busy and not think about the party too much. She hadn’t been back to the diner since that night. She still had trouble walking past it. Bruce had boarded up the windows during the remodel, otherwise she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to do it.

But today, she was going in. And it looked like she’d be on Donnie’s arm.

“Well, if you’re a pussy, I’m a pussy. Nick called a while ago to say he’d be late, and I was starting to chicken out about going at all.”

“Okay, then. We’ll be pussies together and hold each other up. You ready to go?”

“Yeah. Just let me make sure Catty has food and water before I lock up.”

Catty tended to, she set the alarm and they went out the front. She locked the door, and they headed down the block.

The windows were unboarded. Bruce had paid someone to paint a retro-style holiday scene across the glass. The lights in the diner were bright and cheerful, and Bev could see retro decorations—glass balls and silver tinsel; old-fashioned cardboard Santas, elves, snowmen, and bells; a silver, rotating Christmas tree adorned with more glass balls—festooning every inch of the place. Bing Crosby Christmas carols wafted through the windows into the cold air of the street.

Donnie squeezed her arm. “You ready?”

“I’m ready. I think.”

“On three?”

She nodded.

“One…two…” He opened the door. The bell tinkled in the flat way that was so familiar, and Bev broke into tears.

Donnie stopped and let the door close again. “Hey, hey.” He pulled her close. “We don’t have to.”

“No, it’s not that.” She sniffled and got hold of herself. “The bell made me a little homesick. I’m okay.” She stepped back and smiled. “I’m okay, really.”

Bruce opened the door. He looked good. Happy. “You guys okay?”

“Yeah. We’re good.” Bev turned to Donnie. “Right?”

“Right. We’re good.” They went in.

It was good.

~ 25 ~

Nick sat on a wicker chair on his cousin Carlo’s flagstone patio, drinking a beer and talking with Carlo, Luca, and John. Listening, mostly. Actually, he wasn’t really doing that, either. He was sitting with his cousins while they talked. He was watching Beverly. She was pale, and she’d been cross most of the day, at least with him. With his family, she was her usual, smiling, delightful self.

The whole family had just finished helping the kids find Easter eggs in the yard. Since Little Ben was only a year and a half, and Teresa was barely one, that meant that seven-year-old Trey had been the only kid really looking. The adults had found most of them. His cousins had turned it into a big competition, which Luca had won.

This was the sort of thing Nick didn’t get. A bunch of adults running around, digging in shrubbery for plastic eggs filled with candy. Was that supposed to be fun?

He would admit, though, that the kids were pretty cute. Teresa, just beginning to toddle, waddled after her cousins, taking two steps, falling forward and showing a little bottom covered in ruffles, then standing up again and taking two more steps, never seeming to get frustrated at her slow progress. Little Ben was a terror, running full bore back and forth across the yard, his arms pinwheeling, chasing after Elsa, the dog, roaring and barreling headlong into her side. Even Trey rolled his eyes at his little brother’s antics.

Nick turned back to Beverly. She wasn’t pregnant yet. Every time she was a little run-down, he got hopeful. Nothing yet—but she’d been tired and cranky yesterday morning, then better later in the day. This morning had been the same. She’d been so shaky at Mass that she’d stepped out, and they’d had a little whispered squabble when he’d tried to go with her. Now, as the afternoon ripened, she looked rosier and not so much like she had to try to have fun.

Morning sickness?

“Dude. You with us?” Luca elbowed him.

“What? Sorry.”

They all laughed at him. Grinning broadly, Luca said, “You’re maybe the last person I’d have expected to get that look about you, coz.”

“What look?”

“The ‘she completes me’ look. Carlo gets it all the time.”

Carlo threw a stuffed mushroom at his brother, who caught it in the air and popped it into his mouth with a smirk. “And you don’t? Please. That little girl has you tied in so many knots you don’t know which way is up.”

Luca grinned and flipped Carlo off. John, the only single guy in this group, just shrugged and shook his head.

And Nick realized he wasn’t the odd man out. Not in this group. He had something in common with Luca and Carlo. He had love. A wife. A future.

And they were more at ease with him than they’d been since he’d begun his work for Uncle Ben and his father.

She really had made him more a part of his family.

~oOo~

That night, he set the alarm and turned off the downstairs lights, got Beverly the glass of ice water she liked at night, then went up to bed. She was in the bathroom, but the door was open. He set her water on her nightstand, then leaned on the bathroom doorjamb and watched her brush out her hair. He didn’t think she’d cut it in the year they’d been together. It was more than halfway down her back now, all the myriad colors of its auburn sheen gleaming in the lights as she pulled her brush through it. His cock stretched out.

She was wearing one of the lingerie sets he’d first given her. It was too fancy for sleep. When she caught his eye, she gave him a pert little grin.

“You’re feeling better.”

“Yeah. Sorry I was a bitch this morning. I thought I’d make it up to you.”

He knew how she could make it up. “Take a test,
bella
.”

She sighed. “Nick. I don’t want to take a test every time I’m moody. It’s starting to freak me out. You’re obsessed.”

That was true, but he wasn’t sorry. “Two mornings in a row, you’ve felt bad, then got better. Take a test.”

“When I put on a tiny purple nightie with a crystal-encrusted bodice, I thought I’d be doing something more interesting than peeing on a stick.”

He grinned and walked up behind her, taking the brush from her and setting it on the counter. As they both watched in the mirror, he slid his hands through the slit at the front of the negligée and into the matching panties. With his mouth at her ear, he murmured, “Pee on a stick, and then I’ll do something
very
interesting to you.”

She sighed and leaned back against him. “Okay, okay. Get out.”

Chuckling, he kissed her cheek and went out into their bedroom. While he waited, he stripped down to his underwear. Then he sat on the bed and stared at the closed bathroom door.

She never waited out here with him. It drove him crazy, but she said he made her too anxious, so she waited for the result and then came out. This was their…fourth time. She was right: he’d wanted her to take a test every time her sunlight dimmed a little. That was probably overly controlling and a little nuts. Until she made more than the kind of gentle protest she’d made this evening, though—or until she came up pregnant—he wasn’t going to stop.

He’d turned out to be a nester.

The door opened, and he stood. This was why he’d kept his underwear on. Standing here naked, waiting to hear her report, was too vulnerable.

She tossed him the stick. That was a first. He caught it and looked.

He looked up for confirmation and found her beautiful, brilliant smile beaming happiness at him.

“See? I was right!” He wrapped her up in his arms. “Ah,
bella
. You’re going to be the most fantastic mother. All your love and light will grow our children up happy and strong.
Tu sei un dono del cielo. Sei il mio sole. Ti amo, ti amo.
”

Feeling like he couldn’t get enough of her, he kissed her, savoring the hot silk and cool taste of her freshly-brushed mouth. When he pulled away to see her, she was breathless and dazed, but she smiled.

“I thought you were going to do something interesting to me.”

He laughed. “Sassy little tart.” He picked her up off her feet. “I’m going to interest you until you pass out.”

Laying her in the center of their bed, the one he’d bought for their wedding night, he stretched out at her side, moving his hand under the silken film of her negligée to caress her belly. As he leaned down to kiss her, she held him off.

“Wait.” There was a tremor in her voice.

He frowned. “Something wrong?”

The look in her eyes was nervous; he didn’t like that.

“
Bella
?”

She swallowed, and he moved his hand from her belly to her face.

“What is, Beverly?”

“I…I want something. I told you I wanted to make up for my bad mood. But I’m losing my nerve.”

“Nothing you don’t want. Never that. You have nothing to make up for—I thought you were playing when you said that.”

“I do want it. I liked it. I miss it.”

Nick rose up onto his hands and looked down at her. “What is it?”

Beverly dropped her eyes from his and focused on his chest. Clearly, she was afraid. His cock began to soften, and he moved, intending to sit at her side. But she grabbed his arm. “I want you to—to tie me up.”

Almost a year had passed since she’d been attacked and brutalized by Alvin Church’s men. She’d needed months to recover physically and mentally from what they’d done to her. She’d been bound and at their mercy, and they had beaten, raped, and tortured her. Mutilated her.

Before that night, he had just begun to introduce her to the delights of scarves and blindfolds—nothing hardcore, only sensual restraint and sensation play. Since that night, he had never even broached the idea. It had taken a lot to bring them back to where they now were, and where they now were was a good place. A perfect place. A place he didn’t want to lose.

And now she was pregnant with his child.

“No,
bella
. We don’t need that.”

“I do. I don’t want to be afraid of it. It’s the last thing I’m still afraid of. I don’t want a year to have passed and to know that it still has a hold over me at all. And you like it. Right? You still like it?”

Honestly, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have the associations from that night that she did, of course. But he had associations of his own, and a vivid imagination. And their sex had been different, deeper since they’d gotten it back. He had liked that kind of play before, but he wasn’t sure he still would.

“I want to try. Please, Nick.”

He had a vivid imagination. He also had an excellent memory, and he remembered sitting at the side of her bed, very shortly after that night, and promising her,
Anything you need, anything you want. If it’s in my power to make it so, it will be so.
He had not made that promise lightly. He never made any promise lightly.

Bending down, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Talk to me,
bella
. If you feel fear or panic, or anything you don’t want to feel, talk to me. Tell me.”

“I will.”

Easing off the bed, he shed his underwear and went to her dresser. She had a collection of pretty silk scarves in one of her drawers; he pulled two out. He would tie her hands together; tying the hands apart made for a more exposed and vulnerable sensation.

The scarves bunched in his fist, he returned to the bed, where she was still lying as he’d left her, in the middle, her hands linked across her belly.

He got onto the bed and straddled her hips, keeping his weight in his legs. Still, her expression was anxious. What he wanted tonight was to celebrate their news, not risk traumatizing her. His cock had gone completely soft, so he wasn’t even sure he could get done what she wanted. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I trust you.”

“Hold up your hands. Like you’re praying.” She did, and he slid one of the scarves through his hands, stretching it to its full length. Then he eased it over her arms, up and down, letting the silk soothe and excite her skin. When he’d last bound her, he hadn’t taken this kind of care—it had been rough and forceful, the kind of sex he’d mistaken his whole life for passion.

What they had now—that was true passion.

When her breathing became steadier and more rapid, he wrapped her wrists twice, three times, and tied a simple half knot. Then he pulled her bound arms over her head, covering her body with his as he tied her to one of the vertical slats of their headboard. As he secured the scarf, he felt her lips on his chest, and he looked down with a smile.

He wrapped his hands around her slender forearms and eased his palms over her skin, down the length of her arms, over her sides, as he returned to sit astride her.

“Tell me,
bella
.”

“I’m okay. It’s…good.” She sounded as if she were reassuring them both, but he trusted her, as she trusted him.

“Do you want a blindfold, or do you want to see?”

She frowned, and Nick lifted his hand, ready to release her. “I’ll close my eyes. I want to be able to see you if I need to.”

“Okay.” He set the other scarf aside. “Then close your eyes.”

She did.

He took painstaking care to be gentle and soft with her. First, all he did was trace his fingertips over all of her body that wasn’t covered by the negligée—her arms, her legs, her face, the soles of her pretty feet. He opened the split front of the sheer silk that covered her belly and danced his fingers with a feather-light touch over that quivering skin. She moaned, and her arms came forward, tightening her bonds.