The Enforcer (Untamed Hearts Book 3)(19)
The water splashed out on the floor between them. The hum of it faded to the background behind the heartbeat throbbing in her ears. She hadn’t been wrong earlier. Tino was more thickly muscular than he’d been before he left, more cut and deadly.
He’d always been beautiful, but now there was a raw strength that radiated off him, and for the first time, Brianna thought the Borgata was in real trouble. They likely remembered him the same way Brianna did, damaged by life, a slave to drugs because it was the only way he could endure the agony of his job.
They didn’t understand what it meant for Tino to overcome his demons and try for a life outside the mafia.
Even if it hadn’t worked, the fact that Tino was strong enough to try when the ability should’ve been beaten out of him long ago made Brianna realize the Borgata might have created their own demise in him.
She could feel his hot gaze sweep over her like a caress, even as she stood before him battered and bruised. If there was anyone she could be bare and damaged in front of, it was Tino. She had a lot of things to be ashamed about, but she wasn’t going to hide someone else’s sins. She had enough of her own to deal with.
“Can I join you?” she asked as she looked pointedly at the soap in his hand. “I’m dirty too.”
“Don’t say that.” Tino shook his head. “You’re beautiful. You’ve always been so beautiful.”
Brianna smiled at that, even as fresh tears were stinging her eyes. “So are you.”
She stepped into the shower and pulled the door closed. The water was a little too hot, but she turned toward it rather than back away. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the sting of hot water washing away the pain.
When she was younger, Brianna never thought she’d understand Tino’s need to wash away the sins that left him scrubbing his skin until it was nearly raw, but she did now. She understood it completely.
“They made whores out of both of us,” she finally whispered with her back still to him. “I don’t think there’s enough hot water.”
She waited for him to deny it like she used to do with him, to somehow attempt to erase it with feigned innocence, to lie to her. Instead he stepped up to her and wrapped an arm around her waist. Brianna took a long, shuddering breath when he pressed a kiss against the base of her neck.
He ran the soap over her stomach, and she looked down to watch him do it. To see his tanned fingers against her skin, knowing it was Tino touching her. It was his hard cock pressing against the small of her back, and for the first time in so many years, being touched didn’t make her skin crawl.
She let out a sob she couldn’t hide, because the collision was crippling. Lust and despair. She might have fallen in the face of it, but Tino was there, holding her closer as he buried his face against her neck.
He didn’t tell her to stop crying. He let her do it as he washed her body and tried to soothe her soul in a way only he could. Tino had always been the kindest killer she had ever known. Maybe because he was never supposed to be a Cosa Nostra hit man, just like she wasn’t supposed to be standing there bruised by a man she had never loved, but married anyway.
“Do you think I’m disgusting?” she finally asked as the soap ran down her body and did absolutely nothing to make her feel clean.
“Oh Jesus, Bri.” Tino’s voice was a rasp of agony, cracking with tears as if he understood why she was asking. “No.”
“Am I, Tino? Tell me. Don’t lie. I don’t want you to lie to me.”
She wiped at her face, making her eyes sting from the soap she hadn’t realized was running down her fingertips. She held her hands under the spray, blinking at them past the burn and seeing nothing but the glint of her rings that she had put back on her finger after the show.
She pulled them off and threw them against the wall. She stared at the golden wedding band when it rested next to her foot by the drain, and kicked it again for good measure, because she hated it and all the pain it represented.
Before she could kick the engagement ring too, Tino cupped her cheek and forced her to turn to him. Then his fingers were tangled in her hair, and his lips were on hers. She moaned at the feeling of exotic nostalgia that slipped into her veins, and he took advantage of it by thrusting his tongue into her mouth. He was moaning too, something raw and primal and pained as if he was experiencing that same adrenaline shot of pleasure and emotion.
Like they had never been forced apart, suddenly they were pressed together, wet skin against wet slippery skin, clinging to each other because they were both traumatized and terrified the beauty would be ripped away before they could taste it.
Tino moved his lips down to her neck, licking at the water, nipping at her shoulder. His hands were on her ass, his cock hard against her stomach, but she could feel him somehow slipping through her fingers, moving lower as if something deeply rooted was forcing him down.
Brianna’s head had been tossed against the wall, but she jerked forward and grabbed his face, her nails digging into his cheeks that were rough with stubble as she barked on instinct, “Who am I?”
Tino’s dark eyes were glazed and glassy as he stared at her tits rather than her face and whispered in a faraway voice, “You’re Brianna,” as if he wasn’t sure if she were real. “You’re my Brianna.” He ran a hand up to the small of her back, pulling her closer. She arched into him, enabling him, completely weak in the face of seeing him again. “Dio,” he groaned and sucked one taut pink nipple into his mouth with a reverence only Tino could show.