Page 6 of Bruno
“Not that shit about Christopher. We’ll get to that later. Did you say I didn’t want you?” The hard surface of the library wall digs painfully into my shoulder blades as he backs me up against it.
His anger barrels into me, an unstoppable wave crashing against a helpless sand castle on the beach.
“How do you fucking dare?”
“Sal…” He never spoke to me like this in the past. I can’t grasp how I pulled the pin on his grenade, and I definitely don’t know how to put it back in.
“I gave up everything when I sent you away.” Each word he spits at me feels like a scorching burst from a flamethrower, making my face flush with unexpected heat. “Every. Fucking. Thing. I wanted you more than I wanted to breathe. I loved you.”
“Sal,” I gasped. He never used any of these four-letter words before.
“I lost my mother, and then I was forced to walk away from you. Bury you and my child. Put you in the grave in my mind because it was the only way I could go on. I was too young at twenty to know that I should have found another way. Any. Other. Way.”
Sal’s eyes bulge wide, and his hands fly out of his pockets into fists. I never feared him in the past, but the man walking toward me now with anger in his eyes is not the boy I knew. “What did you say?”
I wrinkle my brow, confused and unsure. “Huh, what—”
“Not that about Christopher. We’ll talk about that later. Did you say I didn’t want you?” The hard library wall hurts my shoulder blades as he backs me up against it.
His anger crashes into me like an unstoppable wave hitting a helpless sand castle on the beach.
“How do you fucking dare?”
“Sal…” He never spoke to me like this before. I don’t know what triggered his anger, and I definitely don’t know how to defuse it.
“I gave up everything when I sent you away.” Each word he says is like a scorching burst from a flamethrower, making my face flush with unexpected heat. “Every. Single. Thing. I wanted you more than any fucking thing. I loved you.”
“Sal,” I gasped. He never used any of these four-letter words before.
“I lost my mother, and then I had to leave you behind. Bury you and our child. Put you in the grave in my mind because it was the only way I could continue living. At twenty, I was too young and dumb to find another way.Anyother way. I was too foolish to see that the hole I tore in my heart could never be filled.”
He shakes his head as if waking from a trance. His voice becomes a husky whisper as he breath surrounds me. “So don’t tell me I didn’t want you. I did.I still do, and always will. Having you so close after all these years is pure torture because all I want is to hold you in my arms and make you mine again. Remind you that youareand always will be mine. It pisses me the fuck off that you didn’t come running into my arms when you saw me.” His fingertips graze my cheek. Our gazes lock on each other, anchoring us with shock and disbelief.
“Sal,” I repeat once more, like a broken record stuck on one line.
“Where were the hugs and kisses? The declarations of love? You telling me how much you missed me. After all I sacrificed, I got nothing.”
“Sal.”
“Fuck it. You know what I learned while I was away?” I shake my head, not because I don’t know, but because I don’twantto know. His hand tightens around my neck, and his words sear my face. “I learned that if someone won’t give me what’s rightfully mine… then I’ll take it.”
His lips are on mine in the next breath. The kiss is hungry, wet, and messy. It’s like he wants to devour me. I let him—let him pull me apart and put me back together again. I need his hands in my hair and his tongue in my mouth. His hard body against mine. I want his cock in my pussy, his seed filling me up. I want him to fuck me into oblivion and forget everything that’s happened. So I take what he pours into me with angry, lusty groans, even as I know that I’ll never take him back. I’ll never let him have my heart again. Not when he pulled the knife out of it so carelessly.
“Sal,” I pant, breathless when he finally breaks the kiss. My breasts heave helplessly while my chest struggles to push air in and out of my lungs. Working to keep up with my pounding heart. “I… I—”
Before I can tell him I’m not interested in anything other than safety—Chris bursts into the room. An angry ball of fire and outrage as he pushes us apart. “Keep your fucking hands off my mother.”
The two men stand toe-to-toe. Mirror images of stunned, outrage, and confusion. The seething tension is worse than I could have ever imagined for their first meeting. Now I’m the one stuck with a useless four-letter word… Shit.
“You fucking asshole,” Chris shouts at the top of his lungs. His voice tremors the air around us, and I step between them when I see Bruno’s shoulders go back and his nostrils flare. I wave him back and turn to our son.
“Christopher Wilson, your language is not acceptable. You will apologize.”
I haven’t seen him brick red and breathless with rage since he was a toddler. He’d stomp and scream until he had his way. It took years and patience to get him to understand. ‘Use your words.’ A mantra I’d coded into him by the time he was five.
“I won’t.” My mouth drops. Chris never talks back, other than a few snarky remarks here or there. “You may be okay with him just showing up out of nowhere, but I’m not.”
“Chris, he’s your father—”
