When she didn't reply, he tapped one of the bundles. "Think of it like this - I'm helping you buy your own white horse...Gretchen, for God's sake, you need to take the money."
The bastard used her real name. Damn him.
God...it had been so long since anyone had called her Gretchen. To Robbie she was "Mom." To everyone else, she was Marie-Terese. She'd always loved her real name, though, and hearing it now, she wanted it back.
Gretchen...Gretchen...
She stared at the money. Vin was right: She took that and she had serious breathing room. Except...how was this different from before? It was still a man bailing her out. It just didn't feel right.
She stepped up to him and put her hands on either side of his face.
"You are a lovely, lovely man, Vincent diPietro." She pulled him down to her lips and he went willingly, his palms settling lightly on her shoulders as their mouths met. "And I want to thank you." Happiness flared in the hard lines of his face. But only for a moment. "I'll always remember your gesture," she murmured.
"You don't have to take the hard route," he said, his brows drawing together. "You - "
"But see, that's what I learned. Things are hard for me now because I tried to take the easy way out first." She smiled up at him, thinking that she was going to remember how he was looking at her now for the rest of her life. "That's the problem with white horses. You have to pay for them yourself or you'll always be using someone else's reins."
He stared down at her for the longest time. "You're breaking my f**king heart in half right now, you really are." His hands tightened on her arms and then released as he stepped back. "It's like...I can reach out and touch you, but you're already gone."
"I'm sorry."
He looked over at the cash. "You know...I've never realized this before. But money is really just paper when you come down to it."
"I'm going to be okay."
"Are you." He shook his head. "Sorry, that came out wrong."
Except he was right to be worried. Hell, she was, too. "I'll stay in touch."
"I'd like that...Any idea where you're headed?"
"I don't know. Haven't given it a lot of thought."
"Well...what if I told you I had an empty house I could lend you. It's out of state - " He held up his hand as she went to interject. "Just wait a minute. It's in Connecticut, in horse country there. It's a farmhouse, but it's close to the town, so you wouldn't be isolated. You could crash there for a couple of nights, get your feet under you, figure out where to go next. And it's better than a hotel, because you won't have to use a credit card. You could leave your house tonight after dark and get there in less than two hours."
Marie-Terese frowned as she thought it over.
"Not a handout, not cash, no strings," he said. "Just a place for you and your son to lay your heads. And when you're ready to leave it, just lock the place up and mail the keys back to me."
Marie-Terese walked around to the windows in the dining room and looked out at the stunning view as she tried to think through what the next day and week and month would be like...
She got nothing back. Not a clue.
Which was a pretty clear signal she needed somewhere safe to figure it all out. "Okay," she said quietly. "This I will take you up on."
She heard Vin approach from behind, and as his arms went around her, she turned and embraced him as well.
They held each other for a long, long time.
It was hard to say when things changed for her...when she started to notice not just the comfort of his broad chest against her, but the warmth of his body and the strength in his muscles and the spice of his expensive cologne.
He was warm, though.
And so very strong.
And so...
Marie-Terese ran her hands up his back, feeling the softness of the silk shirt he had on, but concentrating on the hard man beneath the fabric. In a flash, she saw him in the mirror in his old bedroom, naked and rearing up before her, his muscles flexing along his spine.
Vin moved his hips back. "I think...I think we should probably - "
She arched into him and felt the erection he was trying to hide. "Be with me. Before I go...be with me?"
Vin's entire body shuddered. "God, yes."
He took her hand and the two of them hit the stairs fast. On instinct, she headed left toward a black-and-gold room with a massive bed, but he tugged her in the opposite direction. "Not there."
He took her into another bedroom, one that was smaller and done in warm reds and tans. As they landed on the satin-covered mattress, they melded hip to hip, mouths fusing, tongues meeting, hands going to zippers and buttons and belt buckles.
She all but ripped off his shirt, and when his chest was bared, her palms rubbed over his smooth skin and his tight muscles. Shifting back, she helped with the shucking of her jeans and tops and then focused on getting his pants off.
"Holy Christ," he grunted as she pushed his slacks down to the middle of his thighs and gripped his erection through his briefs.
Fusing their mouths and sucking on his tongue, she stroked him through the thin, flexible cotton of his boxer briefs until the head of him burst out past the waistband. The instant she went skin-on-skin with him, he broke the contact of their lips and hissed in a breath through clenched teeth.
His Armanis went the way of his pants, getting shoved roughly down his legs, and she eased her way over his chest, kissing, nipping, allowing her hair to fall all around and tickle him as she went lower.
Just as she stood his arousal up and was ready to take him between her lips, his hands tightened on her arms. "Wait..."
A single, glistening tear formed at his tip and wept down his head and onto her hand. "Your sex doesn't want to wait, Vin," she said huskily.
Another tear followed the first, as if her words were just as erotic as anything she could have done to him physically.
"I need you to know...something."
Marie-Terese frowned. "What?"
"I..." He put both hands to his face and rubbed so hard it was like he wanted to sand his features down. "When I'm with you, it's not like how I've been. You know, with anyone else lately."
"Is...that a good thing?"
"I definitely think so." He dropped his arms. "But I've done some out-there shit, to be honest. With strangers."
Marie-Terese felt her brows pop, as if they were doing so of their own volition. "Like what?"
He shook his head like he didn't want to remember. "Nothing with men. But that's really about the only line I've drawn. I just...I haven't been tested and I haven't always been careful. I feel like you deserve to know that before we do anything riskier than kissing and sex with a condom."
"Weren't you monogamous with Devina?" Although even as she asked, she realized the question was pointless because the woman hadn't been monogamous with him.
"There were other women along with her sometimes. If you know what I mean."
An unwelcome picture of Vin covered in female flesh barreled in. "Wow."
She was about to make a crack about it taking a special man to get a prostitute to blush, but given how he'd reacted before to her bringing up her "profession," she stopped herself.
"But it's not going to be like that with you." His eyes drifted around her hair and her face and her bare br**sts. "To me...you're everything I need, all that I want. I can't describe it. Just when you kiss me, that's all I'm after - What?"
She smiled as she stroked him slowly. "You make me feel precious."
"Come up here and let me show you exactly how precious."
He pulled gently on her arms, but she resisted, not wanting to be diverted. Funny, it felt odd and wonderfully unfamiliar to want to do what she had been on her way to doing.
"Vin, please let me give you this..." Moving her palm up and down, she watched his head fall back and his mouth open and his chest heave. "And I'll just make sure you don't finish. How about that."
Before he could argue, she bent down and used the head of him to part her lips - in a rush, he groaned and his hips shot up, the movement pushing his erection deeper into her mouth. As she sucked him in, his fists balled up the duvet, his arm muscles straining, his pecs and his six-pack going rigid.
He was gorgeous like this, stretched out on the red satin, his big body sexed up to the point of no return...