Then his neck bent and his face was an inch from mine.
My stomach pitched, my knees wobbled and my mouth clamped shut.
When he had my undivided attention, he said in a firm, unrelenting but still somehow gentle voice, “That was not a request.”
“I need some space, Sam,” I whispered and it was breathy mostly because I was breathing so hard I was close to panting.
“You’re not going to get it.”
Say what?
“Sam!” I snapped.
“Talk,” he returned.
“I get to decide when I want to talk, not you,” I retorted and that was when it happened.
Right then.
Right there (nearly).
Within maybe ten minutes of showing up at his dead, best friend’s wealthy, gorgeous, famous wife’s fabulous villa on Lago di Como, it happened.
Sam released me with one arm but only to twist, taking me with him and putting the champagne flute on a table within his reach and he repeated this maneuver when he divested me of my bag. Then he shuffled me backwards out the door. Once there, he turned me to his side, his arm clamped around my waist and he pulled me to the very end corner of the terrace balustrade, alone, no one close. There, he twisted me into the corner and caged me in.
And through this, I lost it. Completely. I forgot who he was but I didn’t forget who I was. I didn’t forget what I learned at the hands of my husband. It had been months but I remembered it in excruciating detail.
And Sam’s actions brought back Cooter’s lessons and fear gripped me, extreme and paralyzing.
So when his hands came to either side of my neck, his thumbs at my jaws forced my head back to look at him and I did, his head jerked with his flinch so violently, it was like I struck him and I knew it was written all over my face.
“Baby,” he whispered and his voice was not rough-as-velvet. It was just rough.
“Step back,” I whispered and there was no way to miss the plea.
“Kia.”
“Step back.”
“Kia.”
“Step back.”
There it was.
A whimper.
Weak. Exposed.
Humiliated, I closed my eyes tight, tried to turn my face away and Sam allowed this, his thumbs gliding from my jaws but he kept me pinned and he kept his hands at my neck.
Then he ground out, “He hurt you.”
Oh man.
Oh God.
How did this happen?
Why couldn’t I keep anything secret?
I kept my eyes closed and my face averted.
Sam kept going.
“He did it often.”
I couldn’t escape him so I did the only thing I could. I twisted my neck deeper to turn my face further away in hopes he couldn’t see it.
“He didn’t check it, not once, not f**kin’ once,” Sam kept speaking, his voice now abrasive.
He wasn’t pissed. He was angry.
Oh God!
Sam didn’t relent.
“He broke you.”
“Step back,” I pleaded.
He didn’t step back.
He did something entirely different.
Both his arms closed around me, one at my middle back, the other around my shoulder, his hand up and curled tight at the back of my neck, his fingers pressing in to keep my head turned away and his mouth was at my ear, so close, I could feel his nose brushing my hair.
“I didn’t know.” Now his voice was rough a different way. “I didn’t know. If I had known –”
“Sam, don’t,” I cut him off. “Please just move away.”
His arms got tighter and he ignored me. “I’d never hurt you.”
I swallowed and stopped talking.
“I wanted your attention, Kia. That’s it. I get where you are now, baby, and I’ll never do that again and I would never, no f**kin’ joke, baby, please get this, I would never, ever hurt you.”
I stayed silent.
Sam stayed close.
I didn’t move.
He didn’t let me go.
God, I needed him to let me go!
I swallowed again, hard, and I did it to swallow back tears so my breath hitched and my chest jumped with the effort and his arms got tighter.
“My Dad beat my Ma.”
My head snapped around as my eyes opened, his head jerked back at my movement and his hand at the back of my neck instantly moved to wrap around its side.
“You see that as a kid, you live it, you’re powerless to stop it, it marks you. You got two choices, you keep that shit alive by givin’ in and perpetrating it on your family or you vow it’ll end with him. My brother and me, we vowed it’d end with him and that’s where it ended, Kia. We got older, taller, bigger, that shit stopped and you want, I’ll tell you how me and Ben made it stop but it was us who made it stop. I haven’t seen my Dad in nineteen years and this is because, he knows I see his face, he won’t be conscious long enough to blink at me. You get where I’m comin’ from with this?”
Stunned speechless at his open, raw sharing, I nodded.
He watched me nod. Then his eyes moved over my face. Then they changed, filling with something that made my body tense so tight, I thought tendons would snap but he didn’t seem to notice as the flame that lit in his eyes quickly built to an inferno.
And I would know why when he spoke again.
“Cheated on you and beat you.”
Oh God.
“Sam –”
“You, f**kin’ you. Look at you. What the f**k?”
I pressed my lips together.
He wasn’t done.
“Any woman but f**k, f**k,” he clipped. “You. You. Takin’ a hand to you would be like takin’ a razorblade to La Scapigliata.”
His last two words jolted me out of our current drama and I blinked then whispered, “What?”
“What?” he shot back, still pissed, definitely, and thus not following me.
“La Scapila-what?”
He stared at me.
Then he repeated, “La Scapigliata,”
I felt my brows draw together. “What’s that?”
“La Scapigliata?”
“Yeah.”
“La Scapigliata. The Head of a Woman. The Lady with Disheveled Hair. By da Vinci. It’s unfinished but it’s still a masterpiece. It’s in Parma. I’ve viewed it twice and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
My mouth dropped open and this wasn’t only because Sampson Cooper, ex-pro football star, ex-dangerous commando and current big, tall, powerful hot guy would be talking about an unfinished masterpiece by da Vinci but because he’d compared me to the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.