Page 68 of Urgent Vows
"Do not go back to sleep," I warn her. "You will slide right under the water."
Not that I'm leaving her here to bathe herself.
She blinks sleepily at me but keeps her eyes open. I don't start washing her because I want her to soak for a while. As her eyelids slide down again, I realize that sitting beside the tub will not be enough. I'm going to have to join her.
Since deciding to marry her yesterday, I have exercised almost no self-control where she is concerned. However, even her delectable body will not tempt me to take her when it could mean hurting her.
Despite evidence to the contrary, I am too well disciplined for that.
My training to follow in my father's footsteps was overseen by a former Army Ranger and one of the world's best assassins. Those lessons only augmented what my father started with me before I learned to walk.
I never played a game as a child that did not prepare either my mind or my body for my future. Trying to catch my father's hands enhanced the speed of my reflexes. Playing hide-and-seek was an exercise in stealth and tracking. Chess taught me strategy and the ability to think several steps ahead to the outcome of any action.
Success was rewarded; failure was punished.
Failure here will punish my wife. That I will not allow.
I finish stripping and get into the tub, maneuvering Catalina in front of me. Her silky skin slides against mine in the oil softened water. The scent of the bath salts is familiar, but different now. I'll never associate it again with my post workout. It now makes me think of Catalina floating naked in our tub.
My hardon presses against her back. She doesn't react to it; she's completely relaxed.
Like she trusts me absolutely to take care of her. This woman who has so little reason to trust powerful men, has no physical reticence with me.
It is a heady truth to acknowledge. I have had the responsibility of the entire New Yorkfamigliasince becoming don five years ago, and yet this moment is more profound than any I have felt.
We lie in the water together for thirty minutes. Any longer will have little extra benefit and any less will not be the maximum benefit achieved.
Though I mentally track the time, I allow myself to relax like I never do. My inner clock tells me when the half hour has passed, and I begin washing my wife's body with moisturizing bodywash that Emilia must have left for my future bride.
I lather my hands and wash her shoulders and then her breasts, forcing myself not to stop there and play. It is harder than it should be. I swirl water between her legs rather than touch her there and be tempted to do more.
"You're pretty attentive for a man who didn't want to bother with his wife."
"I did not say that."
"As good as."
"Marriage to you was never going to be the same as marriage to your sister."
She is silent for several seconds, and then says quietly, "A week ago, I would have assumed you meant I could never measure up."
"The opposite is true." Carlotta would never have tested my resolve like Catalina,mi dolce bellezza, does.
"I'm still finding it hard to believe you were going to marry her feeling that way." Catalina sounds disgruntled, but it's tinged with something else. Sadness? "You would have hurt both of us."
I do not know if she means herself and her sister, or herself and me, but it doesn't matter. "Emotions cannot control the decisions a good don makes."
Even when it hurts someone important to him. My father drilled that into me. He rarely had to make that call, but when he did? I never saw him hesitate.
"I don't know if I could do that." Catalina runs her hands along my forearms, sparking a conflagration of need such a simple touch should not be able to.
"What?" I force myself to ask, when I just want to flip her body and kiss her senseless.
"Ignore my feelings when making a decision." She places her hands over mine, inserting her fingers between my own.
Her hands are so much smaller than mine. Perfect, unblemished skin beside my scars and rough ridged knuckles. I may dress like a billionaire off Wall Street but my body tells the true story. I have risen to the top of the criminal world through a life bathed in violence.
And yet for all the softness that is my wife, she has a core of steel to match my own. "You are stronger than you know, Catalina. If you had to, you could."
