by Simply BWWM
She could not have been happier. “Yes, please call me when you get here. I’ll be waiting,” she told him with a shy grin. She could not believe that he was going to come and see her and that at some point that night she could be in his arms. It was the best day of her life.
“I’ll see you soon,” he promised, and they said a long sweet goodbye before he hung up and his fingers flew over the keyboard making the reservations he needed for a flight and hotel. She was going to be his that night, and he promised himself that he was never going to let her go again.
Five hours later he was sitting in a hotel room in San Francisco, looking out over the bay. He had just set his luggage down at his feet and he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, calling Gabriella to tell her where he was. It felt like forever, and no time at all before there was a soft knock at his door and he rushed to it, pulling it open to see her standing there smiling up at him.
“You have never looked more beautiful than you do right now,” he told her as he reached for her hands and pulled her into the room, closing the door behind her. She was sure she was floating on air as he wrapped his arms around her in a warm embrace and buried his face in her neck, breathing her in.
“I didn’t know if I was ever going to see you again… ever going to feel you in my arms… this… this is all I want right now, right here with you. This is everything to me,” he whispered as he looked at her and lowered his mouth to hers.
She drew in a breath as he set fire to the butterflies in her, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly to her. Warmth began to fill her as he parted her lips with his, tasting her and turning everything in her upside down with his desire for her. Heat rose up in her like a bonfire, and nothing could stop it from taking them both over as their kisses swiftly became urgent, their mouths moving over one another’s, their hands holding each other fast.
“Gabriella….” he whispered between kisses, “I need you… now…” he sighed softly as her lips and teeth closed gently on his neck.
She lifted her lips to his ear, kissing it tenderly as she said back to him, “I need you, too.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before he was pulling her clothes from her, and in no time he laid her back on the bed, staring down at her, his eyes traveling over every curve, every line, and his hands followed his eyes as he caressed her soft skin, making her moan and arch with need for him.
“I have dreamed about you every night… waking to thoughts of you every day, and I can’t believe I’m going to be able to make love with you again,” he said in a soft voice as he lowered his mouth to her breasts, taking them into his mouth in turn, sucking and biting gently at her nipples.
His hands massaged and stroked her skin as they moved over her, and his mouth trailed kisses from her breasts to her belly, and then to her thighs where he teased her by kissing ever nearer to her until she pushed her head back and pleaded with him to taste her.
When he did, he devoured her, thrusting his tongue into her, making her gasp for air as she writhed in pleasure under his hands and his mouth. She brought her body up to meet his hungry kisses, moving herself against his lips as pleasure overwhelmed her and she came, threading her fingers through his hair and holding tightly to him.
No sooner had she begun to breathe again did he rise up between her legs, spreading her thighs apart with his hands and she looked up into his eyes as he pushed his solid erection into her, filling her and making her reach for him, clinging to his muscled shoulders as they began to move together as one.
Their bodies wrestled and turned, arched and drew near, building heat and ecstasy between and with each other until the fires in them had breached every barrier and their orgasms overtook them, rendering them rigid and tense, holding fast to one another until they could breathe again, and he laid himself down in her arms and looked into her silvery blue eyes, touching her cheek with his fingertips.
“Gabriella…” he whispered her name like a prayer.
She smiled at him. “Yes?”
“I love you,” he told her, his heart in every word.
She blinked back tears and leaned toward him, kissing him softly on his lips. “I love you, too. Always.”
They held each other near and made love again before the night became the dawn, and in the morning, there was more love, and nothing but total and complete happiness between them both.
*
Antonio drove with Gabriella back to Los Angeles. He wasn’t about to leave her in San Francisco, and she wasn’t about to let him go back without her. They spent their road trip back laughing and talking, and loving each other every chance they got.
When they returned, they were together as often as they could be until Gabriella had to leave to meet Pierre and do her first shoot with him. It was a shoot that landed her on the cover of their magazine and while the print edition of it sold out in stores, the online version of it went viral. It seemed to Gabriella that it was nothing more than the blink of an eye and suddenly everyone in the world knew who she was.
Before she made it back to Los Angeles, she was receiving calls from all over the world for different requests from modeling to interviews and shows. She had become a sensation, and she knew that she owed every bit of it to Antonio.
Julian was shocked when he saw her face on the cover of his biggest competitor’s magazine, and his fury knew no bounds. It was as if he had somehow lost her all over again, ever failing to really capture her in any way, and his first call from his office upstairs at the studios was to Kathy.
“Hello?” she asked, holding the phone close to her ear with two tight hands. She knew it was him.
“Kathy!” he nearly shouted and she jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Yes?” she asked hesitantly.
“What in the hell is Gabriella doing on the cover of Pierre Renault’s magazine?” he snapped at her furiously.
Kathy had no immediate answer. “I… I am not sure, but I will find out and get back to you,” she promised him, heart pounding rapidly.
“You better get back to me with that before lunch!” he demanded. She promised him she would and then she hung up the phone and scurried to get in touch with everyone she knew who might know the answer to that question.
An hour later she picked up her phone to call him back, not wanting to talk to him at all for the first time since she had laid eyes on him.
“Yes?” he answered in irritation.
“It’s Kathy. I found out what happened,” she told him, wishing she could be telling him just about anything else.
“Well?” he demanded impatiently.
She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “Um… it was your brother… Antonio. He called Pierre and told Pierre to sign her to a contract, and Pierre did it. Now she’s… uh… she’s kind of a global phenomenon.”
Julian cursed worse than she had ever heard him and she cringed, pulling the phone from her ear a short way to reduce the volume of the profanity spewing forth from him at the other end. She told herself that it could be worse; she could be telling him in person.
He hung up on her and she sighed in relief that she was done listening to him for the time being.
***
Julian barged into the mansion hollering for Antonio as he searched the house for him, finding him eventually in his office. He flung the door open and strode in with murder on his face.
Antonio looked up at him from his computer and knew that it could not be good.
“What can I do for you?” Antonio asked hesitantly.
Julian reached the chairs in front of Antonio’s desk and clamped his hands down on the back of one of them, leaning over it, glaring at his brother in outrage.
“You can explain to me just what in the hell you think you’re doing selling off one of my models to Pierre Renault! Gabriella Williams was mine! Now she’s tied to that French fool and she’s all over his magazine… hell, she’s all over the place… everywhere! You know what they’re calling
her? Global phenomenon. That’s what they’re calling her. You know who did that?” Julian shot at his brother.
Antonio lowered his hands onto his desk and folded them together. “Yes, Julian. I did that. She was not your model any longer. She wouldn’t sleep with you, so you fired her, threw her contract into the fireplace at the hotel where you tried to force her to have sex with you, and then you made her clear out her dressing room and leave your magazine.
That makes her a free agent. That means it’s nothing to you at all if she happens to sign with another publication. I am failing to see what the problem is here, Julian.” He spoke calmly.
Julian rage exploded in him. “It’s pretty damn obvious to me what the problem is! The problem is you! You keep choosing everyone else over me and I’ve had it! You have absolutely no family loyalty at all! You couldn’t care less about me or the Medici family! All you care about is yourself and what you want! You’re the most selfish shallow bastard I ever knew in my life!”
Antonio stood up and slid his hands into his pockets. “I am choosing what you have left for me to choose, Julian. You didn’t want to love Gabriella, you only wanted to use her for sex and then throw her away. I wanted to love her. You left her out in the cold, and now she is mine and we are together, and we are in love. We’re happy, finally.
That is something you threw away. That was your choice. You disregarded the business and almost lost it to another family in this city, but the board stepped in and saved it, and that too was something that you willingly threw away, and that was also your choice, and so the board gave it to me to run to keep it safe, so that’s what I’m doing.
You are making all of your own choices, and because of those bad choices, you are suffering what the rest of the world calls consequences. I’m sorry, but that’s the way that it goes. I am not choosing anyone or anything over family. I am picking up all of the pieces that you are leaving behind in your path of damnation and destruction.”
Julian’s eyes were wide and his outrage had reached new bounds. “I warned you about this, Antonio. I said that I would leave, and I have had it. Either you give me back my part of the business right now this very minute, and you leave Gabriella, or our bond, our brother bond is done. I will walk out of that door and you and I will no longer be brothers. We are finished. Do you understand me?” he bellowed fiercely.
Antonio shook his head. “I do understand you, and I’m sorry that you think that choosing you over everything else is choosing family over love, or family over business… but, my dear brother, there again you are leaving me with no choice. I am not ever going to leave Gabriella for you. Never. She is mine and I am keeping her always.
I’m not giving any of the business back to you at this time because you will destroy it if I do, and I have to keep safe what we have left and rebuild it. I’m going to keep doing what I am doing, and I am going to do it with you by my side, or without you. I would rather do it with you here by my side, but that is your choice to make, not mine. You do what you think is right.”
Julian shoved the chair away from himself, realizing that his brother wasn’t going to be true to his blood or to him, and that he was finally, completely on his own. “You selfish, evil bastard. You think that you have to have everything. You have to have Gabriella, rather than choosing me over her, you think that you have to have the business and the money and the properties, you think that you should help my biggest competitor in the fashion magazine industry rather than making any kind of move to help me.
I’m always last for you! I’m nothing to you! You think of no one but yourself first, and I’ve had it! I’m done! I’m leaving. This is it for us. I no longer have a brother. We are done,” he snapped as he shot his brother a look of pure hatred.
He turned then, and stalked back out of Antonio’s office, slamming the door behind him, and Antonio watched him go, knowing that his brother was in earnest and that it was truly over for them as far as he was concerned. He sank into his chair with a heavy heart, knowing that there was nothing at all in the world that he could have done to salvage his relationship with his wild and untamable brother.
Julian was gone from the house with all of his belongings before the night was out, and Antonio left the mansion to go to Gabriella’s and spend the night with her in the peace and tranquility of her bedroom and her arms. He loved no place in the world so much as her arms, and he had decided that he always wanted to be there.
She knew the moment that she opened the door that something was very wrong with Antonio. “What is it?” she asked, taking him into her embrace and kissing him softly as she gazed up into his eyes.
He sighed heavily and rested his forehead against hers. “It’s my brother.” He spoke almost in a whisper.
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She knew he needed to talk and that her own opinions of Julian had no place in the conversation. “What happened?” she asked gently.
“He is blaming me for everything that he has lost: the business, the houses, the money, you, and now he’s blaming your success on me, which isn’t fair to you because you earned that yourself. I just put you in touch with the right person to get you going. At any rate, he thinks that I have cost him everything, and he has broken away from the family. He has disowned me, and sworn that we are no longer brothers. He’s left. I have no idea where, but he’s gone.” Antonio felt like his heart would break and his only solace and comfort was in the woman who was holding him.
She rubbed her hands over his shoulders and leaned up to kiss him. “He’s just angry. He’ll cool down and see that things aren’t as bad as all that. He’ll come back. Give him some time,” she encouraged him.
He hoped she was right, though he strongly suspected that she was not even close. He drew a deep breath and pulled back from her just a little, looking down at her and taking her hands in his.
“There is something else I want to talk with you about,” he said with hope in his voice.
She tipped her head a little and looked into his eyes for a clue to his thoughts. “Of course, what is it?”
He smiled a little. “There is no one who makes me happier, who fills my heart, who brings me back to myself, more than you. I want us to be together. To stay together always. Gabriella, I want to ask you to marry me. Be my wife. Let me love you until we both leave this world.”
His heart was beating swiftly in him, but not nearly as fast as hers was beating as she made herself believe the words he had just spoken to her. “…what?” she whispered, unsure if she had really heard him right.
He smiled wider at her. “Marry me, Gabriella, and be my wife. I love you. I want you always. Say yes. Say you’ll be mine forever.” He grinned, unable to hold back the rush of happiness at the thought that she might say yes.
She laughed in surprise and grinned back at him. “Yes! Oh my god, yes. I love you, Antonio, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, too.” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately, laughing again as she did so.
He held her close and knew that the best was yet to come for them. No matter what happened with his brother, she was his family from that day forward. His wife, his life, his everything, always.
THE END
Authors Personal Message:
Hey hey hey!
I really hope you enjoyed my novel and if you want to check out all my other releases then just head to my Amazon Page and see them all!
Remember
Peace, Love & High Heels
Lena x x
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