He did it again and I started panting.

“Jesus, baby, am I gonna make you come just teasin’ your tit?” he murmured, his voice mildly disbelieving, mildly awed, and totally turned on.

I tried to open my eyes but was not very successful.

Luckily, I was more successful in pulling my hands out of his shirt, then sliding them up his back and into his hair. I put pressure on and learned Ben didn’t need words.

I knew it when his mouth touched mine, where he said, “All right, Frankie, anything you need.”

Oh, I needed it all right, and Benny was as good as his word because he immediately trailed his mouth down my neck, my chest, it closed over my nipple, and he drew it in.

Deep.

A moan slid out of my throat, my fingers tightened against his scalp, and he drew deeper. Then he rolled my nipple with his tongue, before he muttered against it, “Fuck yeah,” then down went the other cup of my nightgown and Benny moved to it.

I was arching into him, winding my leg around his thigh, clutching my fingers in his thick hair, my stomach muscles tightening with anticipatory glee as his hand drifted over it, his destination one I wanted him to get to, and fast, when we both froze solid as we heard Theresa shouting from downstairs, “Benny! Frankie! You here?”

I didn’t move a muscle, but Ben did. Lifting his head and twisting his neck, he aimed his gaze at the door. I didn’t have a full view of his face, not even close, but what I saw of it was the heat of desire battling with the heat of fury.

“Ben! Francesca! Are you here?” Theresa shouted from closer. She had to be on the stairs.

That was when Ben moved.

Yanking up the cups of my nightgown while grinding out, “You gotta be fuckin’ shittin’ me,” he looked to me and clipped, “Do not move.” After that, he rolled from the bed, found his feet, and prowled out the door, slamming it behind him.

I lay in the bed, still frozen, staring at the closed door.

I heard Ben bite out, “Jesus, Ma, seriously?” and it bolted through me. Vicious. Hateful. Destructive.

Panic. Desperation.

Sheer terror.

It was irrational. I knew it. But even knowing it, I was powerless to beat it.

It forced me to roll off the bed, run to the closet, and pull out one of the four suitcases I had at Benny’s.

I then ran to the bathroom. Hearing the murmurs but not listening, I opened the suitcase on the floor and took everything that was mine that I could see. I dumped it in, not even looking if it made it where it was supposed to go.

I opened the drawer Benny gave me and emptied it.

I then dashed to the shower and threw open the door, stepping in. I accidentally grabbed Ben’s shampoo and instantly thrust it back in the recessed shelf, as if touching it burned me.

I snatched up my shampoo, my conditioner, then turned and went completely still when the bathroom I’d been using for over a week came into my consciousness with a clarity that was frightening.

His house was old. Old enough I knew that bathroom as new.

I also knew that Ben was not the kind of man who hired people to put in his bathroom.

He did it.

And he did it with a variety of things on his mind.

Big shower cubicle, big enough for two, all glass except the tiled walls. They were a white matte that was very attractive but not with a bent to personal taste. They were the kind of tile a number of people would like having.

Resale.

Resale in preparation for trading up, going bigger, building a home for your growing family.

My breath went ragged.

Separate tub, big, deep, oval, with just this side of an extravagant faucet with a handheld shower attachment sitting on top.

The kind of tub a woman who liked to take baths could fill with bubbles and sink into to melt away the cares of the day.

Ben didn’t take baths. No way. I didn’t know this as fact from experience, just as I knew it as fact.

Double basin. Two medicine cabinets. Room between the sinks so you’d never get crowded. Full, well-made cabinets underneath. Plenty of space for makeup, toiletries, first aid supplies, ibuprofen—whatever you needed, but far more space than a man would need.

Shelves built into the wall so you could display nice towels, if you wanted. Or put bathroom-style knickknacks, if that was your thing.

It wasn’t Benny’s thing. Towels that could use replacing were shoved in with only a passing try at folding them. Nothing else.

He’d put in that bathroom for the woman he would find to put into that house.

And he’d put in that bathroom with a mind to the buyers who would eventually take that house off his hands when the rest of the bedrooms were filled with babies.

Benny Bianchi didn’t do minute by minute.

Benny Bianchi had it all planned.

I came unstuck and, in a panic, moved out of the shower when I heard Benny say in the bedroom, “Had a word. Ma’s…Frankie?”

I said nothing. I dumped the bottles in the suitcase and they made a thud.

“Babe, she’s gone and she won’t…”

The words were closer and I knew why. I also knew why he trailed off.

Because he was in the doorway.

“Frankie, what the fuck?”

“I gotta go,” I mumbled, bending double, ass in the air, fingers curling around the edge of my suitcase to drag it out of the room.

I felt hands curl around my hips and I snapped upright, whirling and tripping when I took two steps back.

My eyes hit Ben’s face and it was no less expressive than always. Concern. Confusion.

“Careful, baby,” he said softly.

“I gotta go,” I replied.

“Something happened,” he noted, his voice still soft. Soft, deep, and easy.

Killing me.

“I gotta go.”

“What happened, honey?”

“I gotta go.”

“What happened, Frankie?”

Everything I was holding together for the last nine days, the last seven years, the last thirty-four, came flying apart. I leaned in and shrieked, “I gotta go, Benny!”

He flinched at my tone but didn’t move, and his voice was no less soft when he said, “Talk to me, tesorina.”

“I can’t do this,” I declared.

“Why?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t wanna lose you.”

More confusion slid through his features. He glanced back into the bedroom, eyes aimed at his bed, then he looked to me.

“How does what we were doin’ translate to you losin’ me?”

I ignored that question and started babbling. “I lost you. I lost Vinnie and I did something stupid and I lost you. I can’t lose you again. Not you. Not Theresa. Not Vinnie Senior. Not Manny. I can’t do this because I can’t lose you.”

“Honey, we’re not goin’ anywhere.”

“You could,” I returned.

“We’re not,” he shot back.

“You could, though,” I snapped. “This could go bad.” I lifted a hand and jerked it back and forth with agitation, indicating him and me. “This could go bad and I’d lose you all again.”

“It’s not gonna go bad, Frankie.”

“Promise?”

It wasn’t a plea.

It was a dare.

And Benny was too good. Too honest. Too decent. Too awesome to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

But he was also too Benny, so he was gentle and cautious when he replied slowly, “I can’t tell the future, baby.”

I shook my head in short frantic shakes. “No. You can’t. I can’t either. And I can’t take the risk. I got shot and that was good. It was good, Benny,” I repeated when his face grew dark. “It brought all of you back to me. And I know what you want. It burns, it kills, because I like what you want. I want to give it to you. I want to have it for me. But I can’t risk losing more. We have to go back to the way we were before. You can’t promise me this won’t go bad, but you can promise me we can keep that kind of good.”

“The way we were before?” he asked.

“You, me, friends, family.”

I felt it slice clean into my heart, the new look on his face when he whispered, “You wanna be friends?”

But I didn’t delay in whispering back, this time definitely a plea, “Please give me that, Benny.”

He studied me for a moment, his expression beyond unhappy, and I let him, my chest rising and falling rapidly, my bleeding heart still finding a way to beat hard.

Then he said, “There’s somethin’ not right here, Frankie, and we gotta get to the bottom of that.”

He was right.

And that was not happening.

“Benny—” I started, but he cut me off.

“If you can’t do that yourself, you gotta let me in there so I can dig whatever is eatin’ at you out of you, baby.”

“I’m falling in love with you.”

Everything went still.

Silent and still.

Benny. Me. The air around us.

Dead still.

Then Ben wasn’t still. His expression changed again and he gave me beauty—pure, undiluted beauty—as his face warmed, his eyes went sweet, and he took a step toward me.

My hand shot up and I shouted, “Don’t come near me!”

“Baby, you lost a man and you—”

“No!” I yelled. “You think you understand but you don’t. It isn’t about losing Vinnie. It isn’t about me not bein’ strong enough to try again. It’s about you. It’s about the man who would come over to my house and shoot the shit with me, teasin’ me and makin’ me laugh while he ate my Christmas cookies. It’s about findin’ you and snuggling close for a Christmas picture, feelin’ warm and safe, family all around me. This could be good, what we could have—amazing, awesome, the best. And it could go bad. And then all that’s gone for me. You’re all I have. You’re all I ever had. And when I say that, I mean you and I mean your family.”