Her mother had already been dead to her by the time I’d come along. I’d just rid the world of one more deadbeat.
I stepped forward, my stomach brushing against her chest as I crowded her and walked her backwards until her spine touched the shower wall. She stared up at me. “It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d stolen her from your arms and slit her throat while you watched. I still wouldn’t let you go.”
“What is wrong with you?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper as I leaned my forearm against the shower wall above her head. I touched her chin briefly, sliding my finger down her body as her lungs heaved with the exertion of containing the adrenaline her anger caused.
I wanted to feed on her rage, to draw it inside me and claim it as my own.
“Everything, Butterfly. I’m a monster the same as any of the men in this house. I’m just your monster,” I said, digging my fingers into her hips as I turned her to face the shower wall. Her hands smacked against the wet tile, a shocked gasp leaving her lips as I pressed myself into her back.
Grinding my cock against her, I let her feel the effect her body and her anger had on me. “Can you feel that?” I asked, whispering the words against the skin of her neck as the hot water of the shower beat down on my back. The floor of the shower was still pink as the water erased the blood from my skin.
“Nope. I feel nothing,” she said, rolling her eyes in her frustration. The bratty comeback didn’t do anything but heighten my need to punish her, forcing me to gather her hair into a ponytail and yank her head so that she arched her back helplessly, fingers clawing at the wall.
My other hand came down in a sharp slap against the top of her ass.
“That is for running after Madison when she tried to leave,” I said, remembering the moment I’d seen the cars on the other side of the opening gate. The danger coming for my wife with her out of my reach had damn near given me a heart attack.
“Ow!” Irina yowled, the wetness of her flesh adding to the intensity of my spanking.
I did it to the other side, giving her matching handprints on each ass cheek. “That is for trying to fucking leave me.”
“Scar!” she shrieked. “I will gut you.”
Strikes three and four followed despite her words, delivered to the bottom of her ass as I watched the flesh jiggle from the force of them. “Those are for forgetting who you belong to and thinking you have any say in when we’re done. We’re done when I say we’re done, Butterfly. And that will only happen when I’m six feet under. Do you fucking understand me?”
She squealed as I slapped the tops of her thighs, covering her entire ass in my handprint and loving the way it looked against her skin. I’d have tattooed it there if I didn’t think she’d cut off my cock while I slept.
She spent far too much time with Aoife.
“I asked you a question, Irina. I don’t like to repeat myself,” I said, leaning down to capture her earlobe between my teeth.
“I understand,” she said through gritted teeth, making my cock leak with the need to be inside her. I lifted one of her legs, letting her balance herself against the shower wall as I drove up into her pussy in one hard thrust that forced her open for me.
She wailed, the sound reminding me of Darragh’s screams when she’d cut his balls off. Pulling back and thrusting in once again, I held her steady while I impaled her on my cock.
“Tell me this is my pussy,” I told her, fucking her so brutally that my balls throbbed every time they pounded against the red skin of her ass.
There was no response, her jaw clenched as if she could deny the pleasure. As if she could shut me out and not give me this.
But this was us, and she belonged on her knees.
“Only good girls get to come,” I said, watching as she hissed between her teeth. I released her hair, dropping my fingers to her clit and stimulating her enough to torment her but never send her headfirst into the orgasm I knew she wanted.
Even if she tried to deny it.
“Whose pussy is this?” I repeated, driving high and hard and dragging the head of my cock over that spot inside her that drove her wild.
“Fuck,” she cursed, turning her head back to face me. “Yours. It's your pussy, you asshole.”
Grinning at the confession and the look of rage on her face, I grabbed her jaw and held her still as my mouth crashed against the corner of hers. Fucking her brutally, devouring her mouth as if it was the last air on the planet and she was the only way I could survive, I claimed my wife all over again.
“Where do you want my cum?” I asked when I pulled away, watching as her eyes darkened as she warred with the decision. “In my pussy? Or your pretty little throat?”
“Yes,” she said, uncertainty crossing her features.
“Fucking hell,” I groaned, using two hands on her hips to shift her angle. I pounded into her pussy with everything I had, working her clit until she came around me. Pulsing and throbbing, her perfect cunt sucked the cum from my balls and drew my dick deeper into her.
I fucked her more, sliding through the sloppy mess I’d made as I waited for my cock to stop tingling. When I finally pulled out, I stared at the place where my cum trickled out of her.
Irina smiled at me as she dropped to her knees, touching her tongue to the scars on the top of my shaft. Licking me clean like a good girl. Putting herself exactly where she belonged.
On her knees with my cock in her mouth.
EPILOGUE
IRINA
Five months later
Matteo carried the urn through the property that had once been the Bellandi Estate. The building had been demolished, reduced to nothing but dirt on the ground in the months since the explosion left it unstable.
His eyes were heavy-lidded, his body weighed down by the exhaustion of the last few months.
War. Vengeance.
A city on fire.
The workers around the property had finished laying out the posts and structure of the foundation, the concrete mixing in the truck off to the side as we all walked behind Matteo in the funeral procession that Simon had deserved all those months ago.
Simon’s sister walked at Matteo’s side, her eyes wet and her lungs heaving as she tried to force down her tears. Even after five months, Simon’s loss was felt every single day. Every day that Luna looked for her father’s shadow. Every day that passed where Ivory grew bigger, and her due date approached.
Every day that Matteo’s new security couldn’t form any kind of personal relationship with him, his heart too set on not betraying the man who had given up everything for him.
Samara sang softly as we walked, her voice carrying through the void that had been our home. That would be our home in the future.
Matteo nodded as he stopped at the edges of the boundary where the foundation for the new house would be built, signaling the construction workers to start pouring the concrete.
As they laid the foundation, we all watched it spread over the designated area in a smooth flow. Matteo opened the lid on the urn, tipping it over so that Simon’s ashes joined the pouring cement.
He’d given everything to make sure the Bellandi legacy continued on. To make sure that Matteo lived to rebuild this place. It was only fair that he be a part of it forever, even in his absence. Fair that he was a part of the very foundation we built our home on.