“That why you like this?” He moves his thumb against my nub, and I tighten my grip around his neck.
“I can’t stand the sight of you.”
“Then don’t look.”
In one move, he flips me onto my belly and pulls me half off the bed by the ankles. He spanks my poor bare ass with his palm, then the back of his hand, then spreads me apart and wedges himself along the slit between my legs.
“This better for you then?” His cock presses against my folds as he holds me down. The forced immobility triggers a rush of desire.
“What do you care?” I want him to take it without me giving it.
“I don’t.” He rests his cock where I’m wet, pausing his movement. “Tell me to stop. Tell me no.”
The opportunity to disobey and submit at the same time is not one I can turn away from. I could say I’m emotionally disengaged from what’s happening. I could tell myself there’s a coldly calculated plan underlying my resistance and the pleasure I get from it.
But those are lies. I’ve never been more fully present.
“Yes.”
He jams his cock into me so hard I bite back a scream of both pleasure and pain. The emotional gratification of complete physical surrender pushes up against my mental resistance. The friction between them is electric. He holds me down, pulls my hair, and fucks me as if I’m his property. His plaything. His birthright. Every thrust gets harder, asserting his dominance over deeper and deeper parts of me.
This isn’t a culmination of love, but the power to split me open and rip me apart—and I love it.
“Come on,” he grunts, riding me as if I’m a stubborn horse, grabbing my hip hard and pulling it into him while yanking my head back by the hair. “You going to be nice now?”
His reangled shaft goes deeper, rubbing new places, and all I can do is cry out when he reaches around and runs his fingertips against my swollen clit.
“That’s right,” he rumbles, going faster and deeper. “What I give. You. Take.”
Fuck him, but I can’t make words, just gasps, then whimpers, then finally a long groan as I shudder and come around him. He explodes so deep inside me, he’s writing his name on my soul.
Spent like his last dollar, I drop into a flat puddle. Without a word or moment to breathe, Santino pulls out while he’s still half-hard. I flip over, sore, used, empty and full, leaning back on my elbows, and watch him gruffly put his clothes back on.
“You are my wife.” He tucks his sex-slick cock into his pants. “You will cook for me. You will talk to me. You will trust me or you will be punished.”
“Being married to you is the punishment.”
Not impressed by my insult, he shrugs into his shirt. “You will suck my cock and you will open your legs for me.”
My knees relax apart as if obeying a command that my brain can’t filter out. I stop and consciously press them together.
Santino sees this, fixing his cuffs with a frown. “You will forgive me.”
“You going to open my heart for me too?”
With the quickness of a cat, he takes a knee in each hand and pushes them apart as far as they’ll go. As if he’s flipped an invisible switch, I’m lit up with desire.
“I will fuck you so blind you will never look at me this way again. I will fuck you so hard you won’t be able to speak another word of defiance. I am your husband. Do you understand? I can take what I want.”
“You can rot in hell.”
“I will. Every day I pray to God and the devil answers. You want me to rot in hell, but I don’t have to rot to know where my death will lead.” He lets me go, but my legs stay open for him, because I’m broken, and maybe I’ll rot with him. “We will go to mass tomorrow. Maybe you can light a candle for me.”
“Maybe you’ll get struck down at the door.”
Santino smirks and leaves.
I wait for the click of the lock, but it never comes, because despite my intentions, I’ve let him take me to his bed in his space.
The prison is no longer the house, and the warden isn’t Santino. It’s me, and I’m captive to the space between my legs.
I go to my own room to sleep. There, I dream that choices made are promises kept, and they have the power to overcome my body’s longings.
4
VIOLETTA
In the early morning, I am sore. The ache reminds me of that last morning in Italy—how I felt well-fucked. Like a woman. Like I could feel safe and satisfied being plundered. Now all it tells me is that I’m not as numb as I want to be.
The pool glimmers outside my bedroom window. How many summers did I spend sweating in my old bedroom, wishing I could go for a swim? Summer made me feel claustrophobic in a sheath of sticky skin. In front of the bedroom fan, I’d hitch up my long skirts and swing my bare legs or bend low, pulling down the neck of my shirt to dry the sweat between my breasts.
Santino’s palace is perfectly temperature-controlled, and still, I long for the sensation of managing my body’s own heat. So I slip into a bathing suit, hoping the chlorine or the cold will shock some sense into me. I doubt it though.
Dropping my towel onto a chaise, I stand at the edge of the pool. My shadow bends along the built-in steps, not quite touching bottom.
The pool is, inescapably, Santino’s domain.
When I step forward, the shadow follows, hitting the underwater floor. For this moment, I’m marking his place as my own. I submerge myself, and in the gurgle and whoosh of sound, I’m immediately flooded in memories. How he pressed me against the wall of the pool. Kissed me. Left me unsatisfied. How he teased me, tormented me, and denied me, knowing I wasn’t ready to surrender fully.
And then when I did, the pleasure. The frigid kiss of gelato on my tongue. His finger brushing my lip when he fed me oranges. That same hand under my clothes.
I surface with a gasp.
My phone is buzzing where I left it on one of the lounge chairs, and my heart leaps into my throat.
Santino. Who else texts me anymore? What could he want?
I get out of the pool and check it. To my surprise, it’s not my husband. Even better, it’s from someone I’m allowed to love. Scarlett.
—Finally home from Iceland! It was amazing!! Can’t wait to swap travel stories. I’m leaving for Monaco with my dad in a few days. Can we hang on Monday? —
My heart leaps a little. After weeks of isolation and terror and confusion, I can see Scarlett. I can finally get my head straight. I don’t let myself consider what I’ll tell her, how I’ll explain what my life is now.
But before I can respond, another text comes in, and this one is from the man himself.
—Wear what’s in the bag—
What bag?
As if to answer my question, Armando emerges from inside the house, a huge man with a gun under his jacket, carrying a girlish white shopping bag with pale pink tissue paper tufting up from its insides. Did Santino send an old-lady monstrosity fit for a pious wife? Or something sleek and slutty red, to remind me that even my blood was never my own?
With a thrust of my legs, I push myself out of the pool, water cascading down my shoulders and hips, so much more tender with me than my husband has ever been.