“Hmm,” he says almost thoughtfully. “Now why would you think a good wife wasn’t important to me?”
“Because you took me for your own.” He didn’t know who I was. He could’ve had his pick of women he chose, but instead, he took the first one owed to his family as an act of retribution. “You took me for retribution. A payoff. I’m no more than loot from war or a stack of bills. You didn’t weigh your options or do your research. I’m no fool, Ottavio.”
“You were foolish enough to hide from me today, knowing you’d be punished and that I’d only watch you more closely.”
I shrug a bare shoulder, keenly aware of how close he is to me, his mouth and his tongue and his fingers.
Keenly aware of how easily this could turn.
“You call it foolish. I call it intentional.”
From my peripheral vision, I watch him shake his head from side to side. “Ah, lovely. You make a mockery of me? After I’ve whipped and humiliated you?” I don’t think I imagine the warning in his tone, but how much more could he do to me?
He can whip and humiliate me all he wants. It won’t faze me. Whereas other women may be scared of the tactics of a man like him, I’ve known them from the cradle.
“Not a mockery, no,” I say honestly.
“Then what?” He stands and grabs the towel from the floor and fists it in his palm.
I don’t respond. I’m not sure how to. I’m not sure why I did it, but it wasn’t to mock him. This is far too serious a venture for me to treat it so lightly.
“You wanted my attention, Elise? That’s what you wanted?”
I did. Reluctantly, I nod, even though I already recognize the danger in his voice.
“Stand up, then.”
I stand, slowly uncurling myself like I’m waking from a dream. My breasts feel strangely full and tingly, and my skin feels heated and alive.
“Turn around.”
I turn around unhurriedly, apprehension flooding my limbs. I stare at my future husband. My strapping, furious fiancé.
I take in all of him. His sturdy shoulders decorated with ink, the Rossi rose on his inner forearm. The flourish of tattoos along his neck and chest, the smattering of dark black hair. Though he has the Rossi family dark blue eyes, there’s a coldness to his that distinguishes him from the rest. Whereas Romeo’s the Boss, Orlando the group Enforcer, Tavi’s the brains behind everything they do, I know it.
And that might make him the most dangerous of them all.
He crooks a finger at me.
I face him squarely, unblinking, as I walk to him. I’ve got nothing to lose.
When we’re standing so close our toes touch, I have to tip my head back to look up at him. We’re both stripped. Naked. My family would castigate us for this before our wedding night, but here, it doesn’t matter. We’ve broken so many rules we’ve rewritten the script.
His cock juts in front of him at full mast, and my pussy clenches in response. We could be Adam and Eve in Eden for all our bodies know. I don’t care right then who he is or what he’s done. My body’s on fire with primal need.
“You want me to watch you? You want my attention?” His voice is hoarse and rough, just like him. “You’ve got it, baby.” I hear the mockery in his tone, but it doesn’t stop me from liking it.
“Touch yourself,” he orders.
I don’t need to be asked twice. I obey immediately, grateful for the pressure of my fingers on my slick folds. But the truth is, I don’t want to be the one touching myself. I want his rough fingers again. I want that stern glare in his eyes to soften when he makes me come. I want—
His phone blares in the silence, a resounding sound like a siren. Still watching me, he turns and fetches it from the table beside the door, then walks back to me as he answers it. I freeze when he takes the call, but he quickly mouths, “Don’t fucking stop.”
My mouth partly opens as I touch myself and he takes his call.
“Yeah?” He listens, but his eyes are on me. I work myself faster and harder, and when I reach for my nipples to squeeze them, bliss floods my limbs, the first shock shuddering through me. He reaches for his own thick cock and gives a languid stroke.
“Jesus,” he mutters.
I pause only for a split second before I start stroking again. I need this. I want the release. He’s told me to touch myself and worked me this far, I’m not stopping now. A little sliver of fear warns me that he could command me to stop at any minute, but God, it will be worth another punishment just to defy him and make myself come.
I close my eyes, lost to sensation, stroking myself faster, circling my clit and pinching my nipples. I don’t even stop when he reaches for me and sits on a stool by the kitchen. He tugs me onto his lap while I work my climax, muttering in Italian and English, grunting answers and asking questions.
I’m right on the edge but can’t bring myself there. I whimper and tense, so close I want to lose all control, but I’m frozen on the edge of release, when he sinks his teeth into the muscle at the base of my neck and shoulder and bites.
I shatter. I burst into flames. Stars blind my vision and I gasp and moan, bliss flooding me in a sudden vicious torrent.
He mutters into the phone. “Be there in ten. I’m bringing the girl with me.”
I open my eyes and see an unfamiliar shade. I blink, but don’t move. After what I’ve been through in the past few months, I’m used to waking in a place I don’t remember right away. I’ve learned it’s better to come to your senses while lying totally still.
I feel around me on instinct to see if I’m alone in the bed, and find my wrists are not secured as they have been. I can move my arms freely. I pat behind me and all around me. I’m alone in a large, cavernous bed, one of the biggest I’ve ever seen, and definitely the biggest I’ve ever slept in.
Definitely alone.
A wave of grief hits me so hard I close my eyes, immediate tears blurring my vision. My nose stings and my throat burns. There was a time not that long ago when I’d feel Piero’s warm, comforting body beside me. I bury my face in my pillow and stifle my cries. I don’t know where I am, and don’t yet remember how I got here, but I know I don’t have the luxury of dwelling in grief right now.
And then I remember.
Tavi brought me here last night. Tavi, my enemy.
My future husband.
The tears start afresh.
I sit up, oblivious to the time or where exactly I am, but when I open the shade, I see Tuscany’s singular landscape giving way to rolling hills that lead to mountaintops, nature’s border between Tuscany and the southern regions of Italy. Tuscany any time of year is beautiful. In April, it’s simply breathtaking.
I go to lift the window, because I long to fill my lungs with the warm, fresh air of an early Tuscan spring, but find it locked. I frown and flick the lock, as if something so simple would make a difference. Of course I’m locked in here. That I can walk freely is a miracle in and of itself.
Still, I can see for miles outside this window, a luxury I haven’t had in months.
From here, I can see a vineyard, though I don’t know which one. There are as many vineyards as there are gardens here in my homeland, the place my heart longs to live. Here in Tuscany, I learned to read with the help of tutors. Here, my father had a lover who kept him occupied and left me mostly to my own devices, unlike when we went home to America. In America, I was like a pesky scab he liked to pick until it bled.