He’s wrapped in an ivory towel. The bastard had me strip and lay over the couch while he took a shower.
The terry cloth is thick and soft but slightly damp, and he’s naked from the waist up.
I want to observe every detail. I want to run my eyes along his tattooed arms and neck and chest, the curve of his biceps, the tight abs and strapping shoulders. If he’s to be mine, at least I should get to play a little.
When I was a little girl, my Nonna used to tell me a good luck fairy would smack babies with her magic wand to make them handsome or beautiful. I thought it an odd Italian tradition, but accepted it. And now all I can think is, Tavi got whacked good and hard.
I turn my head and look back at the couch.
“I like you in this position.” He gently grinds himself against me. Heat suffuses my core.
“Am I allowed to respond or are we still doing that silent thing?”
A pause before he responds. “Depends. What were you going to say?”
“Just that I’m not surprised you like me in this position.”
“A pointless observation.”
“A pointless position.”
Without warning, his palm slams against my ass so hard I lose my breath. I come up on my toes as pain explodes along my skin, and he smacks me again. And again.
Fuck.
Prelude to my punishment, or is this the punishment itself?
I hiss in a breath and brace my hands on the couch when he pauses, unwraps the towel from his waist, and twists it into a rope. I know what he’s going to do right before he steps back, flicks his wrist, and sends the wet end of the towel curling toward me like a whip.
The whack resounds in the room. The pain is deep, it burns. I hold my breath when he wraps it around his fist, spins it, and whips it again, then again, each flick more painful than the last, the crack against my ass deafening.
“Ow! God, that fucking hurts.”
I imagine locker-room jocks whack each other with towels, but I’ve never been struck by one. I’ve never been struck by anything. It hurts a lot more than I would have anticipated, probably like an actual whip.
“Of course it does. Don’t you ever fucking hide from me again.”
Whap.
Tears blur my vision, but I blink them back. I won’t cry, not from this.
The towel hisses through the air and whips me again.
I nod. “Fine,” I manage to hiss out. “I won’t.”
I gasp when he grips my hips again. The towel falls to the floor, the goddamn traitorous thing. His hard cock juts against my ass, unencumbered with the towel between us. “Why did you?”
“Hide?” My voice is choked, my whole body tense as I don’t know what he’s going to do next.
“Yeah, Elise. Hide.”
After taking that spanking, I feel like he’s torn away a layer between my mouth and brain. I couldn’t lie to him now if I wanted to. And what benefit is there to hiding the truth?
“I wanted you to pay attention. I feel like I’m nothing but an object to you. I wanted to rattle you.” It’s the bald truth and sounds so stupid when I say it out loud.
“Yeah?” he asks, as he lays his body down over mine. “Is this enough attention for you?” My ass throbs, and deep, deep in my core, my sex pulses from his nearness, his scent, and if I’m honest, the spanking he just gave me. It hurt like hell, but it doesn’t mean I’m not all kinds of aroused because of it.
I nod. “I guess, yeah.”
“You fucking played my family.” His fingers splay me open, and I gasp at the rough, unabashed feel of them. He spreads me wide before he teases my slit. “I won’t allow that.”
I nod mutely. “It’s more complicated.” My clit throbs, but he’s circling the edge of my channel, teasing me harder. He spreads my juices up my ass. It’s filthy and sensual and so deeply erotic I’m breathless. I’ve never been violated like this before, never been treated like a sex object, and damn if it doesn’t make me feel wanton and sexy. “It had nothing to do with your family and everything to do with mine.”
His fingers work their magic, slicking my ass. I feel the very tip of his cock right there, circling the tight ring of muscle. I hold my breath, my whole body tense.
Will he?
“I should fuck you, right here, right now,” he says in an angry, furious whisper. “I should fuck you into submission.”
He could. We both know he could. We also both know that it isn’t allowed, that we consummate our marriage on our wedding night.
But I’m not allowed to come to the wedding bed “defiled,” either. I didn’t bring my virginity here, and he likely knows it. I haven’t followed the rules. Any of them.
It’s the only saving grace. If I’d come to him traditionally and he found I wasn’t a virgin, he’d have the right to cast me back to my father, and I’d pay dearly. I’ve heard of such things happening before, but didn’t care in the heat of the moment with Piero. But I have no father to take me back, and my family’s disowned me. They want as little to do with the Rossis as possible, so here I am, whether he likes it or not.
I can sense that he’s warring with himself. I don’t reply.
If he wants to fuck me right here, he can. If he wants to toy with me, he can. I can’t stop him. All I can do is make the most of this, seek pleasure where he’ll let me.
To my surprise, he falls to his knees behind me.
“Bellissima,” he murmurs, before he curses up a blue streak.
“Grazie,” I reply before I think my answer through.
I don’t expect his snort, like an almost-laugh. I’m so shocked, I jump. I bite my lip when I feel his mouth on my ass, kissing the skin he just whipped.
“Why are you laughing?” I whisper, my voice husky, a surprise even to me. I almost convinced myself he wasn’t capable.
“Because I didn’t expect you to respond so graciously. You’re naked and welted.”
Welted!
His tongue licks the welts on my ass, before he kisses them again. I close my eyes against the rush of heat in my chest. I feel it cascade over my cheeks, tendrils licking my core. “You’re so wild and willful, yet you pull out the Italian delicacies like fine china.”
I shrug. I’m used to being treated like a second-class citizen, though he’s definitely the first to ever get a cock involved.
“Le ragazze spiritose—sono sempre ottime spose,” I say in perfect Italian.
“Ah, you speak Italian.”
I nod. Of course I do. It was expected of me.
“You think humor makes for a good wife?” Of course he knows Italian, too.
“I think many things make for a good wife, but I doubt a good wife is important to you.”
He kisses me again, but I don’t trust his gentle caresses. No, he has a purpose in this. I know from my upbringing never to trust an Italian man. They seduce anything with breasts and a pussy as easily as they walk.
Piero was the exception to the rule.
All others used a play of kindness like flattery, an Italian man’s easiest tool to get in your pants. And I’ve been around here long enough to know his brothers are no different from the men I grew up with. Mario especially flatters his next lay with the ease of an angel.
I know better. I know a devil in disguise.