“I missed your smart mouth.” He covers the distance between us. I’m still lying in his bed, surrounded by his scent. Drowning in a sea of Lorenzo King.
“Not enough to come back downstairs like you told me you would.”
“Who let you out of the cell?” he asks again.
“Eli did…” I’m so close to telling him the rest. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but then I imagine him reacting. Imagine how he would laugh at me, maybe even tell me I should have let Eli have his way with me. I couldn’t bear hearing that, so I keep my mouth shut.
Enzo simply nods, not seeming too mad about me being here, or Eli letting me out.
As he steps closer, I smell the bourbon from his drink as he swirls the brown liquid in his glass. The motion mesmerizes me, putting me in a trance. The liquid sloshes over the side, and eventually, he brings the glass to his lips, drinking from it. His lips lick at his drink as if he wants to get every last drop.
“Are you going to tell me who she was?”
He sets the now empty glass down on the nightstand and starts to undress.
When he is down to his boxers, and his clothes are in a pile next to the bed, he climbs onto the bed. The next moment, his body covers mine, caging me in, surrounding me. The monster has captured his prey. His gaze skims over my lips and up my face before landing on mine again.
“I see the jealousy swirling around in your big brown eyes. It’s cute, in a way. But there’s something you must know about me. I don’t care if something bothers you.” He is whispering now. His liquored breath fanning out over my face.
“I’m the king,” he continues. “I do whatever the fuck I want.” Every word forces more of his hot breath onto my face. I want to bite him just to see what he tastes like. As fucked up as all this is, I want him. I want him even when he tells me he doesn’t give a fuck about what I think.
“No. You’re a prick. A self-righteous prick who thinks he is a king, when in reality, you’re nothing but a sad man who can’t love and can’t let go of the anger that’s eating him up inside.” My words are laced with so much hate. I feel like I am trying to make myself like him less as if saying the words aloud will make him less appealing to my body and to my heart.
The air shifts around us, and my skin feels as if it is on fire. Enzo stares at me with an expression that I can’t read. I half expect him to hit me or throw me over his shoulder and take me back downstairs. Instead, he just looks at me for what seems like an eternity. I can’t tear my eyes away from his.
I open my mouth to say something, but Enzo wraps his hand around my throat, cutting me off before a single word has left my lips.
The air hangs between us, and I look down at his hand, clasping it. He pushes me to the back of the headboard, and I can feel the oxygen deprivation.
“I’m not scared of you,” I wheeze out. Even if I am going to die, I will do it in a fashion that is me. He will know I died unafraid of him, and to me, that is the most important thing.
A war rages within him as his muscles constrict. He can’t decide if he wants to strangle me or not… He unclasps his hand, and I swallow a breath of air just in time. His hand clenches again, and I swear I feel the bones in my neck snap.
Or maybe it is all a dream. I know the moment he makes his decision because a softness shows in his eyes.
“You should be…” he mumbles against my throat as he kisses the bruises that I’m sure are there. There is a tenderness in the way he caresses me. It is as if he is trying to scrub away the bad, like he wants to take the hurt away. He is conflicted and fucked up. I can’t even begin to fully describe him.
“I’m not scared of you anymore, and if I was, I wouldn’t show that kind of weakness to you.”
“Being scared doesn’t make you weak…” His eyes glaze over, hazy with a memory, I’m sure. He had to have had a fucked up childhood to have turned into the beautifully damaged man he is. He never speaks of his mother or father.
“In the eyes of a monster like you, it does.” His lips lick over one of my bruises and trails up to my ear. The hairs on the back of my neck stand, and I feel a surge of adrenaline go through me. His teeth nibble at my lobe, and I feel myself growing weak against him. My defenses are nothing when it comes to the things he can do with his mouth.
I want him. Despite how mean and ugly he is on the inside, my body craves him.
“You forget that every fallen angel was good at some point. Monsters don’t really want to be monsters. We just become this way. We’re just like everyone else, waiting for someone to come save us from our very own damned darkness.”
I pull away from him, frazzled and warm with need. Confusion must be evident on my face, he looks at me smiling. Maybe Addy was right. And maybe Enzo himself knows it.
“Why did you tell me that?”
I’m still wondering if someone so dark and hateful can actually come back from that? My mind goes straight to the moment I watched him shoot those people in their heads. The light in him had diminished and left in its place is a gaping hole of nothing.
A single treacherous tear runs down my face as I mourn those people I didn’t even know. Enzo leans down and kisses that tear away before he flops down on the spot beside me.
“Go to sleep, piccolo,” he whispers into the shell of my ear and pulls me into his chest.
Immediately, I relax, letting him soothe me even though he shouldn’t be able to. He should make me feel worse, not better.
Closing my eyes, I take in a deep breath. Letting sleep find me is easy, now I just need to be able to keep the nightmares away.
15
Amara
This time, I wake up before he does. Enzo’s body is wrapped around mine like a protective cocoon. I don’t think I could get up even if I wanted to, which I don’t. If it was up to me, I would stay exactly like this all day.
A deep rumbling groan fills my ears, and Enzo stirs next to me. I cuddle into his hold, not knowing if he’ll let me sleep in here again tonight.
“You smell nice,” he murmurs against my skin, his voice still dipped in sleep.
“You too…” I bury my face into his chest. “Don’t make me go downstairs again.”
“Don’t disobey me again.”
“I’m trying. It’s not that easy to abandon everything I’ve been all my life, to disregard my morals and values for human life. I can’t just change with a snap of a finger, nor do I want to. I can’t erase my mind or my feelings and become someone else. You wanted me here. If you don’t like who I am, you should have asked for something else as payment.”
He doesn’t say anything in return, probably because he knows I’m right. I can’t simply become the person who he wants me to be. Just like he can’t turn into the one I need him to be.
We lie in silence a while longer. Our limbs entwined and bodies giving each other warmth and comfort. I almost fall back asleep when Enzo untangles himself from me and gets out of bed.
“Get dressed so we can go and have breakfast.”
“Will Alessandra be joining us for breakfast?” I don’t mean to say her name with so much venom, but… never mind, I did.