Chapter 5 - Stefano
Staring at the shredded side of my Mercedes, I can feel my anger growing darker.
The car is a complete write-off. Bullets have ripped apart the outer layers and smashed against almost all of the windows. The spiderwebs of broken glass are still solid but useless.
Thank fuck for the bulletproof panels; otherwise, neither of us would have come out of that alive. I feel a low growl building in my chest and rumbling from my mouth. I am beyond furious. The fucking audacity of those assholes.
I know exactly who the fuck it was. And I plan to hunt him down and do as I promised on that phone call we had the other day. It looks as though he is taking his anonymous threats to the next level, and tonight he actually came dangerously close to achieving exactly what he promised to do to me—to erase me from this city. But he also put my wife in danger, and that has a whole other level of implications that he is now going to have to face.
Movement pulls my eyes away from my car and towards Darya as she stomps towards the front door. The low-cut back of her wedding dress shows off her delicate spine as she walks away from me. My eyes trace over her skin with heated desire. At least I know one way to get rid of this frustration I am feeling after being shot at.
I can see she is upset, too. Of course she would be. Any normal human would be shaken by that experience. She looks as pale as a ghost, and her entire body is tense with worry. I can’t blame her. This is not the first night that I envisioned having with her, either.
Those assholes attacked us on our wedding night.
Technically, I could call one of her brothers right now, and they would have that car hunted down by morning and shredded. But she is my wife now, and I want to show her that I am capable of taking care of her without running to her family for help every time something goes wrong. She needs to learn to rely on me for everything. The more she needs me, the more she will have to keep me around.
I will not ask for help with this. I will solve this myself instead of relying on the Dubrovs.
I head to the entrance and lean over her to push the front door open. In doing so, I catch the scent of her perfume. She has this enticing warmth about her that comforts me. She sparks intense passion in me, an obsession that drives me crazy, but also, she has this way of flooding me with an unexpected warmth. I want to breathe her in.
She steps inside the house, and I follow, closing the door behind us.
I watch her face as she looks around, taking the space in.
It is definitely not the luxury she is accustomed to.
She gathers up her dress in her hands. I can see that they are shaking slightly, but she is keeping it together. Should I comfort her? She is so cold towards me—I can’t imagine that she wants my comfort.
She walks through to the living room area, taking a seat on edge of the sofa. I watch her as she pulls her dress up over her legs and leans forward to undo her shoes. Her slender legs look silky and smooth, and I picture myself running my hands over them, sliding my touch beneath the layers of her dress on the inner side of her thighs.
“Who was that?” she asks, pulling me out of my daydream.
“Who?” I ask, confused.
She leans up and glares at me. “The people who just shot at us, obviously?” she says indignantly.
“Leave it alone. I will sort it out.” I don’t want to be dragged into a conversation with her about the threatening phone calls being linked to the attack. She doesn’t need to worry about that kind of stuff. That is for me to worry about and fix.
“I didn’t ask if you were going to sort it out, I asked you who it was.”
I know if I tell her it was one of the people who has been threatening me, she will tell her brothers, and they will either come rushing over here or send a car to fetch her. She is mine tonight; she does not belong to any one else right now.
“It isn’t something you have to worry about, Darya; I said I would sort it out and I will.”
She huffs and turns her attention back to her shoes, slipping her feet out of them and rubbing her hands over her feet to massage them for a moment.
“What are we going to do?” she asks without looking up at me.
I can tell she is still really shaken—despite the coldness in her body language, she looks scared. “Would you like a drink? I am going to pour myself a whiskey.”
She sighs. “Yes, thank you.”
“What would you like?”
“A whiskey on the rocks.”
I chuckle. “You never did strike me as being a whiskey girl,” I grin.
“Just another example of how you know nothing about me,” she replies with a snarky undertone.
I shake my head and walk across the living room to pull out two glasses from the bar against the wall. I pour us each a double whiskey and toss a couple of ice blocks into the golden liquid.
When I carry the drink over to Darya, I notice that she is looking around with her brows knotted together. “Here,” I say, handing her the glass.
She sips it, closing her eyes for a moment as the alcohol burns down her throat. I do the same, letting it warm my chest, and ease away some of the tension from what happened on the drive here.
“How long do you think we should wait before it is safe for us to leave here and go home?”
The look on her face is one of concern, mixed with something else that I can’t read. The way she was taking in this space, I can only imagine that it is because she is used to a far more luxurious surrounding than this. Perhaps she doesn’t want to stay here because it doesn’t meet her usual standards.
“We aren’t going back out there tonight. The car is a wreck. We will stay here, and in the morning, I’ll decide what to do. It isn’t safe to be on the road again anyway. There is nothing wrong with where we are.”
She takes a deep, frustrated breath. Is she really that shallow? This isn’t exactly a luxury villa, but it is still a very expensive and modern space.
“What? It isn’t five-star enough for you?” I say dryly, taking a bigger swig of the whiskey.
“Excuse me?” she sounds confused.
“The place—it isn’t up to your standards? You would have preferred silk sheets and gold chandeliers?” I can’t seem to hide the annoyance in my voice.
“Stop being so childish,” she snaps at me, downing her entire glass of whiskey. I stare at her in disbelief, and she places the glass on the table and turns to glare at me again. “I just don’t want to stay here. It has nothing to do with this place. It’s just—it’s because—"
She bites her lower lip, sending waves of heated lust through my body.
“It’s because what? What is the problem?”
I stand next to the sofa, over her, looking down at her. Her bright blue eyes are wide and glittering fiercely as she stares back up at me. Fuck. I just want to take her right here on the sofa. I want to flip her over the back of the chair and fuck her from behind with her wedding dress wrapped around her waist.
I clench my fist. The first time I am with her, tonight, I will go slower, be more tender. It doesn’t have to be so raw and aggressive. I am just feeling so desperate to taste her—but I have to keep that under control at least to a degree.
She wrestles with whatever is on her mind, and then sighs heavily.
“I don’t want to stay here with you. I want my own room,” she admits finally, and the reality of what is worrying her slams into me. She isn’t stressed about being here in a strange place or the luxury of it. She isn’t worried about where she is at all. She is only concerned about not sharing a bed with me.
She thinks she is too good for me.
She thinks I am beneath her. She is too highly ranked to sleep with a commoner like me.
I feel the snarl forming on my lips.
She can think twice if she believes we are not going to fuck tonight.
I am just as good as any man she has set her sights on or ever been with, and I will prove that to her in the bedroom. In fact, I know I am better in the bedroom than anyone she has experienced.
She is my wife, and she is mine for the rest of her life.
We will finalize this union whether she wants to do it or not.
“You want your own room?” I snap. My voice raised and booming through the space.
She flinches slightly but then looks even more defiant.
“I want my own room,” she nods, turning her head slightly in caution as she answers. She knows she is pushing her luck with this. I have already made myself clear in the car on the way here—we are married, and we will be sharing a bed tonight. There is no further discussion to be had, so the fact that she is still trying to get out of this is starting to really piss me off.
I reach down and grab her arm, stepping back and pulling her to her feet. She stumbles against me and cries out.
“Come on then, let’s go find you a bed.” I say darkly.
“Stef—"
“No, let’s give you what you want.” I start dragging her down the hallway, past the different rooms, towards the one I know has the largest and most extravagant bed in it.
I push her ahead of me, through the doorway, and into the bedroom. I flick the lights on, keeping them dimmed low.
She spins on her heels and glares at me with hatred. “Don’t ever push me around like that,” she shouts.
“Take it off,” I demand.
“What the—"
“I said take it off,” I demand again, nodding my head to gesture over her wedding dress with my eyes.
“Leave,” she shouts. “Get out.”
I step closer to her, my body right up against hers. The heat between us is fierce and intense. I wrap my hand around her jaw and tilt her face up to look at mine. I lean close, my lips inches from hers.
“Strip, Darya. I want to fuck my wife tonight,” I whisper darkly.
Her eyes grow so wide I can see the entire dreamland of blue within them. My cock is already growing hard at the thought of thrusting into her. I have waited too long for this. I have been watching her and dreaming about her, obsessing. I can’t wait another night.
There is some internal battle going on behind her eyes, and I keep my gaze locked with hers as it plays out in her mind. No matter what she decides, she agreed to be my wife, and in doing so, she knew this was part of the deal.
She bites her bottom lip, and my cock begins to throb.
Then she steps away from me, and her fingers drift up her side, over her slender waist, and start to slowly pull the zipper of her wedding dress open. My heart begins to thunder more wildly than it has ever beaten before. I walk over to the single armchair near the bed and sit down.
“Here, stand closer to me,” I command, and she obeys without argument. This pleases me deeply. I lean back in the chair with my legs spread and rub my hand over my mouth, fighting back the urge to rip the dress off her body myself.
She is moving slowly, seductively. I don’t know if she realizes it, but she is teasing me near dangerous levels, and it is only going to make me fuck her harder when the time comes.