11. Simone #3
Tristan looks at me, finishing his bite of salad and reaching for his wine glass without saying a word.
I force myself to hold his gaze, but his silent scrutiny makes me feel as if my skin might crawl away from my bones.
It feels ridiculous to be talking about this with him in such bland, euphemistic terms, but I can’t bring myself to be more explicit.
Not after the things he did to me last night.
Not when I can still remember how it felt when he made me come on his fingers this morning.
The tension is thick enough to cut with a knife when he finally speaks. "Visit your room," he repeats slowly.
I can already hear that this conversation isn’t going to go the way I planned, but I push forward anyway. “Yes. I’ll let you know when the time is optimal, and we can… fulfill the requirements of our arrangement. Efficiently.”
Tristan sets his wine glass down with a thud . “The requirements of our arrangement.”
“Are you a fucking parrot?” I snap at him without meaning to, the sound of his voice grating beyond what’s bearable.
“Yes. That’s what I said. We’ll handle this practically.
I’ll take care of the responsibility of tracking my cycle, I’ll let you know when you’re welcome in my room, and you can fuck me as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Once I’m pregnant, there’s no need to touch me again until you want another child. ”
“Hm.” Tristan regards me with a cool, blank expression that’s impossible to read.
I hate that I can’t easily figure out what he’s thinking, that it’s so difficult for me to manipulate him.
He looks as if he’s listening, but is only humoring me, and it makes my fingers curl into claws against the tablecloth.
“So you want to keep your own room. Sleep there, separately from me. And you want to schedule sex like a business meeting, and handle it just as promptly. In, out, and over as soon as possible.”
I take a slow, measured breath. I know this is bait, that he’s trying to get a rise out of me, and I fight to not give him what he wants. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
He smiles. “No.”
My teeth clench so hard that I feel like they might crack. “What the fuck do you mean, no ?”
The smooth line of his lips, curled up with humor, flattens.
“Curse at me again, célie , and I’ll make good on my promise to show you how I can put that mouth to better use.
Right here at the dinner table.” His cool green gaze meets mine.
“Is that what you’d like, Simone? For me to put you on your knees and have you pleasure me with your mouth while I eat my supper?
Suck my cock while the staff brings in the courses?
I imagine you could make me come before dessert, but since you’ve never had a cock in your mouth before, I can’t be sure… ”
“You can’t be serious.” I bite back the addition of fucking just in time…
no matter how much I want to ignore everything Tristan says to me, I can’t ignore the fact that there isn’t a chance that he wouldn’t do exactly what he’s promising.
My face burns at the thought of one of the staff, most of whom have worked here since I was a child, walking in on my new husband forcing me to suck him off under the dinner table.
And at the same time, a strange, curling sensation of heat slithers through my belly, a sensation I don’t understand and don’t want to think too long about.
“I’m very serious.” His gaze holds mine.
“You can have your own room,” he says finally.
“Sleep there if you want. I don’t want to worry about being stabbed in the middle of the night by my wife, and I don’t have any interest in cuddling.
” His mouth forms a thin line. “I want pleasure from you, Simone, and your submission. I want a dutiful mafia wife, as I was promised. And your duty , célie —since you clearly need it explained—is to let me use your body when I want to, to provide me with children, to keep this house in order, and to smile and look beautiful when I want to parade you in front of others. Your duty is to be pleasant, peaceful, and both elegant and gracious in public. So if you want your own room, fine. But as to the rest of it—no.” He shakes his head.
“I’ll fuck you when I please, Simone, and you will pleasure me in the ways I ask you to.
And if I tell you to come on my mouth or my fingers or my cock, you’ll come for me. Am I understood?”
I smile at him, just as pleasantly as he smiled at me moments ago. “No.”
His jaw tightens. “Simone?—”
“I’ll lock my door every night that I’m not ovulating if I have to.
Stay out of my room unless I tell you that I can get pregnant.
And no, I won’t come for you. I won’t get down on my knees for you.
I won’t do anything except what is absolutely required of me, which is, yes, to keep the house and hang off your arm at parties.
I was raised to do all of that impeccably.
I was also raised to know that I would need to provide my husband with heirs.
Aside from that?” I widen my smile. “My answer is no, Tristan. You get ten minutes inside of me to get your rocks off, a few days a month. Otherwise, figure out how to deal with your rampaging cock yourself.”
“Enough!” He throws his napkin down, rising from his seat, but I’m already out of mine. If he thinks he’s going to humiliate me in front of the staff tonight, he should think twice.
“I don’t want complications,” I say firmly, backing up and putting space between us. “This was an arrangement. My father’s empire for my life. It’s business, Tristan. So let’s keep it business-like.”
“Complications,” he repeats, rolling the word around in his mouth. “Like the way you were so fucking tight around my fingers this morning when you came for me? Like the way you drenched my hand, you were so fucking wet when you orgasmed?”
The clink of china makes me freeze before I can retort, and I squeeze my eyes shut, my face burning as I realize that the second course was being brought in. I can’t bring myself to turn around and look at the staff member behind me.
I reach forward, grabbing my wine glass and tossing back the red liquid.
Tristan didn’t need to put me on my knees under the table tonight to thoroughly humiliate me, and it’s clear that he realizes it from the insufferable smirk on his face.
“I’m not hungry,” I say flatly, and turn on my heel to stride out of the room.
I half-expect him to shout at me to stop as I flee—pointedly refusing to look the woman carrying two plates of salmon into the dining room in the eye—but he doesn’t.
He lets me go, and I can only imagine it’s because for tonight, at least, he’s won.
—
The more startling thing is that he doesn’t come to my bedroom that night, either.
I lock the door just in case, and I’m tense all the way until I fall asleep and probably after as well, waiting for him to bang on the door and demand entry.
Especially since he didn’t fuck me this morning, claiming he didn’t want me, which was a bold-faced lie. I felt and saw how hard he was.
But Tristan doesn’t appear. Not after dinner, and not in the morning either, to my surprise.
I don’t see a sign of him as I go down to breakfast, opting to eat in the kitchen again, and he doesn’t appear to taunt me during my workout.
I have a feeling I know what he’s doing—deliberately putting me on edge, like waiting for a jumpscare in a horror film—but there’s nothing I can do about it, so I go about my day as usual.
Which comes to a screeching halt after I shower and change, intending to go downtown and do some shopping to take my mind off of all of this.
I go to find the head of security, who turns out to now be a man named Vitto that I don’t know—another of Tristan’s replacements. “Where’s Luca?” I demand as soon as I’m introduced to Vitto. “I’m heading downtown. I need my usual security team to come with me.”
Luca has always led my security team—three men who go with me everywhere I go when I leave the estate—and has for years. But when I say his name, Vitto just frowns.
“Luca’s gone.”
My jaw clenches tight. “What do you mean, gone ?” I hiss through my teeth, but I could answer my own question. I just want to hear Vitto say it out loud. Tristan has replaced my security team, like he’s slowly replaced everyone else.
“Mr. O’Malley has designated a security team for you,” Vitto continues. “I’ll radio them and let them know they’re needed if…”
“Don’t bother,” I spit out, turning sharply on my heel as I stalk toward where I know Tristan has set up his office, my heels clicking on the marble floors as I go.
I know from Nora that Tristan opted to choose a different room in the house to be set up as his office, rather than taking over my father’s.
It’s a pattern that I’m seeing—he doesn’t want to slip into my father’s old shoes, he wants to trample all over his legacy with his own, replacing everything with his choices, his signature.
The last-minute remodel of the master suite, the changing of the guard—literally—the new office.
All of it speaks to Tristan wanting to make all of this his own, rather than taking over what already existed.
And the worst part of it is that deep down, in the most logical center of me, it all makes sense.
It might even be what I’d do, if I were in his shoes.
I think that’s what makes me the most angry—that despite how much I hate it all, if I think of it from his perspective, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same.
I don’t want it all to make sense. I just want to be pissed off, and I want Tristan gone.
I don’t bother to knock. His door isn’t locked, and unlike the days when my father was alive—when I wouldn’t have dared to walk into his office without being invited, much less unannounced—I storm directly inside, slamming the door behind me as I enter.
Tristan looks up from behind his long mahogany desk, not all that different from the one in my father’s office, I think dryly.
He doesn’t flinch, only lets his gaze glide over me, a look of heated appreciation for my appearance gleaming in his eyes.
I immediately wish I’d chosen something different for my planned shopping trip.
I picked out a black eyelet lace sundress with a red ribbon threaded through the low bodice, my dark hair loose and wavy, and I can see Tristan’s eyes resting on my breasts with unhurried desire.
He finally looks up again, meeting my eyes, and tilts his head slowly. “What did I do to deserve such a pleasant surprise, célie ?”
“Knock it off,” I snap. “Why the fuck did you replace my security team?”
His smile drops. “What did I say about your mouth?”
“I’m not in the mood for games.” I glare at him. “My security team has been with me for years, Tristan. I trust them. I didn’t want them fired.”
He looks at me coolly. “It’s not about what you want, Simone. I didn’t know them. I didn’t trust them. And certainly not with my wife.”
My teeth grind together. “That should have been my decision.”
“No.” He says the word flatly. “I trust my own men with my wife. Men my father knows, men I’ve trained with, men I’ve known for years. Not strangers.”
“They weren’t strangers to me! Now I have strangers guarding me?—”
“Men who are loyal to me,” Tristan corrects, and it’s all I can do not to stalk up to the desk and spit in his face.
“That’s what this is about. Controlling me. Making sure that the men following me around are loyal to you, and not to me. So that they’ll spy on me, tattle on me, tell you anything you ask, and do anything you say, regardless of how I feel about the matter!”
“Exactly.” Tristan’s gaze is impassive, which only makes me angrier.
“ You can’t be trusted, Simone. You married me out of fear for your life, and you’ve made it very clear every step of the way that you resent being put in that position.
You treat me like an imposition and you want nothing more than to place boundaries on our marriage that I never agreed to.
” He pauses, taking a slow inhale. “You need to be reminded of your place, célie , and of what it is that you agreed to.”
“I agreed to marry you,” I reply sharply, through gritted teeth. “Not to be your pet. Not to have my security replaced without my permission. Not to be constantly threatened?—”
Tristan smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“You haven’t begun to be threatened by me, banphrionsa .
I would think, after Konstantin’s ultimatum, that you would know what a threat is.
But it seems you still need a lesson.” The smile doesn’t fade.
“And if you were my pet, Simone, I would keep you on a tighter leash.”
“I’m done with this conversation.” I shake my head sharply. “I want my security back. And I want?—”
“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear.” A muscle ticks in Tristan’s jaw, and for a moment I see something flash in his eyes—something that almost looks like uncertainty.
But it’s gone so soon that I can’t be sure.
“ I am in charge here, Simone. Not you. And if it’s going to continue to be a battle of wills, I promise it’s one that you will lose sooner than you think. ”
A chime comes from his computer, and he glances over, letting out an irritated breath.
“I have a teleconference with Konstantin in five minutes, Simone. So I’ll give you a choice.
You’ve stormed into my office without permission, interrupted my day, and it’s clear that you need a reminder of who it is that you belong to.
So—you can get on your knees under this desk, get my cock out, and do your best to make me come with your mouth while I have this meeting. Or…”
He trails off, and I stare at him, shock painted across my face. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly serious, célie ,” he growls. “Or I can spank you for your insolence. I’ll find both equally pleasurable, I’m sure.” He smirks at me, reaching down to adjust himself without shame—and despite everything, I feel a tingle run down my spine.
He’s gorgeous, and masculine, and utterly confident, and I hate that I feel heat pooling in my belly as I look at him, my thighs squeezing together at how potent a mixture it all is. Tristan smiles at me, and I glare at him, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.
“Your choice, célie ,” he says lazily, watching me from behind the desk. “Which will it be?”