Chapter 2 #2
She made no effort to help. Made no reaction at all, not when he covered her breast with the palm of his hand and gently felt the weight and softness hidden beneath the silk shirt she wore, nor when he idly rubbed his thumb over the peak and felt it harden at his touch.
The mannequin made no reaction until Elio slid his fingers through her silky hair and brought his mouth to hers, and she turned her cheek before he could make contact with her lips.
Framing her face with his hands, he gently pulled her stare back to his. She’d closed her eyes.
“Look at me,” he ordered quietly.
Mutinous soft blue eyes locked on his. The plump lips he’d fantasised about too many to count had compressed into another tight line.
He brought his mouth to hers again, holding her cheeks so firmly she couldn’t turn away. It wasn’t just her hair that smelled of marshmallow. Her skin did too. It was softer than even his imaginings had conjured.
Siena closed her eyes again and held her breath.
Grinding her toes into her heeled shoes, she worked to block her senses and return herself to the place in her head she’d found when she was fourteen and pinned to a wall.
It was a moment in her life she rarely allowed herself to return to, a moment she’d relegated in her mind to experience, one she would never allow to happen again.
But though she’d long ago shoved it far from the forefront of her mind, the fear and disgust she’d experienced were never far from rising back inside her, capable of being triggered by something as innocuous as a whiff of onion on someone’s breath.
The mouth moving on hers was firm. Determined.
The stubble from his beard tickled her chin.
Although she wasn’t breathing, she could smell coffee and the remnants of his cologne and something else, something undefinable.
She could still feel the light mark of Elio’s hand on her breast and the sensation of his tongue on her neck.
She squeezed her eyes and pulled her lips in tighter. She didn’t want to feel anything, would not give him the satisfaction of any kind of response, good or bad. She would kill him with her indifference.
But there was the strangest warmth tingling in the pit of her stomach, and she was painfully aware her heart was racing. Painfully aware, too, that keeping her lips compressed was taking all her concentration.
His hands now buried in her hair, the firm lips skimmed over her cheek.
His warm breath danced over the sensitive skin of her ear.
“Is this how it’s going to be, my little wife?
” He pulled his head back. She could feel his eyes boring into her.
“Are you going to spend our wedding night acting like a mannequin?”
Fisting her hands, she opened her eyes. “You’re a stranger to me,” she said stonily.
“We both know that isn’t true, and now I’m your husband. You knew what you were signing up for.”
Through the pounding of her heart, she held his stare. “Then take it. Rip my clothes off and force yourself inside me. That’s how you get your kicks, isn’t it? Breaking women?”
She felt the slightest tightening of the fingers still buried in her hair, and for the first time, detected a flash of emotion in his silver eyes. Fear coiled up her spine, but she swallowed it and tightened her fisted hands.
Slowly, silkily … menacingly … he said, “I have never forced myself on a woman in my life.”
Refusing to allow herself to be intimidated, she smiled. “Really? But that was what you intended for my cousin. You planned to break her into being exactly what you wanted her to be.”
He gazed into her eyes for the longest time before bringing his mouth back to her ear.
“Then it is as well that you stepped into her place, isn’t it, wife?
You swooped in like a guardian angel to save the sweet little virgin from the hell I would have put her through.
” He pulled back to look into her eyes again.
“How much did it sting when you discovered the sweet, virgin cousin you were saving had fallen in love with a man who’s screwed his way around Europe? ”
“Better she falls for a man-whore who returns her feelings than have her life ruined by a monster who wants only to break her.”
“So you stepped in as tribute to volunteer yourself to be broken? How…” His lips curved mockingly. “Selfless.”
Her mouth filling with the bile of her loathing, she didn’t respond.
Sliding his hands out of her hair, he palmed them slowly down her neck like a sculptor examining his work for imperfections. “You think you are strong enough to withstand me, wife?”His fingers followed the V of her shirt’s collar to the top button and undid it.
“You disgust me,” she said, fighting with everything she had to keep her voice even. “If you take me, it will be rape.”
His laughter at this was as mocking as everything else about him. “You agreed to this marriage, Siena.” His fingers trailed a line over her breasts. “I made my vows, and you made yours, and you will do more than give your body to me. You will take mine.”
The confusion on her face made him smile, but there was no longer amusement in his glittering eyes.
He encircled one of her shamefully hardened nipples.
“Yes, my beautiful little wife, to salve your fears that you have married a rapist, I’m going to leave the consummation of our marriage in your hands.
You have exactly one day to seduce me, or I file for an annulment.
” His smile dropped, the silkiness of his voice hardening to granite. “And I issue a declaration of war.”