Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
“Tell me,” Elio said as his driver navigated the route back to the villa, “When were you and Stefano a thing?”
Siena’s sharp stare turned to him. “What are you talking about?”
“The way you are with him. It’s like you don’t even see him.
” He’d first noticed it when they’d left the meeting he’d demanded Francesca as his bride, and she’d stalked past Stefano as if he were invisible.
She’d treated him as if he were invisible at their wedding reception, too.
Stefano, who was Mattia’s right-hand man, was the only person Elio had noticed she never addressed directly.
She looked back out of the window with a tight shrug. “He’s staff. How else should I be with him?”
“You’re not aloof with the rest of the staff or anyone else.” Elio himself excepted, of course. “Were you two once a thing?” That she’d been a virgin until barely twenty-four hours ago suggested it couldn’t have been anything serious.
“No, we were never a thing,” she said, her voice full of contempt, but also something else he struggled to identify.
“Then what’s your problem with him?”
“That is none of your business.”
“You’re my wife. Everything about you is my business.”
Her gaze shot back to him. “You don’t own me or my thoughts, so go fuck yourself.”
“I’d rather fuck you, my little wildcat.”
Her mouth twisted with distaste before she turned her beautiful face away. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re on the defensive. Is it because I’ve hit a nerve about Stefano or because you don’t want to admit how much you want me?”
She pressed herself closer to the door.
“Which is it, princess? My guess is both.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’m going to throw myself out of the car.”
He laughed. “As a threat, that would be more effective if you said you were going to throw me out of the car.”
“You have no idea how much I hate you.”
“And you have no idea how much I feed on your hate, but your threats are worthless because we’re home.”
As he said that, the car came to a stop. Watching the electric gates slowly open, Siena whispered with all the venom she possessed, “This will never be my home.”
His laughter was mocking and made her want to punch his nose hard enough to snap it.
The only thing that stopped her from getting out of the car right then and there was fear of his dogs.
Since meeting them the first night, she hadn’t seen or heard them at all, but that didn’t stop her from being on her guard for them, and when the driver stopped directly outside the villa’s front door, it didn’t stop her eyes darting around for signs of them when she climbed out.
“They’re in their kennel,” Elio drawled as they walked up the steps to the door.
She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying good. It was unnerving how well Elio was coming to read her.
Bad enough that he’d recognised her fear of his dogs, a fear that had formed without rhyme or reason, but how the hell had he noticed her loathing of Stefano? The only person who knew what had happened with Stefano was her mother. Not even Gabriella knew.
Inside, she headed straight up the stairs and into their bathroom to take a shower.
Taking care to keep her hair dry, she washed her body quickly. If she did everything quickly, then maybe the torture of Elio having sex with her would be over quickly too.
After removing her makeup and scrubbing her teeth so hard she would be lucky to have any enamel left on them, she wrapped her naked body in her robe and stepped back into the bedroom.
He’d already stripped off his clothes. Unashamed in his nakedness, he winked at her and sauntered to the bathroom. “I won’t be long.”
She bit back another good. As far as she was concerned, the speedier he was in the bathroom, the better. The last thing she wanted was the time to pull herself out of the mindset she’d put herself in.
It shouldn’t hurt this time, she valiantly told herself as she dropped her robe on the floor by her side of the bed and climbed beneath the sheets.
She had to forget the pain she’d experienced because it shouldn’t happen again.
Surely they’d done enough last night for her virginity to be considered broken?
Please, let it have been enough, she prayed desperately, even as she did her best to affect a bored pose when the bathroom door opened.
She had to control every facial muscle to show no reaction to his arousal, which was growing with every step he took toward her. She couldn’t control the cantering staccato of her heart, though.
He slipped beneath the sheets. Even before he’d propped himself on his elbow to gaze down at her, her pathetic senses were opening themselves up in delight to breathe in the scent of freshly showered Elio.
She stared into the vampiric silver eyes, trying just as hard not to let her eyes give away any emotion either. “Do you want me to do what I did last night?” she asked in her best monotone.
His firm lips curved at the corners before he rolled on top of her and pushed her legs apart with his thighs. “Not tonight, princess.”
Everything inside her tensed. Even when his mouth slanted onto hers, all she could think was, please don’t hurt me, which she shouldn’t be thinking because all she should be thinking about was affecting boredom.
Let him do whatever he wanted, but give minimal reaction.
And so she let him cajole her lips apart, let his tongue entwine with hers, too aware of the weight of his erection pressing so close to her sex at the top of her thigh to even get anything from the sensations of his kisses.
Not that she wanted to get anything from them anymore.
She just wanted it to be over, but for it to be over meant Elio driving his erection inside her and hurting her…
He lifted his head. For once, there was no mockery or amusement or anger in his stare. “It will be different this time, princess.”
But she didn’t want it to be different, she came within a breath of shouting. Okay, she did. She just didn’t want it to hurt, but she didn’t want anything else to be different, not if she was going to give an air of indifference.
“Relax,” he murmured before lowering his mouth back on hers.
He was right. She knew it. She had to relax, or it would hurt a whole lot more. She just had to find the happy medium of relaxing enough to take his length inside her with minimal pain, but not relaxing so much that he thought she was enjoying it.
Her lips had barely begun moving with his when he brushed his mouth over her cheek. Strong fingers gently swept her hair away from her ear, and then his mouth was there, his breath hot against her skin as he kissed the sensitive spot beneath her lobe. The effect was electric.
Slowly, he drew his lips down her neck, tenderly kissing and nibbling his way to the arch.
She closed her eyes. As trying to trick herself into being an inanimate object had proved a spectacular failure, this time she tried tricking her mind into being somewhere else, picturing herself on a beach with soft, white sand and clear blue water lapping gently on the shore.
She was there on a cabana, sipping a pina colada made with fresh pineapple.
The effect of the cocktail and the bright sun caressing her body was making her skin tingle with pleasure...
A mouth closed over her breast, pulling her out of her imagination with a jolt to realise the skin-tingling pleasure was coming from him.
Clamping her teeth together to stop herself from crying out, all Siena could do was take it, too shocked at the unexpected thrills of sensation to know how to fight it.
She’d never known the breasts she’d once hated for the way men reacted to them; treating her as if her breasts were all she was, could be so reactive to another’s touch.
Elio’s touch. His lips were closed around a hardened peak, his tongue flickering and teasing, making her shiver at the swirling, sensory awakening he was evoking in her.
Fresh shivers of delight danced through her skin when his mouth moved to her other breast, and as he caressed it with his mouth and tongue, his fingers slowly explored the plane of her belly, tiptoeing over her hip, and then the flat of his hand was sliding down the length of her thigh... It felt heavenly.
He kissed down to the underside of her breast. Familiar sensations were uncoiling again, the pulse between her legs thickening and burning as desire flamed back to life.
A restlessness was growing inside her, her body instinctively searching …
craving … something she couldn’t explain because she’d never felt it before but which her brain was telling her to fight.
Breathing hard, she fought the sensations, tried tricking her mind again, this time into turning her body’s sensors off so she couldn’t feel anything, but the pleasure was too much.
He was too much. The way her body responded to him was too much.
She was losing herself, sinking into the pleasure, and maybe she would have lost herself completely if his fingers hadn’t brushed the folds of her sex.
Her panicked reaction was beyond her control. The muscles of her thighs tightened and ineffectually tried to clamp together as she twisted her hips and tried to slap his hand away. “No!”
The hulking body between her legs stiffened.
After what felt like the longest passage of time in the history of the world, where all she could hear was the rush of blood pounding in her head, the hand at the apex of her thigh drifted away to palm her hip, and then he was shifting, but not off her, moving back up her body until his face was over hers.
“You don’t want me to touch you there?” he asked with a quietness at odds with the intensity in his eyes.
Afraid she was going to cry, she shook her head.
He continued gazing into her eyes, as if trying to penetrate them and read her thoughts. “When I was touching the rest of you…you enjoyed how it felt?”