20. Georgia
20
GEORGIA
T he brute called Jimmy dragged me out to the gardens at the back of the house then released me.
“There, get some fresh air,” he said, taking a cigarette out of a pack in his pocket and lighting up.
I rolled my eyes and hid my face from him.
I wasn’t marrying this man. I’d marry him over my dead body.
“So, you knew Renato when he was young, eh?” Jimmy grunted.
I was still blinking back tears, trying to hide my reaction from my so-called fiancé.
The moment when Renato had told me I was getting married, my eyes had immediately found my mercenary. For the smallest of seconds, I’d thought it would be to him, and I’d… been relieved. That was the horrifying truth that hurt to admit. I supposed the old adage was true. Better the devil you know.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.” Jimmy poked my shoulder.
I faced him and folded my arms over my chest. “What?”
“You knew Renato when he was young?”
I just shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. A lot of good that’s doing me.”
Jimmy puffed up his chest. “I’d say it’s done you a favor. I mean, I don’t want to brag, but I’m kind of a big deal in the family… I even run one of the De Sanctis casinos in AC. You like gambling?”
“No.” I turned away to fight a shudder.
Jimmy touched me on the shoulder, and I jerked back around.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped at him.
His gloating expression morphed quickly into something ugly. “Watch how you speak to me. Tomorrow, I’ll be your husband, and I won’t be disrespected at home. Get with the fucking program, or I’ll have to show you who’s boss here.”
“And who is that? Renato?” I mocked him quietly, my survival instincts fried at this point. “You’re certainly jumping to do his bidding.”
“You stupid bitch, you should be getting down on your knees and opening that smart little mouth to show me how much you appreciate getting a merciful husband like me.” He grabbed my shoulder and shook me, like he could shake some sense into me.
“That’s never going to happen,” I hissed at him, trying to stop my teeth from clacking together.
“Oh, yes it fucking is. Maybe we should go somewhere and have a demonstration right now.”
“De Luca.”
The quiet, commanding voice called to us from the doorway to the gardens, and Jimmy immediately stilled. We both spun to see my mercenary lounging in an archway.
He had his hip propped against the stone and his arms crossed, but there was no mistaking his pose for ease. He looked like a coil about to spring open.
“Is there a problem out here?” he continued in that quiet, deadly tone.
“Just a couple’s spat,” Jimmy said, his fingers still digging into my flesh.
My mercenary pushed off the wall and sauntered toward us.
He stared pointedly down at my shoulder, the place where Jimmy’s hand still sat.
He dropped it to his side and shifted slightly away from me.
“There’s no problem,” Jimmy repeated. He was afraid. It came off him in waves.
So, Renato hadn’t simply sent some random made man after me. He’d sent his sottocapo , his second. My mercenary was an important man in his own right.
I met his dark brown eyes and felt like they saw down to my soul.
“If there’s no problem, then I’ll be taking Georgia inside. Mrs. De Sanctis needs her.”
Jimmy raised his hands as if surrendering. “That’s cool, man. I can wait one more day to have uninterrupted time with my new wife,” he said, a smarmy smile spreading across his face.
A wave of sickness threatened to engulf me, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t fall apart now. I had to figure a way out of this.
I walked stiffly inside. As soon as I was in, I lost my orientation. I swiveled around to find my mercenary right behind me.
“Charlie has had a dress brought to your room; go and try it on.”
“Or what? You’ll make me marry a fucking asshole?” I snapped at him. “Wow, I better be careful or my life will be ruined.”
“Wasn’t it ruined anyway? What were you even living when I found you?”
“A life. Sure, maybe it was shitty by your standards… but it was mine. Now — I’m just leverage for my father. I’m more than just a pawn to be traded back and forth when it suits people.”
A muscle worked in my mercenary’s jaw. “These are concerns you should have brought up with Renato. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” I shot out.
“Let me ask you this… why should I help you?” he finally asked.
I stared at him, my chest deflating. He was right. He didn’t owe me anything. He wasn’t on my side just because he’d saved my life a few times. He’d just been doing his job, which he would continue to do, even if it involved marching an unwilling woman down a wedding aisle.
“Whatever. Take me to my room.” I sighed and turned away.
I couldn’t look at that man’s face anymore. It was the similarity to Elio that was doing it. Muddling my mind and making me confused. Why should this stranger show me mercy? A jagged laugh left me when I realized that Elio Santori hadn’t shown me any either, when he’d had the chance.
“Save going insane until after the ceremony,” my mercenary said dryly as we walked toward my room.
I ignored him as much as I could ignore a man like him. He unlocked the door and let me in. On the bed, a beautiful white dress lay spread out. It was so pretty, I gasped, I couldn’t help it.
“Whose dress is this?”
“I believe it’s one of the ones that didn’t make the cut. Renato bought every single garment his wife tried on.”
I approached the simple and beautiful satin gown. It was lovely. Even with my picky eye for design, it was utterly exquisite. I touched the material gently.
“You need to try it on,” my mercenary stated.
I shook my head straight away. “It’ll fit.”
“I can’t leave until you do. It’s the boss’s wife’s orders, and what Charlie wants, she gets.”
“Lucky girl,” I muttered.
“If you knew what she went through before she married Renato, you wouldn’t think so.” He presented his back to me. “Change,” he tossed over his shoulder.
Just wanting to be alone, and knowing that he would stick to his damn orders like glue, I took off the T-shirt I’d been borrowing and then the overly large cargo pants.
The dress was heavy, a many-layered concoction of frothy petticoats and beading. I stepped into it and pulled it up. It needed a strapless bra, that was for sure. I unclipped mine and tossed it on the bed, then raised the dress to cover my bare breasts. It had a strapless neckline and a corset back.
“It fits.”
“You haven’t done it up.” My mercenary’s voice felt like a touch on my back.
I twisted around. He was watching me. Heat flushed over my skin. It was like standing too close to a fire. Like his eyes could burn me.
“Well, I don’t have arms on my back so…” I forgot what I was saying when he approached me.
“Allow me, in that case,” he said in a low murmur. “Don’t be shy. I’ve seen more than your bare back.”
I faced away, clutching the front of the gown to my bare chest as if my life depended on it. I’d never felt so exposed in my life. No, not exposed… seen.
In over ten years of being married to my best friend, I’d forgotten what it felt like to be half-naked around a man who liked women. It was a different feeling altogether. Heat trailed down my back as his fingers brushed my bare skin.
It was like I’d friend-zoned my own body, and now, it was waking up. Very inconvenient timing.
“Thanks for the uncouth reminder of the mistake we made on the plane,” I bit out, embarrassment rushing in.
“Uncouth? No, Signora Conti, uncouth would be reminding you of how you came so hard when I finger-fucked your asshole and your pussy that the flight attendants probably think you wet the bed.”
I gasped, shocked by his filthy words.
“Uncouth would be reminding you how you rocked your tight ass on my fingers and took what you wanted…”
“Okay, I get it. Stop, please.” My voice felt strained, like something was sitting in my throat.
He pulled in the lowest ribbon of the corset, cinching my waist. I gasped a little.
“Hold onto something,” he advised. “I’m not known for my gentle touch.”
I swallowed a knot in my throat the size of my fist. Was I nervous at his touch? I sure was, but worryingly, it wasn’t the kind of nervous I should be. It was something else.
“Believe me, I know.”
His fingers worked the ribbons, tightening the dress bit by bit.
“You’re good at this,” I remarked, feeling like the silence needed to be broken, in case he could hear my heart beating as loud as a drum.
“Mm-hmm, restraining people is a talent of mine,” he murmured.
His hot breath warmed the very top of my spine.
“But not usually for fun, right?” I blurted and then flushed hotly. “I mean, of course, you can tie people up for fun all you want… it’s just you have experience in a professional capacity,” I rambled on.
He continued, unfazed, while I agonized over my words. What the hell?
I twisted my fingers together this way and that. An old habit.
“Are you nervous?”
“Me?” I forced a laugh. “Why would I be nervous?”
His hands left me. He was done. I turned around slowly.
“I’m just a captive in a heavily guarded Mafia compound, my father is going to prison, and tomorrow I’m being forced to marry the most loathsome man I’ve ever met, probably at gunpoint. What’s there to be nervous about?” I finished, my voice rising higher and higher until the last word.
“You seemed calmer ten minutes ago.” My mercenary raised an eyebrow in question.
“That was before you started touching me,” I snapped back, then realized what, exactly, I’d just said. What I’d revealed.
He tilted his head down farther, bending forward to look in my eyes. “Are you saying I make you nervous?”
“Have you seen you? Of course you make me nervous. I’m a perfectly rational person with a working endocrine system… a man like you will always make me nervous. You’re dangerous,” I added, in case it sounded like I was admitting how insanely hot he was.
His gaze drifted from my eyes to my lips and back. The heat that had been flushing through me, building with his every touch, was creeping up to my face.
“You’re no picnic to be around either, cara .”
Cara . Dear one. Another word lifted from the past. Sure, it was a common enough endearment in Italian, and this man’s tone made it clear it was sardonic, and yet, it reminded me again of him. My cittaiolo .
“Damn it, and I was trying my best to be a good little hostage. I wouldn’t want to make your mission to ruin my life difficult,” I ground out.
The shadow of a smirk pulled at his face. It made a startling transformation; a split second later, it was gone.
“Well, you might want to try harder.” Then he did something that shocked me. He reached out and brushed a lock of hair from my forehead, guiding it back behind my ear.
It was a gentle movement. Gentler than I’d ever expect a man as hard as him to be capable of.
My breath caught when his fingers brushed my ear. It felt shockingly good. I was so touch-starved, my whole body thrummed with life at the meager contact. The pleasure he’d given me only hours ago rushed back, sitting in the air between us. We’d crossed a line there, in that luxurious little bedroom, high above the world, and we couldn’t go back.
His gaze dropped to my eyes and fell, down and down. He looked me over with a darkness in his eyes that stole my breath. It was like we were caught in a spell for a long moment, and I didn’t want it to end. Right here, it felt like time had stopped and tomorrow might never come. I wanted that more than anything. His gaze ran down my body, and he seemed to sway imperceptibly closer for a second, before catching himself.
He took a step back and then another.
“It fits.” His voice was a low growl.
It took a second to remember what he was talking about.
I glanced down at myself. Ah, yes. The dress.
I smoothed my hands down the beaded corset. It was lovely.
“Yes. It does. It’s very pretty for a prison uniform,” I said.
My mercenary just stood there, silent. I wanted to know what was going on behind his taciturn facade more than ever. I wanted to open his head and pick out his secret thoughts.
Like always, he gave nothing away.
“Be good until the ceremony. Don’t do anything to the dress… I’m warning you, or you’ll be getting married in front of a roomful of people in your underwear.” He headed for the door.
“I wouldn’t… not something so lovely. I could never hurt it,” I said, looking up and catching my mercenary’s eyes.
He watched me for a second and then spun on his heel and left.
The lock twisted with a sharp click behind him.
I found a full-length mirror inside the closet. It was the sight of myself standing there in the sweetheart-neckline gown, the white satin giving my skin a glow, that convinced me.
I had to get away from here. Earlier on the plane had been a moment of delusion, and it had given me the strength for one last stand. I couldn’t stay here, with my mercenary, marrying some stranger. This was my last chance to grab for freedom. What about the other guys… the ones following you ? The Ravellis. The other men my father was threatening to squeal on.
I was in New Jersey now. What were the chances that they’d already caught up? I could disappear here, somehow… I had to try.
It didn’t matter what it cost me; I wasn’t marrying Jimmy Sleazeball De Luca.
I’d die first.
After half an hour of wriggling about to loosen the corset ties, I changed back into my borrowed outfit and got into bed. I waited until the house went to sleep. I lay fully dressed, not that I had an option for changing, until the grandfather clock in the hall chimed three a.m.
I got up. I’d already gotten a good look around the room. The only possibility was the window. I was surprised to find that the lock opened easily. The room had been very nice for a prison cell, so I was starting to think it was a place for guests and not prisoners. I strapped my bag onto my back. It was time to get the hell out of here.
I opened the window and stepped out onto the wide stone ledge that hugged the building and ran around the side. There was a tree not too far out from the ledge. Some of the wider branches were within touching distance. All I had to do was make it along the ledge to the tree.
And then across the guarded grounds and over the fortified walls.
One step at a time, I told myself. The ledge was firm. The night was cold, a big difference from the balmy evenings of LA. I edged along the ledge, my heart pounding so hard it hurt. I shuffled past a window next to me, and then the end of the building came into sight. Thank God.
I continued my graceless shuffle toward the place where the ledge passed close to the tree. I finally reached it and had to stop, taking deep breaths and trying to calm myself down. My hands were shaking terribly, and I felt sick. But just the thought of Jimmy De Luca waiting at the end of an aisle for me was enough to steel my spine.
I had no choice.
I reached out for the tree and grabbed it easily enough. When I brought one foot to rest on it, the whole branch swayed. Okay, so maybe I was a bit heavier than I’d allowed for, but I could make it work.
I pushed my weight toward the tree and used the momentum to grasp a branch closer to the trunk. Slowly, I worked my way down the tree, only putting my feet on the biggest branches I could find. When I got near the bottom, I slowed, as the branches were sparser. I really had to reach carefully, feeling for a foothold.
I was only about ten feet from the ground at this point. I could just jump. I was facing in toward the trunk, my hands digging into the rough bark, while I tried to feel for one last foothold.
Suddenly, my foot gripped onto a firm but pliable hold. I let out a small sob of relief and transferred my foot to the branch and lowered myself slowly. I moved my hand and searched wildly for another place to hold onto.
“Just a little to your left,” a voice helped from below.
I reached for the foothold, realizing what had just happened. I’d been so intent on finding my way down the tree, I’d forgotten that being caught rendered the entire exercise pointless.
I glanced down and swayed, nearly falling.
“Careful, Signora Conti, you wouldn’t want to trip and fall and ruin your big day tomorrow,” my mercenary’s mocking tone drifted up to me.
Fuck, fuck, fuck . I was caught.
I froze there until the branch under my foot moved. So, it wasn’t a branch, it was his hand.
“Okay, I’m coming,” I muttered and lowered myself.
His hand disappeared under my foot, and I slipped a few inches, then his arms closed around my middle.
My body pressed against his, his face level with my breasts, my feet swinging in the air.
“Put me down, then,” I demanded hotly. I felt like crying. My only chance to get away was gone. Had there ever really been one? Probably not. Ever since this man had appeared in my life, I’d been trapped. There was never any escape.
A tear dripped down my cheek. I was no stranger to crying since Tommaso died, but lately I’d been setting myself a new record.
His gaze searched my face. He wasn’t as guarded as usual. Maybe it was the late hour, but it felt like his face was softer than normal. Maybe I was just imagining it. It was pretty dark out, with only the light of the moon to reveal him to me. A hint of something sweet and peaty floated to me. Had he been drinking?
“Don’t cry, Georgia.”
His deep voice, so familiar and yet so different, broke my heart all over again. Elio Santori had been my safe harbor. The boy who’d blazed into my life and changed it forever. I’d never felt safer than I had around him, and when he’d left, he’d taken that feeling of safety and never given it back. But this man was not him. Sure, he looked like him and sounded like him, but he didn’t have his eyes, and more than anything, he didn’t have his soul. The Elio I’d known would never be a mercenary for Renato De Sanctis. His sottocapo , no less. He might have taken the easy payday and run off on me, but there were still lines he wouldn’t have crossed.
Still, despite knowing that this man had less mercy than a pile of rocks, I had to try.
“Let me go, please… just let me go,” I whispered.
He was still holding me suspended against him. Slowly, his arms loosened just enough to send me sliding down his front. I felt every single ridge of his body.
“You could just look the other way, pretend that I’d escaped… Renato wouldn’t blame you.”
“I’d blame myself when the Ravellis caught you, which they would. The only things keeping you safe right now are me and this place. Without De Sanctis protection, you’re lost. Would you choose that over me?”
“But I’m not marrying you , am I?”
“And if you were? Would you still be out here, trying to run away?” he pressed.
I changed tack. “I can take care of myself, better than you think. I would be okay out there.”
His thumb rubbed across my lip, startling me and stealing my frantic words.
“It’s done, Georgia. There is no escape, not from here, and not from me. There never was.”
Anger surged in my chest. The fucking unfairness of it all. I parted my lips as his finger brushed past, and it fell just inside. He jerked against me. I swiped my tongue over the end of his thumb and then closed my teeth around it.
I bit down hard, and blood filled my mouth.
He just stood there and took it. He didn’t fight back. I bit down again, daring him to push me away, but he only watched, impassive. Untouchable. I attempted to bite harder, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
I pulled my head away, releasing his finger, and spit a mouthful of his blood onto the grass.
“Time for bed.” His voice was quiet. He took my arm and firmly steered me toward the house.
“Please… just let me go,” I cried, devolving into full-blown tears at this point. I stopped walking and tried to sit on the grass.
He hoisted me up into his arms and continued, without missing a step.
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he told me mercilessly.
“And I guess you don’t want to?” I didn’t know why I said it. There was no point. No point at all. I guess I was just addicted to pain and disappointment by now.
He carried me silently through the house and up the stairs.
Instead of the room I’d been in before, he took me into the room next to it and set me down, shutting and locking the door behind him, then leaning against it.
“No,” he said.
I forgot what question he was answering, so long had passed.
“No, you couldn’t let me go?”
He pushed off the door toward me. “No. I don’t want to.”
I glared at him. “Why?”
He just shrugged, his impassive face giving nothing away.
“You’re sick, you know that? You and Renato, and all the men you live with here, playing life and death with innocent people?—”
I trailed off when his hand moved, faster than I could duck away from it. His fingers pressed against my lips.
“Don’t pretend you’re an innocent person. You will tempt me to prove you wrong,” he said, sounding grave.
I blinked at him. What the hell?
“No more talking for tonight. You’ve proven yourself unworthy of being trusted to sleep alone, so now… you sleep with me.”
My eyes widened in alarm. He backed up a step and lowered his hands to the hem of his T-shirt. The next thing I knew, he’d pulled it up and over his head, tossing it precisely onto a chair in the corner.
“Sleep with you.” I looked around the room. “This is your room, right? You put me in the room next to yours.”
“I suspected you were a flight risk. I was correct.” His lips tipped up in an unexpected smirk.
I was right, he’d been drinking.
“Tell me a woman who wouldn’t try and run away when faced with Jimmy De Luca for a fiancé,” I protested hotly.
The slightest ghost of a smile seemed to pass over my mercenary’s face, then it disappeared so suddenly, I figured I’d imagined it.
“Well, now that you’ve represented the females of the world, it’s time to sleep. There is no escape from tomorrow, Georgia. Not for any of us.”
I frowned at him, watching him step back and move around his room. He was fishing in a drawer for something.
He turned around and revealed what looked to be scraps of material and a rope.
“Those better not be for me,” I warned, panic jumping up my throat.
I backed away, and he followed.
“I can’t have you trying to kill me in the night.”
“I won’t try. I pinkie promise.” I’ll succeed, I vowed.
He just shook his head and advanced.
What came next was undignified to say the least. We tussled, me with abandon and him with great restraint. I’d never stood a chance of stopping him from tying me up, and the way he managed to do so within two minutes was really a blow to my ego. My hands were bound in front of me, and he’d tied some scrap of soft material around my neck.
He went to pull it up and silence me, and I backpedaled, shaking my head.
“Wait! Wait… please… Before tomorrow, I need some kind of reassurance.” I looked him right in the eye. “I’m scared.”
He met my panic steadily. “It’s okay to be scared. It’s smart. It doesn’t change anything.”
I shook my head again, and a tear dripped down my face. “I swear, I don’t know what happened to my life. None of this was supposed to happen.”
Another tear followed.
He watched them. His hand flexed at his side, as though he was fighting his own self-control. In the end his discipline won, and he watched me cry without touching me.
“I know the feeling.” Then he pulled the gag up over my chin and silenced me.
I glared daggers at him. He tugged on the loop of rope between my hands. Of course he’d been good at tying up my wedding dress. He was a bondage expert, clearly.
That line of thinking sent me hot all over, and I was even more angry at myself. I was clearly focusing on trivial shit, like misplaced attraction to my literal captor, as a psychological trick to make me less scared of the future. It was my brain protecting itself. I had to believe that or I’d lose my mind.
“Lie down,” he instructed me tightly, pushing me in the direction of his huge king-size bed.
I shook my head and pointed at the floor.
“Lie. The. Fuck. Down.” He gave me a look that would make saner women cry. “I’ve had enough tonight. Stop testing me.”
What would this man be capable of if that steely control snapped? I dug my heels in and pushed back when he tried to tug me.
“Georgia,” he growled in my ear.
He lifted me and hauled me to the bed, throwing me onto the mattress so hard I bounced. Before I could sit up, he was straddling me, lithe with that predatory grace of his.
He leaned over me and grabbed my bound hands, tying the loop of the binding rope around the metal bars of the headboard. I wriggled and writhed, bucking my hips and trying to unseat him. He fiddled with the rope, leaning forward so he could reach, his entire body stretched out along mine, and my mind went blank. His body weight was pressing me into the bed, his hips flush with mine, and his scent was everywhere. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was nineteen, hiding a boy in my room, waiting until my father went to sleep before pulling him into bed with me. Those stolen nights with Elio were my happy place, and my deepest pain, all at once. He’d taught me what it was to love and hate in sync. I wished I could be back there, in bed with my cittaiolo. The only man I’d ever loved.
My mercenary stilled once my hands were bound but didn’t move. I was still trying to shift him. Pushing up into him, trying to turn on my side, raising my hips up and down.
Then I felt it. Nestled right between my thighs and up on my pubic bone. Long, hard, and thick.
My mercenary was hard. He had me pinned to the bed, bound and gagged, and he was hard, rocking on me. And the plane wasn’t that long ago, damn it, not nearly long enough for the fire he’d lit inside me to die completely. Desire roared back to life, igniting inside my veins. I didn’t know what it was about this man that just made me want to hurt him and fuck him.
“That’s enough, Signora Conti,” he said thickly.
My heart was pounding. I was nervous. I was excited. I wanted to get lost in a different sensation tonight, something other than fear and panic. I wanted to be consumed by feeling, so intense that no other thoughts could exist in my head at the same time.
“I said, it’s enough,” he growled at me.
His restraint was being tested. He was dangerously close to losing control, and I wanted to see it. The smell of expensive whiskey fanned across my face. He tugged my gag down, and I sucked in a breath.
“Are you drunk?” I murmured.
“Why? You thinking of taking advantage of me?” he mocked.
I raised my hips once more, pressing on his hard cock. Daring him.
“Why have you been drinking? Drowning your sorrows?” I didn’t know where the words were coming from, maybe some instinctive part of me that understood this dangerous man on a primitive level. He was upset, out of tightly held control. I bet he hated it. Good.
“Maybe I’m just celebrating early… a new addition to the De Sanctis family. A bride for De Luca. Maybe it’s his bachelor party downstairs and I just got a lap dance,” he murmured, goading me.
I scoffed. “Right. I’ve seen cardboard cutouts more likely to enjoy a naked woman gyrating on top of them. I’m starting to think you don’t feel anything from the waist down.”
“Try the neck,” he countered.
I swallowed a hard knot in my throat. “Makes sense… how else could someone be so heartless? Were you born without one, or did you lose it along the way?”
A muscle ticked in his strong jaw. He lowered his face toward me, and one of his hands sank into my hair and tipped my head back. His lips brushed over mine.
“Neither. Someone took it,” he murmured. “Someone stole it, and she’s never given it back.”
His face filled my entire line of sight. Everything I saw was him. A flicker of something dark and twisted burned in my blood. Was that jealousy? Over my kidnapper’s lover… I’d lost my mind. It had finally happened.
A tear spilled down my cheek, born of frustration and fear. My tears had never been far from falling since all this had started. Had it only been a little over a week ago? It felt like a lifetime.
A shadow passed through his eyes at the sight of that tear. Then he ducked his head and ran his lips up my cheek, wiping the evidence of my devastation away with his mouth. He pressed a soft kiss to one eyelid, then the other.
“Don’t cry, Georgia. I really can’t fucking stand it.”
Then he kissed me.
And kissed me.
His tongue swept along my lips, sliding between as soon as I parted them and stroking along my tongue. Heat enveloped me, so hot I felt like the places where he touched would be scorch-marked.
I arched into him, trying to bring my body closer to his. This was it. My last night of freedom before I was married off to a creep who made my skin crawl. I wanted this man. The one who reminded me of the only man I’d ever loved. The one I felt drawn to, despite everything.
“You taste like lies… and fucking heaven,” he murmured on my lips, moving lower.
“What are you doing?” I panicked. My hands were tied, and I wasn’t going anywhere. Just like on the plane, I was in this man’s hands. Excitement electrified my blood.
“This time I need more… directly from the source.”
His hands fastened on my pants, and he tugged them down. I’d washed my panties earlier in the bathroom sink and dried them with the blow-dryer in my room. They went the same way of the borrowed pants. I should have been embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I was getting married for the second time in my life to a man who I didn’t love like a lover. A man I had no choice in marrying. I’d married Tommaso out of sheer desperation to save myself from a broken heart, and Jimmy De Luca — force.
My mercenary’s hot breath fogged my thighs as he pushed my legs apart.
“Fuck. Does every single part of you have to be so fucking pretty?” he complained, leaning in and licking a hot, wet stripe up my slit.
I cried out. The touch was too intimate and sudden, overwhelming my senses. I wanted to crawl away and pin myself down at the same time. This man, this merciless mercenary, was pulling me inside out. My heart, still stuck in the past, couldn’t reconcile my feelings for this man who looked like the only man I’d ever loved. My ghost, made flesh, but different. Cold and brutal, and at times kind and thoughtful. I couldn’t figure him out.
But I wanted him. His mouth worked over my pussy, his tongue insistently slicking my clit. God, I wanted him like this. Dark and dirty, blurring the lines between right and wrong.
It was the only way I could give myself permission to do this… anything else felt like a betrayal of the past.
His finger worked inside me, curling up so it pushed on the front wall, my legs shaking.
“Why do you have to taste so good and smell so fucking good? Ambrosia has nothing on you, and it’s fucking annoying,” he said, his fingers pumping into my cunt.
I was going to come all over his face, and there was nothing I could do about it. All I could do was take it, and that fact was making me burn.
No control. No responsibility. No decisions to be made or morals to grapple over.
Just freedom and enough pleasure to set my soul on fire.
I was going to come; it was close. I was rising at a rapid pace. Maybe it was because it had been so incredibly long since I’d been touched like this, but I sensed it was more… it was him. This man who could touch me like no one else.
I was thrashing in his grip now, tightening my thighs around his head, and he laughed. It was a good sound.
“That’s right, cara , fucking come and let me see it.”
“Ahh!” A strangled scream left me as I came. My entire body tensed, and a wave of pleasure washed over me, my nerves tingling right down to my fingertips.
His hand pumped into me until I begged him to stop, the sensitivity just too much.
He shifted to his knees, ripping his pants open and taking his cock out. I stared at it. It was so thick and long, riddled with throbbing veins. He fisted it roughly and pumped himself, his body still angled over mine.
His gaze moved to mine, and his face twisted with pleasure. He came hard, his whole body shaking, his cock spurting long, white jets across my pussy. He panted, still working his cock, until the last of his spend dripped onto me.
With a sigh, he sank back and closed his eyes.
How much does someone as big as him have to drink to feel drunk?
After a second, he moved to the panties still caught on one of my ankles. He dragged them up my leg and helped me put the other leg in, then he guided them all the way up.
“Lift,” he instructed.
“But — I need to clean up,” I pointed out.
He tutted and shook his head. “No. You don’t. You should smell like me. It’s the least you can do for driving me fucking insane.”
I lifted wordlessly, and he drew the panties up, over the mess of cum on my cunt, and snapped them into place.
He stroked a hand over the front of the material, wetting it through.
“There, that’s how you should always walk around, Signora Conti.”
Heat blazed through my cheeks. It was wrong and fucked up… but I liked it. There was something dark and possessive in his tone that made me feel wanted in a way that no man had ever wanted me, except for my ghost.
“Now, sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
He pushed off the bed and stood. Going to the corner, he unrolled a thin blanket and tossed it on the floor, then added a pillow.
Without another word, he lay down, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.