23. Georgia
23
GEORGIA
W e got around the side of the chapel before the maniac set me down.
My mercenary.
My husband.
The boy who broke my heart.
Elio Santori.
I knew it. I’d known it was him all along. Despite his denials, despite his damn eyes, I’d fucking known it, and I’d allowed him to lie to me to keep my sanity. Hell, wasn’t that why I’d lied to myself? Now, there was nowhere to hide.
I pushed his hands away as soon as he lowered me to the ground.
“Don’t touch me. You don’t have permission to touch me ever again!” I hissed at him, trying to inject cool, hard vitriol into my tone to mask the hurt and shock I was feeling.
He stared at me, a muscle clenching in his tight jaw.
“And here, I thought you’d be grateful not to have to marry Jimmy De Luca.” His voice was cold. “My mistake. Shall I see if someone can scoop his brains back into his worthless skull and right the wrong?”
“You could never right the wrongs you’ve done to me,” I accused. “And you think I’d want to be your wife?”
Elio stepped forward then, his chest colliding with mine. “Don’t be confused, Georgia. You’re not my wife.”
I could only stare at him as he leaned forward, getting in my face.
“You’re simply my hostage. It’s just business. De Luca needed to be taken out. I did my job. Renato ordered you to be married into the family, I performed my duty. All of this is just work to me. It’s nothing personal.”
My slap took him off guard, turning his head with the ferocity of it.
“I hate you,” I fumed at him. If I didn’t get furious, I’d cry, and I wasn’t giving this motherfucker the satisfaction.
I raised my hand to hit him again, and this time, quick as a whip, he grabbed my wrist.
“The feeling, Mrs Santori, is entirely mutual. Now, we’re going inside to discuss the rules of your new reality, and I’ll get on with my fucking day. You — my hostage — will do what you’re told. Jimmy wanted a beautiful trophy wife to fuck and show off. I have no such temptation.” His gaze raked me from head to toe. “You have nothing I want, so behave, or your life will get a lot more difficult than it already has.”
His eyes met mine, and I flinched away from his dispassionate expression. Sure, he had to have contacts in, I knew that now, but it wasn’t just the color that was throwing me off. Part of me hadn’t believed he was Elio because the man with those soulless eyes was so far away from the boy I’d loved.
“What happened to you?” I asked in a near whisper.
He became utterly still at my question. “What happened to the boy with the easy laugh, who wrote poetry under the stars?”
He studied me, and I studied him back. I saw the tension in his jaw, and the haunted look in his eyes. His thick, tattooed throat bobbed with a swallow.
“You.” His voice was heavy. “You happened to me — and I’ll never forgive you for it. This conversation is over. I have no interest in dissecting our youth. Bring up our past one more time, I’ll put you across my knee and make you scream. Though, maybe that’s exactly what you’re angling for.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, and my mouth dropped open in shock.
“You’re a pig,” I mumbled.
“Maybe, but I’m also your husband. Being married to you and keeping you in line is part of my job, and I am truly talented at my line of work.”
“What’s that? Following orders? Killing people? Torture?” I spit out.
Elio just nodded. “Yes, and so much more. Consider this your only warning not to push me. None of this is personal, and I will employ my experience and skills to make you comply. You are my hostage and you’ll be a picture-perfect one — or suffer the consequences.”
“You’re not just a cold, unfeeling machine… you’re a tyrant.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, to you, yes, I am. Just think of me as your judge, jury, and executioner. The decider of your fate.”
“You’re drunk on your own power! Does it give you a thrill to make women kowtow to your demands?”
“Not all women. Just you. Now, get your ass inside. I’ve had enough of providing free entertainment for the men today.”
I opened my mouth to protest, because of course, I couldn’t just go down without swinging. But he never gave me the chance. With a heavy sigh, he hoisted me over his shoulder again and started toward the house.
His hand landed hard on my backside when I wriggled in his grip. “There’s something we need to do to make this marriage official.”
He carried me through the house, and I stopped kicking and screaming, because honestly, it was embarrassing as hell. Everyone was staring at us. I squeezed my eyes shut and longed for the privacy of Elio’s room. I had always hated everybody knowing my business, and this took it to a new level. Shouts rang out in Italian. Congratulations and then much more bawdy comments, all aimed at consummation. The men watching assumed Elio was carrying me to his room to consummate the marriage. They were all animals. I hated every single one.
He set me down just outside his room and unlocked it with a key from his pocket.
I kept stealing glances at the man I now knew for sure had been the one and only man I’d ever loved.
Before, when I’d been trying to find similarities, they had been all I’d seen. Now, all I could see were the differences. His violence and coldness. His hardness.
“No one goes in or comes out, until I say so.” He was speaking to his underling and holding my hand in a grip that would surely leave bruises.
The young guy’s eyes strayed to me.
“Including her… and there’s no need to look at her. Avert your eyes in her presence,” Elio told him curtly, with all the warmth of a frozen river.
What had happened to Elio Santori to make him this ruthless, remorseless killer? You could just ask him. Right, because stopping to ask deep, searching, personal questions when you’re literally under attack is a normal thing to do.
He opened his bedroom door and waited. I paused on the threshold.
“Shall I carry you over it? I didn’t take you for superstitious.”
I stepped forward into the room and glared at him. He entered more slowly and locked the door behind him. The world fell very quiet. My anger and shock from just outside the chapel had petered out, but I was still reeling.
Elio took me in from head to toe.
“Turn around,” he instructed me harshly.
“I will not consummate this marriage,” I stated, firm. “I refuse. I protest. I do not consent to your touch, got it?”
I raised my chin at him and folded my arms across my chest, because honestly, I didn’t know any other way to deal with this man. The one who’d broken my heart and now, all these years later, tracked me down and forced me to marry him.
“Yet, I’ve already tasted your cum, cara … and you’ve already screamed my name while my finger was in your ass. I think that ship has sailed.”
“Yeah, well, that was before I knew who you were.”
He chuckled, a dark, familiar sound. A sound ripped from the past.
“So, you wanted to fuck a brutal stranger but not the boy you pretended to care about all those years ago? That tracks. You’re still arrogant enough to think I want to stick my dick anywhere near you?”
I flinched at the icy mockery in his tone and shrugged.
“As long as we understand each other.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folding knife. He opened it languidly, and the wicked point caught the sunlight falling through the window.
“Now, back to the business at hand. I said, turn around. You’d better get used to following instructions, Georgia, or this new life of yours is really going to hurt.”
I scoffed. “Hurt? Like anything you could do to me could hurt me more than you already have. What are you going to do? Beat me? Stab me? Force me?” I shrugged again. “Do your worst. It’s all I expect of you anyway.”
A muscle ticked in Elio’s stone-cut jaw as he watched me. Remaining silent, he pushed off the door and advanced on me. I turned and tried to sidestep him, but his arm quickly snaked around my waist and pulled me close.
“One day, my dear wife, you’re going to realize that these little acts of defiance and tests are dangerous. You’re going to understand how much I’m holding back, only when I lose it. So be careful,” he said.
I didn’t understand why, but his words made heat break out across my skin. Something about how his voice dipped over the threat of losing his self-control. The way he’d sounded like the old him, the brave, charming boy I’d lost my heart to so effortlessly. He was warning me not to break that mechanical, robot-like cool that he had developed in the years we’d been apart.
I wanted to break it, though. I wanted to destroy him like he was destroying me. Why should he get to be the one with the clear, unruffled composure, while I was melting down into a hot mess?
There was a slicing sound, and then the damn corset of the dress was loosening. The bodice sagged as he cut through the ribbons up the back. His hot breath hit my bare shoulder, sending prickles all through me. His thumb brushed my skin, and I fought not to arch into his touch like a cat.
“Your control isn’t mine to command.” I twisted around. “You can’t blame me for any of this.”
His gaze hit mine and then dropped.
Colored contacts. Such a simple way to hide those noteworthy green eyes. Suddenly, I wanted to see his real eyes so much, I couldn’t breathe.
I was pretty sure the sagging bodice and sheer strapless bra I’d been given this morning wasn’t leaving much to the imagination. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to be the only one to suffer. I wasn’t going to be the only one to go fucking insane.
His gaze moved across me, bringing heat to the surface of my skin.
“Take it off and shower,” he instructed. His words were only a murmur now but a command, nonetheless.
“Why? Don’t you like the horror show you made?” I waved my hand down the bloodstained side of the white gown.
He tilted his head to the side, his eyes holding a challenge. “I’m not the one who introduced darkness into our story,” he said.
What ? He took the back of the dress and tugged it down, leaving me in just my panties and the bra that barely fit. Thankfully, the ladies who’d helped me put the dress on had provided me with clean underwear.
He tossed the dress away and stepped back.
“But I am the one who will end it,” he said cryptically and stripped off his jacket.
I watched his once white, now red shirt join it on the floor. Next, he reached for his belt, whipping it through the loops of his pants in a way that had my core clenching, hard.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He pulled the zipper of his pants down and stepped out of them. He was wearing black briefs, and his cock was clearly outlined, pressed up against his belly. I stared. I couldn’t help myself.
“I told you to shower. I was letting you go first. That courtesy has ended, wife .”
Then he dropped the briefs, and my attention jumped to his bare cock, red and drooling at the tip, thick and hard and oh-so dangerous-looking. He was hard. All this had turned him on. So, I did affect him on some level, even if it was just the base one.
Aware I was staring at his dick, I spun around and let out a laugh that caught in my throat. So much for appearing unruffled. “Right, like I’m going to let you?—”
I didn’t get to finish. His arms crossed around my back, and he was lifting me. His skin was hot. Burning me everywhere it touched. My back was to his front, and his cock poked at the top of my ass.
“You don’t have to let me do anything. I’m not asking for permission.” He carried my wriggling body toward the bathroom.
He dropped me unceremoniously onto the floor and locked the door behind him.
He nodded toward the shower stall. “Get in.”
“No! You can’t just order me around,” I ground out, knowing I was lying. Of course he could.
He took the key out of the door and set it between his teeth, then brushed past me and entered the huge shower cubicle. He reached up to the rainfall showerhead, so much higher than I could, and placed the key on top of it.
Then he went for the faucet handles. The water turned on, and I tried very hard not to stare at his naked back. The man was a work of art.
Thick bulging ropes of muscle, tight in all the right places, and swelling out in others in a testament to pure physical perfection. His skin was sun-dusted brown, just as I remembered it to be. The tattoos were different, new, and the scars. So many scars. Elio’s back was a map of the life he’d lived without me. My eyes snagged on a cluster of dots that looked like old bullet wounds and another that was jagged and scarred, like a serrated blade had raked his flesh remorselessly.
He reached out and snagged my arm, dragging me under the water, and breaking my stare.
“Stop it! I don’t want to—” I started, just as he pushed my face under the fall of water coming from the huge showerhead.
“ I don’t want to see any part of another man touching you, never mind smeared across your face,” he bit out, his rough fingers smoothing over my cheek, rubbing away the spattered blood.
Water was falling in my eyes, so I couldn’t open them. I parted my lips to protest and got a mouthful of water, so I snapped them shut.
Elio’s hand was on the nape of my neck, holding me just where he wanted me.
Hot water sluiced down my body, wetting through my underwear, turning the lace transparent.
Finally deeming my face clean enough for him, he let me step back, and the water formed a curtain between us.
“Trying to waterboard your wife on the first day of marriage?” I spit at him.
He ignored my words and stepped forward, the water coasting over his head and down his beautiful, strong chest in rivulets. Jimmy De Luca’s blood washed down the drain, erasing the evidence of the insanity of the last hour.
He squirted a long jet of shower gel into his large palm, and rubbed his hands together until long tendrils of bubbles ran down his arms, then he started to wash his chest. I was just stuck there, watching. I couldn’t get past him. I was wet, wearing underwear, and getting cold. He cleaned himself methodically, and lastly, let his hands fall to his hard cock. I briefly watched him slide his hand up and down the taut, veined shaft before forcing my eyes away.
“So, I guess that answers my earlier question. It does turn you on to have a woman at your absolute mercy, to do with what you please.”
“Again — just you.”
I shivered, and Elio noticed. He stepped back and pulled me into the hot spray. This time, I was able to bend my head forward so the water hit the back of my neck and eased the tension there a little. Not all the way. I wasn’t insane enough to relax when I was next to naked in the shower with the tattooed menace standing in front of me. He reached out again for the soap and squirted another jet into his palm. He held it out to me.
“Wash.”
His grunted instruction only pissed me off. I was so angry. I was so sad. I was feeling everything at once, and it had to go somewhere, or I’d explode. I simply couldn’t hold all those emotions inside at once.
I knocked his hand away. “Don’t tell me what to do. I told you, I’m not going to follow your orders, so you can just lay off it already.”
Elio’s impassive face could have been hewn from stone. How did he manage that cool facade? It was impressive, and annoying as hell. I wanted him to burn with rage and frustration like I did.
“I said wash the blood off, Georgia,” he said in a low tone that would have made someone smarter than me take notice.
“No,” I stated calmly instead.
He sighed and lifted one shoulder in a gesture of defeat. That was easier than I’d expected. I’d barely formed the thought when he advanced.
“Hey!” I grunted.
He backed me into the wall. The cold tiles were a shock against my overheated skin.
“I said, wash. If you can’t do that, I’ll have to do it for you.”
“Don’t you dare,” I hissed, twisting around to face away from him so I didn’t have to feel his hot skin on my chilled body. My nipples felt like they could cut glass, and the thought of Elio feeling them pushing into his chest, of knowing how he affected me… I couldn’t stand it. I tensed just as his hands landed on my hips.
They were soapy and slick. He ran them up my sides and over my stomach, and I put my hands on the tile to brace myself.
With a perfect slow and methodical grace, he began to wash me. His soapy hands ran across my stomach, roaming up my back and along my shoulders and neck, rubbing away any place Jimmy De Luca’s blood had touched me.
And damn me, I couldn’t stop him.
I didn’t want to.
I was so fucking touch-starved, his strong, insistent hands running along my arms and over my collarbones turned me inside out. So, this was what it felt like to be alive. I’d nearly forgotten.
His hand circled my neck, scrubbing away the blood that had congealed there until the water swirled pink beneath our feet. I was panting, my breath coming hot and short. His hand rested on my throat, his fingers digging in just a touch, enough to make my breath catch. I could feel his naked body brushing my back.
“What am I going to do with you, topolina ?” he asked me, his voice a growl.
He was still hard, his cock poking insistently into the small of my back. His other hand had paused on my breastbone, just shy of touching my bra. I wanted the damn thing off. It felt offensively unwanted, that harsh, wet lace, when all I craved was to feel his skin on mine. As if he were reading my thoughts, his hand dipped lower, brushing the cups of my bra, circling my hard nipples that were pointing through determinedly.
He pinched one, and I gasped, water getting into my mouth.
“This isn’t going to do,” he murmured, and with a sharp, strong tug, pulled the strapless bra down, forcing my breasts to pop free. His hand returned to the shower gel and then touched me again. He started on my left breast, the place where a fine patina of red had dried just above where the dress had sat.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said quietly.
My heart clenched hard.
I closed my eyes and let myself sway back against his superior strength. It had been a long, long time since I’d had someone to lean on. And I had to be weak as hell, because I couldn’t stop myself. His hand, still slick with soap, advanced across my breast, finding my nipple and tugging on it. My legs nearly gave out at that sensation. It was all too much for me. The steam rising around us, sending the air thick, and the smell of jasmine and neroli, and Elio. He fogged my senses. His skin burned my back. He was so hot and hard. His other hand was still on my throat, gently holding me in place, his thumb playing over my pulse. As his hand shifted to my other breast, my head fell back onto his chest. God, I was a sucker. I knew it as clear as day and yet, I didn’t want him to stop. It felt too good, and I was tired of feeling like shit all the time. My head was pressing into his collarbone, and he bent his face forward and nosed through my wet hair.
What was this sickness in my blood? How could I want him like this, after all that had happened between us?
Beneath this skin, a world waits to be discovered.
The poem he wrote, all those years ago, still as true now as it had been then. There had never been anything ordinary about the electricity between us when we’d touched. It had been magic, and it was still there. Stronger, even.
The hand on my breasts moved downward, and I mourned it for a moment, then it hit my lower abdomen and kept going. His fingers slid into the top of my panties, and I arched back, my hindbrain screaming for more. Yes, touch me. Yes, remind me what it feels like.
Relief flowed through me, thick and sweet. I couldn’t deny it. I was relieved that he was Elio. I felt safer. I could breathe again. That was the shameful truth, deep down in the dark, where no one could see.
His hand around my neck slipped to my necklace, the chain pulling taut.
My locket. My testament to the past.
Fuck, I was such a pushover. A traitor to myself.
The reminder was like a bucket of ice water over the head.
I twisted away and rested my front against the wall, the cold of the tile slashing through my heated skin.
“Are you done? Am I clean?” I asked in a muted tone. I didn’t turn and see Elio’s expression. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t risk forgetting who this man was. Once upon a time, he’d brought my entire world crashing down. He’d left me. I could never trust him again.
He was quiet, and then the heat of his body disappeared. I kept my eyes closed for a long while, until the soft snick of the door shutting hit my ears. I peered through the steam.
I was alone. He’d gone.
I grabbed my necklace, sliding my finger over the closed locket, hiding my weaknesses inside, and holding it over my heart.