12. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Bianca
T wo weeks.
Fourteen days.
Three hundred and thirty-six hours since I became Mrs. Ravelli.
I wake alone in sheets that still smell like him, though Luca hasn't slept beside me in three days. The bed is vast—a black sea I'm drowning in, silk sliding against my skin as I reach across the emptiness.
Sunlight filters through heavy curtains, casting the room in muted gold. Everything about the Ravelli mansion is like this: opulent but cold. Beautiful but untouchable. A gilded cage that gleams brightest when the bars catch the light.
I trace the engraving on my wedding ring—the Ravelli crest, a snarling wolf encircled by thorned roses. The gold is heavy, the design intricate. Like everything in this life, it's both exquisite and suffocating.
The suite is enormous—bedroom flowing into sitting room flowing into bathroom, all wrapped in black marble and dark wood, with ceilings so high my voice sometimes echoes when I speak. But the grandeur only amplifies the isolation. I'm a ghost here, haunting halls I don't belong in.
A soft knock breaks the silence. I don't answer, but the door opens anyway. Teresa appears, arms laden with fresh towels and a garment bag.
"You're awake." Not a question. Teresa doesn't ask questions. She observes, decides, and acts. "Good. We have much to do today."
I push myself up against the pillows. "What's the occasion?"
"Brunch." She lays out the towels with military precision. "The family is gathering. You're expected to attend."
My stomach knots. The "family" means more than just Luca and his brothers—it means the inner circle of the Ravelli empire. Men with blood-crusted knuckles and women with diamond-sharp smiles.
"I'm not feeling well."
Teresa's mouth tightens. "That wasn't a request, Mrs. Ravelli."
The title still feels foreign—a name that belongs to someone else. Someone stronger. Someone who wasn't cleaning hotel rooms two weeks ago.
"Fine." I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, the cool marble floor shocking against my bare feet. "What am I wearing to this performance?"
Teresa unzips the garment bag to reveal a cream-colored dress, simple but clearly expensive. "Mr. Ravelli chose it himself."
Of course he did. Even when absent, Luca controls every aspect of my existence. What I wear. Where I go. Who I speak to.
For the past two weeks, I've been kept primarily in Luca's wing of the mansion. At first, I thought it was protection—a buffer between me and the world of violence and power I'd been thrust into. Now I realize it's isolation. A quarantine to keep the outsider contained.
I've seen glimpses of the other women who orbit the Ravelli family. Dante's girlfriend, with her model-thin frame and calculating eyes. The wives of associates, dripping in jewels and secrets. The household staff, who avert their gaze whenever I enter a room.
None of them speak to me. They whisper, though. I catch fragments— civilian... knows nothing... won't last...
It shouldn't sting—being shut out, being whispered about.
I've been alone before. I've spent years visiting a mother who no longer remembered my name. She hadn't said 'Bianca' since the winter I turned twenty-one, and for a while, I stopped going because it hurt too much. Even when I started again, it was never the same—just monthly visits filled with one-sided conversations and crushing guilt.
At least in the Ravelli mansion, the silence is deliberate. There's honesty in that.
Teresa leads me to the bathroom, running water for a bath that steams with oils and rose petals. Another ritual in the daily choreography of my new life.
"I can do this myself," I mutter.
She ignores me, testing the water with practiced efficiency. "Your husband returns this morning."
My pulse jumps, a betrayal I can't control. "Business trip?"
Teresa's lips curve, a secret caught between them. "Something like that."
I sink into the bath, letting the heat seep into my bones. Teresa disappears, leaving me with my thoughts and the flower petals that cling to my skin like memories.
Luca has been gone for three days—vanished without explanation, leaving only the ghost of his cologne on the pillows. This isn't unusual. He comes and goes like a storm, violent and unpredictable. Sometimes he returns with blood on his knuckles. Sometimes with new contracts in his briefcase. Always with hunger in his eyes when he finds me.
And I've learned to wait. To expect nothing. To find small freedoms in the spaces between his presence.
I close my eyes and slide deeper, letting the water cover my ears, my nose, until only my face remains above the surface. If I stay here long enough, maybe I can dissolve. Become nothing more than steam and perfumed oil.
But the water grows cold, and reality returns.
Teresa helps me dress with quick, impersonal touches. The cream dress fits perfectly, hugging my curves before flowing out just above the knee. My hair falls in loose waves over my shoulders—the way Luca prefers it.
"The others," I begin, voice hesitant, "the women here... do they ever speak to you?"
Teresa's hands pause as she fastens a delicate gold necklace around my throat. "Some do. Some don't."
"And which am I?"
Her eyes meet mine in the mirror. "You're neither. You're Mrs. Ravelli now. The name carries weight."
"It carries judgment."
"Of course it does." She resumes her work, adjusting the necklace so it sits perfectly against my collarbone. "Power always invites scrutiny. Especially when it's new."
I turn to face her fully. "I don't have power."
Teresa's laugh is soft and knowing. "You share a bed with Luca Ravelli. You wear his ring. You carry his name. What do you think that is, if not power?"
Before I can answer, the suite door opens. I know it's him without turning. The air changes when Luca enters a room—becomes charged, electric.
"Leave us," he commands, and Teresa slips out without a word.
I face him slowly, pulse quickening despite myself. Luca fills the doorway, broad shoulders stretching the fabric of his black suit. His hair is damp, curling slightly at his temples. He's freshly shaven, but exhaustion lines his eyes, giving him a dangerous, feral edge.
Those eyes lock onto mine, gray as smoke and just as suffocating.
"You're back," I say, aiming for indifference and missing by miles.
He steps closer, the scent of his cologne—dark, expensive—wrapping around me. "Did you miss me, little rabbit?"
I lift my chin. "Should I have?"
His mouth curves, amused by my defiance. Even after two weeks as his wife, I still refuse to yield completely. It's the only piece of myself I've managed to keep intact.
Luca circles me slowly, appraising. His fingers brush the bare skin of my shoulder, a touch so light it might be mistaken for tenderness if I didn't know better.
"The dress suits you."
I resist the urge to lean into his touch. "You chose it."
"I know what looks good on my wife." His voice drops lower, rougher. "And what looks better off her."
Heat coils low in my stomach, unwelcome but undeniable. This is what he does to me—turns my body traitor with nothing more than a look.
"We have brunch," I remind him, stepping back. "Your family is waiting."
He catches my wrist, tugging me against him. "They can wait longer."
I push against his chest. "Luca—"
"Tell me you didn't miss me." His grip tightens, not painful but impossible to break. "Tell me you slept soundly in my bed without me there."
The truth claws at my throat—that I did miss him. That I've spent three nights reaching for a body that wasn't there. That I've grown accustomed to falling asleep with his arm heavy across my waist, his breath warm against my neck.
But I won't give him the satisfaction.
"I slept better without you," I lie.
His eyes darken, tracking the pulse at my throat that gives me away. He backs me toward the bathroom, a predator herding prey. "We need to shower before brunch."
"I already bathed."
His smile is all teeth. "Not thoroughly enough."
The bathroom door closes behind us, sealing us in a world of steam and marble and unstoppable desire. Luca turns the shower on, stripping off his suit jacket, his shirt, watching me the entire time. Each tattoo is revealed piece by piece—black ink sprawling across olive skin, telling stories I'm still learning to read.
The scar along his ribs catches the light. The faint bite mark on his shoulder—my mark, from our wedding night—has almost faded.
He steps into the shower fully clothed from the waist down, water darkening his trousers, plastering them to powerful thighs.
"Come here," he commands.
I should refuse. Should maintain this fragile distance I've built over the past three days. Instead, I step forward, drawn by the gravity of him.
He pulls me under the spray, my dress instantly soaked, clinging to every curve. His hands find my waist, sliding up to cup my face, tilting it toward his.
"There's my wife," he murmurs. "Still fighting. Still wanting."
"I don't want this," I whisper.
His thumb traces my lower lip. "Another lie. You're collecting them today."
Water cascades over us, turning the cream fabric of my dress translucent. Luca's eyes drop, following the revealed contours of my body beneath the sodden material.
"I've thought about your mouth for three days," he says, voice thick with need. "About the sounds you make when I'm inside you. About the way you shake when you come on my cock."
My breath hitches. My body responds to his words, nipples tightening, heat pooling between my thighs.
"We don't have time," I protest weakly.
Luca sinks to his knees before me, hands gripping my hips. Water streams over his face, catching in his long lashes, dripping from the hard line of his jaw.
"I'll make time," he growls, pushing the wet fabric of my dress up my thighs. "I missed the taste of you, little rabbit."
His fingers dig into my thighs with bruising force, spreading me open like a promise he intends to break.
The cold marble behind me bites into my spine, water cascading down my front in rivulets that trail over my nipples, already tight from the chill. Luca sinks to his knees, still in his soaked dress pants, a beast in restraint only by choice.
The sight of him below me should be vulnerable.
It’s not.
Even on his knees, this powerful man is in control. He's dominant, deliberate, devout in his destruction of me, of everyone and everything around him.
“Hold on to me,” he growls, voice coated in hungry seduction and thick steam. “And don’t you fucking look away.”
My hands tangle in his dripping hair, anchoring there as if he’s gravity and I’m already falling. He leans in slowly, dragging his tongue up the inside of my thigh with a carnal growl. His teeth follow, biting deep enough to make me jolt.
A gasp escapes. “Luca—”
“Did I say speak?”
His voice is dark silk, threaded with steel as those dark eyes snap up to mine. His breath fans over my soaked panties—ruined lace clinging to me like a last line of defense.
“My little whore will not talk. If you want to talk, then you will beg.” His thumbs hook under the drenched lace, dragging it down my legs with reverence and rage all in one motion.
Then he spreads me wider.
The way he stares at me makes me feel flayed open—body and soul. Water streams between my thighs, over the slick folds he parts with his thumbs like he’s opening a sacred text.
And finally… his mouth is on me.
Not gentle.
Not sweet.
He licks me like I’m his final meal, tongue flat and unrelenting as it drags from slit to clit. He groans into my cunt like the taste is holy water.
“Eyes on me,” he commands again, lifting his gaze as he suckles hard enough to make me cry out.
I try—I try —to keep looking, but my head thuds back against the marble. One sharp bite to my clit punishes the lapse.
My eyes snap open. He smirks, lips wet with my cream.
“That’s better,” he murmurs, before sucking me into his mouth like he’s starving.
His mouth devours me, tongue working in devastating circles around my clit. It's too much, not enough, just everything . My body writhes under the attention, thighs trembling, need spiraling fast and brutal.
But he doesn’t give me more.
I reach for his hair, desperate to anchor him, to make him give me what I need.
He pulls back, depriving me of the penetration my throbbing core needs.
I nearly sob.
“Ask for it,” Luca rasps, lips slick with me. “If you want me to fill this tight little cunt, you’re going to beg.”
I bite my lip, holding his gaze, refusing.
He grins a dark and merciless grin. “Still holding on to that pride, little rabbit ?” His tongue flicks across my clit, feather light and maddening beyond belief. “I’ll wait. I’ve got all fucking day to make you fall apart.”
I cry out as his mouth returns to me, licking and sucking in slow, torturous circles—but still, nothing more. My hips buck, chasing the pressure, the fill, him .
My voice breaks. “Please.”
He pauses, tilts his head. “Please, what?”
“Please— fuck me, Luca. ”
“That wasn’t so hard,” he murmurs.
The first inked finger slides into me and the instant stretch makes me moan. Then a second joins it. No buildup. No hesitation.
My body clenches around him, heat sparking like wildfire in my blood.
His fingers curl. “So fucking tight. Still wet for me after all that begging?” Another curl. Another flick of his tongue. “You don’t hate this. You hate that you need it.”
He’s right. And I hate him for it.
Then he adds a third finger.
The stretch burns and I moan, caught somewhere between pleasure and panic.
“You can take it,” he growls against my clit. “This pussy was made for me.”
My hips buck against his hand, chasing the brutal rhythm he sets, while my thighs tremble like they’re caught between rebellion and worship.
“More,” I whisper before I realize I’ve said it.
He lifts his head. “What was that?”
I can’t speak. My mouth is dry, my limbs shaking.
“I said... more.”
Luca's laugh is low and dangerous. “Good fucking girl.”
He pushes a fourth finger inside, and I scream —a raw, guttural sound that echoes through the marble chamber so loud the lunch guests might hear.
His free hand comes up and grips my jaw. “Open that mouth.”
I do as I'm told, gasping and panting, enjoying this more than I think I should be.
He lifts his soaked, glistening fingers from between my legs and pushes them into my mouth without giving me time to process.
“Suck.”
I moan around his fingers, tasting myself. My tongue curls over his fingers, my eyes glassy, and he watches me like I’m art come to life.
“Taste how fucking ruined you are?” His voice is feral, fingers pressing deeper into my mouth until I gag.
“Look at you.” He pulls his hand free, thumb wiping the spit from my chin. “You're dripping. Shaking for me. You're all fucking mine. ”
He falls back between my legs, mouth crashing onto my clit with devastating force. A palm spanks my ass as his fingers return—three this time, pumping viciously, perfectly, claiming everything.
“Come for me,” he growls as heat begins to coil. “I want to feel it. Show me what this pussy does when I break it.”
My orgasm detonates with a sob I can’t silence. I shatter on his tongue, my entire body convulsing. He doesn’t let up. Not for a second. Not until I’m wrung out, twitching, tears sliding down my cheeks.
When he finally rises, his lips are slick, jaw shadowed with stubble and sin.
He kisses me hard, filthy and deep, forcing my own taste down my throat.
“Remember this,” he breathes against my lips. “Because next time, I won’t stop at fingers. I’ll fuck you against this glass so hard the house will feel it.”