Chapter 15 #3
I’m ready. I could tell him to open his eyes.
But I don’t want him just to look at me.
Bracing my hands on his shoulders, I ease myself down into his lap. My thighs wrap around his hips, and I take his face in my hands. With my lips close to his, I whisper, “You can open your eyes.”
Damiano does, and his hands seize my waist as he takes in the sight of me.
His pupils are blown and brown eyes are almost black as they linger on my face.
I begin to wonder if he has forgotten all about the lingerie until his fingers push beneath the suspender belt.
He lowers his gaze and drinks in the sight of my breasts, pushed high by the corset, the lace covering but not concealing my nipples.
Damiano plants a slow kiss against my throat. “I never thought I’d be allowed to hold you again.”
I arch my back and rock against him. No one will ever look at me the way Damiano does. No one will ever make me feel this beautiful and loved.
“My lingerie. What do you think? Is it worth the money that Mom spent?”
“Lucy, you’re a goddess,” he breathes.
I turn my head to the side to admire our reflection in the mirror. The long, muscular lines of his body are curved possessively around mine. We fit together so perfectly, me dressed in white lace and nestled in his big, dangerous arms.
He meets my eyes in the mirror, and his are filled with reckless need. “Lucy, I love—”
I quickly cover his mouth with my hand. “Don’t. We have no future, so there’s no point in saying it. All we have is this moment, and I want to live in it with you.”
He takes my face in his hands. “Whenever you leave my sight, I die over and over again. So give me your lips and let me live.”
“Damiano,” I cry desperately.
He slants his mouth over mine in a hungry, devouring kiss.
A kiss that means I need you and I love you and goodbye all at once.
A last kiss, because we can never do this again.
I lose myself in the kiss, giving in to him completely.
His fingers whisper up my back. His body moves against mine, desperate for more.
“Can I have you?” he pants between kisses. “Please, Lucy. You’re the only woman I’ll ever want.”
“There’s a ring on my finger. I belong to another man.”
He cups the back of my head and kisses me insistently. “There are no other men. There’s only me. Don’t you fucking dare say that again.”
I let his kisses devour me, growing drunk on his intensity. “I’m still a virgin. I was saving myself all these years for you, Damiano.”
He buries his face in my breasts with a groan. “For me, my love?”
“Of course for you. I would have given myself to you years ago, after the kiss in the diner when I was sixteen and you were eighteen and covered with Sokoli blood.”
He caresses my cheeks with his knuckles and takes a ragged breath. “I wanted you too, but I had to protect us.”
“In public you did. In private, I could have been yours.”
He nods bleakly, holding me tight. “I know that now. We were going to be found out anyway, so I wish I had kissed you the moment we were alone, and then all night long in my bed. If I could do it all again, I would have made you mine that night, and every night after.”
My heart aches for the sweetness we might have had together. “But now it’s too late.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Are you wet for me, Lucy?” Damiano whispers in a darker voice. “Are you soaking through your bridal lingerie for the man you love?”
I put my lips against his ear. “Are you hard, even though you’re forbidden to touch me?”
Damiano sinks his teeth into my shoulder in a hungry love bite. He shifts beneath me, about to turn around and tumble me onto the mattress. He’ll pull my lace underwear aside and thrust into me, hard and deep, claiming me now and forever.
But the two of us are cursed to be interrupted before we can find any pleasure together.
Andreas Montoni pushes open my bedroom door with the confidence of a man who thinks he owns me.
“Lucy, good news. I’ve confirmed with the venue, and the date has been set for three weeks from…
” The smirk on his lips fades away as he sees me and Damiano locked tight around each other. “What the fuck?”
Damiano snatches my robe from where it’s laying over the back of my chair and wraps it around me, covering my body against my future husband’s gaze. He points at the door. “Get the fuck out.”
“Are you two kissing?” Andreas speaks loud enough for his words to echo through the whole house. “You’re brother and sister. That’s disgusting.”
Damiano lifts me up and places me on the mattress, and then he strides toward Andreas. “I said, get the fuck out of Lucy’s room.”
There’s the sound of rapid high-heeled steps in the corridor, and my heart seizes in panic. We’re so screwed.
“What is going on in here?” Mom says as she enters my bedroom. “Damiano, stop shouting at our guest. Andreas came to tell Lucy the good news about her wedding date.”
Her eyes land on me, huddled in my robe on the bed, and then on the lingerie bag discarded on the floor, and finally at Damiano’s kiss-swollen mouth.
She turns a furious shade of red. After a murderous glance at me, she turns to Andreas with a smile.
“I’m sure there’s an innocent explanation for what you thought you saw.
Damiano and Lucy can be…overly affectionate sometimes. We’re a very affectionate family.”
I nearly snort at that.
Andreas turns to me, revulsion filling his amber eyes. “Is that true? You and your brother were being affectionate?”
I don’t know what to say. It’s plain that nothing I can say will make any difference. Damiano’s whole body is tense like he wants to attack Andreas for coming into my room.
“You’re all fucking crazy.” Andreas shakes his head in disgust as he heads out of my room.
Is the wedding off? I think the wedding is off. Mom gives me a look that turns my blood to ice, and then she hurries to catch up with Andreas. “Andreas, wait! This is all just a misunderstanding. Andreas, please.”
Damiano scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck. Are you okay, my love?”
I’m so not okay. Mom’s going to kill me, and it’s not a figure of speech. I start to cry, and Damiano holds me for several minutes.
“Just go,” I manage in a whisper. “Mom will be angrier than ever if you’re still here when she comes back.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll fix this. I’ll follow Andreas right now. I’ll find him.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
My eyes follow him, fearing that this will be the last time I’ll ever see him.
It will be the last time I ever lay eyes on him.
I have to stand up, pull some sneakers on, shove a few things into an overnight bag, and run for it.
Mom isn’t going to convince Andreas that he didn’t just see what he saw, which means I’m a dead woman.
I have to walk away from the only man who means home, and my heart is shattering.
If I don’t, I’ll be given to Dad’s men to be raped and beaten, begging for mercy until they finally slit my throat.
What they will do to me will destroy Damiano, and I can’t let that happen to him.
My eyes drift to my closet. Running will only delay the inevitable. There’s a surer, swifter way out of this.
Feeling numb, I pull myself slowly to my feet.
My gun is hidden in the bottom of the shoe rack in my wardrobe, inside a shoebox.
Better to die swiftly by my own hand, to spare Damiano from all that suffering.
It will hurt him when he finds out what I’ve done, and he won’t ever forgive me, but I am sparing us both from an even worse fate.
Maybe he’ll take some comfort from knowing that I went out on my own terms, and I’ll live on in his heart forever. It’s the only place I want to be.
If Damiano can’t have me, no one can.
My hand is on the wardrobe door when I hear determined, masculine footsteps sounding along the corridor and getting louder. My bedroom door bursts open, and I turn toward it with a sigh. Why does Damiano have to make this so much harder than it is? We’ll both end up dead at this rate.
“Damiano, I told you…”
But it’s not Damiano who’s come into my room. Andreas slams the door behind him, and turns to me with an angry, petulant expression. “What were you doing with your brother?”
I draw the robe tighter around me. “Get out.”
He crosses the room toward me, and I sense violence radiating from him.
Gone is the deferential, overeager man who’s been desperate to impress my father and his cousin.
Damiano has just humiliated him, and he’s furious.
“Everyone in Malus says that Damiano fucks his sister. It’s true, isn’t it? You do fuck him.”
He crowds me, and I step back, and with the wardrobe suddenly pressing against my spine, I have nowhere to run.
“Damiano,” I shout at the top of my lungs, but there’s no reply.
Apprehension skitters through me as I realize how silent the house is. Where’s Damiano? Right now, I’ll even settle for Mom. My gun is stacked under several shoeboxes, and Andreas won’t stand there patiently while I dig it out.
“Go and tell Mom and Dad the wedding is off,” I say in a shaky voice. “I don’t care. Just get out of my room.”
Andreas’s eyes narrow. “You’re too important. I can’t call off the wedding.”
By important, he doesn’t mean that he cares about me. I’m a useful tool for his ambitions.
“You crave your brother’s dick and that’s sick and twisted, but I can work with that. You just need to be corrected, and that’s a husband’s duty.”
My mouth drops open. “I need to be what?”