6. Contessa
6
Contessa
My new digs: a four-poster canopy bed, a cozy window nook overlooking the lawn, an antique wardrobe and dresser set made redundant by a spacious and very empty dressing room, and an attached bathroom with a separate bathtub and walk-in shower. I have spent the morning scrutinizing every inch of this room, getting to know its tasteful cream-and-gold color scheme all too well. It has a vintage classiness with modern standards.
What it doesn’t have are any secret doorways or passageways cleverly hidden in the walls. Not even a secret fantasy world hidden in the back of the wardrobe. I checked.
All I find in my scouring of the room is a cheap plastic pen, forgotten in one of the drawers of the nightstand. I spend a few lazy minutes contemplating my odds of using it as a weapon. The custom print job on the side advertises some hotel in Chicago. It feels like neither of us are meant to be in this room, but we’ve somehow both been carried here, one way or another.
I sigh and throw myself back into bed sheets, the mattress squeaking. Last night pulses behind my eyelids whenever I close them. With absolutely nothing to occupy myself with, no phone or TV, not even a book, my thoughts turn endlessly toward last night. When I close my eyes, I can feel him there, his body heat between my legs, his hands on my thighs. If I let the fantasy run too long, I ache to touch myself, but his growl still echoes in my thoughts —I don’t even want your own fingers between your legs without my permission. I’ll show you how you should be taken care of.
I have no reason to listen to him. Salvatore would never know. But somehow, his order keeps my hands above my waist and the hunger between my legs.
Besides, there’s nothing I could do to myself that he couldn’t do better, my treacherous thoughts whisper. Even those thoughts I’m hearing in his voice.
A soft knock at the door shakes me out of the monotony. I clutch the pen in my fist just in case. The lock clicks and the door swings open. My well-aimed glower is not so well-aimed at all. My eyes drop from where I expect to see Salvatore, down several inches, to stop on a short girl with a mop of dark brown curls and a softly freckled face.
She balances a tray of food against her hip and carries about a dozen bags on the other arm.
“Hi,” she says breathlessly, the word landing flat and awkward between us.
“…Hi?”
A man stands just past the doorway, almost out of sight. I toss the comforter over my legs, trying to hide the fact that I’m still half-naked from the waist down, but he stays back in the shadows of the hallway.
“Sorry. This is—I’m no good at introductions. I’m Ava,” she says, all in a single breath.
“They asked me to make sure you have everything you need. I brought you breakfast and some clothes.” Her words pitch as she almost upends the tray of food.
Unable to sit and watch her struggle, I take the tray from her so she can set the endless number of bags on the floor.
“Thank you…”
I’m not sure if gratitude is the appropriate response in my situation, but good manners are hard to shake. “Where’s Salvatore?”
She glances over her shoulder, toward the doorway, but gets no answer from the man standing guard there.
“That’s a little above my paygrade,” she admits. “Do you need him?”
My mouth opens and closes.
“No. No, of course not,” I blush, as if she’s accused me of something. “But what am I supposed to do? Just…sit in here and wait for…”
For what?
I don’t even know what I’m waiting for .
For Salvatore to come in here and whisk me off to a wedding? What changes then? I have no idea what tomorrow looks like, or the day after, or the day after that. But the thought of it looking like these four walls—I don’t know if I can stand it. Like a caged animal, I might start beating my head against the wall or gnawing off my own limbs.
“Never mind,” I sigh. “You’re bad at introductions, I’m bad at being kidnapped, apparently. I’m Tessa.”
Ava smiles sympathetically.
“It’s nice to meet you. I mean…well, sort of...” She winces at herself. “Sorry. Obviously, you wouldn’t think there’s anything nice about this. I don’t know why I said that.”
There’s a certain awkwardness about the interaction that neither of us can shake. My unwilling imprisonment lingers in between every polite word we try to exchange.
If Salvatore had sent some man in here, I might have felt brave enough to try and beat him over the head with this tray. Ava seems too soft-spoken and sweet, just as uncertain about all of this as I am. I suck it up and pick at my breakfast.
I’m not hungry, and even the artful slab of French toast and bright, fresh berries on my plate can’t convince me that I am. I just sip at the orange juice, served in a skinny glass, with a fresh orange wedge on the rim, alongside a glass of ice water.
“If you need anything, you just have to ask,” Ava explains, “I can’t let you leave this room, and I can’t give you anything electronic. But besides that, Salvatore said you can have whatever you want.”
I scoff softly, fiddling with the plastic utensil I’ve been given.
“Except a real fork, apparently.”
Ava blushes guiltily.
“And nothing that can be used as a weapon,” she agrees softly.
“Nothing quite like the insane asylum treatment,” I say, “A danger to myself and others.”
“I’m sure that’s not true...” she says gently. “I can give you time to eat—”
“Wait,” I say, desperation cracking in my voice. I don’t want to be locked away alone again. I glance over the room, looking for any excuse to make her stay. “What’s all that?” I ask instead, motioning to the bags of clothes on the floor.
Ava glances down, and for the first time since entering my room, she fights a smile.
“Oh. Well…first of all, it’s not my fault,” she says.
I arch an eyebrow at that little disclaimer. It’s as though she’s been itching to talk about this, some of her shyness melting away as she lowers her voice as she opens one of the bags to show me,
“I looked through some of them. Of course you’ll need clothes, but…” She fights another laugh, “Let’s just say they sent a man to do a woman’s job.”
Oh, God.
“…what does that mean?”
Ava pulls something from the bag. It’s dark and tiny, and when she gets it straightened out, it becomes a skimpy little mini dress. It’s not something I’d lounge around in, but I don’t hate it either.
“It’s not bad,” I say, but Ava’s smile doesn’t waver.
“I’m glad you think so, because—” she reaches into the bag and pulls out another, completely identical dress. I blink, and she pulls out another. “Apparently, whoever was sent to do your clothes shopping didn’t know your size. So…they just bought three of everything.”
“You’re joking,” I say, reaching for one of the bags. Sure enough, three identical cream, sheer tops are folded up inside, each a different size. I double-check the designer brand, then turn my stunned gaze to Ava. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth, biting down her laughter.
“Wait, there’s more—I’m convinced, really convinced, that they thought this was a bra—”
I’m laughing before she even gets the elaborate halter top out of the bag.
“ No .”
“Can you imagine the poor man who was sent to do this? Just standing in the women’s section sweating buckets.”
We find a strange solidarity in the hopelessness of men as Ava and I go through the clothes. Ava digs through the bags, showcasing my new wardrobe. She pulls out a heavy mink coat and classy evening dresses. Apparently, whoever did my shopping for me doesn’t believe women wear jeans, since there isn’t a single pair of those anywhere in these bags. Not even a pair of cute sweatpants to lounge around in.
If I’m going to be kept imprisoned, I feel I at least deserve to be comfortable.
“This feels like one of those shopping haul videos,” I say, trying to make sense of something that is somehow both sequins and see-through.
“It’s kind of exciting,” Ava agrees, then seems to remember my situation. I can almost see the apology forming behind her grimace.
“Clothes are always exciting when they aren’t on your own credit card,” I smile quickly, cutting off the awkwardness before it can fester. It’s something we’re both going to have to live with, and there’s no use tripping over ourselves about it every few seconds. It is what it is, and we skip over the awkward beat as gracefully as we can.
In one of the bags, I find a large travel kit, complete with all the things I had sorely missed this morning: a hairbrush, toothbrush, toothpaste, even shaving cream and a plastic razor. I’m more grateful for a travel-size tube of Colgate than I am any of these thousand-dollar gowns.
The pristine bedroom quickly becomes a disaster site of clothes. Ava and I are left to our own devices, the man who darkened the doorway vanishing somewhere in the chaos.
Once all the bags are empty, we look over the bed and the many pieces of designer fashion laid out across it. All the clothing is feminine and suggestive, low-cut tops and high-slit skirts. The dresses are as exquisite as they are revealing, with plunging necklines or open backs. I wonder if Salvatore had any input in this at all. For some reason I don’t want to inspect too closely, I think I would feel different about it if he did. I trail my fingers over one of the dark evening gowns, imagining how it would look with a chunky string of pearls.
The more I look over the chosen outfits, the less random and silly it seems. There’s a design here. Taking in the sight of all the clothes at once, I gradually piece together the vision.
These clothes aren’t about practicality or comfort. This is about how I look next to him , in his dark fitted suits and polished shoes.
Between the pieces of fabric, the message is clear: this is what you are now.
It is not at all the message I want to give. I have no part in it, no stake in it. Until now, reality hadn’t settled in yet. It still felt like this was all a dream and I would wake up in my familiar apartment running late for something. My father would call me, and it would go to voicemail. Kay would crash at my place for podcast and pizza night. Everything would just…go back to normal, and Salvatore would be a faint memory of some heated fever dream, where he belongs.
Now, I look out at these clothes, and see a future planned. My future. How many days would I have to spend here, to wear all these clothes?
“What do you know about him?” The question comes on suddenly, as if I can’t help myself but ask it. “Salvatore. What is he like?”
The silence lingers too long for her answer to be anything good.
“I don’t know him very well,” Ava finally says. It sounds like an excuse.
“Aren’t you related?”
“Not by blood. My brother is his consigliere. His right hand. Marcel and Salvatore call each other brother, but it’s not literal.”
It’s odd to me that the right hand in power isn’t a blood relative. My father would never trust an outsider to hold an important position like his right hand, but then, my father had always said the Moris’s were wilder and more reckless, and that was what made them so dangerous.
“Shouldn’t you be close to Salvatore if your brother is?”
“Not at all,” she admits softly, as if confessing a secret. “I know Marcel loves him like a brother, but he’s always told me to do as Salvatore says and to stay out of his way.”
“He doesn’t want you near him,” I summarize, more to the point than Ava was willing to be. I appreciate that she doesn’t want to scare me, but I would rather be informed and afraid than blissfully ignorant until it’s too late.
She doesn’t deny my summary.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“I’m afraid of a lot of things,” she says, exasperated. I bite back a smile because the shy thing really does seem to mean it. She might even be afraid of this conversation. “But I don’t think he’s a bad—” she hesitates, as if she can’t even say that much with any honesty. “I just mean…I think he is what he has to be.”
Ava might not be much for comfort, but at least she doesn’t seem interested in lying to me. I hate that I make note of that, that on some level I recognize this as being an asset I can use.
“Salvatore has my brother’s loyalty if that means anything,” she continues. “We both owe him. When our dad died, Salvatore used the family’s connections so that my brother could become my legal guardian. Marcel was only sixteen at the time, and we were supposed to be separated and put into the foster system. I was six. Even now, my brother is legally considered two years older than he really is. I don’t know how the family managed to pull those strings.”
“Salvatore did that?”
“Well, Sal wasn’t don back then. His father did it, but it wouldn’t have happened without Salvatore’s convincing.”
“And Marcel’s worked for the family ever since,” I say, filling in the rest of the tale for myself. The story doesn’t warm my heart any. I’ve heard it a hundred times over. It’s how the family functions, meting out kindnesses that can be repaid later and collecting any unpaid debts with blood. It’s just business. My father works the same way, as did his father, and so on.
I was expected to be the same. I just failed.
Floorboards creak in the hallway and our conversation ends abruptly. Wordlessly, the mood shifts between us.
“Don’t worry about these clothes,” Ava smiles sunnily, scooping up empty bags. “I’ll take back the things you don’t want and what doesn’t fit, and I can do some shopping for you. You’ll just have to wear some of this for now. Or just stay in that.”
We both glance down at Salvatore’s shirt.
“There’s a reason you haven’t seen me below the waist,” I confess.
She blushes, wide-eyed at the realization.
“Oh. Goodness. Right—let me go get a pen and paper so we can make a list of things you need, okay?”
Once Ava hurries off, as if this is now an urgent emergency, I kick off the sheets and stand at the edge of the bed. All the possible outfits stretch out before me, dark and decadent. I want to drown the part of myself that hungers to impress him, that looks at these clothes and wonders what he likes.
I pull off Salvatore’s shirt and toss it aside.
“Is little Ava spilling all my best secrets?”
I whirl around at that low baritone. Salvatore leans in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.
In the early morning light, he brings my heart to a frenzy. The full suit from last night is gone, replaced with just a crisp dark button-up with the sleeves rolled up, showing off the subtle veins on his arms. He didn’t shave this morning, and it shows in the shadow darkening his powerful jawline.
“Do you have an alarm that sounds when I get naked?” I snap at him, grabbing one of the dresses.
“I have impeccable instincts,” he drawls.
Salvatore crosses into the room and seamlessly snatches the dress from my hands before I can get it on. He throws it back on the bed without ever taking his eyes off me.
“It’s not polite to talk about a man behind his back,” he says, his footsteps making slow circles around me. My heart lands at my feet as I wonder how much he heard.
“It’s not polite to eavesdrop, either,” I counter.
“My house. My eaves.”
Fuck.
If he’s angry, I can’t let Ava get in trouble for my snooping.
“I was just asking questions. I already know what you do, I know that your life is better than most. What does it matter to you what I ask?”
My question goes unanswered. Salvatore crosses to the bed, looking over the same selection of clothes that I had been choosing between.
“Maybe your men should get better at asking questions, too,” I add, “They won’t waste so much of your money that way.”
Salvatore continues to ignore me, the price tag of a few thousand dollars not worth a single syllable to him.
“And apparently, they think I’m not deserving of panties,” I add bitterly.
He picks up the mink coat. I think it’s a strange choice until he drapes it around my shoulders. By looks alone, I know the fur is real, and a shudder runs through me as he wreathes my naked body in the skin of a soft, innocent animal. I wonder if, to Salvatore, I’m the hunted animal. The trophy kill he wants to wear on his arm.
“You can ask whatever you want,” he says, his hand cupping my jaw as he makes me look at him, “but you ask me .”
“You weren’t exactly here at the time,” I counter, through gritted teeth.
“Well, I didn’t expect to be so sorely missed,” he smiles. He’s no different in the daylight. It could be Sunday morning, and Salvatore would still smile like a sinner. Like there’s never been a truly happy thought behind those black eyes.
“Listening comprehension wasn’t your strong suit in school, was it?” I ask. Somehow the space between us seems to be disappearing. He backs me up to the window nook until I fall back against the seat.
“Is that what you want to know about? My school days?” he asks, as he takes my knees and spreads them apart. I freeze as I’m opened up for him, my pussy on full display in the sunlight falling through the window. “I can already tell what yours were like,” he says, as if it’s written there on my cunt. “The perfect little student. Good grades. Private tutors. Excelled in all your extra-curriculars, didn’t you?”
I don’t know how he would know any of that, and it frustrates me that he isn’t off the mark by a single centimeter.
“Are you trying to humiliate me because I was good at school? That’s a new one.”
I try to close my legs, but his hands rend them open again. Heat throbs in my belly as he forces me open. My lips open around a voiceless sound.
“It’s not about school,” he says, sliding his fingers against my pussy. “Girls like you just thrive there. And they tell you it’s because you’re so smart and clever. Gifted . Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. Doesn’t matter. You just want the attention. The praise. You want someone to pat you on your cunt and say, ‘ that’s my good girl .’ You’ve been good for me, haven’t you? You haven’t touched yourself without my permission?”
He shouldn’t know that—but he does—and I shouldn’t play into his games by shaking my head no—but I do.
“Touch yourself,” he commands.
My pride despairs as my hand obeys.
If I’m trapped here with only Salvatore’s perverted little games to entertain myself with, why not play them? Why not run my fingers between my legs and feel my own wet arousal?
When I’m not forward enough, Sal’s huge hand cups mine and drags my hand against my pussy until my hips lift. The tips of my fingers squelch as he curls them against my pussy, stroking the heel of my palm up against my clit. His grip on my hand is feather-light. I could break it if I wanted, but I don’t, rolling my hips up into my own touch.
My own fingers aren’t enough like this.
The pleasure from last night lingers like the first hit of a drug, and I want to chase that dragon so badly.
“Are you going to be good for me, Contessa?”
My jaw clenches. “It’s Tessa,” I tell him again, my own name throwing me out of the fantasy. No one calls me Contessa, not even my father. His knuckle brushes against my clit. I ache to grind into it, but when I try, he only replaces it with my own fingers.
“Answer me.”
I nod.
“Use your voice,” he says, the words firmer, a command that I feel in my stomach.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Have you ever given yourself an orgasm before?”
I shake my head before I remember the rules— his rules.
“No,” I say instead.
“Because you haven’t tried, or because you tried and failed?”
My body stretches out against the waves of soft gray fur, fingers circling my clit—an agonizing tease.
“I’ve tried…”
His hand falls away. The distance between us is sudden and cold against my overheated skin. My body temperature has spiked as if he set a fever off inside me. Salvatore sprawls out on the edge of the bed, props himself up on one arm and watches me with my hand hanging limp between my legs.
“Touch yourself,” he says, making himself comfortable.
I stare at him, unsure.
“You want me to…”
“I want you to make yourself come.”
I’ve never done it. Not once, and not for lack of effort. My own fingers just don’t do it, my thoughts too loud, my own body too stubborn. It’s always too much or not enough, and right when I felt like I was getting close, so close , the pleasure would evaporate. Like a misfire, something inside me slipping out of gear. It was less frustrating to just not try. For years, I have considered myself the Goldilocks of orgasms, never getting it just right. When I finally confessed the truth to Kay, she assured me it was normal and recommended toys. I told her I purchased them, that I was enjoying them and they had changed everything for me. I lied. I just couldn’t handle someone thinking I was broken somehow.
But under Salvatore’s burning gaze, I’m not able to lie. My fingers work tirelessly at my pussy, trying to stoke the ember of pleasure into a fire. The way he had done it last night, so effortlessly—
It had happened so naturally, I thought maybe I was fixed.
But I feel it now. The aching struggle to reach that peak, the pleasure there but distant. Impersonal.
I whine in frustration and try dipping my fingers deeper inside.
“No,” he orders sharply. His voice has more of an effect on me than my own hands.
“Outside only. Only I go inside. Good girl,” he says, when I listen and stroke my folds again.
I wait for him to tell me what to do. To order me into orgasm, like he can snap his fingers and make my ovaries quake with pleasure. He doesn’t. Salvatore sits and watches, a silent observer to my plight.
The sweat gathers on my brow, my body twisting on top of the fur coat. I hammer my fingers against my cunt in frustration, the cry that I utter having nothing to do with pleasure.
Suddenly, Salvatore is between my legs again. With both thumbs, he circles either side of my clit until I see stars. I buck, hands curling into his arm as he brings me to the edge in a matter of seconds.
“You think it’s an accident that you don’t have any panties here?” he asks, in that low, dangerous voice that scrapes like a blade across my cunt. My vision blurs, eyes rolling and breath hitching. “I would never allow that. I don’t want another man even thinking about your cunt.”
He roughly flicks my clit with his finger, pulses of pleasure and pain shooting through my core. I yelp pitifully, and plead for him to keep going, keep hitting it just like that.
“Look what all I can do to my good girl, and she still begs me for it—” he says, a new thickness in his voice. He’s into it.
I nod up at him, our eyes meeting.
“Fuck,” he breathes, the word ragged on his lips, as if he’s seeing me for the first time.
It all comes to an abrupt stop. His touch vanishes like a mirage in the desert, an illusion of relief that gets snatched away from me. I cry out senselessly, legs closing and clenching around the nothingness between them.
Salvatore turns away.
“Wait—” I say when he makes his way toward the door. “You’re leaving ? Why?” I hear my own stunned disbelief and desperation for him to come and finish me off. I stand up too quickly, my legs wobbling beneath me, my bare thighs wet and slick.
Salvatore doesn’t look back.
“So next time, you’ll think twice before you start gossiping.”