13. Contessa
13
Contessa
I am locked away in my room again for the next couple of days, but rainy weather makes confinement more bearable. Salvatore is out of the house again, though this time, he gives me notice. When I am alone, I fill up canvases and sketch books. In these four walls, there isn’t much for reference or inspiration, so I work from imagination as best I can. I put together the sketchy impression of a few outfits, thinking I might send Ava to shop for close-enough pieces to bring them to life, but the novelty of it wears thin. I’m tired of new things and missing old ones.
I draw what I can remember of my old bedroom, how it must still be frozen even now, trying to commit what it looked like to paper. Did I make my bed that morning, or are the sheets all messy, spilling onto the floor? Did I leave a coffee cup sitting on my desk? I can’t remember now.
I sketch Kay—the way she looked that last night, all dressed to kill, frozen in the moment with a laugh on her lips. The last moment we were having fun together.
The view from my favorite hiking spot. The exterior of the café where I was a regular.
Little scenes that I don’t want to lose by being here, that I want to hold onto. I put them to paper until I have a makeshift memorial of my old life.
But every so often, between the pages of my sketch book, silhouettes and rough sketches darken the page. Unfinished profiles, their features lost in obscurity. Dark, intense eyes.
Unreadable. Matte black.
Salvatore itches in my skin, in my thoughts.
I find him in my art even without meaning to, as if he has worked himself behind my eyelids. Every blink leaves an impression of him somehow.
I break him down into layers, a rough sketch of his posture, all straight and foreboding angles, with broad shoulders and an apex predator’s stride. I encapsulate his lifestyle into small, observable pieces. Impressionist details of his expensive watches. A pair of sleek, simple cufflinks. A flip-top lighter and a cigarette. A pistol. The subtle outline of his scar. My pencil hovers over the page as I consider the rest of him. His thoughts. His intentions. His history.
I scrawl an ugly question mark into the page and throw down the pencil as thunder grumbles overhead.
The bleak daylight leaves early, and the afternoon stretches on into eternity. The Beast’s reception is terrible in bad weather, so I lie on my bed and flip through a book I can’t focus on.
Salvatore will be back tonight. The thought circles around my head, always intruding when I least expect it. The words slide by on the page, my eyes skimming them without reading as he slips into the forefront of my thoughts again. My feelings toward that man are all knotted up, wanting and resentment entwined.
I’m tired of pretending I don’t feel something for him.
Denial hasn’t given me any medals or accolades, just the occasional migraine and an unhealthy amount of shame.
I throw down the book, abandoning distraction to curl up in the window nook overlooking the long driveway. I wait for him, watching the rain lash out in angry sheets across the yard. It’s annoying that he has me trained like this, that he’s already instilled in me some Pavlovian response to this time of night. He’s supposed to be here, stretching me out on the bed and showing off all the things he can do with his tongue. My forehead thumps pitifully against the glass.
The lights in the distant houses go out one by one, and behind angry clouds, the moon ladders slowly into the sky. Only imagination keeps me company until a set of headlights cut apart the lingering fog.
Dark figures step out of the car, just blurry shapes that are darker than the night around them. But on sheer instinct, I know which one is Salvatore when one man stops and looks right up at my window.
The whisper of anticipation that has taken up permanent residence at the back of my thoughts turns into an impatient buzz.
Within minutes, Salvatore enters without knocking.
“Someone’s late,” I say, as Salvatore enters, trying to hide how my pulse drops into my belly at the sight of him. He’s rain-soaked and worn, his wet hair tussled and falling into his eyes, shirt plastered to his skin by the pouring rain. Despite being soaked and cold, Salvatore marched right here. Right to me. My ego blushes hotly that I somehow make a man like this come running.
“On your schedule now, am I?” he asks, no shred of apology in his voice. “Gone for a couple days, and you’re already starting to get demanding.”
The words play at annoyance, but I can hear it in his tone—he likes that.
“I did wait up to see what you’d bring back. How you’d make it up to me.”
My teasing gives him an honest pause. Is he really considering maybe he should have come back with something? He’s been gone less than 48 hours, and all I really want is for him to put me on the mattress and give me something to focus on that isn’t literature and local news.
Before I can give him any hints, Salvatore offers me his phone. The gesture is so unexpected, I don’t have the sense to take it.
“Here, then. I said you could call your father. I haven’t been around for that to happen.
Call him now if that makes up for it.”
I blink at the phone for a few seconds.
“Really?”
He must mean it, because he leaves the phone with me as he goes to get a towel and dry off.
This olive branch puts all my silly little superficial wants to shame.
Salvatore’s contact list lights up the screen. In the sea of unfamiliar names, my father’s stands out. I wonder why they have each other’s numbers. Do they call to brag about their nefarious plots against each other? Sign each other up for spam call services?
The phone rings.
“On speaker,” Salvatore orders as he comes back, making it clear these are not going to be private conversations. The ringing fills up the room.
“Hello?”
Maybe it’s my imagination, but my father sounds older somehow, more tired. He seems apprehensive about who or what he might find on the other end of the line.
“Hi, Papa.”
His exhale fills the room as he swears with relief.
“Tessa. How are you calling? Are you safe? Where are you?”
“I’m fine. I promise, I’m fine,” I assure him, cutting off his rapid-fire questions before he can get ahead of himself. “Salvatore let me call. It’s been a while, and I just didn’t want you to think the worst…”
“The whole family is behind us on this,” he continues urgently. “It won’t be much longer now. We’re not going to leave you with that monster. Like all rabid animals, he’s to be put down like a dog in the street.”
I glance up. The so-called monster in question looks unaffected as ever.
“Tell me, what has he done to you? Are you hurt at all?”
For some reason, the truth feels shameful. That Salvatore hasn’t hurt me, that I sit around anticipating him like a pet waiting for its master to come home. The worst things Salvatore has done to me, I’ve liked . I am as guilty as I am grateful for it all.
“I told you, I’m fine. He’s taking care of me, papa.”
“Swear it to me,” he says.
“I swear it. You know I’m a bad liar.”
He laughs weakly.
“Yes. Yes, always. Despite my best efforts. I’m sorry for all this, Tessa. You don’t know how the regret keeps me up at night. I know I should have acted sooner. I should have made sure you were taken care of before something like this happened. I mean, I tried of course…” my blood runs cold as I piece together what he’s talking about, the final fallout that put this wide rift between us. “. . .Well, I could have done better. That’s all.”
I don’t know what to say to that, my words stolen.
“Tessa?” he says, worry trying to pluck at my frozen-over heart.
“It’s not your fault,” I force myself to say.
“No. No, we both know whose fault it is. Is he there?”
Salvatore nods his approval.
“He’s here.”
“Tell him we can reach a deal. I’m still willing to negotiate. This doesn’t have to get any bloodier.”
“How bloody has it—”
The phone is plucked from my hand before I can ask.
“Start talking numbers, Lovera,” Salvatore says, abruptly taking charge of the conversation. “What are you offering?”
The sudden change in Salvatore nearly gives me whiplash, as if another person has entered the room. I’ve seen how Salvatore is when he talks business—direct, efficient, and cold as ice. But I’ve never seen him switch it on like that, so effortlessly becoming the man who runs this vast, illicit empire.
Would he really make a deal? Is there a number my father could say that would put an end to this and make Salvatore give me up?
The line goes quiet for a few long seconds, leaves just the rain tapping noisily at the window.
“I’m going to assume you’re checking your bank account,” Salvatore presses again.
“Just mustering the will to talk to you like a man and not an animal,” my father says, his rage a razor’s edge in his voice. “What are your terms?”
“I asked first. As far as I’m concerned, the sky better be the limit. I’m not easily impressed.”
My father practically growls in frustration. Salvatore strolls comfortably across the room, pacing as he waits for my father’s answer. Thunder trembles the house.
“We can arrange something like that. What’s her condition?”
Salvatore looks me over.
“What the fuck am I supposed to answer that with? Fresh off the lot? Low mileage?”
“Is she still innocent?” my father clarifies.
My thoughts stumble over themselves, the words robbing my breath. They land like gunshots. Two to the chest. For several long seconds, I can’t process it at all. Hurt has me in a chokehold.
“Hang up,” I try to say, but my voice only comes out in a rasp.
“What’s the deprecation value if she isn’t?” Salvatore asks.
“Salvatore, hang up!” I snap.
I’m desperate to not hear the ugly number they would come up with.
He ends the call at my command.
Silence washes the room. Little by little, the fine details of my vision grow blurry.
My father’s backwards, old world principles are no secret to me. He never shied from being honest about his beliefs, even when those same beliefs left us estranged. But even I wouldn’t have thought him low enough to reduce his own daughter’s tangible worth to if I’d lost my virginity or not.
My thoughts are a wilder storm than the one outside.
I would really mean less to him if I weren’t a virgin.
I sat in this room and worried about his feelings, while I was the one kidnapped. Hindsight is so humiliating.
“He really fucking asked that.” I hate the way my voice trembles, unable to decide if it’s rage or sorrow that makes it waver. I angrily scrub my hand at my eye.
“There must be some kind of condition,” I seethe at myself, “like how babies don’t have object permanence. But me, I don’t have emotional permanence. If I don’t see someone, I forget what they really are, how I feel about them. I know what he is, and I still try —”
“You want to believe in the best in people,” Salvatore says. “Easy to do when they’re not in front of you, proving you wrong.”
“Well, that’s stupid.”
“It is,” he agrees flatly, not sparing me from my own truth.
I glare at the floor, emotions simmering.
“I want to change the agreement,” I sniff.
Salvatore scoffs.
“I wasn’t going to allow that to happen again whether you asked for it or not—”
“Then I want to replace it with something else,” I say, conviction building with all the urgency of a manic thought. “I want you to take my virginity.”
“That’s already on the docket.”
“No, not on the docket . I mean right here, right now.”
“Contessa, I’m not gonna do it this way—”
His words are interrupted by me pulling off my shirt over my head and throwing it at him.
“No?” I ask, still stripping down. As the last scrap of my clothes hits the floor, I march up to him with a mission, as if I can seduce him with my rage. “Why not? I’m your wife, and I get everything I want, right? So why can’t I want your cock?” He glares at me as I approach, slinging my words at him. “Worried about my fucking resale value in case you change your mind?”
Suddenly, Salvatore has me back on the bed. The breath knocks out of me as my back hits the mattress. I can’t get it back. His hand is closed around my throat, his angry breath in my ear.
“I had my mind made up about you the second I saw you in that club. You know that. I didn’t know you were a virgin then. I didn’t give a damn. I’m not one of those insecure fucks who can’t impress a woman unless she just doesn’t know any better. First or not, it didn’t matter.
I just knew I was going to be your last . So don’t take your daddy issues out on me, girl.”
He holds me pinned until the ache burns in my lungs.
He's right. I know he’s right. He’s not the one I’m angry with, but it only makes me more desperate for him to give it to me, to take me and ruin me. When he lets me go, I reach up and pull him back down into an urgent kiss.
“Please,” I beg him, pulling at his shirt.
“Stop it,” he growls. “You’re not turned on; you’re just pissed off. You don’t want it like this.”
“I’m so fucking tired of men telling me what I want,” I say, ripping at the front of his shirt until buttons rain across the bed. The wet shirt tears open to reveal a canvas—a mural of scar tissue and tattoos interwoven across Salvatore’s defined chest.
The sight shocks me out of my crusade.
Waves of dark ink meet shores of white and pink tissue, colliding across his abs. There are cuts and burns and some damage I have no name for. Slowly, I follow the sight with my hands, trying to make sense of the history of pain written out under my palms, as if I can read the raised tissue like braille. He tenses under my touch.
Beyond the scars and tattoos, Salvatore is all thick muscle and defined anatomy, with dark hair that trails down to his belly. I knew he was strong from his silhouette alone, from his easy strength and the occasional tight shirt, but reality puts my imagination to shame at the sight of him, all strong and roughly chiseled out. I reach for his belt.
“Contessa,” he says, my name a strained warning on his lips. I ignore it and silence him with my own mouth, dragging him into another kiss. My anger is becoming desperation. I don’t care if Salvatore gives me the most amazing pleasure or the most intense pain; I’ll take it all, as long as it eclipses this awful storm raging inside.
The belt buckle opens. My hand is almost on his zipper before he catches me by the wrists.
“You take out my cock, you better be sure you want it,” he says. “Look at me.”
He gives me no choice but to meet him, eye to eye. He means it. I see midnight in his wild look, pupils blown wide and hungry with the same wanting that has burned there for weeks, never letting himself give in while he showers me in pleasure.
The zipper slides down under my fingers, our gazes not wavering.
I’ve made my decision.
Good or bad, it’s mine .
“Goddammit,” he breathes, as if I’ve walked us to the cliff edge and pushed us both over.
“Come here.” Salvatore pulls me up into his arms, kissing me until I’m drowning in him, my head spinning and nails scraping at his shoulders. The phone vibrates once at the end of the bed, breaking the moment as surely as if my father had entered the room.
The heat dims.
Salvatore senses the break in the mood and reaches for the phone. I know it’s from my father just from the look in his eyes.
“What does it say?” I force myself to ask.
“It’s a hell of a number,” he admits.
“Oh.” The wounded syllable is barely out of my lips before Salvatore slings his phone aside, throws it into the floor across the room. He buries me beneath him, his mouth all over me.
I gasp and arch under him.
“You think I give a damn about your father’s deals? That I’d choose anything over you?
Over this ?”
I cling to him like a life raft, like he’s the only thing keeping me afloat.
“Please,” I whisper.
This time, Salvatore doesn’t tell me no.
He strips to just a pair of designer boxers. His own wanting strains against the sleek fabric. I pull at them until Salvatore slides them off, and his erection juts forward into its newfound freedom. He takes his hard cock in his hand, stroking it a couple times as it defies its own weight and girth.
My bravery skips briefly at the sight of it. He rests it between my legs, letting me feel its huge size against my pelvis.
“Are you ready?”
I nod pathetically, looking somewhere up over his shoulder as if I can make it less daunting by simply not acknowledging it.
“Yes.”
It doesn’t sound convincing even to me, and I’m the one who said it.
Salvatore’s laugh comes as a quiet scoff.
“Liar. You think that’s how I’m going to do it? That I’ll shove it in you like some freshman frat boy? Come here,” he says roughly. I gasp as he surrounds me completely, his body over mine, his huge cock resting on my belly. He is a barrier between me and the rest of the world, until there’s nothing else except the heat of his lips and the fit of my legs around his waist.
I cling to him desperately as he kisses me. His attention drifts between my mouth and my breasts, which he grips in his huge hands, teasing them until they roll beneath his touch.
“Let me show you what a man is for,” he breathes, “How I can fill you up, your cunt, your thoughts, until there’s no room inside for anybody else to hurt you.”
He slides down the bed, smoothly pulling my hips down to meet him and opens me up. I gasp in relief as he buries his mouth in my pussy. He gives me that familiar pleasure that he’s trained me on all these nights. I sink quickly into that hot, hungry feeling. A force stronger than my anger and devastation washes in as he makes me give them up, like he’s ripping all those painful emotions from me with his mouth.
Nothing else. Nothing but him.
He rubs his big hand over my belly, reaching up to grope my breasts.
The house’s power flickers, lightning lashing outside the window. He doesn’t stop. I cry out as he keeps going, clinging to him, to the mattress, reaching desperately to any fixed point as I am tossed on a roiling ocean of pleasure.
He works his way up my body inch by inch, making me last like a rare wine. He licks a warm stripe up my abdomen, reaching my breasts with his mouth and his hands. My nipples stand stiff and aching.
“Sal,” I whisper, as he meets my lips with his. “I’m ready,” I say, between breathless, hungry kisses. “Please, please, I’m ready—”
“I know, I’ve got you,” he whispers roughly, working two fingers into my drenched pussy, proving my own arousal, as if it’s not burning me alive inside. I groan as his thick digits work inside me, mixing up the surface pleasure with a deeper, profound throbbing. I open my legs wider, inviting him, all of him, the greed within me endless as I crave more.
Salvatore moves back. His cock is stiff, glistening at the tip. He’s gorgeous, the way he towers over me, every inch of him on display. His light scars and dark hair and thick cock. He strokes it idly as I run my hand up his chest, the moment weighing over both of us.
“I don’t make love, Contessa,” he says, voice rough with want. “I just fuck. That’s all I know how to do. But if it’s too much, you say.”
I’m a grown woman, and this is long overdue; I want it even if it hurts. I nod to him.
I take a few seconds, studying these last moments in which I am my father’s perfect little virgin daughter, breathing her last breaths. She is in Salvatore’s crosshairs now, his finger on the trigger of a kill shot.
Salvatore takes me under him, fits my body perfectly beneath his. The tip of his stiff cock nudges between my legs as he guides himself in, pushing against the immediate tightness.
Tension ripples through me. Even wet and hungry for him, Salvatore struggles to fit.
Pain blossoms, and within seconds of him starting to push inside me, I can’t bear it without gasping.
He stops immediately.
“Sorry,” I whisper, humiliated by my own weakness. “I’m sorry, just…just keep going.
It’s okay if it hurts.”
He shushes me roughly, kissing away the frantic words tumbling from my lips. He eases himself in again, teasing just the head into the shallow dip of my pussy. His cock pushes in slowly, but he stops with a strained growl when he meets the resistance that makes me cry out.
It won’t fit.
My face burns hotter than my aching pussy. I should have known better. I should have known this could never work. Not for me. That’s just how my luck is. Even when begging to get rid of my virginity, pinned under a man who wants to take it, my blood on fire for him—I can’t do it.
Salvatore has barely been able to get inside me at all, and I know he can’t enjoy this.
I want to disintegrate on the spot.
“Am I doing something wrong?” I ask, mortified.
“No,” he says. “Relax.” His hand slides up and down my body, soothing me and fondling at my breast. “Give me time to teach your little cunt how to take me, Contessa. It’s not a race.”
He opens my legs wider beneath him. I realize he’s sweating, though it can’t be from exertion. A subtle shudder runs through him, his breathing heavy. God, he’s holding himself back for me.
Salvatore takes his time persuading me and my pussy that his cock is going to fit inside it, whether the physics of it all agrees with him or not. Whenever I get too tense for his liking, he rubs his huge hand against my pussy, chasing off the pain until I’m soft and hungry for him.
Then, when I’m willing, he tries again.
The cycle repeats until I’m brought to tears with wanting, so desperate to have him in me.
The throbbing in my belly is like a drumbeat. Salvatore’s patience with me never wavers, though I know he’s holding on by a thread.
I run my hand along his cheek, down his chest, taking in the sight of him over me.
My first. My last.
My pussy nudges up against the thick girth of his cock again and again, stretching around that impossible bulk—but he won’t hurt me, won’t batter his way through that superficial tightness keeping us apart.
I can feel the subtle strength in his every motion. I know what he’s capable of, what he could do to me so effortlessly. Instead, he swallows my breaths in his kisses, distracting me from the ache between my legs until all I can feel is my craving for him. Whimpers fall from my lips as he teases himself deeper.
“That’s my girl,” he breathes, our foreheads pressed together as I whimper under him.
“You’re doing so well. Can you take a little more for me?”
I nod, eager to do something right in all this.
The stretch hurts, but flares with sensation. For the first time, I feel a distinct give as Salvatore sinks deeper. He inches his cock between my legs, brings my feet to twitching. My mouth opens around a silent sound. My body surrenders to him. The intensity eclipses every thought as Salvatore takes my innocence like a hard-won prize.
I come up off the mattress, my cry all sweet relief and vindication as I cling to him.
Salvatore takes me in his arms, holding me firmly as he keeps grinding up into my clenching pussy. He never loses the momentum, gentle but relentless as I’m fucked for the very first time.
“Tell me if I need to stop,” he says, his voice a growl.
“No, don’t —” I beg, shaking from head to toe.
We got this far, reached this point of almost pain, almost pleasure. I don’t want to lose it now. He gives me only a little of his full length, and I don’t know how even that fits inside me.
He puts me back down onto the bed, easing from shallow grinding into slow thrusting.
His most miniscule motions are tectonic inside me, drawing out ragged breaths and clenching muscles. My hips jerk at first. Slowly I drift into the sensation; pleasure corkscrews into my belly with every thrust, Salvatore’s hands like iron as he holds me under him. The momentum burns, the tempo slow and sizzling as it builds. I’m amazed at how a huge, angry cock like that can fill me so sweetly.
“I thought you said you didn’t know how to be gentle,” I whisper.
He answers me with sharp roll of his hips that shoots pleasure into my belly.
“I’m not too old for some first times,” he says.
His unexpected tenderness makes my belly flutter just as surely as his harshness usually does. I want him all over me, inside me. I want all of him. I want him to eclipse the rest of the world.
“Contessa,” he rasps against my ear, as my legs bounce with the snap of his hips. He’s getting more desperate. I moan softly for him, encouraging him to give me what he needs. I want to take it for him, want to bring him to my brink. Every thrust stokes that ember of pleasure until it becomes a proper fire, burning hot and low.
“ Please ,” I hear myself say, latching onto the word as the pleasure grows and grows, pleasure that I’ve never felt, never even dreamed before.
“That’s it, gorgeous,” Salvatore says, in that dark, heated tone that melts me. “Don’t fight it.” His hand tightens in my hair, holding me back and keeping our eyes locked on each other. I can’t stop the embarrassing sounds tumbling from my lips as I’m stretched and filled. I urge him for more, and he gives it to me.
His hand sprawls on my belly as he holds me down, slowly rolling his hips at a deeper angle.
The way he’s looking at me—all power and passion—floods me with heat.
“Salvatore—”
“Beg,” he says, his voice thicker now. He’s on the edge just like I am, cresting that dark wave.
“Beg for my cum inside you. Earn it.”
My pitched whines tremble with desperation, pleasure shaking in my legs.
“Don’t pull out. Don’t pull out—” The words slip, unguarded, from my lips. I barely hear myself say it, but I see the effect it has, reflected in his simmering gaze. “I need it. I need it, I’m so close—”
He curses under his breath.
“That’s my girl,” he praises me between gasps, his own control slipping, “Taking her first cock raw. Look how much your cunt likes being bred—you can take it all for me, can’t you?”
His fantasy shoots right to my belly. I have known from the start what Salvatore wanted from me, what he has planned to use me for from the start—but he finally tells me how he is going to use me, my toes curl with a forbidden thrill.
I nod as the fantasy becomes a desire he plants right between my legs. Salvatore pushes raw and deep inside me, right toward my womb with not a single barrier between us. My nails leave their own marks on him, my personal addition to his scars.
Every thrust fans that ember of pleasure until it becomes a proper fire, burning hot and wild.
He shifts positions, taking me by the waist, holding me by the little grooves of my hips.
I’m amazed at all the ways we fit together, the perfect synergy of raw anatomy.
Salvatore’s thrusts are firmer, commanding—hips snapping greedily as he looks down on me beneath him, driving me to the edge of belly-deep pleasure. My breasts bounce, back arching, legs twitching in the air involuntarily as the heat inside me twists into a tight, narrow point, driving him toward my womb.
Lightning flickers. In that brief flash, I see something other than Salvatore above me. I see my father’s worst enemy. I see the man killing the only thing my father ever really cared about. I see my 6’4, tattooed revenge. I see ruin .
My head falls back, and my white-hot fantasy implodes on itself with a scream.