32.2
“ Mmmmm ,” I moaned out. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Please. More. More. More. Just like that. ”
“My wife is greedy for me,” he said.
“YES. More. Never stop. Please.”
He was giving it to me, his tongue working magic, and when he thrust his finger inside of me, then another, I bucked and started moving faster. I was almost coming off the seat while he was down on his knees in front of me.
“Tell me, my wife, my queen, what do you want.”
“To….” I made a garbled noise.
“If you could only see yourself…you are the most beautiful woman to me .”
Two words.
To me.
The possessiveness, like he was the only man allowed to say those words to me, because his truth made it law…
Set me off.
All the pleasure in my body was concentrated on the frantic pulse between my legs, and it seemed to snap, give in, explode, rushing my system with enough satisfaction, it felt like I orgasmed three times at once.
I was seeing spots like I had just entered a dark room after being out at the bright beach. My heart had relocated to my throat. My skin felt thinned, and even the soft mist of the water felt like hard sprays. I was so sensitive, when Rocco rested his head against my stomach, and kissed me there, I orgasmed again.
This man wasn’t only about the physical.
He went much deeper than that.
My entire being responded to his entire being.
Once I caught my breath, I leaned down, resting my head against his. He looked up at me, and I looked down, and…we started to kiss. Until I couldn’t control it. I brought him up, leading him to his seat, and sat him down. His eyes took in my body, the water flowing over it, with a low growl in his throat. The sound made me ravenous, like I was the one on the hunt. I couldn’t wait to taste him. To have him deep inside of my mouth. And when my hands came to his powerful thighs, and I lo wered in front of him, my knees at his feet, my eyes rose to meet his.
“ My husband, my king, my everything,” I whispered, before I took his cock in my hand and then into my mouth.
He hissed out a breath and said my name, and then rested his hand on my head. My eyes lifted and found him watching me, as if watching me was making him higher. He was big. And wide. But I was too turned on to care. He tasted of salt and of something that belonged to my husband only.
Maybe it was me.
He hadn’t been inside of me since the thermal springs, but I could taste my hold on him.
A claim that I had on him.
He was mine in this way, and even deeper ways, only.
The thought inspired me to move, swirling my tongue around him, before I started to move faster with the sounds coming from his chest.
Total madness.
His muscles strained against his skin. His face was an expression of pure pleasure. His hips started to pulse up like he was fucking me. And when he exploded, he exploded with a sound that ripped from his chest and echoed inside of the bathroom.
He sat, eyes closed, breathing out smoke, for only a second. Then his eyes opened and he picked me up, bringing me close to his chest. We sat pressed together for a while, in the stillness, the world suddenly so loud—even if it was only the sound of the water running.
He stood, kissing my head, bringing me directly under the spray. He washed my hair, giving me a scalp massage, and I did the same to him. And after we were done, we stepped out together, but he picked me up, bringing me to the counter. He dried me, then dressed me. He refused to let me dry him, and as he dressed, he said, “The pleasure of taking care of my wife is my own. Allow me this for the rest of our lives.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “But I get to comb your hair. That’s my way of taking care of you—allow me to do this for my husband, to take care of him in this way.”
He nodded seriously. Then, after he took a seat, I stepped behind him, watching him through the mirror as the comb slid through his silky hair. His head almost lolled when the comb reached his scalp, and my heart made a whimpering noise for him—he had been starved for much too long for a simple touch, a connection.
My stomach took the noise and turned it into an obnoxious one, and his eyes snapped open.
“You are not eating enough.” He stood, towering over me, taking the comb from my hand and setting it on the counter. “I am not feeding you enough.”
Before I could protest, we were out of bathroom, the bedroom, and into the kitchen. I stared as his face as he stood in the middle of the room.
“You are so beautiful, Rocco,” I whispered, clasping the lion’s heart pendant. “ Mine .”
He closed his eyes and kissed me—it was light, so light, but the gratitude in it was a hearty meal sticking to my soul.
After the tingling melted and the moment had passed, even though it would linger in my heart forever, I breathed out, “Okay, let me get started on dinner.”
“Dinner has already been prepared.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’d like to cook something for us. A surprise.”
It was like my words were timed to the arrival of Vincenzo. He said something to Rocco in a dialect of Italian or Sicilian I wasn’t familiar with. Guido was right behind Vincenzo. I wasn’t sure what was said, but Rocco placed a kiss on my lips and pulled me to him hard, whispering in my ear, “You are dessert, my wife,” before he headed toward the office.
After he was gone, I stood in the massive kitchen alone, closing my eyes for a second, inhaling his lingering scent and trying to focus .
Right.
Dinner.
Nonna had taught me how to make eggplant parmigiana. Or melanzane alla parmigiana . A family recipe. Layers of eggplant, tomato gravy (Nonna said no one could convince her to ever call it sauce!), and cheese. I considered making chicken cutlets, but... I was able to find a lady on the island who…well, who offered to get the meat for me. She was willing to sell me the entire chicken, but I’d decided not to. The lady next to me had received a bag that had feathers mixed in with the bloody juices. That was as far as I would allow myself to think about that. It was totally different when I ate in a restaurant or bought meat from the grocery store. There were a few steps between me and the finished product.
Rocco had exploded with laughter when I told him I wasn’t a chicken plucker and decided on eggplant instead.
Before I started to clean and cut and prep, I poured myself a glass of red wine, grabbed a cup full of nuts, and left the kitchen, venturing toward the wall of glass. My bare feet padded across the cool stone floors, and I sighed at how nice it felt against my soles.
The storm still raged.
Even worse than before.
Under different circumstances, I would have enjoyed being holed up in an Italian castello with my husband for the night. In our shotgun in New Orleans, I would have, too. But there was something about this storm that brought back shocking replays of the first storm I’d experienced on the island.
Rain beat against the glass, buckets constantly being thrown against it, and when lightning flared across the sky, it gave a terrifying view of just how angry water could get. The sea was seething in every direction, for as far as my eyes could see. An angry woman’s emotions between land and island.
I looked past my flowy dress, the hem landing at my ankles, down at my feet.
Yeah, the ground didn’t feel all that steady .
My eyes ran up the glass and caught sight of the reflection in the glass.
Me.
My hair fell to my lower back, and it waved around my head, plumped by allowing my hair to air dry and the humidity. My skin seemed like soft candlelight ran through my veins instead of blood. My irises reflected the glow. My body was thinner, but it had more definition, like I had been working out. My curves were more pronounced. My breasts looked soft and swollen, even though my bones seemed closer to my surface.
The comfortable dress I wore felt like air flowing around my body, enhancing all that had already been enchanted by finding my true happiness in this world.
Sighing, I went back into the kitchen and got to work. Nonna always said food responded to love, and people responded to food. Add in music’s frisson, and all together, a delicious meal that fed both the body and the soul could be created. I’d never forget how her face reflected perfect harmony when she’d stand over a pot of rolling gravy, her eyes closed, her hands wafting the smell of it underneath her noise as an Italian tenor hit the highest note of his song.
“Right now,” she would say. “Right now is when our food is hitting a high note too!”
God, I missed that woman.
With tears in my eyes, I found the pad that controlled electronics in the castello and opened the music app Romeo had downloaded, thankful he had downloaded songs too. It seemed like the power was going to go out at any second. I played a song Nonna had cooked to and got to work, snacking on nuts and cheese as I did. I sang, dancing around, doing my usual lip-syncing routine. I wasn’t sure what I was doing with my arms, but I was almost sure it was called the windshield wiper dance as I moved my body in the opposite direction of my hands to a jazzy Sinatra tune. Tomatoes were an opera tune. Eggplant seemed good with an upbeat tune .
My laughter echoed inside the kitchen when I realized how I must have looked, but it didn’t matter—as the song said, I was in love. And even in the face of this storm, I was going to sing through it. Nonna taught me that. I was going to make her proud, carry on her fighting spirit, her love of cooking, and her verve for life. The fierce love she left with me was all the inheritance I needed.
As I sprinkled salt on the aubergine slices (dark purple skin still intact), preparing to set them aside for about an hour, I felt eyes on me.
One of the soldiers.
He stood at the entrance of the kitchen, staring at me, his mouth open a little. When he realized I was staring back at him, he blinked, like he was bringing me into focus. My eyes went up, in a what can I say about myself? way, and I grinned at him. He looked almost…transfixed. Maybe because of how I’d been carrying on in the kitchen.
In that moment, he must have realized he had to leave or chance coming face to face with his…boss didn’t seem right, and neither did prince. Rocco was either king or knight. Either way, I could tell he was shocked that he’d stopped in the first place, but even when he went to leave, his body seemed to go ahead of him as his neck craned, eyes lingering until he was forced to move forward completely.
The vision of me in the reflection of the glass came back to me—what he must have thought of me. My hair wild and voluminous, like I’d been electrocuted, and moving around wildly as I laughed to myself, seasoning the food like I’d been sprinkling it with a spell.
Yeah, way to make an impression, Ari.
I blew air out of my mouth, laughing after at the look on his face.
The castello seemed to go completely dark at the same time an electrical light shocked it.
I wasn’t sure why, but after the light cleared, keeping me in complete darkness, it felt like my body had become a bottle, trapping it inside. The sharp points of it, zapping back and forth, seemed to shock my gut into high gear.
“Rocco,” I whispered, snatching the knife from the counter and holding it in a firm grip in front of me. My feet were silent as I tiptoed forward, my heart overreacting, but going in the opposite direction of when Rocco was near and I was just…drawn to him.
This wasn’t dopamine flooding my system.
This was pure panic.
Something was wrong.
Not metaphorically speaking—not with my heart.
His.
Soldiers were starting to light candles, and as if light had become liquid and was starting to swamp the castello , it started to brighten the shadows with a soft emanating glow, creating dark shadows that rose and wavered up the walls. The soldiers rushing toward me were not coming for me, but passing me up, like they were sheep and were being chased in the opposite direction by a big, bad predator. I was almost afraid that, in the rush to get to the other side of the castello, it was going to tip us over.
One of Rosaria’s arias blasted from the kitchen.
Either she was behind me, or someone was.
I took off for the office, running as fast as I could, holding the knife out in front of me as a warning. If one of the soldiers happened to come for me, he’d get it in his gut if he tried to stop me from reaching mine. None of them seemed to care. Whatever was in this castello was more powerful than an army of Fausti soldiers.
At the door of the office, I lowered my arm and hand, setting the knife down, in case Rocco was going to come out of it, but I knew. He would have already come for me. The air in the room was humid, almost hot, and I scented it right away. Blood.
The light from outside of the room reached the pool of blood coming from my husband’s head.
I dropped to my knees next to him, keeping the knife close .
Something hard had hit him in the back of his head. Hard enough to knock him out.
“Rocco,” I whispered, but my touch was insistent, hoping to reach him deeper than skin. “Rocco!”
He groaned, and my heart settled some, but I still needed him to get up. I needed to help him up. We had to get…where were we going to go? Was there the equivalent of a panic room in this place? I doubted if Rocco would use it, but he’d want to send me there, which was worse. I needed to be wherever he was.
Where were Guido and Vincenzo? I trusted both men—to a certain degree. Rocco did too. He said not only were they blood-related, but they had proved their bones when Brando and Scarlett had gone through years of war.
“Stand, daughter of a whore,” Rosaria Caffi’s voice came from in front of me. She was blocking the meager light, and I couldn’t see her, only her profile.
She couldn’t see me snatch the knife from the floor either. Rocco probably had a gun on him, but if I started patting him down, she would hear and know. And I had to get her away from him. I had a feeling once she was done with me, maybe hoping to make him watch, she would try to finish him off. She’d only momentarily stunned him.
“Stand!” she shouted.
“I am!” I shouted back, hoping to rouse Rocco awake. “You can’t see me.”
Rocco groaned, a pained sound, like he was fighting through the fog to get back to me.
“Move into the light,” she ordered, her tone full of rage. “Now!”
I moved slowly, tucking the knife in the back of the dress, where it had an opening, exposing a slice of my back, and she seemed to be taking steps backward, keeping herself hidden from me while the light was slowly bringing me to life. I wasn’t just a voice in the darkness like she was. And I hoped the knife stayed put. The tip was stabbing me at the start of my ass crack. Between the elastic of the dress and my underwear, it made a flimsy sheath I hoped would hold.
At the door, she stepped back, into darkness, and she ordered me to move forward.
Okay.
I didn’t expect to have her at my back, but she poked me between the shoulder blades to get me moving.
“Do not try anything, daughter of a whore,” she whispered, the sound of it almost trembling, “or I will force you to watch as I carve his heart out.”
I kept my hands up, not responding, but walking at my own pace to keep the knife from ripping through the fabric and falling to the floor.
There were three things decided as she seemed to be walking me to the end of the plank.
One, if it came down to her going back after my husband or me fighting her right there, right then, we’d sword fight with our knives.
Two, whoever this woman was, she was truly unhinged.
Three, this was no ghost.
This was Rosaria Caffi in the flesh, unless she had a twin. Which made me feel a rush of heat and chill at the same time. I compared the… feel of this woman to the one beneath the window. The one beneath the window felt like winter incarnate. This woman felt like the flames of the seventh circle had somehow gotten tangled in her veins.
She shoved me toward the area of the castello with the glass walls, forcing me to stand close to them.
A shock of lightning lit up the room.
My eyes narrowed against the darkness, trying to process if what I’d just seen was my imagination or not. A boat that looked like it belonged to Vikings was riding the rough seas, coming straight for the castello. What kind of…people did it take to brave this effing weather in something that looked like it was hellish enough to survive the massive waves, wind, and deluge ?
People I didn’t want at our doorstep.
Rosaria Caffi laughed from behind me. Stepping closer to me, she purposely stepped into the light, allowing it to bring her to life.
Okay, that was truly effing unsettling.
The last time I saw this woman, our eyes had met through her mirror while she was dangling from a cliffside. She wore a dark cloak, and it gave the impression in the glass that her head was floating. Her laughter, the meanness in her eyes, though… Nothing had changed. The most astonishing part of all this—she had no visible scars.
This wasn’t adding up. At all.
The only plausible explanation my head could work up in that moment was that she had hit another cliff, and it had broken her fall, then she pushed her car completely over after. That was so damn farfetched, but I couldn’t come up with anything else.
Really not the time to think the situation through, though, not when this woman was still raging behind me, as seething as the sea. Time had not touched her temper. And I was married to the man she had an arrangement with, before her, er, fake death, and it wasn’t that long before he had moved on with me.
“I knew it,” she seethed. “I knew he would go for someone like you! Someone soft.” She spat the word out. “Someone not worthy to wear the Fausti name. All that time. All that time!” She threw her hands up. “And this is what the king of beasts does. He marries someone below him—a laughing hyena.”
She motioned toward me, like I was small and insignificant, then made a yip, yip, yip noise.
I was about to say, and don’t forget a daughter of a whore , but I didn’t want to poke her back. If mental stability was linked to a cord, hers had truly snapped. She was coherent enough, but the amount of rage…it just wasn’t normal.
Then my brain decided to try to play peacemaker. It asked me a question .
If Rocco fell in love with a woman and married her not that long after our death…how would you feel?
Okay, in nothing but truth, I could understand her rage. How she let it all fly, not caring what other people thought of her.
Damn. This was exactly what Scarlett said happened to her. Sometimes she understood people’s motives when she didn’t want to, but that didn’t mean I still didn’t feel whatever I was feeling. And that pissed me off. It was like my understanding nature was irking the bitchy part of me.
The bitch snapped back, Well, if it was love between them, why did he fall in love with us so quickly? Why did she want to take other lovers, share him? That man! Share him! If it would have been a lifelong commitment between them, he wouldn’t have married us. He wasn’t that type of man. He would be in the grave with her, not lying unconscious on the floor of the office, blood pooling around his head from the gash that bitch made!
Peacemaker turned up her-holier-than-thou nose and stf up.
That’s what I thought, bitchy me said with delicious satisfaction.
I was going mad, as mad as this dangerous storm.
As mad as this haunting woman suddenly in front of me, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, holding a knife like the bride of Chucky. Without warning, she lunged at me, slicing instead of stabbing. In the dim recesses of my mind, a voice was coming closer, screaming, she cut me! But the fire of it was a dull ache in the background, as I produced the knife from behind my back and held it out to her.
She laughed. “Oh, how symbolic! We are dueling to the death! That is a game the Fausti family just l oooo ves. Fitting.”
We circled each other, and even though I refused to take my eyes off her, I couldn’t help but notice in my peripheral that the boat was getting closer to shore.
She must have noticed, and her eyes sparked. “The Russians,” she said. “What I do not finish here, they will. And then the Caffi family will be tied to eradicating one of the most legendary families in history. But this. What is between you, me, and Rocco Fausti…it is personal.”
“That’s where you were going that night,” I said with certainty. “You left my husband for dead, and then you were going to, what…rat his family out to the enemy?”
Business was discussed around me sometimes, but I got the feeling Rocco only allowed bits and pieces to come through. He had been prepping me for his life, my new role, but this was still our honeymoon. He said there were times when men were allowed a year to enjoy the pleasures of marriage before official duties began again. Maybe he wouldn’t have been allowed the same time if the situation with Rosaria Caffi hadn’t happened the way it had, but since it seemed like he was…coming to terms with this entirely new direction of his life, the time was being given.
The word “rat” from my mouth seemed to trigger her. She went mad, screaming at me, slicing the air so fast, it whistled. I couldn’t get a jab in, not unless I wanted to be shredded. I was mostly holding the blade for self-defense, and if I could get a swipe in, I would. She’d nicked me first. It was only fair.
I was standing with my knife poised and ready, ready to duck and weave, and then…she was gone.