Chapter 8
ELSIE
His hand is on the small of my back as he leads me out of both the bar room and the garage, wanting to show me around the place that will be my home for a year.
His touch is firm, and if I weren’t in this situation, I’d even find it safe, the way he touches me.
But there’s nothing safe about him. I’m trapped in the arms of a monster and there’s no way to escape. He wants me for a year, and the thought of being bound to him, living with him—a murderer, someone evil—it churns my stomach. Makes my skin crawl.
But he was right about one thing: I don’t have other options. And it’s better to have them than to end up dead or back where I came from. If this is the only way for me to save Kayla, then I will take it.
So I’ll give the infamous Michael Marino what he wants. I’ll play his game. But once he lets his guard down, I’ll run. And this time, he won’t find me.
“What will you tell your daughter? You know, considering she saw me hiding?” A small, sinister laugh bubbles out.
He pauses as we enter the house, snapping a hand around my wrist, yanking me flat against the bulk of his chest. “Don’t worry about my daughter. She’s only six. She’ll believe just about anything.”
His smoldering gaze skirts down to my mouth, and I swallow over the ball of nerves there.
“You just worry about doing your job right.”
He drops my hand as though it’s suddenly made of ice, practically rushing past me, further into the house.
But he pauses, his back to me, his shoulders leaping with heavy breathing.
I proceed closer, my eyes scattering high to the cathedral ceiling with a sparkling chandelier hanging overhead.
The mansion appears as though it spreads out endlessly, fancy-looking art on the walls and elaborate décor like tall shiny silver vases at the corner with fresh lilies.
I look at the wall to my left and see photos of his daughter, them together at the beach building sandcastles. He looks happy. Truly happy. Sophia’s on his lap, and his face is beautiful, that wide smile makes him appear almost kind.
But I know better.
I pause, continuing to glance around and spotting a large photo of them at a wedding, the couple smiling, Michael’s arm thrown over the man’s shoulder. There are other photos too: an older couple. Parents, maybe.
I pass a glance at another frame: Michael with two other guys, the one who pointed that gun at me and the other the groom from the wedding photo. He too has similar dark features to Michael, all three with those darkened eyes and black hair.
“Those are my brothers,” he explains. “You’ve met Giovanni already.”
“Yeah, he seemed really friendly.” I peek over at him. “Kinda like you.”
“Must run in the family.” His entire face flanks with amusement, and I quite like it when it does.
I return to the photos, allowing me a glimpse into his life. “And the other one?”
My attention wanders back to Michael once more, but this time, his jaw twitches and he stares ahead. And it makes me that much more curious.
Is he dead?
Shit, I shouldn’t have asked.
His palm returns to my lower back as he practically pushes me out of here and into a den. Cream leather sofas and pale gray walls greet me, along with a TV that covers almost the whole entire wall. I didn’t think they even made any televisions that huge.
“At least this place is big enough that I don’t actually have to see you every day,” I say, sauntering further into the space.
His eyes play with delight as he stops me, tipping my chin up with a finger. “Except at night, when you and I will sleep together.”
An icy chill skitters up my entire body as though I just took a bath in ice water.
He takes in my horrified expression with a cunning turn of his mouth. A hand slips around my hip, pulling me hard against him, and a breath rushes out of me.
“Did you think any wife of mine wouldn’t be sharing my bed?”
“Why would we have to?” The words fall just above a whisper. “I thought this would be…uh…” I swallow harshly. “Purely business. I scratch your back, you…you scratch mine.”
The vein trapped within the thickness of his neck twitches as the backs of his rough fingers skate softly down my cheek.
“Oh, little dove…” A thumb traces my lips as his eyes follow its path. “This mouth of yours is gonna get you into lots of trouble.”
“Get used to it,” I breathe.
The hand at my hip tightens, and those palms, those large hands…
I’ve never felt what I’m feeling, and I’m ashamed of it. Because between my thighs, something throbs to life. The whisper of an ache building in my core, like his fingers are there, flicking past the abuse, past the depravation, to discover what I like, what I need.
I don’t even know what that is. I haven’t felt anything for any of the men who violated me. Not a single thing. I’d close my eyes and pray for it to be over, but now, with him…. I don’t know what’s happening. Maybe I’m just fucked up. Only capable of getting turned on by men who don’t care for me.
His sigh is harsh as he pins me with a flame of his own desire. My throat goes dry, my entire body spreading with sheer electric heat.
“This will most definitely be a business arrangement. There will be no love in this marriage.” His voice grows deep, gruff.
When that molten gaze slinks down to my parted lips, a slow trembling exhale rushes out of them. He continues to bathe me with his captivating aura, and I continue to feel it in parts of me I swore had died.
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” I ask. “Because I don’t need convincing, Michael. I’m not looking for anything but my freedom.”
“You’ll get it, as promised.” He pushes off me in a quick move, leaving me to wonder if I had imagined him there at all.
His back is to me, his fingers threading through his hair, the bulging bicep beneath his suit jacket flexing.
He stays that way for several seconds before he faces me again. “Let’s keep moving. I’ll show you the rest of the place, and soon enough, you’ll meet my staff.”
I don’t care about any of that. While he starts to walk away, I stay there, wondering why we have to share a bed at all. Unless…
“What is this marriage going to look like? Do you expect—”
His lips twitch slightly. “To fuck you?”
I nod, those dirty words slamming into my core with a vengeance.
Would I like it if he did?
My chest rattles with heavy breathing as he cuts the gap between us. His hands stay off of me, but he’s close enough for his chest to press up against mine until it’s as though every single part of me is being felt up by him.
“Are you scared, little dove? Scared that I’ll touch you?” A single finger traces down the side of my torso. “All of you?” He grasps my chin between two fingers, his commanding gaze only pulling me in deeper. “Or are you scared that you might actually like it?”
Those words ignite inside me, my panting slamming out harshly.
A knowing sultry pull of a smile falls over his entire face. “I don’t have to love you to fuck you. Remember that.”
I raise my chin up even higher, meeting his fiery gaze with a glare. “Don’t think you’re even capable of love.”
He chuckles faintly. “You’d be right.”
“What if I say no?” My brows tighten and my core clenches because the worst thing about it is, I’m not even sure I would.
His nostrils enflame as he stares. Seconds drift by, and his eyes? They almost entrap me, my breaths flailing.
His hand leaves my chin, knuckles caressing under my jaw.
In his gaze, I see him again: flecks of the tender man that appeared before, when we were alone in the bar room.
And in these short little seconds, I almost wonder if I was wrong.
If he’s capable of loving a woman. The more he looks at me, the more I wonder if he’s asking himself the very same thing.
“I may be a lot of things, Elsie, but I’m not the kind of man who’d take a woman against her will.”
His mouth leans closer, those lips fledging over mine.
“But you’ll say yes,” he whispers in a gravelly tone. “I promise you that.”
My breath hitches while a throbbing ache roars inside me, squeezing and feeling and wanting. Him.
“You sound sure of yourself,” I breathe, unable to maintain the strength in my voice.
“As sure as I am that if I slipped a finger inside you, I’d find you wet.”
An unintentional gasp jumps out of me. I’m unable to respond, the words stuck in my throat.
And instead of a crass reply I’d expect from him, his lingering gaze intensifies, holding me captive in its unending storm. His thumb strokes my lower lip in the most tantalizing way. Being touched this way, every single time he does it…it’s unsettling.
The men use me—their hands weapons, not safety. But his touch feels different. Or maybe I want it to. Maybe my subconscious is desperate to cling to the hope that for once in my life, a man wants me enough not to hurt me.
But hope is a fantasy left for the women who believe in love. Because I don’t. Not anymore. That girl I was may have held on to hope that one day she’d find a man who’d scorch the earth for her, but I’m smarter now. Those men don’t exist.
The sharp edges of his features temper, and in a blink, he’s off of me, his hand against my lower back. “Let’s go upstairs so I can show you to our room.”
Our room. Oh, God.
A lot can happen in a room, especially when I’m trapped there with a man who makes me feel the way he does.
He leads me past the den and toward the double spiral staircase. I climb up, him behind me. Though I no longer feel his touch, I can sense him at my back, and my body breaks with a shudder from merely being this close to him.
It’s crazy, the way my body reacts to this man.
It’s unexplainable, and I need to push it away because it isn’t real.
It’s merely an illusion, my twisted-up mind making me crave something I shouldn’t and wouldn’t have ever desired before I was taken.
Before they changed me into a woman who’d want a man like Michael Marino.