Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DARIA
H eat draped around my skin, a heavy weight on my thighs, and a constriction in between my breasts. I crawled out of the fogginess of sleep to a dark wood floor, cream walls, and ivory white curtains. My first thought was someone had kidnapped me out of my cluttered bedroom and dumped me in a pristine fancy spa. There was a pleasant smell in the air, and the temperature thumped to the beat of my heart. I moved lazily to stretch, and the haze popped like a ball of bubblegum. The weight on me was, in fact, a man .
My breathing clogged, and I froze. The only sound in the room was the silent hum of a digital clock.
Medda! This was a first, to lie in bed with a man. If I didn’t count the last time, which was a different kind of lying. Different type of man. I wasn’t sure what I thought of this. He was hot. As in, heat was radiating off him. My cold hands and feet were certainly basking in his glow.
Still, distress rode my skin, leaving goose bumps on its trail. Somehow, I knew, even without twisting, that he had woken up. The slight shift in the air, the heat that wrapped my skin. Move away. Of course, he didn’t. Tension ticked away heartbeat after heartbeat. The hum of the clock was overbearing, the heat suffocating. The urge to break free overwhelming. With a wrench, I pushed him away.
He rolled onto his back lazily, like my shove had no impact on him. “Good morning, wife .” His voice was deep, sleep-induced, and rasped like sandpaper on velvet. It felt too intimate to hear it like that.
I pulled myself away and huddled against the bedhead.
Gone. Forever. Waking up in my room with pink curtains and pistachio-colored walls. I’d chosen the color to resemble my favorite gelato. It didn’t look like he was going to resemble anything favorite of mine.
He ran his tongue along his bottom lip and eyed me like I was a new Glock he was testing. Something that fascinated him, but he didn’t trust yet to do the job he wanted to do with it. I sat all huddled up, but he lay with his arms behind his head like he was tanning on the beach. His naked torso and the sheet riding just below the black band of his boxers vibed nonchalance. I gave up a silent prayer that he, at least, wasn’t naked.
This was, for sure, not a first for him. How many times had he woken up in a strange room with a new woman? And how many times would he do that in the future? I hated having firsts with him while he’d had so many more.
A trepidation, strong and thick, coursed through my body. This was the future for me. I’d known it the day I walked in and told Vitale I’d always wanted a Lorenzo. When the truth was that I had wanted anything but him. I knew this man lying beside me, oozing confidence in nothing but his black boxers, wouldn’t think twice before fucking another woman. Why would he, really? When all the made men I knew proved it again and again. Something happened to a man when power and wealth landed on their lap. It didn’t help that most made men looked delicious. Just like the one lying next to me. There was something about the tanned skin and drop your panties at the stroke of a gun attitude. Even I, who had never seen the charm of it, found a twitch in my skin that said I wasn’t immune to it. So he would fuck around as well. The question was not if but when . The frustration of my plight built up for a hot eruption. Every noise, every breath, was one too many. My skin cracked with defiance like a hedgehog with pins. If he put a hand on me now, I might just lose my sanity.
“Don’t worry, piccola mia , I won’t be fucking you now.”
The relief of his words was short-lived and jittered out with the last now .
Hot agitation steamed off my skin, and the words were out before my brain could catch up. “You don’t have to fuck me at all.”
His jaw clenched. “Come again?”
I didn’t know this man. Didn’t know him at all. But even I could feel the tension ebbing off him. I could practically hear his molars grinding.
We were brought up to never voice our thoughts. It didn’t look like it brought us far. An impulse to talk back, an itch to build walls to protect myself, took over me.
“You must have plenty of whores lined up.”
His eyes thinned. “Is that so?”
“No?” His lips were tight, and his amber eyes glittered like Vitale’s whiskey on ice. “Are you more polished, then? Are mistresses more your thing?”
I thought he was hot. But when he turned cold, he was a terror to witness. He emitted an iciness that sent shivers up my spine. My breath shallowed as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. I don’t know what’s happened to the filter in my mouth. Static electricity vibed, and time crawled. When he swallowed, I swallowed. I was not sure how much time passed, but it did pass. I thought he might not answer at all. I couldn’t bear the thumping in my heart anymore. But just when I opened my mouth to plead insanity, he yanked my arm and pulled me on top of him. I landed with a thud on his naked chest and close to his heated breath. His hand crawled through my strands and yanked to cock my head. “Oh, we’ll fuck all right. And when we do, it won’t be a must but a need, and you’ll come crawling to me with your pleas.”
He didn’t give me time to recover from his heated line. Just as quickly as he pulled me to him, he threw me off him like a filthy blanket. If his words hadn’t told me anything, his strides to the bathroom and the slam of the door did. I’d already pissed my husband off, but he hadn’t told me his choice. Whores or mistresses clogged my mind like a multiple-choice question. But I forgot there was a third answer to that vile question. Both of the above.
LORENZO
A feeling I didn’t recognize riled up my body. The first time I lay in a bed and didn’t fuck a woman had to be on my wedding night. Still, it wasn’t amusement I felt when I jabbed my upper thigh and spilled blood on the pristine, white, hand-embroidered, cotton sheets. The sheet was supposed to symbolize the pureness of our marriage. Now my blood stained it with lies threaded with vile words. I didn’t want you to own me. I’d warned them off. But I was no fool. The moment we were out of the room, there would be a group of women sniffing the sheets up like addicts with dope.
The blood leaking through the sheets brought a dark image of another night. Did I want to fuck my wife? Well, yes, the woman was any man’s wet dream. She certainly was mine. I’d have done anything to watch those warm blue eyes roll with pleasure as I stuck my dick into her. But I needed that image of another man between her legs wiped off the back of my retina before I did. Besides, when we fucked, I wanted her to beg. For more. To come hard and scream her fucking lungs out. Not like she had been two nights ago, lying like a corpse with tears lining her face.
The second I zipped up my pants, the bathroom door opened, and a whiff of lavender hit me. It was like she’d been hiding in there waiting for me to get dressed. The back of my neck ached from the stiffness of this whole damn scenario. I’d thought I would give her a few days to adapt before taking off to New York. Last night, in between my fourth and fifth glasses of whiskey, I changed my mind. I needed to get the fuck away from here, and she was coming with me. Sicily itched on my skin all the damn time. It always changed Mamma and pushed her further from me. I wasn’t hanging around to see how much further it could push my wife when there were already oceans between us.
I turned to find her looking at me like I was an alien species in her fucking room. I’d like to see a different look in her eyes. She had the most beautiful ones. I couldn’t figure out what kind of blue it was, just that it was the right kind. Matched with those full lips and a fluffy dress that was innocent but looked hot on her. Yeah, I needed to get her out of here.
“Let’s go.” My tone was clipped and came out gruff.
Her lips thinned in annoyance, and she strode out of the room without a glance back.
And I spilled blood for this? For fuck's sake, couldn’t she see I was walking around with loaded balls between my fucking legs?
I strode out, yanked on her arm, and pulled her to me. Lips, eyes, lavender and all, fell against my chest. A flame, hot and itchy, spread down south. “Watch your attitude, or they’ll really doubt those red sheets.”
“Well, now you have as much to lose as I do,” she gritted through her clenched teeth.
Well, well, well, until last night, I thought her firecracker attitude was lost as much as her virginity was. Turned out it only took a night with me to get it riling back. At me.
I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not. Again, indecision coasted through me. One thing I was sure of. She fucking annoyed me.
I had a comeback, and I could have spit it out. Something about the fact that I didn’t care for my reputation as much as she did. But I swallowed it back the moment I caught a glimpse of a movement behind her. I needed to get the fuck out of here. Strangers intruding on my privacy pissed me off. Besides, I was starving, and I was always in a bad mood when I was hungry.
The longer I sat among the Di Matteos the deeper they itched under my skin. No fucking and no smoking put me in a dark mood. It didn’t help that they were happy with an espresso and a few pieces of fruit. I missed my smokes and my American fucking breakfast. My knuckles fisted and unfisted around Mamma’s birth and death anniversaries under the table. The only interesting thing about the entire ordeal was the woman seated next to me. I’d learned some new things about her. She played with her food as if her life depended on it. She called all her siblings by their last syllables. Fucking juvenile if you asked me. But no one did.
The loud, robust laugh of a man irked me. I ran my gaze along the table and found a man in his sixties, hairy and loud enough to be a damn gorilla.
“Who’s that?” Truthfully, I didn’t give a shit. Didn’t even know why I asked. Probably delusional.
Her gaze lifted reluctantly from her plate of apples and grapes. “ Zio Remigio, he’s Papà’s fratello . He has a line of whores.”
So, we were still on that line of thought. My brows furrowed. If that was the way she introduced everyone in her family, this could be fun. “What about him?” I nodded to the next one, the man who’d been in the room the first time I’d been here.
“Another brother. Zio Marco. He has a mistress in Palermo. She has her own penthouse.”
“Must be a good fuck if she got a penthouse.”
Right on cue, she stiffened next to me like a cold slab of thick meat. Someone get me a fucking bacon and eggs.
“Him?” I nodded to another idiot.
“He’s fucking his cognata .”
“Well, it’s not a whore or a mistress.” There was a burn on my cheek hot enough to scald a fucking hole into it. Interesting. She didn’t have a great opinion of the men in her family. Was this what her talk this morning was about?
“What about your brother?”
“He’s not married.”
“So?”
Bitterness seeped through her voice. “When he does, he’ll cheat on her too.”
“Is that what you think? That all men cheat?”
She shook her head. “No.” My relief was short-lived. “All made men do.”
The thought crossed my mind to tell her that wasn’t true. But I was many things, but I wasn’t a liar. This was the Cosa Nostra . Money and power did strange things to fidelity. In all honesty, that was exactly what I planned to do. Couldn’t bother not to.
She could play house, and I could do what I did before. Married or not. Fucking one woman for a lifetime just wasn’t written anywhere in my cards. It was better she knew it sooner rather than later.