20. Carina
CHAPTER 20
Carina
W e haven’t said a word to one another.
And while I’m seething in my silence Constantine seems to be basking in it. Which only adds fuel to the fire coursing through my veins.
I’ve never known the true feeling of bloodlust before, but at this moment I’m consumed by it.
And I won’t be satisfied until I have a pound of his flesh.
Dangerously I eye the steak knife placed on the right hand side of my dish.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” Constantine says after biting into a piece of his rare steak. Even something as mundane as eating proves to be an aphrodisiac. And while it may have affected me greatly I’m still holding onto my anger.
And it comes out when I reply with snark, “I’m beyond pleased you can point out the obvious, Signore. Tell me, what more talents do you have?”
He hums without amusement. His head tilts to the side as his eyes assess me. I feel as if I’m under a microscope and he’s picking my wings apart. “Careful, Carina,” he warns me and I immediately want to defy him, “or you’ll be seeing yourself over my knee with my handprint on your delectable ass.”
White anger flashes through me like a live wire as I grind down on my teeth. “I’m not a child who needs punishment.”
He hums again. “Then perhaps you should stop behaving like one.” My eyes widen. When I go for a rebuttal, surely with my sharp tongue, he intercepts. “Except something tells me you would find pleasure in it.”
Oh, I am vibrating with fury. To even suggest I would like pain after the brutality I’ve suffered. “You are no gentleman,” I spit.
His eyes sparkle with mischief and the smirk on his face promises it. “I see pointing out the obvious is a talent of yours as well.”
I’ve never known a man as infuriating as him. It’s as if he knows every one of my buttons, buttons I don’t even know I have, and succeeds in pushing them all.
The man is provoking me on purpose.
He’s always provoking me. All to gain a reaction.
And I am giving it to him without resistance.
God damn him.
My hand without thought gravitates towards the steak knife. My fingers itch to wrap themselves around the handle.
And the most depraved thought crosses my mind. Would his flesh break easier than this tender piece of meat?
As he bites into another piece of steak I take hold of the knife.
To my horror it feels right. Holding this knife, in this manner, with my impure twisted thoughts, it feels like an extension of my hand.
“Unless you are going to do something with it I suggest you drop it.” Constantine eyes the knife in my hand with a bored expression. Intuitively I know he’s done calculated every move I can possibly make. He isn’t afraid of a mere knife. He wouldn’t even be afraid of a machine gun.
I eye the knife and then him. And although I tell myself I would never bring any harm to him I don’t drop the knife. “Are you challenging me?”
He drops his own cutlery, pushing his plate which is only half eaten to the side. He raises a brow at me. “And why would I do that?”
My nostrils flare. “Don’t attempt to be funny. You are challenging me. All you ever do is challenge me!” Unable to contain my anger I rise from my seat and tread across the hardwood floors driven by no plan but only by intense emotion.
Distantly I hear the creak of his own chair as he abandons it.
And my traitorous body feels him before I can even turn to see him. It yearns to close the distance. To have his morally corrupt hands on my skin and for it to feel like heaven.
And I loathe how even the deepest part of me that I refuse to accept yearns for it, too.
“You’re even more desirable when you’re wrathful.” I turn to find his eyes gleaming with pleasure and his voice oozes desire. I loathe how his voice is a soft caress to my skin and how it ignites a heat in my lower abdomen.
Surprising both him and I, I press the knife against his throat. A whisper of a touch that is threatening. “I will slit your throat.”
My threat causes his pupils to dilate, the pleasure swallowing his eyes whole.
Dio mio.
I turn breathless as I imagine him swallowing me whole.
His hand ghosts over the flare of my hip. And I find myself sickly anticipating his touch. My body hums like a live wire for him.
He continues to tantalize me. His hand ascends, his fingers a hairbreadth from touching me. He pauses over the swell of my breasts which are rising and falling in an exaggerated way due to my erratic heartbeat.
My body is all but begging for him to touch me but I do not lose grip of the knife against his throat.
“Give in to the darkness inside you.” His voice is the art of seduction. My breath hitches in my throat. “Stop fighting it.”
“Why must you keep pushing this? What’s in it for you?” I press.
“To see you alive.”
An intense heat unfurls in my stomach and my heart pounds ferociously in my chest. I apply pressure to the knife, although it doesn’t faze him. “I don’t wish for that.” What a lie.
“Mia leonessa, Carina.” The way he says my name induces a shiver down my spine. With the smirk that graces his lips he knows the profound effect he has on me. Damn him. “What beautiful lies pour from your lips so easily. Tell me, do they taste bitter or have you formed an acquired taste?”
“I’m not lying,” I vehemently deny.
He hums in thought, lips pulled upwards with amusement and eyes dancing with mischief. Seeing him like this should repulse me but it has the opposite effect. He thrills me.
Dio mio. If I had the strength to kill myself I would. Because these feelings Constantine evokes, the damn unkillable flutters, the maddening need to feel his lips on my own, it shouldn’t be.
And yet, here I am, standing before him with a knife pressed to his throat with my voice denying him at each turn and my body eagerly awaiting him.
“Then let me taste it for myself.” He’s not asking for permission nor is he seeking an answer.
Constantine Donati then does what he’s known for, he takes without remorse.
His lips, lips I have always described as sensual and sinister capture my own with a bewildering tenderness.
Air seizes in my lungs as my heart races wildly. My skin feels as if it’s on fire. Veins coursing with electrical currents shock each time his sinful tongue presses against the seam of my lips.
Horrifyingly, I find myself responding. The seam of my lips, which were a firm line meant for no entry, slowly begin to part.
Then, in a breath I thought would never come, his tongue delves in the recess of my mouth and makes acquaintance of my own.
A moan of appreciation passes from my mouth into his. And I swear I can feel his smile in the kiss but I am so lost in the sweet pleasure of his wicked tongue that I find myself not caring.
His tongue leads mine in an erotic dance. And while this may be my first kiss it’s as if I have been kissing these lips for all of my life.
A hand ghosts down my back and my lower abdomen pools with heat when he caresses my ass firmly in his hand.
Heart racing, body compelled by the desire he has casted upon me, it’s to no surprise there’s a slickness between my thighs.
By the hand on my ass he thrusts me up against him. It’s then I feel the desire of his own. Hot, heavy and hard against my stomach. He growls into my mouth. I feel the vibration of it all the way to my engorged and neglected clit.
There’s a need inside me. A need I’ve never once possessed let alone thought to be possible. And yet I feel it all the same. The need to be possessed. The need to be ravaged. The need to feel a pleasure that is blinding and all consuming.
A need has been awakened inside me by a man I am supposed to loathe.
Constantine Donati is the bane of my existence.
He is also the darkness within myself that I am no longer sure I can deny.
And I should loathe him for it. For tempting me like the serpent he is. For awakening me when he’s the one who caused my death.
I do loathe him.
But I also can’t resist him.
And it makes me loathe him more.
Wrenching myself away from his lips I inhale a trembling breath.
As I go to take a step away from him his arm winds around my back keeping me pressed flush against him.
“Let go of me,” I demand with a voice that still lingers with desire.
There’s a smirk upon his face that I want nothing more to skin off. “Your lies don’t taste bitter at all, mia leonessa. They’re deliciously decadent.”
Dio mio.
My breath hitches.
His words. His mouth. Those whiskey colored eyes. They’re all so damn intoxicating.
The Devil really is the most handsome man.
Closing his eyes he slowly licks his lips, as if savoring the pleasure from the taste of my own.
And I find myself doing the same, tracing my lips, tasting him once more.
When my eyes open his are already on mine.
“Would it be such a crime, Carina, for you to admit you don’t loathe me?”
“I do loathe you,” I insist, my response immediate.
He sighs, eyes filled with disappointment. Strangely it affects me. No. Absolutely not. Dio mio. I don’t like being the reason disappointment etches his features.
He lets me go then. Coldness embraces where his touch burned. The echoing loneliness returns in my dead heart. I swallow harshly, trying to regain a single ounce of composure but failing.
As he swallows himself I see a bead of crimson pool from his throat and follow the remaining drops down the column of his neck.
Much to my own horror I stare fascinatingly at the sight.
Me, Carina Fiore, has made The Devil of the East Coast bleed. And so easily.
“You’re staring,” he points out rather huskily.
I breathe through my nose. “And you’re bleeding.”
His eyes cut down to the knife still held in my grasp but now loosely. With an expression I can’t possibly read his furrowed finger comes to collect the drop of blood at his throat before it reaches its descent.
With his index finger painted crimson he reaches it out towards me. “Does this satisfy you?” His voice is low, soft. I can’t even begin to understand what it means. And I don’t understand why my body responds to it so.
I answer his question with a question. Evading my dark desires. “Do you want me to take pleasure in your pain?”
“I want the truth from you, Carina. No unspoken truths. No deliciously decadent lies. I want to hear you say it.”
I turn my head to the side, my eyes fighting to look at anywhere but him.
I feel him then, his hand wrapped like a band of steel around my bicep. I feel his chest rise and fall with even breaths against my body.
Those damn unkillable flutters return. The maddening race of my heart starts once again. And I feel so incredibly alive with his touch that it’s startling.
Locking his fingers around my wrist he brings my hand that holds onto the knife between us. He points the tip at his throat. I swallow a gasp.
“If making me bleed is what you wish then I am all too happy to grant it for you.”
He presses the sharp tip of the blade into his skin and I stop him before he can penetrate deeper. “Constantine.” His name falls from my lips in a breathless warning.
“How beautiful it is to hear my name from your lips,” he moans in appreciation. “Say it again.”
I close my eyes, trying with all my might to sever the magnetic pull between us. But I’m spellbound. And if I know anything to be true it is that he and I will always be bound to one another. “Constantine.”
To my utter surprise and own delight he traces my lips with the tip of his tongue. My eyes flutter open as I see him savor the taste.
“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. No man I wouldn’t hesitate to kill. A world I wouldn’t gladly burn. What will it take Carina for you to realize that you and I are inevitable? What more must I do?”
“Signore.”
“No,” he says harshly. “No, you are not running from this. You are not going to deny what you know is true. Aren’t you tired of this, Carina?”
“Stop,” I protest weakly.
“Aren’t you tired of running from this?” He releases my bicep to slip his arm around my back, pressing me to him. “Aren’t you tired of running from yourself?”
I shake my head. “I’m not running.”
His eyes flare. “Liar.”
“I am not.”
“All you do is lie, Carina. You lie to your papa. You lie to your brother. You lie to your mama in her grave. You lie to the priest in which you confide in. You lie to me with every breath you take. But it’s you yourself you tell the most heinous lies to.” The knife before us falls as he releases me.
And I see it, I see it more than I did moments before.
He’s truly well disappointed in me.
And it leaves me feeling bereft and hollow.
“The truth you’re so afraid of, Carina, is you don’t loathe me at all. The truth is you hate yourself. You hate the darkness inside you that I am not ashamed of. You hate fighting with your morality when I don’t have to fight at all. You hate me because I am what you truly desire. I am who I am so freely and unabashedly. You hate that you cannot accept yourself the way I accept myself. And you hate that I see all of you, all your darkness and sinful desires, and I accept them.”
Tears burn at the back of my eyes as they clog in the back of my throat. I flex my hand around my neck to try and keep them at bay.
The disappointment on his face is the hardest to bear. His lips curl, as if he’s disgusted with me. And I can’t stand the sight of it. The churning in my stomach has me feeling physically sick all over.
“I have always thought so highly of you. You are meant to be a Queen, Carina. My Queen.” His voice is painful, agonizing. “But I would have never thought of you as a coward.” The word makes me wince. And I see he takes no pride in it.
The step he takes away from me feels like a lash against my skin. No, it’s in fact more painful. I’d rather take all of Luca’s lashes than feel this.
“Constan-” His hand in the air silences me. I obey him, as I always seem to do without him even uttering a word.
His face changes before me. There’s no longer Constantine Donati, the man who has humbled himself before me with a vulnerability only he’s allowed me to see. Now stands before me the man the rest of the world sees. Eyes that were soft and warm turned to a harsh bitter coldness. A face made of stone instead of clay that molded just for me.
Inside I feel pieces of my heart wither. My soul is aching for him to come back to me.
But it’s my damn mind that tries to convince me that having any longing for him at all, any feelings is insanity, and that this is what I should want.
Except this version of him I do not want at all.
Least not at all towards me.
“Dessert is served next if you wish to have it.” His voice is cold and unfeeling. It leaves me feeling hollow and unsettled. “Dinner as always will be at seven. However, I will no longer be attending.” It will be the first time in the six weeks I have been here that he will not be attending dinner.
My mouth is suddenly dry as my tongue feels like lead.
He nods his head at me, as one does when business is finished, and turns on his heel to leave.
And somehow, some way, I manage to ask on a baited breath, “Where will you be?” As if I have any right to ask him of his whereabouts after what I have just done.
He snickers darkly. He doesn’t even turn around to respond to me. It’s a respect he’s no longer giving me. Another painful lash. “I have more important matters that need tending to.”
“More important?” I echo in a strained voice. He remains standing there, still giving me his back. And while I’m hurt I’m also agitated. “You’ve had dinner with me every night. Never missed once. And now matters are more important?”
Finally, he turns. It should be rewarding but it feels more like a punishment. The anger and pain that greets me is unwelcoming. “Yes, now matters are more important,” he says harshly. “They have become more important because you wish them to be. You chose this, Carina. Do not lay the blame with me when you are the one denying us at every turn.”
I swallow harshly. Tears burn at the back of my eyes. My breathing is uneven and I hate how I want to squirm from his scorching glare.
He raises a brow. “Are you done denying us?”
“No.”
His lips set in a firm line, but his shoulders drop with defeat. “Then we will be two ships passing in the night and nothing more. Do you understand?”
I don’t respond. How can I when two parts of myself are fighting a war with one another. But this must be done. This must be the way. Mustn’t it?
“You deny your voice on what we are meant to be, but you will not deny your voice on what you so clearly want from me. I have told you time and time again I would give you anything you ask for. And here I am, once again, giving you what you want. And this, this is what you want to become of us. I asked if you understood, Carina, and I want to hear you say it. Capisce?”
His declaration is the final nail in the coffin. And I have no one to blame but myself for giving him the nail. “Capisce.” My voice has never been so small.
With features as hard as stone he nods his head and leaves.
And my beating heart goes with him.