Chapter 9
Curse
Aurora and I don’t speak much for the rest of the evening.
We each eat a couple more protein bars and drink some water.
She spends a lot of time flicking through the TV channels while seated in the armchair, worrying her lower lip between her teeth.
I spend a lot of time thinking. Thinking about what’s going to happen when we get to Montreal.
I’ll have to have somebody watching her at all times when I’m away from the house, the same way Elio did – and still does – with Deirdre when he’s not at home.
But though I have more than a few men I could call upon for the task, I’m not sure I’d trust anyone enough to do it.
The only one I’d probably trust with Aurora is Elio, and he still doesn’t even know I’ve got her.
I’ll have to figure that out quickly. I can’t leave her alone in my house the same way I refuse to leave her alone in this motel room.
And I can’t bring her with me on all my business.
She’s already watched me kill too many men.
Besides, it would be too dangerous. She doesn’t need to get dragged through the mud and the blood of Montreal’s underworld.
After sleeping much of the day, neither of us are ready to turn in early.
But a little after midnight, I tell Aurora to lie down.
I don’t think staring fretfully at the TV, obviously waiting for a news story of her husband’s murder to pop up, is doing anything good for her.
I don’t even want her to think about him at all anymore.
He’s dead. We’re alive. We need to keep moving on.
Though I am aware that most normal people can’t move on from a violent murder the way I can, especially when they feel responsible for it, which I know Aurora does. Even now, she’s blaming herself for what went down. And waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Aurora looks at the bed with trepidation and a little bit of longing.
Sleep can be an escape from your mind, from everything.
And I think she recognizes that fact. She asks about a toothbrush, and I produce one for her, along with toothpaste, from my bag.
It’s pink. I don’t think I chose the colour on purpose, but now that I’m handing her the toothbrush, I can’t deny that it’s the same shade as the pink stripes on her bathing suit in Sicily.
So is the parka I bought her.
When she returns from the bathroom, I’m sitting up in bed. My left wrist is cuffed. She freezes when she sees that.
“Not again,” she whispers. “How long are you going to make me do that?”
For as long as it takes to know that she won’t do something goofy and fuck us both in the process.
For as long as it takes to not feel like someone’s peeling all my nerve endings apart at the thought of not knowing where she is for one fucking millisecond.
I don’t think that latter one is going to change anytime soon.
I’ve spent more than two decades without her.
Not knowing what her day-to-day life is like.
Not knowing what colour she’s wearing, what coffee she’s drinking, what shampoo she’s using.
I’ve kept track of the broad strokes of her life, of course.
Easy to do with a man as powerful and influential as her papà was.
I know that she studied literature and library sciences in university.
I know that she spent years working in the Buffalo library system.
And I knew when she got engaged. Knew when the wedding would be, and where.
Two decades doing nothing but swallowing little news-worthy snippets of her life and dreaming of her face. Twelve years of keeping the same fucking phone number on the tiniest chance that she might one day use it. That she might one day call on me, her monster, to do whatever needed to be done.
That day has come. And I’m not giving her up now. If I have to keep her tied up with me every single night for the rest of our lives, then that’s exactly what I will do.
Of course, I don’t say any of that out loud.
It runs through my mind but never makes it to my mouth.
I don’t talk much, and I think some people assume my brain doesn’t work quite right as a result.
My brain probably isn’t quite right, to be honest, considering the euphoric high I get from squeezing the living daylights out of other people.
But I can certainly think. I think a lot.
I just never usually spit any of those thoughts out for anyone else.
But Aurora clearly expects me to spit them out now. She hasn’t moved towards the bed, and is standing there with her arms crossed, waiting for me to answer.
“As long as it takes,” I say at length.
She still doesn’t move.
“Don’t make me come and get you.” I sit up straighter, preparing to swing my feet off of the bed and to the floor. “Because I will.”
A sudden look of sorrow crosses her features and nearly stops my fucking heart.
“You don’t know how many times I dreamed about you saying something like that to me. That you’d come and get me.”
My bones don’t feel right inside my skin.
“After you left Taormina and we were staying with the Messinas, I thought…I hoped…”
I didn’t know she stayed with the Messinas in Taormina.
I didn’t know shit, because my world had just been blown apart, and Elio, our uncle, and I were doing everything we could to muscle the ragged pieces back together.
But I suppose it makes sense that her papà was close with that family, both in Sicily and New York.
He obviously made a deal to get his only daughter engaged to Marco Messina.
It obviously wasn’t some kind of love match, considering Marco was pushing sixty and Aurora never even lived with him in New York before the ceremony.
And, of course, that she basically bashed his brains in for touching her on their wedding night.
“You hoped I’d come back,” I say, finishing the trailed-off sentence she’s left hanging in the air.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Every night.” She blinks rapidly and turns away, wiping at her face. Dio mio, she’s fucking crying. Why? Why now?
Why does it feel like her every tear is fucking acid to me?
I don’t give a fuck when people cry. Never have.
A surprising number of tough guys can be reduced to begging, blubbering idiots when you cut off enough of their appendages.
Especially things like dicks and balls. Tears never move me.
If anything, I frankly find those kinds of emotional displays pathetic. Repulsive.
But Aurora crying sets my teeth on edge and makes something nameless inside me hurt. I don’t find her tears pathetic. I find them to be completely unbearable.
“Stop,” I say, rising from the bed. Something in my voice must shock her, or frighten her, because she jerks her head to me and does actually stop. Her eyes glisten; her cheeks are flushed and damp. I close the distance between us, my hands coming up to the sides of her jaw.
She doesn’t like men touching her? Well too fucking bad. Because I can’t look at her tearstained face right now and keep any sort of distance between us. I press my thumbs into her cheeks.
“Why?” she asks on a shaky whisper. “Why do I have to stop crying?”
“Because when you cry,” I grit out, “it makes me want to fix it. And I don’t know how to fix things, Aurora.” Her skin is so incredibly soft. I rip my hands away from her. “I only know how to break them.”
She brings her own hands to her cheeks now, wiping. Maybe trying to scrub the memory of my touch right off of her.
“Maybe I’m already broken,” she says.
I give a bitter snort at that. At this flawless fucking angel before me, thinking she’s anything but the best this world has to offer.
“If you are,” I reply, “then I don’t even want to know what that makes me.”
I snap the other cuff onto her left wrist. She jumps a little, but doesn’t try to dodge it. When I start walking back to the bed, she comes without resistance. I let her lie down first, stretching out my arm, then follow, lying on my back beside her.
Maybe it was the tears, or maybe she’s just extremely fucking tired of me already, but she falls asleep quickly.
More quickly than me. Last time, I was asleep when she started hugging my arm, and only noticed it when I woke up.
But right now, I’m extremely fucking aware of every move she makes.
When she’s awake she might hate the idea of being too close to me.
But in sleep, it’s a different story. Some unconscious part of her is seeking me out.
A foolish part of her, probably. Trying to cozy up to someone like me.
I’m not sure how to stop her.
I’m not sure I even want to try.
I’m the one who’s bound us together like this.
If it weren’t for the handcuffs, I could easily pull my arm out of her reach.
But I don’t – I can’t. So when she rolls onto her side towards me, I don’t do anything at all.
My arm isn’t bent at the elbow this time.
It’s laying flat on the bed. When she wriggles closer and goes halfway onto her stomach, hitching her thigh up, my hand is right fucking there. Against her pussy.
I can’t imagine we’ll be like this for long. With her own arm bound to mine and now trapped under her body, it’s going to go numb. I wait for that discomfort to jostle her into a new position, but it doesn’t. Not yet, at least.
My breathing is harsh and uneven. My knuckles are pressed against her there. My dick throbs and goes steel-fucking-hard.
I cup myself with my free hand and barely hold back a groan. Fucking Christ almighty.
I want to fuck her like I’ve never wanted anything or anyone in my life.
And I don’t want to fuck her at all. It’s almost laughable, how a part of me knows she needs to be protected and, frankly, to be kept away from men like me.
And another part, a writhing, hungry, monstrous part, doesn’t care at all.
Doesn’t care about anything besides fisting her hair and ramming myself inside her. Defiling her.
The only two women I’ve ever fucked were both professionals.
They were fully prepared and consenting.
They were ready for my rough dominance, my savage thrusts, the red marks I left behind.
And they were compensated exceptionally well.
So well that both of them tried for ages to get me to book their services again.
They both came, too. Several times over.
But I’m not thinking of them now. I’m thinking of Aurora. Aurora whose hot little cunt is only one layer of fabric from my skin.
I wonder if she’s a virgin.
I wonder if she’d bleed for me.
My dick throbs. My teeth grind. The thought of Aurora bleeding is even worse than her crying. But somehow, it’s still arousing beyond belief. Thinking of her little pussy weeping blood onto my claiming cock.
Fuck.
Fumbling so hard I nearly drop the key, I shove her thigh off of me and unlatch myself from the cuffs. She doesn’t wake up, only makes a tiny, sleepy moan of complaint that I feel rather than hear. It gets under my skin, makes my blood race in my veins. And in my cock.
I close and lock the bathroom door, knowing that, unlike someone like me, she won’t be able to get through it from the other side. I pull myself free from my clothing, feeling the hot, thick pulse of my arousal in my own hand.
I can’t even remember the last time I jerked off.
But that’s what I’ve been reduced to now, apparently. Maybe it’ll help clear my fucking head.
I do it in the shower, my grip swift and merciless. I don’t turn on the water or use anything for lubrication, preferring the near-painful friction of my calloused fist. This shouldn’t feel good. This should be nothing but a physical release so I can be around her without losing my goddamn mind.
It doesn’t take long to accomplish. I need only think of her weight against me in the bed, of her so innocently drawing my hand between her legs in her sleep, for come to shoot out of me like a geyser.
I paint the shower tiles with it, my balls heavy and tight, my dick jerking in my hold. My breath saws in and out of me.
I don’t feel fucking better. My head? Yeah, not cleared out at all. Because I know that Aurora will still be out there, her sleeping body waiting for me in that bed, when I return. And she will be every night from now on.
Maybe I don’t just like torturing other people.
Maybe my true goal is to torture my fucking self.
I turn on the shower, watching as my foul desire for her runs down the drain.
But even though it’s been rinsed from the tile, it hasn’t been washed out of me.
I don’t think there’s any way to strip the lust out of the twisted devotion I feel for her.
I wish I could go back to feeling the way about her that I did when I was eight, or even eighteen.
Love her the way a monk or priest might love his god.
Something as close to purity as I am capable of.
But there’s no point in wishing. Just like Aurora said.
Nothing comes true unless you fucking make it so.