37. Elio
Elio
O nly problem is getting dressed doesn’t take all that long.
There’s still more than an hour to go before the ceremony and here I am all ready to go, prowling around the room like a trapped animal.
Curse is gone to do a final sweep with Enzo, and now I’m here watching the clock tick down so slowly it feels like it’s mocking me.
I need to see her.
I waited all night. I didn’t disturb her sacred little bridal suite last night. But I’m not going to wait anymore. Fuck the old adage about bad luck before the wedding.
Titones make their own fucking luck.
I snatch the key card to the from my bedside table and hurl myself out the door. The bridal suit isn’t too far away. Just down the hall. I reach it in less than three minutes. Robbie is at his station outside. He straightens up when he sees me. “Boss?”
I ignore him, unlocking the door and slamming it open.
The first person I see is Valentina. See is actually a mild way of putting it. I just about collide with her. She’s coming out of the bathroom just as I step into her path.
“What the – Elio?!”
“Out,” I tell her, looking over her head for my fiancée. But all I see is a wall of dark blue fabric, broken up by the occasional arm or face. Valentina’s wearing the same blue, a long strapless gown of it. She slams her hands onto my hips and scowls at me.
“What do you mean, out? If anyone should be getting out, it’s you! You’re not supposed to see the bride!”
“Out,” I say again, then, more loudly, “Everybody. Out right now.”
Valentina throws up her hands as Lucia, Giulia, and Deirdre’s friend Annabelle all give each other uncomfortable glances.
“Well, you heard the man,” Valentina huffs at them.
Then, to me, she says, “Don’t fuck up her hair or makeup.
Or the dress. You know what? Don’t even touch her.
Just stand across the room and admire her like the piece of art she is, because she’s fucking perfect and I want her looking just like that when she walks down the aisle. ”
I barely restrain myself from rolling my eyes. She doesn’t need to tell me what a work of art my fiancée is.
“Out, Valentina. Don’t make me say it again.”
She waves at the others, gesturing them forward like she’s their general or something. They hustle out of the room, closing the door behind them. Once I’m sure they’re gone, I turn around again. And finally, I see her.
And it’s like the rest of the world falls away.
She looks like something from a fucking fairy tale.
Like something from another world, another age.
I don’t know shit about dresses, and wouldn’t know how to describe this one properly if I tried, but even I can see what a masterful garment it is.
The top part hugs her breasts and waist, the skirt flaring outward in a dramatic sweep of silk.
There are long sleeves, oddly prim and pure, going almost all the way down her arms, but the illusion of modesty is ruined by the gorgeous expanse of skin exposed at her shoulders and collarbones.
My throat goes dry when my gaze roves over the luscious curves of the tops of her breasts.
The whole dress sparkles, like it got left outside on a cool night and somebody hasn’t shaken the dew off of it quite yet.
But it’s not just about the dress. Because this dress would just be a dress if it weren’t for the bride wearing it. My bride.
Deirdre’s hair is swept away from her face, the front bits pinned back, the rest of it falling in a glorious, curling tumble of flame down her back.
I don’t know what kind of makeup she might be wearing, but it looks fairly simple, enhancing the shape and glow of her features instead of shadowing them.
My angel of perfect ruin. My Songbird, my phoenix, my fire.
My wife.
“Say something,” she whispers.
“I love you.”
She gapes at me, her painted lips parting with shock. She almost looks stricken.
“What?” I ask, finally finding the will to move, crossing to her in an instant. “You’re shocked by that? I’m fucking marrying you today.”
“But you… You’ve never said it before,” she breathes.
I’m actually fairly certain that’s not true. It’s just that I’m pretty sure it slipped out when I was delirious with desire, buried deep inside her pussy. And I think it came out in Italian instead of English.
“Well. I’m saying it now.” My hand rises to stroke her throat, because I can’t stand not to touch her, damn whatever Valentina said about it. “I love you,” I tell her again, feeling her pulse jump beneath my glove in response. “If I thought I had a soul I’d say you owned it.”
Her next inhale sounds wrecked, all shuddery and shattered.
“You don’t need a soul to love someone,” she murmurs. “Just a heart.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m pretty sure you own that too.”
“Oh, Elio…”
“It’s alright,” I say, but the words feel jagged, like maybe it isn’t alright at all. “You don’t have to say it back. You already told me that you’re mine. And it’s enough.”
A teary, disbelieving laugh flutters up out of her throat. I feel it under my hand as well as hear it.
“Elio-”
“I said it’s alright.”
“No!” she nearly shouts. She presses the tips of her index fingers against the inner corners of her eyes, as if she can keep any wayward tears inside.
Then she flings her hands back down in a violent slicing motion.
She looks like she doesn’t know what to do with them now, so she gathers up some of her skirt in her fists and stares me down with such ferocity I feel like I should be on my fucking knees.
“It’s not alright,” she says fiercely. Her voice shakes, but there’s no hesitation in her words. “I love you. And it’s not alright. Nothing’s been alright since the day you forced your way into my world.”
Her eyes are blue fire, and I’ll never escape from that blaze.
I don’t even want to.
“It’s not alright, Elio!” she cries. “But maybe I’m self-destructive, or broken, or just as crazy as you. Because I love you. It’s not alright. None of this is alright. But I fucking love you anyway .”
Need batters its way through my body so hard it leaves me breathless.
My fingers tighten on her throat, and I back her up against the table where all the hair and makeup shit has been left behind.
Brushes and bottles rattle when her ass collides with the edge, and with one wide sweep of my arm I send all of it crashing to the floor.
The next instant I’ve got my hands on her waist, lifting her to sit on the table, my fingers diving beneath her skirt.
For fucking once she doesn’t fight me. Doesn’t hide from me.
Doesn’t deny me anything. She moans, wrapping her arms around my neck and spreading her thighs wide beneath the layers of her dress.
I yank her panties roughly to the side, my lungs burning, heart slamming, cock straining.
I fumble with the fasteners of my tux, desperately tugging fabric until my hardness is freed.
Fuck, it’s so good to have use of both my hands again.
I grip her hips, dragging her forward, making her skirt bunch as I line myself up to her entrance.
There’s no foreplay, no languor, no slowness or stillness.
There’s only a hard, rough claiming as I jam myself inside her, moaning when I find her already wet.
Deirdre moans, too, her head lolling until it hits the mirror behind her back.
She clings to me as I plant my hands on either side of her hips, rutting into her as hard as I fucking can.
The whole table slides and shakes from the brutality of my motion, the mirror slamming against the wall over and over again until I half wonder if it might break.
Seeing the bride before the wedding. Broken mirror. Two for fucking two today.
But the mirror doesn’t break. And neither does Deirdre.
She bucks against me, driving her hips against mine in frantic jerks.
She climaxes quick and fucking hard , milking me with spastic contractions until I can’t think, can’t stop, can’t do anything but fuck her and fuck her and fuck her before I come with a ragged cry.
Deirdre sags back against the mirror, fogging its surface with her body heat and the fine mist of perspiration on her skin.
Still buried in that sweet cunt, still spurting, still spilling everything I have inside her, I taste that sweat for myself.
I give the side of her neck an open-mouthed kiss, relishing the velvet of her skin, smelling sex and perfume and Deirdre.
I don’t want to pull out. I don’t want to leave her, even if it’s only for the short while left until she walks down the aisle to me.
“Elio,” Deirdre pants, “The time. I’m still not ready. I have to fix my hair. And the veil…”
“I know.”
I slide myself out of her slowly, relishing every inch of that wet channel until I’m all the way out. I tuck myself back inside my clothing as Deirdre fixes her panties. She stops, then looks around with dismay.
“What is it?”
“I need a tissue or something. It’s so wet.”
“Good. I want part of me still on you, still in you, the moment we get married.”
I lift her off the desk and set her on her feet, kneeling for a brief moment to lay her skirt nicely before I stand again.
She smooths her slender fingers over the beaded fabric, almost obsessively, as if she’s worried someone will see a rogue wrinkle and know what we’ve just done.
“I can’t believe the today is actually here,” she remarks into the silence.
“Is it the wedding part you can’t believe?” I ask. “Or the groom?”
She looks up at me questioningly.
“What do you mean? Is there a difference?”
“Sure,” I reply. “Don’t tell me you never imagined getting married before.”
“Well, I suppose, but…”
“But not to someone like me.”
She doesn’t answer, so I go on.
“Probably to some snivelling little prat like Brian. Not that he’d be able to fuck you the way I just did. Considering what I did to him.”
Deirdre goes very still. Her freckles look suddenly darker. But they’re not. The rest of her has just gotten paler.
“What do you mean?” she asks. “What do you mean, what you did to him?” She presses a hand to her belly and bends over slightly, like she thinks she might be sick. “Did… Did you kill him?”
“No,” I tell her, and she relaxes a little, only to tense right back up when I add, “I shot his fucking dick off.”
“What?! When?”
“That’s what I was doing up north when I was gone. Took him to one of our warehouses up there. You don’t have to look at me like that. Alexei took him to a doctor afterwards. I let the little shit live. Just for you.”
“You,” she croaks, grasping at the edge of the table we just fucked on for support, “you abducted my ex-boyfriend. Disfigured him. Because of me. And then you came back on the anniversary of my mom’s death and took my virginity.”
“Yes.”
She leans over and clutches at the table for another moment, breathing heavily, before she stands up, her spine so straight I could use it as a fucking level. Her voice, when she speaks, is flat and grim.
“There’s an old Irish tale, you know. Deirdre of the Sorrows . The story goes that Deirdre was kidnapped and forced to marry a tyrant king instead of the man she loved.”
“Clearly, I’m the kidnapping tyrant in this tale,” I scoff. “But are you telling me there’s actually some other man out there you’d rather have?”
“No.”
That’s good at least. I wasn’t exactly imagining hunting down some random guy and smashing his skull in on my wedding day when I got up this morning.
“But that’s just the thing,” Deirdre continues. “What am I supposed to do when the tyrant and the one I love are one and the same? You even look a bit like Naoise, her lover in the story. He was supposed to be beautiful. With raven-black hair.”
Well, I have the black hair going for me, I guess. I don’t bother addressing the “beautiful” part because there’s only one beautiful thing in this room and it sure as shit isn’t my scarred ass.
“What happened to Deirdre?” I ask instead. “In the story.”
“She threw herself out of a chariot and killed herself.”
The room tilts sickeningly to the side. I feel like I won’t be able to remain standing upright if I don’t do something and do it right fucking now. It’s the same way I felt back when I smashed the doors right off their hinges at home that very first night.
But there are no more doors left in here to rip down. No more men to kill, at least for now. She’s got the ring, got the dress.
There’s nothing left to do but make her mine in all ways, before my uncle and this city and the eyes of fucking God if He can even stand to look at me.
So I don’t do anything. I just stand there with my hands balled into useless, aching fists and say tightly, “Then I suppose it’s a good fucking thing we took a bullet-proof limo to the venue instead of a chariot, isn’t it?”
She gives a lifeless laugh.
“I already told you, Elio. I don’t plan on dying just to get away from you.”
“But do you still plan on getting away from me?” I demand, seizing her chin and forcing her to look at me. “After everything, do you honestly still think you can escape?”
After everything, do you really want to leave?
To leave me?
“No, Elio,” she says. “Don’t you see? You don’t need debt to bind me now.
You don’t need to hold threats about my father over my head.
You got me to love you.” She raises a trembling hand, stroking her fingers over the scarred part of my jaw.
It takes everything I fucking have not to lean into that hand like a touch-starved animal.
“I love you,” she whispers. “And that’s more powerful than any other cage you could have constructed.” Her hand falls down, pressing flat against my chest, right above the place my heart beats.
“I love you,” she repeats one final time, and I’m suddenly terrified that I’ll never hear her say it again. “And now I can never leave.”