Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
To Siena’s surprise, she slept well and woke feeling refreshed. Her head hurt a little but was nothing that a couple of painkillers wouldn’t cure.
Carefully pulling the bedsheets off, she was about to climb out of bed when the arm attached to the man she’d hoped was still sleeping snaked around her waist
“How are you feeling?” he murmured sleepily, spooning his warm body to hers and rubbing his mouth in the top of her head.
Hating how good it felt to have his naked body touching hers and the sensations unfurling inside her, fear unfurled to feel his arousal springing to life in the cleft of her backside. Today was tomorrow. Today meant the next round of torture he’d promised before they’d fallen asleep.
“My head hurts,” she mumbled.
“Let me see.” Draping a thigh over hers, he effortlessly rolled her onto her back and slid between her legs.
Abdomen against abdomen, he propped himself on his elbows and gently moved the hair off her forehead to study the bump on it. “The lump’s gone down, but it’s turned green.” He met her stare with a sleepy, rueful smile. “People will think I’ve been beating you.”
Intensely aware that his chest was compressing her breasts and that one tiny adjustment in his position would have his erection jabbing against her sex, she swallowed. “I’ll let them think that.”
His smile widened a touch, amusement flashing in his sleepy eyes. “I bet you will.”
Her heart racing, Siena stared into those sleepy, silver eyes, not because she wanted to but because she couldn’t not.
They were equal parts terrifying and mesmerising.
Put together with all the other components that made Elio’s strong, handsome face, it was like gazing into the eyes of the captivating but merciless God of death from mythology.
“I need to use the bathroom,” she whispered, still unable to wrench her stare from his.
His gaze was as fixed on hers as hers was on his. “One kiss first.”
Relief that the planned torture seemed to have been delayed soared through her in the same beat that anticipation stirred, both emotions already fizzing through her blood before his mouth locked onto hers.
Closing her eyes, she sank into the kiss and her senses filled with the sensations she was fast coming to associate with Elio.
If not for his erection so, so close to her sex, she could relax fully into the kiss, but it was close, and though she knew he wasn’t going to do anything more than kiss her, the shock of pain she’d experienced when he’d thrust inside her was still too fresh for her to switch her mind off and just enjoy the kiss for what it was.
For all that, when he pulled his mouth away and lifted his head to gaze back into her eyes, she couldn’t help the longing for him to kiss her again.
He half obeyed her unspoken yearning. One more fleeting, chaste sweep of his lips to hers and then he rolled off her.
Feeling strangely bereft without his heat and weight on her, it took Siena a moment to pull herself together and climb off the bed.
* * *
If there was one thing Siena hated, it was the Esposito Group’s board meetings.
When her father had been alive, he’d rightly chaired them.
Rightly, because everything they had had been built by him.
The meetings had always been a smokescreen, an exercise in preserving the legitimacy of the Esposito Group from the few zealous officials who itched to bring the family down.
Since their father’s death, Mattia’s anointing into his shoes meant he chaired the meetings just as he now chaired everything in both their legitimate and shadowed worlds.
Mattia’s word was now law, and though Siena had cast her vote for this, she couldn’t help her resentment that he’d stepped into their father’s shoes by dint of being born first and with a penis.
Rico had refused to vote, and Tommaso had withdrawn himself from contention for the role, leaving the decision to Siena, Mattia and their mother.
Their mother was always going to give her vote to her favoured firstborn, and it didn’t matter that Siena was better suited to the role than any of her brothers.
Without either Rico’s or Tommaso’s support, her hope of being crowned Donatella had died.
Better, she’d decided, to throw her weight behind Mattia.
It didn’t mean she had to like it, but it was imperative they stayed united as a family because family always came first.
The main reason Siena hated the board meetings was because the division she ran was considered the most pointless one of all.
By the time her father had deemed her old enough to take control of the newspaper and magazine division, it had been close to having its last rites read.
While she’d turned things around by investing in the online versions of their publications, it was still treated by her brothers as insignificant.
Tommaso ran the social media side of the business, and the platforms he controlled were going from strength to strength, the same with the news and television division that was ostensibly in Mattia’s hands.
These were all the media divisions that had made Lorenzo Esposito a household name and had allowed him to curate a public persona as a beloved, cuddly, charismatic charmer. Mattia had many strengths, but cuddliness and charisma were not two of them.
He did, however, have a forensic eye for detail, which was what had made the board meetings become so interminably boring.
He questioned everything, a trait that had worsened since they’d been forced to allow Gino Vicario, the nightclub owner their cousin Francesca had fallen in love with, a place on the board.
Siena’s new husband wanted only to be brought into the shadowed side of their world.
He’d made no noise about joining the Esposito Group, and it grated that the few hours’ grace she had from him were being spent with her mind focused on him.
She couldn’t stop herself from replaying all their conversations, as if her mind was trying to work him out and understand him when she absolutely didn’t care to understand him.
She didn’t want to imagine him, his siblings and his cousin as children.
She wanted to think of them as they’d been on her wedding day, firing daggers at her with their adult eyes, not imagine them as children in Carlo’s restaurant with their little legs dangling as they shovelled carbonara into their hungry mouths.
She didn’t want to think of his grandmother, a woman who’d died long ago, grieving the loss of her daughter and two sons whilst working her fingers to the bone to keep a roof over her orphaned grandchildren’s heads.
She didn’t want to think of Elio’s parents as bones and dust in their graves.
Worse than all that, she didn’t want to feel him. Didn’t want the constant sensation of his mouth on hers. Didn’t want his taste on her tongue. Didn’t want his scent invading her every inhalation. He wasn’t even in the building, and it felt like he was right there with her.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” her new assistant whispered when Tommaso started arguing with Mattia about something that had gone right over Siena’s head.
Siena reached for Francesca’s hand and squeezed it.
Things must be bad if her lovestruck cousin, who had a tendency to just moon over Gino when they were under the same roof, had noticed.
But then, Francesca was the only one who’d looked at her with suspicion mingled with compassion when Siena had told the truth about the green lump visible on her forehead.
“I headbutted Elio,” she’d said airily when she’d taken her seat. Her brothers had laughed knowingly. Francesca had looked troubled.
The interminably boring meeting finally came to an end.
Siena’s next meeting was on the second floor with the senior staff who managed the individual publications.
Her lovestruck cousin shared a goodbye kiss with the equally lovestruck Gino, and as the two women headed towards the stairs, Francesca quietly asked again if Siena was okay.
Knowing her cousin felt huge guilt over Siena’s marriage, she smiled and said the words needed to reassure her. “It’s only been a few days. I’m sure we’ll find a way to make our marriage work once we’ve got to know each other.”
“Did you really headbutt him?” she asked, her tone laced with doubt.
“Yes.” Morbid amusement suddenly danced into her veins. “And I scratched and bit him.”
But instead of sharing her amusement, Francesca only looked more troubled. “Did he…?” She swallowed.
Understanding what her cousin was trying but failing to ask, Siena shook her head. “No. He didn’t rape me.”
“You’re sure?”
“I think I’d know,” she said drily, then stopped walking and placed a hand on her cousin’s cheek. “Chicca, I knew what I was getting myself into by marrying him. He’s an asshole who would happily put a bullet in my brain, but he’s not a rapist, so put that thought from your mind. I can handle him.”
“Great, so I don’t have to worry about him abusing you, just killing you?”
Touched by Francesca’s genuine worry, Siena wrapped her arms around her. “He’s not going to kill me, so please, stop worrying. I told you, I can handle Elio.”
The arms around her squeezed tightly before she heard a muffled giggle. “I suppose the question now then is, can he handle you?”
“He wishes.” Unwrapping her arms, Siena gripped her cousin’s forearms and looked at her sternly. “Now stop worrying about me, and that’s an order.”
“Yes, boss.”
Grinning, she linked arms with Francesca and carried on to the stairs. “Now, onto a much nicer subject, have you and Gino set a date yet?”
That did the trick. Francesca was never happier than when rabbiting on about her wedding plans.
Let her have her happiness, Siena thought. Let her be enveloped in it forever.
Maybe, if she were lucky, some of Francesca’s happiness would rub off on her and infuse into her own spirits.
* * *