Chapter 15 #2
Ducking out of its way, he strode to her before she could snatch at another plate and lifted her straight over his shoulder.
If Elio thought Siena had fought like a wildcat the night he took her virginity, it was nothing on how she was fighting him now.
Carrying her over the kitchen floor covered in shattered crockery was like carrying a wriggling, bucking eel that had developed hands that punched and feet that kicked and vocal cords that were screaming hell at him.
Tightening his hold around her thighs, he swept her into the living room and deposited her smartly on the nearest sofa.
Fully aware of what she was capable of doing in the state she was in, he backed away sharply before she could headbutt him, but didn’t pay enough attention to her hands because he didn’t see the fist aiming for his face until it connected with his jaw.
“For God’s sake, Siena, will you calm the hell down!” he shouted as he staggered back. “I’m not here to hurt you!”
But his blonde bombshell was back on her feet and charging at him. For someone well over a foot smaller than him and half his weight, she was immensely strong, a factor compounded by the rage she was in, and when her palms slammed into his chest it was with enough force to send him back two steps.
They were steps she breached in a blink.
“All you’ve done is hurt me!” she screamed, now pounding at his chest.
With a sharp breath, he snatched hold of her flailing wrists and pinned them together. She kicked him.
Keeping a tight hold of her wrists, he spun her around and wrapped an arm around her waist before frogmarching her to an armchair.
Instead of sitting her on it, he sat himself down and hoisted her onto his lap, pinning her arms and thighs like a parent would a tantrumming toddler in danger of hurting themselves.
The heel of her foot connected with the side of his thigh. “Let me go!”
“I will let you go when you’ve calmed down,” he said grimly, and tightened his hold around her and gripped her ankle to stop her foot from making another kick.
“I’m twice your size and every bit as stubborn as you are, and if I have to sit like this all night waiting for you to get a grip of yourself, then I will.
Now, are you going to tell me what’s brought this rage on? ”
Her body still a tight ball of tension, she didn’t answer. But she stopped bucking against him.
Closing his eyes, he allowed himself one small inhalation of her hair and considered himself fortunate she didn’t whip her head up and break his nose for his troubles.
It would have been worth it for a dose of her marshmallow scent.
They sat there for a time that seemed to stretch forever, and as that time stretched, Siena seemed to tighten even further into herself, almost like a hedgehog curling itself into a ball.
“You can let me go now,” she whispered.
“No I can’t.” He’d never been able to let her go. Siena was woven so deeply inside him that she’d become a part of him.
“If you’re not here to kill me, then let go of me and get out.”
“You must know by now that I could never kill you,” he said hoarsely.
Her voice hitched. “You’d let your sister do it.”
“I’d never let anyone do it. I’d sooner die myself.” A truth he’d realised as his fists had been smashing into the face of the man who’d caused such pain and damage to the woman he loved beyond measure.
“I’d still kill you in a heartbeat,” she choked.
He kissed the top of her head. “No you wouldn’t.”
He felt rather than heard the strangled sob.
The hand pinned at his side suddenly gripped his shirt.
The tense body curled on his lap tightened to a point, and then he had the sensation of a shaken bottle being unscrewed as all the tension left her body and she collapsed into him with a wail he felt right in the soul she’d brought back to life.
“How could you do that to me?” she wept, her hot tears soaking through his shirt. “Oh, God, Elio, why? You knew all along that our marriage would last only until you’d completed your vengeance, and still you made me…”
He pressed his mouth tight into the top of her head.
“You told me to never trust you in life, and I didn’t, but in the bed we shared every night…
” Her body trembled with the force of her tears.
“It would have been better if you’d spent the whole of our marriage treating me like shit and degrading me.
How could you make me fall in love with you when you knew you would never stop hating me?
Why did it have to be so personal? You say I had a choice, but I didn’t.
I was born into this world just as you were.
I had no more choice about my parents than you did. ”
“I know,” he whispered. He kissed the top of her head again. “I know.”
“You threw me away,” she whimpered, her sobs dulling. “After everything we shared, you threw me away.”
He breathed deeply. Barely two months ago, he’d have relished the pain he was witnessing from the woman who’d played such an intrinsic part of his life for all her life. Now, her pain was his. She was his.
And he was hers. He always had been.
His chest rose, and he took another long breath.
“I told you once that my feelings for you have always been complicated. Who you are and how you make me feel have always been at war.” Gently, he ran his fingers through her hair before capturing her chin and lifting her head so he could gaze into her eyes.
“You were born in the midst of the worst bloodshed our city has lived through, but you were born innocent. I wasn’t old enough to think that at the time, but I was old enough to feel it.
I wanted to hate your existence, but I couldn’t. ”
Emotions rising inside him, he stroked her cheekbone.
“I have never been able to hate you, Siena. You were this beautiful, innocent child, and all I wanted was to protect you. I wanted to take you from your family and keep you safe.” He smiled, remembering her as a teenager.
In the aftermath of her confession about Stefano, he’d blocked those memories out, and now he knew why.
Siena had been every bit as innocent and knowing as Elvira had been, a beautiful butterfly shaking its brand-new wings and trying to find the courage to spread them and take flight.
To have remembered her as she’d been at that age would have been to inflict pain on himself and confront the true depth of his feelings for her.