Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ANNA
Ileaned against the balcony railing and searched desperately for a star.
Si no puedes encontrar una estrella, busca lo suficientemente lejos hasta que la encuentres.
I found none. No matter how far I looked, it was a sky illuminated with the glow of the city lights, masking all the stars in the sky.
The agitation that had been building in me for days shifted. The shadows came for my lungs and tightened its grip. My breathing turned into gasps. On the banister, my hands balled into fists. I felt like I might just combust under the pressure of my insanity.
One moment, he was asking me for promises, and the next, he was evading the truth. He’d sucked me into his game. When he went from fire to ice, he took me along for the ride. And I knew as sure as the starless sky that I wouldn’t survive him.
The little truths he fed me hit me like darts.
I’d believed Papá had just been an accountant.
But turned out he was a genius. Except his murder wasn’t one of an outsider.
He’d worked for the Mafia. My doubts had turned into facts.
Each fragment of truth left me spinning.
Something told me the final truth was going to be as disastrous as a gunshot to my heart.
Two hands braced next to mine. I didn’t know why my heart tumbled into a different beat. Faster. Harder. Louder. More alive.
“What did I tell you about wandering off?” The growl in his tone made the hair on the nape of my neck rise.
Just one star. That was all I needed. Something to guide me to the right path.
His palm brushed my ass. Stilled. Then rose to my hips before wrapping around my waist. “No underwear,” he murmured, his tone half-agitation and half-pride.
“Would have broken the line.” Satin was unforgiving.
He buried his mouth in my neck. Heat zapped to my clit when a rough groan touched my deprived skin.
We stood like that for a few long minutes.
His body, his scent, his breath surrounding me.
A ripple of heat rushed through my body when his palm inched down.
I should have told him this was inappropriate.
The hum of voices of strangers still filled my eardrums. We were at a distance with our back to the floor-to-ceiling windows leading out of each room.
I wasn’t going to be that kind of wife. But there was a petty demon in me that whispered maybe I’d like it.
That maybe I’d be any kind of wife he wanted me to be.
Satin scrunched in his fist. My hips rocked of their own will.
His hand touched my clit. I was so ridiculously wet that his finger slid down my lips.
“Jesus,” he hissed.
I sank my teeth into my lip.
Slowly, agonizingly, he thrust two fingers in.
Curled them to the front. A shudder ran down my spine.
I hate him. I hated how he played with my body.
I hated how much I wanted him to do it. I could have come just like that.
He knew it. My thighs trembled with the effort.
My body was as tightly strung as a Gaelic harp.
I only needed one touch, and I’d get off.
One brief, single touch. The moment stretched between us.
Fingers thick and pulsing. Breath loaded and heavy.
My lips throbbed around him. Aching for a need that I was beginning to fear that only he could deliver.
I didn’t want him to discover my weakness.
A bead of sweat slipped down between my breasts and pooled in my navel.
For anyone watching us from inside, we were just a couple embracing, looking out into the night sky.
I rocked my hips. His palm gripped them roughly and brought them to a stop. Even that was aggravating. His touch was abrasive on my skin.
“Por favor.” My voice broke in the tense air. I didn’t even know what I was begging for. Defeat or escape?
He shifted, bringing his front closer to my back. Then he flipped his fingers and triggered each nerve in my body. I went off like a firework in the night sky. Rocking my hips against him, gripping the banister with a death grip, I convulsed, losing all sense of reality.
Moments later, I faced reality. I was a mess. Sticky liquid coated my thighs, my back sagged against him, and worse. Far worse. His palm had wrapped around my mouth, and I shuddered at the thought of what I would have screamed before he shut me off.
I took one shaky breath. An inhale and a slow, agonized exhale. The heat of it touched his calloused skin. A soft curse fell on the dark terrace before he unwrapped his palm and slipped his fingers out of me.
A clash resounded. Somewhere inside, a server dropped a tray full of crystal. With a sigh, I turned around to tell him something. What, I didn’t know, because words melted in my mouth. Hunger and heat stared back at me. Fingers in his mouth. Each lick felt like one on my clit.
To the left of us, behind the glass doors, strangers mingled. Black suits. Colorful dresses. Champagne buzz.
“We should go inside,” I muttered in a throaty voice.
His heated gaze licked at my lips.
“The party is for us,” I insisted, but it sounded weak even to my ears.
He drew in a rough breath but didn’t utter a word of consent.
I pushed my trembling hands to his chest. The thud of his heart was so intense it felt like it vibrated through my skin.
Because of it or in spite of it, instead of pushing him away, I pulled him in.
A shaky growl fell from his chest. It sounded both vulnerable and possessive.
One single sound, that was gasoline to my heat.
We went up together in a flame. His kiss was harsh.
Spinning us around, he walked me back to the wall and away from the windows with his hands gripping my ass through my dress.
My back hit the bricks. The rough texture of it bit through my skin.
I was only aware of the heat from the front.
He deserted my mouth. Dragged his mouth down my neck, my collarbone, and the peaks of my breasts.
Nipping, biting, and sucking. With one hand, he tugged the string of my sleeve down.
Then, for breathless minutes, he stared at my braless breast while I struggled to breathe.
Then he squeezed my nipple between two fingers, and when he pulled, a spark of heat rushed through my body.
I ground my hips on his thick erection. With a low growl that vibrated through my body, he dragged my breast into his mouth.
I gasped. Struggled to contain my breathing in a situation that was rapidly spinning out of control.
As if he felt my confusion, as if he felt my need to be grounded, his hands came up to my hips, gripped them, and pinned them to the wall.
I writhed under his hold. Half in heat and half wrapped in an emotion I couldn’t understand.
His hand shook as he pulled his erection out. I shifted into deliriousness as it throbbed in his hands.
“Fuck,” he hissed, a word that showed his fight with his iron-clad control, and a second later, he lost it entirely. With one thrust, he hammered into me, fucking me into the wall. The force of it rippled through my body like a never-ending wave of pleasure.
Gripping my hips, he pounded into me. It was hard.
Rough. Relentless. I loved every second of it.
I moaned, whimpered, and screamed. He swallowed every one of them.
He was a fever. Sliding through my skin.
Shooting inside me. Coiling, twisting, and burning my insides.
He was a force of power unleashed on me.
A thing made out of war and violence. The dominance in his movements, the roughness of his hands, the strength in his hips pushed me off the cliff.
And as I soared and fell to the pits of hell, I screamed out in joy as if heaven itself had opened up for me.
“Jesus,” his voice broke into a moan right next to my ear. “I can feel you clenching all over my cock.”
His words drifted in and out of my mind. Half reality and half a delirious dream. I was no longer sure if he was fucking me or if I was fucking him. Because I was sure as hell using him to get off as I writhed against him.
A sound of despair worked from his throat. He tried to hold on to control but failed miserably. His movements spiraled. He bucked hard. Thickened, his muscles tightening. Then he found his release, jerking and spilling his warm seed inside me.
My body went boneless. His entire body vibrated with his release. My chest heaved. Breathing still too far out of control to have any kind of pattern to it.
His gaze wasn’t cold or dead any longer.
It held so much emotion that it made me feel vulnerable.
When I didn’t want to be vulnerable in front of a man.
Not after Joel. But instead of pulling away, I sought his comfort.
My head dropped onto his chest. His palm soothed my back.
His heartbeat pounded so hard it vibrated within me.
I ran my hand over his chest. Soothing it where his heart hid behind his rib cage.
The soft silk of his dress shirt was warm under my palm.
He still had my leg lifted. I lifted the other one up to him.
Curled into him. Climbed him like a tree.
Legs hugging his waist. But something hard on his hip bit into the dip behind my knee. Dropping my leg, I reached for it.
“Leave it,” he rasped.
But I was already there. Cold metal burned through my hand. One second’s confusion melted into cold realization. My heart dropped as I yanked my hand away in shock. Panicked gasps filled my chest. Nothing but suffocation filtered in.
“Anna.”
His voice came to me as if I were underwater. My lungs emptied.
“Breathe for me, stella mia.”
I couldn’t. My vision blackened. My arms failed.
With a growl, he grabbed my hand. “Feel this.”
Heat beneath my palm. So much heat that it dripped into my veins. “Open your eyes. You’ve got this. Look at this.”
But my eyes were open, weren’t they? I forced my eyelids up. Lifted my head, which felt as heavy as bricks. I gripped the heat. Confusion forced me to focus. Palm on naked skin. Under my palm, a star. Where his heart was.
I traced it over and over again. My fingers curled into it.
The shape of it. The beat of his heart within it.
They both burned and soothed me. “I don’t understand,” I whimpered, staring at the perfectly inked shape of the star.
He’d only unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt.
There was more. But his hand clenched around mine. Stopping me from discovering.
I pleaded with him. He looked pained, but he shook his head.
My lips trembled. Fingers shook. I wasn’t stroking just the star. I was touching his skin. Why did it feel so right? “What are you doing to me?” I whispered.
Leaning forward, he pressed words in my ear. As if they were a secret. “Guiding you.” As if he were telling me something more. “Let me be your happiness.” His voice edged with something unrefined. “Your star.”
My breath caught in my throat. I shook my head.
He was my father’s murderer. I hated him.
I had to remember that. Tears lined my cheeks.
He licked each one of them dry. There was so much pain in that action.
So much confusion in it, too. Even then, I still wanted to stay like that, cocooned in his arms, like he cared for me.
Would take all my pain and carry it for me.
But his phone rang. The shrill sound was loud in the quiet silence of our cocoon.
He took it out of his pocket, still holding me in his arms. Stefano’s voice rang through the line.
Whatever he said made him tense immediately.
I tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold on me.
Short and rapid words in Italian that sounded like bullets.
He cut the call a second later and put the phone back into his pocket.
When I pulled away, his eyes were on me, but his attention was already somewhere else.
“Go inside,” he said, his tone clipped.
“What?”
He didn’t give me an answer. He just pulled my straps up, yanked my dress down, and smoothed it one swipe.
Then he zipped himself up, his movements jerky when he took a step back from me and nodded toward the door.
“Inside. Now.” He didn’t give me the chance to react.
Flipped me around and gave me a gentle shove.
Behind me, he was talking on the phone. Furious Italian words being fired.
To Stefano again, I assumed, who appeared at the door, his gaze behind me.
His lips were a thin line. He pulled me inside.
Only then did I realize he couldn’t have been calling Stefano because he wasn’t holding a phone.
I glanced back just before the door closed.
My husband stood in front of a man, blocking me from his view.
“What’s going on?”
Stefano was as forthcoming as his brother. “Nothing.”
He made me wait in the en-suite, while he went outside and closed the door.
The sound of music from the main room pulsed through the walls as I paced the room.
I lost track of time. It could have been an hour, or it could have been a couple of minutes.
When the door finally opened again, I was relieved to see my husband step inside.
“What’s going on?” I asked him immediately.
He avoided my gaze as he gave me his hand to take.
I stared at it. Went still. He followed it to his white cuff. Undeniably covered in three spatters of blood.
With a sigh, he rolled the edge of his shirt under his jacket sleeve. But it was too late. It was etched into my vision.
“Let’s go home, Anna.”
“What happened?” I whimpered.
He ran a hand through his hair. It was an action so out of character for him that it unsettled me. “He saw you,” he muttered.
I frowned. Confused. Then I figured out what he meant. He saw us. Fucking.
I gulped. Forced words out of a throat gone dry. “What did you do to him?”
“That’s one question you don’t want an answer to, Anna.” He told me roughly before catching hold of my hand. “Party’s over. We’re going home. Now.”
And that was the end of it.
No le pedí a decirme la verdad. él tampoco me la dijo. Perdóname por ser tan débil.
I didn’t ask him for a truth. He didn’t give me one either. Forgive me for being so weak.