Chapter 26
Isabella
“What in the hell are you doing?” Lorenzo was standing beside a fire pit, feeding clothes into the bright orange flames.
Glancing at the boxes at his feet, I knew that they were all Sienna’s things.
I had seen him from the window in the kitchen, far enough across the property that I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing.
He looked at me and held up the blouse in his hand. “Well, I’m not going to put this on,” he said and tossed it into the barrel.
Anger gripped me hard, and when Lorenzo picked up a dress, I slapped it out of his hand. “Stop,” I said. “Just stop.” Panic was rising in my throat, and I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t allow him to do this. “Why would you do this?”
Lorenzo picked up the dress. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“Happy?” The word didn’t even sound right coming out of my mouth. “Why would you think this would make me happy?” I demanded.
My eyes stung from the smoke, and I stepped back. It probably wasn’t a good idea to breathe that shit in. My hand drifted down to my belly; it was becoming a touchstone for me. Something to do when I was nervous.
I watched Lorenzo toss a few more things into the barrel, and I felt that squirming feeling beneath my hand. “How can you just throw her away like that?” I asked. “She meant so much to you, and now you’re just—”
“For you,” he barked.
I huffed. “All this tells me is that I could be just as easily thrown away if something were to happen.”
“What?” His voice was brittle and sharp with anger now. “So, you can act jealous and push me away for days, but I do this to show you that you’re the only woman that I care about, and now you’re mad that I’m ‘throwing Sienna away’?” His face tightened. “Make up your fucking mind, dolcezza.”
I blinked again and again, eyes still burning from the smoke. “Who said that I was jealous?” I asked. “What do I have to be jealous for?”
“You tell me,” Lorenzo demanded. “You’ve been an even worse brat than usual ever since you came with me to the Palazzo.” My body went rigid, and he noticed. “See? You have been jealous, haven’t you?”
I was in love with an idiot, I decided. The man controlled several real, legal businesses and so many more that weren’t legal, and yet, his best estimate as to my mood was that I must have been feeling jealous because another woman had entered a room. “Was Yulia trafficked?” I asked.
“What?”
“Was. She. Trafficked?” I asked, slowing each word and dragging it out, as if he were a child who didn’t understand. “Did she come to the Palazzo because she wanted to, or was she sent and told that something bad would happen to her if she didn’t comply?”
Lorenzo looked absolutely gobsmacked. “Why does that matter?”
To say that I was disgusted was an understatement.
“You’re asking me why it matters to me if a woman was raped in your hotel.
” I held up my hand to stop whatever he was about to say next.
“I know that I don’t understand your world, okay?
But that will never be okay with me, ever, and it’s not out of jealousy.
It’s just abhorrent.” I gestured to the box of Sienna’s books and clothes.
“You didn’t have to do this. You don’t have to erase her for me. ”
Like I knew it would happen, Lorenzo’s walls went crashing up. “Sienna was my wife, yeah? So what I chose to do with her belongings is my decision.”
I nodded, jaw clenched. So, we weren’t going to talk about Yulia, then. “That’s true,” I forced out and took another step back. “You do what you need to do, then.”
Turning on my heel, I started back to the house. I barely got a dozen steps before his hand closed around my arm. Lorenzo reeled me back around. “Where are you going, dolcezza?”
“Inside,” I said and tried to pull my arm out of his grip. “I’m leaving you to do what you want.” Because you get what you want, I thought. You do what you want.
Even though I didn’t say it, Lorenzo could read my thoughts in my expression. He reached out and cupped my cheek. “You really need to develop a poker face,” he said. “It would be safer for you in the long run.”
“I’m mad,” I said. “I’m not trying to hide that. So, why don’t you let me go so that I can calm down? Hmm?”
Lorenzo sneered. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“What?” I demanded. “You want to talk this out right now? Like this?” I looked down at where he was still gripping me. “Don’t you have a fire to get back to?”
“Someone will come take care of it, don’t worry.
” We stood there, locked in a staring contest of sorts, and then he sighed.
His hand loosened, but he didn’t quite let me go.
“I can’t do anything about Yulia,” he said.
“She’s not mine, and I don’t know enough about whatever contract she’s made with Nikolai that got her into the country. ”
“But you still accepted her as a gift.”
“I set her up in one of the suites for the week. Her escort didn’t stay; he only came back when it was time to be picked up.
Other than room service, no one went into that room.
” For a moment, I felt relief, but then Lorenzo said, “I didn’t prevent anyone from going to her.
Damian made it clear that she was here as a gift.
It just worked out that no one took the offer. ”
Again, my stomach twisted itself into knots. “Why did you have to tell me that part?”
“Because I don’t want you to misunderstand me,” he said gruffly. “I’m not some kind of hero here. That’s not the way things are.”
I gave him a flat look. “Believe me, I am under no delusion about that.” But I was glad that Yulia didn’t experience anything negative while in Lorenzo’s “care.” Even if he didn’t care what happened to her, I did. “I’m going inside now.”
Lorenzo’s expression was cool and calculating. “I think you need a reminder of the way things work,” he said. “I’ve indulged you for too long.”
Indulged me? “What?”
My question was cut off with an undignified yelp as Lorenzo swept me into his arms. My breath caught in my throat. Goddamn me, but I knew where this was going, and I tingled all over with anxiety and excitement.
But Lorenzo didn’t take me toward the house. Instead, he walked us over to a crop of trees. “What are you doing?” I asked, embarrassed by how breathy my words came out.
“You’ve spent days being mouthy. That’s not good girl behavior, dolcezza.”
I shivered. It had been a long while since we’d done something like this. The night at the tattoo parlor was relatively tame compared to some of the things that we’d gotten up to before. “But why aren’t we going inside?”
Once we were under the trees, Lorenzo put me down. “Get on your knees.”
I looked around us. I could still see the house clearly from where we were, which meant that they could still see me. “Absolutely not.”
He grabbed my chin between his fingers. His eyes seemed to pierce mine. “Get. On. Your. Knees.”
If I truly refused to do this, I could tell him. Lorenzo pushed, but he didn’t want to do anything that I didn’t. It was fun to see me squirm with embarrassment even as I got hot, but he would never truly humiliate me. I trusted him not to.
It felt like something clicked in my head then. I trusted him to keep me safe. To not push too far.
Filled with trepidation and the kind of nervous excitement that usually came with this kind of play, I lowered myself until my knees were resting in the grass. I looked up at him and swallowed hard. Lorenzo was staring down at me with a kind of cold detachment that made me tremble.
“Don’t speak until I ask you something directly,” he said, caressing my cheek with his fingers. “Yes or no, dolcezza?”
I bit the inside of my cheek for a moment, and despite my trepidation, I nodded. “Yes.”
“If that changes, you can tell me.” He unzipped his jeans and drew out his cock. He wrapped his long fingers around the shaft and pumped it until he was fully hard. “Put me in your mouth.”
With the house seeming to loom behind me, I grabbed onto his hips to steady myself and swallowed him down.
Lorenzo groaned, and I felt his fingers tangle in my hair.
I closed my eyes and put all my focus in the way his cock stretched my jaw, the heaviness of him pressed against my tongue, and the sounds that I could pull from his throat.
The more I tuned into what I was doing, the fuzzier my mind became, and the more I could forget that someone might be watching what we were doing.
I bobbed my head, taking him as deeply as I could manage, and he let out a guttural sound when the head of his cock touched that spot in my throat that made my throat convulse. “Easy,” he murmured, panting. “Don’t choke yourself.”
I wasn’t choking. It was more that I was smothering myself every time I tried to swallow him down, and it made my lower tummy go tight. I worked him up and up with my tongue, and when I couldn’t get any more of him in my mouth, I wrapped my hand around the rest of him.
Finally, with a grunt, Lorenzo pulled back. “Turn around,” he demanded. “Now.”
Feeling wobbly, I turned and dropped forward so that I was on my hands and knees. Lorenzo pulled down my pants so that they were around my knees. I couldn’t widen my stance, so when Lorenzo pressed the head of his cock to my pussy, it felt even larger than it already was.
He slid his cock against me, bumping my entrance, and even with all of the sounds outside, I could hear the slick sounds that he was making. “Fucking dripping,” he said in my ear. “Look at the house, dolcezza. Show anybody who’s watching how much you like when I fuck you.”
I didn’t want to like this, but I moaned and raised my head to look at the back of the house just as he sank inside me.
For as wet and ready as I was, it still stung as he stretched my inner walls.
That little spark of pain faded into the most pleasurable warmth.
“Lorenzo,” I groaned, scrabbling at the ground, digging my fingers into the grass.
“You like me taking you like this,” he panted as he drove himself inside of me. His rhythm was heavy and steady, but I noticed that he wasn’t going all out. Even in this moment, he was being careful. “Say it.”
I whined. “I like it.” It wasn’t a lie. Lorenzo reached around so that he could circle my clit with his fingers. “Oh, God, I like it.”
“Do you want to come?”
I nodded, trying to push back against him and meet his thrusts. “Yesyesyesyes,” I begged, spiraling so near to that dizzying edge.
“Are you going to keep being a brat?”
I chuckled; I couldn’t help it. “Probably.” His fingers disappeared, and my clit throbbed from the sudden lack of touch. I hiccupped out a sob. “Sorry,” I cried. “I’m sorry, please.”
Lorenzo brought his hand down against my ass with a sharp crack! “You have fifteen seconds to come, dolcezza,” he said, hips jerking against me faster now. “Or I’ll leave you just like this. Count it for me.”
“One…two…three…four…five…” I panted, and he spanked me again. “Six…please...”
“Count,” he barked.
“…Sev—” All of the tension in my belly went slack, and pleasure roared through me, and I came with a cry.
Lorenzo swore as he hit his own end, spilling inside me. “Good girl,” he murmured, petting at my hip. “So good for me, dolcezza.”
There was a ringing in my ears, and it took everything in me not to flop onto the ground. All of the tension that I had been holding onto for days melted away, and I relaxed into the floaty feeling in my mind. I glanced over my shoulder and met Lorenzo’s eyes. “I need a nap.”
He smiled. “Of course.”