22 | Sit Pretty
SANTO
Touch is transactional.
I touch to gain things—money, respect, and obedience.
I receive touch to gain others. A clear mind. Temporary relief from the constant pull in my spine.
I don’t feel women when they touch me, I never have. My body was always something I used, not something I inhabited. A tool. A weapon. A vessel built to exercise power and control.
Ella ruined that.
My body recognized her before my mind did. I knew she was mine the first time I saw her across that room—before I knew her name, before I knew what she would cost me.
And what she would bring me.
I don’t look at Giorgia as she gathers her things and leaves quickly without another word. I don’t glance over my shoulder when the door closes.
“Lock it.” The words rumble out of me, low and final.
There’s a beat of silence. I feel the shift in her—the hesitation, the instinctive resistance. Her defiant nature lifting its head.
Then the lock clicks.
A quiet surrender. A temporary truce.
Footsteps approach, soft and unhurried, and then she’s beside me—not touching, just close enough that my skin begins to tingle.
“A masseuse,” she says.
I glance at her, and her beauty hits harder than any fist ever has. “Sì.”
“You wanted me to think she was something else.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, bella.”
Her mouth tightens, but she doesn’t retreat. She studies me instead—my bare back, the scars, the tension she can see even without touching.
“Are you in pain?” she asks, softer now.
I exhale through my nose, slow. “I live with it.”
Her hands come to me anyway. Soft, smooth palms glide across my back. Without even working my muscles, she makes me relax more that Giorgia ever has.
She starts carefully. Tentative fingers press into muscle, as if she expects me to flinch or snap. She doesn’t know yet that restraint is something I learned young—and mastered violently.
Her palms move, slow and exploratory, thumbs dragging along my spine.
Her touch isn’t transactional. She isn’t trying to fix me or earn something. She’s mapping me out—learning me. Committing me to memory like she intends to keep me.
Possession coils tight and dark in my chest.
She shifts, climbing onto the bed without asking. Her weight settles over my thighs, light and steady. Then she tilts her hips, and I can feel myself growing hard against the mattress.
Her hands return, firmer now, confidence growing with every pass. She works her way across my shoulders, down my arms, tracing scars she doesn’t comment on and all the lines of my tattoos.
I let her. I let her see what no one else is allowed to study this closely.
She’s dangerous.
It’s not the fact that she touches me, but that I allow it.
That I want more.
“Turn,” she murmurs, lifting her weight off me.
I do, shifting to my back between her thighs.
She settles on my hips, facing me, straddling my erection. I can feel her heat through her jeans—the way she grinds down instinctively, already looking for friction.
Her hands resume their slow exploration, spreading over my chest, following the lines of muscle, the steady beat of my heart beneath her palm.
She’s learning her husband’s body.
The thought lands heavy and final, but dissolves instantly when she rolls her hips again.
“Take off your clothes.” The order is out before I even register it.
Ella tilts her head, eyes scanning my face. “Is that what you told Giorgia?”
“No, amore.” My voice is calm, unbothered. “I have no desire for anyone but you.”
Color floods her cheeks. She opens her mouth, but her phone vibrates between us, snapping the moment clean in half.
She blinks, disoriented, as if she’s only just realized where she’s sitting. On me. On my rock hard cock, twitching with restraint.
The phone buzzes again. And again.
It’s not a call, the buzzing is irregular, frantic.
Messages. Urgent ones.
She pulls it free with shaking fingers, unlocking it with a swipe. Whatever she sees drains the color from her face.
I sit up and catch her wrist before she can pull away, angling the screen toward me.
Mia: WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK.
Mia. The roommate.
Lila: ELLA??? IS THAT YOU IN THE BACKGROUND OF THIS PHOTO???
Ella’s breath stutters. She taps the link, still trembling, and there it is—an Instagram story from some society account I didn’t know existed.
A girl eating a pretzel, laughing at nothing. She’s on a square with a cathedral in the background—our cathedral.
Sure enough, on the steps, Ella is stunning in her dress—looking every bit the bride she was meant to pretend to be. And beside her is me, looking at her like I intend to devour her whole.
Because I do.
Mia: YOU GOT MARRIED?!
Mia: AND YOU DIDN’T INVITE US???
Mia: OR EVEN TELL US????
Lila: Please tell me this was for a shoot.
Lila: ELLA. ANSWER ME.
Ella clamps a hand over her mouth, eyes rimming with silver, panic threatening to spill. She types back with one hand.
Fiorella: It’s… complicated.
Three dots appear instantly.
Mia: COMPLICATED HOW.
Lila: I don’t know what’s happening.
Lila: You’re scaring me, El. Something feels very wrong here. The restaurant was open yesterday. Do your parents even know?
I don’t wait to see her reply. My phone is already at my ear, ringing.
“Marco,” I say calmly. “I need a post taken down. I'm sending you a link right now. Do a full search—any mentions, any pictures. Find out how this happened. Fix the leak.”
I end the call before he can respond.
Ella is still tapping frantically at her screen, so I grab her hips, pulling her flush to me—solid and unmoving. She doesn’t register it. Her mind is spiraling.
I catch her jaw and force her to look at me. “Ella.”
The sight of her watery eyes hits harder than any blade ever could. I feel it then—cold and precise.
I’m spilling blood tonight.
It was covered. The square was locked down for our exit. Barriers, men, protocol. Someone slipped up, and it’ll cost them.
She pulls back, freeing her jaw. “I need to find out who else knows. If my parents—”
“Marco is on it,” I cut in. “He’ll find out who knows, and how this happened. And I promise you—”
“I don’t care how it happened, Santo.” Her voice breaks, tears spilling fast now, tracking down her cheeks in helpless streaks. “They think I got married behind their backs. I already moved out with barely an explanation—this’ll cost me our friendship, maybe worse.
“Tell them it was a photoshoot.”
She lets out a broken sound and buries her face in her hands. “They’re not stupid. They’ve been to my shoots before. There were no screens. No soft boxes. No photographers. And with the way I left when I moved out—”
The sobs hit her all at once. Her body folds in on itself, shaking hard.
I pull her to me, and this time she lets me.
She melts into my chest, limp and boneless. It takes everything not to savor it—to mark the moment she chooses me. Her husband. Not out of obligation, but need.
This is not the time.
“We’ll go see them,” I say quietly, tightening my hold. I bury my nose in her hair, breathe in the grapefruit scent of her shampoo, and something inside me locks into place.
Certainty.
I chose right.
It isn’t just her beauty—it’s the way she cares too much. The way she fights and breaks in the same breath. The way she loves her people fiercely, even when it costs her.
The yin to my yang—soft against sharp. Angelic white against demonic black.
We will move mountains together.
She pulls back, wiping under her eyes with her middle fingers. “You want to come see my friends?” she asks, disbelief threading the words.
I nod, unmoved. “We tell them it’s because of religion,” I continue. “That we’ll do a civil wedding later. That we couldn’t wait to consummate the marriage.”
Color floods her face. “I’m not religious, Santo. They’d never believe me.”
“Amore mio,” I murmur, leaning closer. “Do you think I spend my Sundays asking God for forgiveness?”
She shakes her head slowly.
I catch her eyes, steady and unflinching. “We lie, baby. We go see your friends tonight. You give them a story—for now. And I play my part.”
She scoffs. “You want to act? Come to my friends’ place and pretend you’re some church boy who married me because he wanted to do right by God? Look at yourself, Santo. You’re looks basically scream ‘respect is bought with blood’.”
Pretty close, actually.
I don’t blink. “We can give them a half-truth. Tell them we needed the church wedding to please my mother.”
She sighs, something between surrender and relief. “Fine. But I’m doing the talking. You just sit there looking pretty and nod at all the right times.”
The fucking nerve on this girl. Men twice my age fold at a single look from me, and she tosses orders around like she has the right to.
Good. She’ll need that fire if she’s going to survive a man like me.
“I don’t sit pretty,” I murmur, tightening my grip on her hips and grinding up until her breath catches. “But I’ll let you do the talking.”
She gives me a slow, assessing look, then smiles and leans in to brush her mouth against mine. “I guess that’ll have to do.”
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MEETING THE FRIENDS!! How do we think that'll go? ??
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