I hover over her, trapping her beneath me. Her chest is heaving, her eyes are blown wide, dark with an intoxicating mixture of fear and blinding desire. The sharp-tongued spinster is gone. Beneath me is just a woman, breathless and flushed with heat.
"Dario is a ghost," I tell her. I grab the hem of her faded black tank top. "By the time I’m done with you, you won't even remember what he looks like."
She doesn't argue. She doesn't fight me. She stares up at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly, waiting for the executioner to swing the axe.
I assume she knows exactly how this works. I assume Lombardi taught her the ropes in the dark corners of whatever location they rendezvoused. She is twenty-four years old, older than a traditional mafia bride. She’s experienced. She knows the game. I don't need to hold back. I don't need to treat her like a fragile virgin.
I can take her the way I want to, rough, demanding, and with authority.
I pull the tank top over her head and toss it onto the floor, my eyes dragging over the pale, bare skin of her chest, the delicate lace of her bra. A fierce, territorial hunger claws at my insides.
She belongs to me. She is my wife. And tonight, I am going to claim my property.
8
Noemi
The cold air of the bedroom hits my bare chest the second Cassio tears my faded tank top over my head and hurls it into the shadows.
It feels like I’ve been thrown into a freezing river, the shock of it making me gasp, but the man hovering over me is suffocating heat. Cassio Vellutini is a force of nature, a violent, inescapable storm that has just pinned me to the dark charcoal sheets of his massive bed.
"Get off me," I breathe, the words lack any real venom. I push my hands against his chest, feeling the hard, heavily muscled planes beneath his unbuttoned dress shirt. His heart is hammeringwildly against my palms, a frantic, tribal rhythm that perfectly matches the panicked thumping in my own chest.
"Liar," he growls softly, sending a treacherous fire down my spine.
He doesn't move. He doesn't yield an inch of space. Instead, he drops his head, his lips grazing the sensitive skin just below my jaw. I flinch, a sharp intake of breath hissing through my teeth, but I don't push him away. God help me, I don't push him away.
For two years, I have lived in a state of absolute, freezing numbness. I have been the unwanted spinster, the burden, the ghost haunting the halls of the Genovese estate. I convinced myself I didn't need a man, didn't want the suffocating cage of a mafia marriage. But the hatred I feel for Cassio has mutated, warping into a dark, feral adrenaline that is currently setting my blood on fire.
The line between wanting to kill him and wanting to let him consume me has completely vanished.
"Cassio," I try again, my voice trembling, betraying the sheer terror clawing at the edges of my mind.
"I told you," he murmurs against my skin, his hot breath fans over my collarbone, "I’m erasing him."
He kisses his way down my neck, his teeth scraping lightly over my pulse point. The sharp, stinging bite sends a jolt of electricity straight to my core. My hands, which were supposed to bepushing him away, instinctively slide up to his broad shoulders, my fingers curls into the expensive cotton of his shirt.
I hate him. I hate his arrogance, his cruelty, the way he looked at me at the altar with such absolute disgust. But the way he is touching me now is unraveling every defense I have spent my entire life building.
Cassio shifts his weight, his large hands dropping to the waistband of my oversized sweatpants.
Panic pierces through the haze of lust.
He’s going to know.The thought hits me with the force of a physical blow. Cassio thinks I am experienced. He thinks Dario Lombardi took my innocence years ago, turning me into spoiled Mafia goods. It’s the insult he hurled at me in the cathedral. It’s the reason he said he would never touch me. If he realizes that I am untouched, that my father lied by omission, that I have never been with a man, let alone my supposed lover, I don't know what he will do.
In our world, a virgin bride is a prize. A bloody sheet is a badge of honor, a symbol of a family's purity and control. My father denied Cassio that prize when he swapped me for Lucia. If Cassio discovers I am a virgin, it strips away the only armor I have left. I won't just be the bitter, unwanted pawn. I will be the miserable woman whom even her lover didn’t want.
But I don’t care. Instead, I yank the sweatpants down my legs with one fluid, powerful motion, dragging my simple cottonunderwear down with them. I kick them off frantically, but before I can scramble backward or cross my legs to hide myself, Cassio is there.
He grips both of my thighs, his large, calloused hands searing my pale skin, and forces my legs apart. He steps between them, his dark slacks are rough against my bare, hypersensitive flesh.
I am completely exposed to him. The vulnerability is terrifying. I reach down, trying to push his chest, trying to cover myself, but he catches both of my wrists in one of his massive hands and pins them to the mattress above my head.
"Look at me," he commands, his voice is back to that demonic, authoritative register.
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, feeling humiliated by how much I want him.
"I said, look at me, Noemi."