Given to Madness

by Fox, Winter

  “Liselle.” Even her name sounded like honey when he said it out loud.

  She broke the spell when she shook her bitter chocolate mane, and snapped, “Ms Marchesi. You can call me Ms Marchesi.”

  She was trembling, as she spoke. And he was almost ashamed of how his cock twitched when he realized that she was terrified of him.

  Almost.

  He had to fight back the smile which nearly broke across his face, as he imagined taking Ms Marchesi and putting her over his knee. Or even better, tying those slender wrists to his bedposts and fucking some respect into her.

  Then he suddenly remembered where he was, and why he was here. She was Mariusz’s, not his. And Mariusz would in all honesty fuck some respect into her before long, anyway.

  “Are you ready to leave, Ms Marchesi?” He knew she didn’t miss the mocking emphasis he put on her name.

  4

  Liss

  The Lieutenant was a thousand times more terrifying up close. When he crossed the room, and stood looking down on me I felt as though his black eyes were burning their way through my body. It was as though my actual soul had been stripped naked beneath his gaze.

  I felt an unexpected flicker of heat in my belly as my thoughts touched against the word naked, and I quickly crushed it down into embers.

  I blushed. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I studied the face of the monster who had come to collect me, and I was surprised to find that he was handsome; or at least he would be, if he didn’t seem so cold and empty.

  It wasn’t just the tattoos, or the dark hair and pitch-black eyes. There was a deeper sense of darkness about him that I didn’t remember about the other men from Mariusz’s personal guard.

  I remembered thinking that they had been cold, and dead. But the Lieutenant seemed almost to be made up of a living blackness. A sweeping whirlpool of dark water which threatened to pull you under, and drown you.

  A barely restrained killer.

  “Liselle.”

  I was surprised by how reverently he had spoken my name, as though he were reciting a prayer. His hint of a Russian accent making my first name sound sensual and seductive.

  Even though I was trembling, and even though I knew that this man was probably more dangerous than “Mad” Mariusz. I refused to back down. I wanted to show him from the start that I wouldn’t take shit from anyone. I didn’t really care if he used my first name—but I wanted to flex my muscles. Wanted to see how far I could push.

  If my outburst bothered him, it didn’t show. But his mocking reply told me that he didn’t give a shit about provoking me—something which I was unused to after twenty-one years as mafia royalty.

  Alessio wisely intervened. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting downstairs for a moment, Lieutenant. I would like a minute to say goodbye to my sister.”

  It wasn’t a request, but the brute treated it as one. Answering Alessio simply with the word, “Da.” Before retracing his steps to the door.

  I rolled my eyes at my brother.

  “It’s Russian for yes,” he confirmed.

  “I know that,” I snapped. “He’s just so…”

  Alessio nodded. “I know.”

  Then my brother held his arms out toward me, and the moment that I had been dreading for the last six years was finally here. I was being taken away from my family, and I might never see either of my brothers again. I let Alessio hold me in his arms for the second time today.

  “I’m so sorry, Liss. I’ve failed you. If I was a better brother, I would have found a way to stop this from happening.”

  I pressed my face into his chest, shaking my head slowly back and forth. “It wasn’t your fault, Alessio. Just promise me that you’ll get Matteo out as soon as you see the opportunity.”

  “I will,” he murmured, as he kissed my hair.

  “I love you.” I gently pulled back as I spoke, and he reluctantly released his grip on me.

  “I love you too.”

  Then before it got any more painful, I turned away. Pulling my sunglasses down to cover my eyes—I didn’t want the monster outside to be able to see my sorrow—I walked out of the door, and left my only living family behind.

  The Lieutenant hadn’t gone downstairs to wait; instead he was standing just outside the living room door, and I jumped in surprise when I walked into the hall and caught sight of him. My eyes flickered back to the open doorway, and I wondered if he had overhead what me and Alessio had spoken about.

  Did he hear what we said about getting Matteo out?

  “Ms Marchesi, the car is waiting.” His eyes gave nothing away. I just had to hope he hadn’t heard anything, and I sighed as I started down the stairs.

  The staircase in my home was wide enough for three people, which was good because the Lieutenant chose to walk alongside me. And even though I was barely five-foot five, and one-hundred and ten pounds, his shoulders were so broad that we needed a little more than room for two.

  The silence between us stretched out until it became uncomfortable. But I refused to be the one who spoke first. I had nothing to say to a man who had been sent by a psychopath to collect me for my forced marriage.

  When we got outside he opened the back door of the gleaming SUV, and I fired a final glance back over my shoulder toward my home. Then, taking a deep breath I slid into the air-conditioned car; feeling the cool leather against my bare legs, and it was bliss after the heat of the day outside.

  The Lieutenant closed my door, and walked around the car to open the opposite rear passenger door. I bit my lip in panic—my first obvious tell that I was afraid of him.

  “I’d prefer it if you sat in the front.” I almost added the word please—and I cursed the waver in my voice. I sounded afraid of him.

  Ignoring my request, he climbed into the car, and pulled his seatbelt across his impressive chest. He snorted. “I’m sitting here to make sure that you don’t get any last-minute ideas.”

  I huffed, and turned away from him to look out of the window. I hadn’t realized that I had forgotten my seatbelt; until I flinched as he leaned across me to hook the strap with his fingers.

  “I’m paid to get you home safely. You need to belt up.”

  I snatched the belt from him—ignoring the fire which danced across my skin as his hand touched mine for a brief instant. “I just left my home,” I hissed, defensively.

  He looked at me for a moment. I sensed his dark eyes searching for mine behind my sunglasses, and I was grateful that I’d thought to wear them.

  Finally, he spoke.

  “Can I give you some advice, Ms Marchesi?”

  I wanted to say no. Actually, I wanted to tell him to go to hell. But in truth, I knew nothing about the man that I was being married to—apart from the fact he was a psychopathic crime lord. I also knew nothing about the house I was being taken to live in. I reasoned that I could probably use all of the advice I could get.

  “Yes.” I lifted my sunglasses up onto my head, and levelled my eyes at him as I spoke.

  His eyes felt a thousand times more intense when I was unable to hide behind my glasses. My own eyes were completely captured by his as I listened to him speak.

  “My korol.” He paused and shook his head—seeming to realize I wouldn’t have the first idea of what a korol was. He tried again. “Mariusz is not a patient man, and he’s definitely not a nice man. If you piss him off, he will hurt you. Wife or not.”

  The words cut through me like a knife, and I tensed. Captured by my famous Italian temper. “If he hurts me, my brother will—"

  He cut me off, his voice a deep growl of impatience. “Your brother will what, Ms Marchesi? Your brother just handed you over to a monster. Watched you walk out of that fucking door, and he didn’t say shit. Your brother is weak.”

  I bit back the angry words which I wanted to throw at him; I was going crazy if I thought provoking the man sitting next to me was a good idea. I was also seriously regretting telling him to use my last name. It sounded
ridiculously formal. And he had an amazing way of using just enough emphasis to make it sound as though he were constantly mocking me.

  “Please stop using my last name?” I asked calmly, clasping my hands together in my lap as I spoke.

  He raised an eyebrow inquisitively, and raised his fingers to rub them over the dark shadow of stubble which was scattered across his strong jaw. I felt a momentary flicker of heat inside me again, as he studied me with a sort of lazy confusion.

  What was wrong with me?

  I was a virgin—Alessio had seen to that. I had been allowed to have friends while I was growing up. But when they started drinking and partying, my brother had put his foot down.

  “You’re promised, Liss. And Mariusz will not want damaged goods.”

  Oh, I had raged against him for months—the fights about my virginity were the biggest we’d ever had. My body was my own, and I wanted to be able to choose the man I gave it to for the very first time. I didn’t think that was such a big deal. Alessio apparently did.

  And my brother had won. Meaning I was a twenty-one-year old virgin, who was absolutely terrified of what was going to happen on her wedding night. Especially with a sadist like Mariusz Sokolov.

  That didn’t mean I didn’t have urges. And I fully understood that the heat which was currently burning low in my belly, meant that I had stirrings of desire caused by the man sat beside me.

  I groaned aloud, and shook my head.

  “Can you please just call me Liselle?” I pleaded.

  “Liselle.” He repeated my name, and the flickering heat leaped up, as though responding to his voice.

  Fighting to get my ridiculously slutty body under control, I bit my lower lip, and I was certain I heard a low growl from the man next to me.

  “And what should I call you?” I asked, quickly navigating back onto safer ground.

  He sat back against the leather seat of the SUV. Leaning his head against the headrest, he closed his eyes as though he were going to sleep. “You can call me Lieutenant.”

  I narrowed my eyes angrily. His easy dismissal of me, causing my temper to flare. “Aren’t you worried I might try something?”

  He snorted, but kept his eyes firmly closed. “Like what?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. You didn’t check me for weapons. I could kill you while you weren’t paying attention, and throw myself out of this fucking car.”

  His eyes snapped open, and a dark grin played across his lips. He slowly leaned across me until his broad chest was pinning my thighs against the seat, causing my heart to hammer in my chest. He turned his head back so that he could keep his eyes trained on my face, and he hooked his fingers underneath the door handle.

  “What are you doing?” I yelled, as he pulled the handle back. I grabbed for the metal catch, trying to stop the door from opening while we were hurtling down the freeway. But I quickly realized the door wouldn’t open because the child-lock was on.

  He sat back, grinning. And I scowled at him in silence.

  “As if you could kill me.” He huffed laughter as he lay his head back against the seat again.

  I folded my arms across my chest, and focused on getting my breathing back under control, with deep, slow breaths. Once I felt my heartrate slow down to almost normal, I looked over at him. His eyes were closed again. His toned arms crossed over his chest, and his face was serene—almost as though he really were sleeping.

  “What’s your real name? I’m not calling you Lieutenant.” It annoyed me that he knew my name, and I didn’t know his.

  His eyes stayed closed, and his arms remained folded over his sculpted chest as he answered me. “Aren’t you even a little bit afraid of me?”

  “No,” I lied.

  He opened one eye. “Nyet?”

  Even though my Russian was utterly appalling, I guessed that nyet meant no.

  I didn’t know why I was being so cocky, although I suspected that my emotions were all over the place, after waiting so long for this day to happen. But the temptation to provoke him was all too real.

  “Nyet.” I was studying his face when I said it. He had closed his eye again. But both eyes snapped back open when I parroted the Russian word back to him, and I felt my glare waver.

  He met my gaze. And I felt the living darkness inside of his eyes, almost as though it was calling out to me—I shuddered, despite the heat.

  “You should be,” was all he said.

  5

  Ilya

  He’d had to close his eyes. He couldn’t spend another second looking at those rosy pink lips, curved in their sulky little pout. If he did, he’d probably make the driver stop the car: drag her out, bend her over the hood, and fuck the attitude out of her.

  Fuck. He had issues.

  Her arms, which were tightly wrapped over her chest, didn’t hide the rise and fall of her luscious breasts, as she tried to steady her erratic breathing. And watching them was making his cock twitch.

  He understood that she was trying to get her temper under control. A fiery Italian temper, he thought to himself. She thought she looked angry, and tough, but realistically he just found her knitted brows adorably cute. And those lips? He wanted them around his dick.

  Most men would probably look at Liselle’s lips, and imagine kissing them. But not Ilya. He looked at Liselle and he wanted to hurt her. He didn’t want to hurt her badly. But when she’d bitten down on her lip, his mind had been flooded by the image of his own teeth closing down on the soft, pink flesh. His mouth pressing over hers, his tongue stealing the bead of redness he’d drawn from her body.

  Ilya realized that he was broken. He was almost obsessively structured in his approach to sex, and to women. There was never any emotion attached to the encounters he had. Only fucking, and only pain—for both parties.

  He told himself that the reason he only ever fucked women once—before ghosting them—was to protect them from getting too attached. And that was partly true. But he also knew that he couldn’t afford to let himself get attached to a woman; not for as long as he was “Mad” Mariusz’s lapdog anyway.

  Ilya had only ever cared about three people in his whole life, and one of them was dead; while the other two lived on a permanent knife-edge. Under the watchful eye of Mariusz’s men on the ground in Russia.

  So, Ilya didn’t allow himself time for any distractions which lasted longer than a single night. He didn’t permit himself to even really notice the women he fucked. He took them home—always their home, never his—and he used them. Then come the morning he would be gone, and they would never hear from him again.

  Some women were able to deal with that shit. They were usually the ones who were almost as broken as Ilya was. They knew the deal from the get go. Even when he was buried eight-inches deep inside them, and they were screaming his name—deep down inside they knew that he despised them just as much as he despised himself.

  It was the clingy girls, the ones who just kept pushing his buttons, that really drove him insane. Those girls would beg him to reassure them that they would see him again. Desperately trying to validate falling into bed with a tattooed criminal—because being honest, he looked exactly like the thug he was—within an hour of laying eyes on him.

  He really wanted to hurt those girls. Which was why he was so picky when it came to choosing the women he screwed. Because every day he fought against the demons inside of him. Even though he knew that he was already a lost cause.

  After he issued his warning to the feisty girl sitting next to him, he kept his eyes closed, until he felt the car beginning to slow down. He sensed the tension in the air around him increase as she realized that they had arrived at Mariusz’s home. He could almost taste her fear carried through the cool air of the car, and he was almost ashamed to acknowledge that it made his cock even harder.

  The car stopped, and Ilya’s eyes snapped open. He glanced sideways at Liselle, and wasn’t surprised to see a paleness to her skin which hadn’t been there before.

&
nbsp; “We’re here.” He stated the obvious, as he watched her wide eyes taking in the size of the house that she would now call home.

  She swallowed, and he waited for a sarcastic reply. But her anxiety seemed to have worked wonders on her attitude, and she stayed blissfully silent. Ilya shrugged, before opening his own unlocked door and stepping out into the afternoon sun.

  Slamming his door closed, he walked around the car and opened her door. She still had her seatbelt on, and she looked tiny and afraid; sitting in the car, staring at him with fearful eyes.

  “Take off your seatbelt, and get out,” he said, not unkindly.

  She hesitated for a split second, and his mind was assaulted by an image of him pulling her out of the car; before throwing her over his shoulder, and carrying her into the house—into his bedroom. But then she snapped the seatbelt off, and smoothly slid from the car. Her hand reached for her sunglasses, but then she suddenly seemed to change her mind—letting the hand drop weakly back to her side.

  “Come on.” Ilya knew he didn’t sound particularly friendly as he started walking toward the front door. But he was hot, horny as hell, and he really wanted to sit down in the coolness of the poker room with a drink. He might have even made it back in time to see Sava stick his knife in Kostya, he thought without humor.

  “Have you ever had a conscience? Or were you born this cold?” She muttered, as she followed him into the ridiculously extravagant Hollywood Hills style house.

  He looked down at her as she caught him up, and he had to bite back a smile. He’d never met anyone who seemed so unafraid of him. Even the women he fucked had the good sense to be frightened of him. But then fear and sex made for a spectacular combination.

  He frowned. Mariusz wouldn’t like the attitude though—not one bit. He spoke seriously. “Liselle, please don’t piss him off.”

  He thought she looked surprised when he said please. And why wouldn’t she, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d used the word. It wasn’t something Mariusz’s Lieutenant had to say to anyone.