“Would you like that?” he breathed against my neck. “Would you like to be edged?”
I tipped my head to the side, giving him more access to my throat. “I-I don’t know what that is.”
He continued to thrust slow and deep, to torture my clit with his steely cock. To send shivers down my spine with his tantalizing breath. “It means I torture you with the promise of release. I keep you right on the edge of orgasm. I think you deserve it after the way you taunted me all fucking day.”
He rubbed my G-spot deep inside, and I felt my orgasm screaming toward me. My whole body tightened in anticipation, and I lifted myself in his arms.
But right before it hit, he pulled his fingers free. Cool air swept over me, making me twitch and grunt.
“That’s it,” he whispered, letting go of my skirt so it fell down the backs of my legs. “Edging makes you horny as fuck. When I finally let you come tonight, your orgasm is going to destroy you. But I say when, angioletto. Not you.”
I groaned because…tonight?
My fingers slid up into his hair, and I yanked his mouth down to mine and kissed him hard, telling him with my tongue exactly what I wanted now.
His chest shook with a laugh, one that only made me more frustrated. I kissed him deeper. He answered by wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing me back, slowing and gentling the kiss until I wanted to scream. But he didn’t make any other move to fuck me, and I knew he wasn’t going to. I knew this was his latest form of domination.
Every cell in my body quivered in protest. I wasn’t going to let him call the shots this time. I needed this. I needed him. Letting go of his hair, I dropped my hands and reached for the snap on his jeans with frantic fingers.
He captured my wrists before I could get the snap free and jerked back from my mouth, pushing my hands away from his waistband at the same time. “Natalie, don’t.”
My chest rose and fell with my labored breaths. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I could feel his heat and his need pulsing in his veins. He wanted me, dammit, and I wanted him just as much. “Why not?”
“Because there are too many people outside.”
“You didn’t mind when we were on your plane. Or in Venice. Or in the winery earlier today.”
“Those times were different.”
I had no clue what he meant. “Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Because he said so? No way. “I don’t thi—”
“Luciano.”
I froze when I heard Luc’s father’s terse voice, and everything that had been hot inside me went ice-cold.
“Porca puttana,” Luc muttered. Jerking me into him, he growled, “Don’t pull another fucking stunt like this again.”
He pushed me away, then called, “We’re down here.”
Footsteps sounded, and a light flicked on. Blinking rapidly to clear the spots from my vision, I smoothed my skirt and glanced at Luc, five feet away from me.
He was watching me, but not with the heated, aroused eyes he’d watched me with all day. These stormy eyes were hard and furious, and they sent a shiver of unease straight down my spine.
Luc’s father rounded the corner and stopped when he spotted us. His gaze drifted from me to Luc and back again. “What’s going on down here?”
Pressure formed in my chest. I felt like I’d crossed some invisible line I wasn’t supposed to come near. Luc hadn’t balked at my teasing all day, and only a few moments ago, he’d been the one sexually taunting me. But something had changed when I’d tried to unsnap his pants. Was it the fact I’d tried to take control? Or was it something else? Something linked to the people outside in that courtyard?
I was almost afraid of the answers as I glanced at Luc’s father. My smile wavered when I said, “It’s my fault. I was looking for a restroom. Luc was kind enough to come find me before I got lost.”
Luc’s father’s eyes narrowed, and he stared at me for several moments before glancing at Luc. “Stai fermo dove sei.” He looked back at me. “I need to speak with my son for a moment. Please, return to the party.”
He stepped back and held out his hand, indicating I should pass.
My nerves shot up, and I glanced at Luc.
Luc stood perfectly still, but a muscle in his jaw ticked, and his eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
“Okay,” I said in a nervous voice, unsure what was going on. “I-I’ll see you both back in the courtyard.”
Neither answered me, so I hesitantly stepped past Luc’s father. At my back, Antonio called, “The restroom is inside the main house, two doors down on the right.”
My face flushed, and my feet faltered. Something in his voice told me he knew I hadn’t been looking for a restroom at all. It also told me he knew exactly what we’d been doing in the dark. “Grazie.”
My stomach pitched as I moved out of the corridor into the courtyard again. Dusk was drifting to darkness, and only the western part of the sky was still a deep shade of blue. Tables covered in white tablecloths had been set up around the courtyard, and candles illuminated the place settings.
Hand shaking, I refilled my wineglass and took a large sip. An older woman—one of the aunts I’d been introduced to earlier—grabbed me by the arm and pulled me toward a group of women.
They each began asking me questions about America. I answered what I could, but my attention kept darting back to the archway, waiting for Luc to reemerge. And with every passing minute he didn’t, my pulse ticked up another notch.
Just about the time I was ready to go looking for him, he finally appeared. Relief swept through me, but it was quickly banked when I saw the hurricane swirling in his eyes and the rigid line of his shoulders.
His father smiled at his side, slapped him on the back, then shouted at a group of men and walked toward them. Luc didn’t follow. His livid gaze scanned the crowd until it locked on me. And as he approached and I felt the fury rolling off him in waves, I very nearly recoiled.
He stopped next to me and took the wineglass from my hand. Flashing a sour smile at his dark-haired aunt to my right, he said something in Italian I didn’t understand. She and the two other women glanced my way with shocked expressions, then flushed and scurried off.
My face immediately heated. “What did you tell them?”
He tossed back the rest of my wine. “I told them you’re a lush who can’t handle her alcohol.”
My eyes flew wide. “Wha—?”
“You’re done drinking tonight.” He turned me away from the party by the elbow and set my empty wineglass on a nearby table. “It clearly fucks with your ability to follow simple directions.” He pushed me into a chair away from the festivities and glared down at me. “Sit there where I can keep an eye on you, and stay out of fucking trouble. We’re leaving first thing in the morning. I’ll be back when it’s appropriate for you to retire to your room without making a goddamn scene.”
My mouth fell open as he turned and walked away from me. Shock and disbelief rolled through my belly while I watched him weave through the crowd, stop near his mother, and whisper something in her ear.
She glanced past him toward me, frowned, and patted his arm. Luc, however, never once looked my way. He disappeared into the house, leaving me sitting confused and alone at a table in the middle of a party where I knew no one.
Something hard twisted around my heart. I scanned faces, searching for some kind of threat, for anything that would explain his odd behavior. But everyone else was laughing and drinking and having a good time. I was the only one separated from the group. I was the only one being punished.
“Signora.” An older woman with salt-and-pepper hair pulled neatly into a bun and whom I recognized from the kitchen this morning appeared at my side and set a cup of coffee on the table in front of me. With a pitying expression on her weathered face, she said, “Enjoy, cara.”
The woman looked as if she wanted to say something more, but one quick glance over her shoulder and she scurried off just like t
he others. I looked to see at whom she’d glanced and spotted Luc’s mother scowling in my direction.
My face heated even more as I focused on my coffee. I wanted to disappear into the background. I wanted to jump up and run to my room. But I was afraid to do either because if Luc came back and found me gone, I knew the storm I’d seen flare in his eyes moments before would pale in comparison.
I swallowed hard because the pressure around my heart told me that wasn’t the real reason I couldn’t leave.
The real reason was that I sensed Luc wasn’t really upset with me. Something had happened with his father, the same kind of something that had enraged him in Venice when he’d been summoned home. I was just the closest target for his rage.
But I was tired of being kept in the dark. I was tired of his secrets. And I was done letting him push me around like this.
I loved him, dammit. I deserved to know what was really going on.
I just didn’t know what I’d do if he chose not to tell me.
Luc didn’t join me at the party again. I spent the rest of my night stewing over that fact with Dante’s girlfriend who’d migrated my way when she’d seen me sitting alone.
I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with Maricella. She watched Dante like a hawk, but anytime Luc’s brother had glanced our way, she’d cast her eyes down and away. And she had a weird tattoo peeking out of the collar of her soft yellow dress and beneath her blonde hair. A leopard-print tattoo I suspected ran the entire length of her spine.
Not that I had a problem with tattoos. Some I’d seen were pretty awesome. I simply had no desire to get inked. It wasn’t Maricella’s tattoo that bothered me, though. It was the way she acted…
As if she wasn’t good enough to mingle with the Salvatici family. As if it was her place to walk behind Dante and let him treat her like dirt. As if everything he said and did was golden and she was thankful just to be in his presence. And every time she said yes, sir to him, just as those models in New York had said yes, sir to Gio, my spine tingled with both outrage and disgust.
That similarity left me more unsettled as I paced the length of my dark room later that night.
Luc’s mother had been the one to take me up to my bedroom suite, not Luc. The party had still been in full swing in the courtyard when she’d come by my table and “suggested” I might be tired. She’d been wrong, of course. I hadn’t been the least bit tired. I wasn’t even tired now, two hours later when the sounds of the party were no longer drifting in through my open—yes, very open—balcony door. I was spitting mad and ready to tear Luc a new one…if the jerk would ever show back up.
More frustrated with every passing second, I dropped into a plush red chair near the cold fireplace and stared out at the twinkling stars past my balcony railing. There was no moon tonight, so everything was darker than normal and fit my mood perfectly.
We were leaving tomorrow, which was good. I was ready to get out of this place. Everything about Luc’s family seemed to set him off and make him act like a total lunati—
A rustle sounded outside my open door, followed by a soft thud. Clenching my jaw, I crossed my arms over my chest and glared toward the balcony.
A large shadow filled the doorway, but I didn’t budge. I knew it was Luc by the shape of his shoulders and the way he moved. I also knew it was him because I could smell his intoxicatingly masculine scent.
He sighed, but the sound was more exasperation than anger, which for some reason fired me up even more. “Angioletto, I told you to keep the doors locked.”
“You don’t get to call me angel.” I pushed out of my chair, unable to sit still anymore. Even more unable to control my hurt and resentment. “You don’t get to call me anything any longer. What you did to me down there was humiliating.”
“I know,” he said softly.
He knows?
Asshole.
I stalked over to the wardrobe closet and jerked it open to grab my suitcase. “I had to sit there like some grounded child. Your mother had to take me up to my room like I was a five-year-old.”
I tossed the suitcase on my bed, feeling like a complete moron. He knew he’d humiliated me? And he hadn’t done a thing about it? Fucker.
“I don’t even know why I’m still here. If you’re just going to treat me like Dante’s pathetic excuse for a girlfriend, I’m out of here.”
Luc moved so fast, I barely saw him. One second he was standing in the open doorway, the next he was beside me at the bed, his big hands closed around my wrists, his muscular body between me and the suitcase.
My temper lurched. I tried to jerk my hands from his grip, but his hold was too strong. “Let me go.”
“No.”
“Dammit, Luc.” I pulled harder and ground my teeth. “Let me go.”
“I can’t.” He tugged on my wrists, pulling me into him with ease.
I stumbled, and my body fell into the hard plane of his chest, my arms caught between us. He quickly let go of my wrists and wrapped his thick arms around me, holding me closer than I wanted.
I struggled, but he was like solid steel. And, dammit, when he leaned into me, pressed his face against my neck, and sucked in a shaky breath, my anger faltered.
“I tried to let you go,” he breathed into my hair. “I tried everything to keep you from me, but it didn’t work. And now… Now you’re part of me, and I can’t let you go. You’re a shimmering light in my sea of darkness, and if you leave, that darkness will swallow me until there’s nothing left.” His arms tightened around me. “I need you, Natalie. I need you with me. You’re the only good thing in my life.”
Everything inside me stilled. Everything but my heart, which picked up speed until it was a bruising rhythm against my ribs.
I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand what he meant. I didn’t understand how he could say such tender words to me one minute and humiliate me another. “Then why did you do that to me?”
He drew back and framed my face with his hands, looking down at me in the dark. There was just enough starlight coming in from outside for me to see the regret in his stormy eyes. Regret and pain. “Because my father was watching. Because they were all watching.”
I didn’t know what he meant by “they,” but I resisted the urge to pull away, because he looked distraught. And because even though I knew it made me a fool, my heart was thumping even faster. “Your father doesn’t like me.”
“No.”
“Because I’m American?”
“Because he didn’t choose you.”
“I don’t understand.” My brow wrinkled. “Did he set up some kind of arranged marriage for you? Explain this to me so I can understand. What’s going on here, Luc?”
He closed his eyes, and as I watched him draw a slow, deep breath, I knew he was searching for the right words—or any words.
The worry and fear inside me swelled.
“My…family is very old-fashioned,” he said long seconds later, opening his eyes and looking down at me again. Only this time, I saw both tenderness and heartache, so much it threw me off-kilter. “They have plans for me that don’t include a woman like you.”
“A woman like me?”
“Strong.” He kissed my forehead. “Independent.” He pressed his lips to my temple. “Sweet.” His supple lips found my other temple. “Caring.”
My resistance was wavering. I could feel my wall of anger crumbling with every brush of his wicked mouth. But I needed to understand. I couldn’t let this happen again.
I hadn’t disobeyed any of his orders. I liked when he took control of my body and my desires—he already knew that. All I’d done today was tease him and love him and show him how crazy I was about him.
I swallowed against the urge to lift my lips to his as he trailed a string of kisses across my cheek. “Then why? Why did you treat me like that? Do you have any idea how that made me feel? People were sending me pitying looks like I was…like I was Maricella.”
“You are not Mari
cella.” He drew back again, and this time when I focused on his eyes, they brimmed with truth and an insistence that rocked me to my core. “You’ll never be Maricella. I don’t want someone like Maricella. I never did. I want you.” He skimmed his thumb across my cheek. “I want you, Natalie, exactly the way you are.”
Tears filled my eyes. Tears of both love and hurt because they were the words I longed to hear, but something felt wrong.
He still wasn’t opening up to me, and I was starting to wonder if he ever would or if our relationship was destined to fail. He’d said he was floating in a sea of darkness, but I was swimming in his ocean of secrets. Why couldn’t he tell them to me? What was so awful he had to keep hidden from me? And why did I feel like my heart was on the verge of breaking and that there was nothing I could do to stop that from happening?
“Mannaggia.” He let go of my face and wrapped his arms around me again, pulling me into the safety and warmth of his embrace.
I was too shaken to fight him. I was too shaken to do anything but let him hold me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I wanted to throw my father off. I wanted him to know you aren’t a threat.” He pressed his lips to my ear, and the regret I heard wavering in his voice almost broke me. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning, and you won’t ever have to come back here again.” He kissed my cheek and brought one hand back to my face as he kissed the corner of my mouth. “I promise, sweet Natalie. Never again. Dio, I need you so much. Don’t leave me. Please don’t ever leave me.”
Any thought I had about asking what he meant by “a threat” faded in the ether. His soft, pained words didn’t just drift into my ear, they seeped deep into my heart. And when he pressed his lush mouth to mine, it wasn’t my lips he claimed, it was my very soul.
Sparks spread through me, rippling out from the spot where our lips joined, and, too weak to resist their power, I opened to him. I opened everything to him because I loved him.
I loved him blindly and without reason. I loved him even when he hurt me. I loved every part of him, especially the parts he didn’t know how to love himself.
The Fall (House of Sin Book 2) Page 10