by Nicole Fox
He stares down at me as his fingers roam delicately down my collarbone, right down to my chest, between my breasts.
“Do I look like a fool to you?” he asks again.
His tone terrifies me, but the way he’s touching me… I don’t know how to process it.
“Do I?”
I jolt. My body jerks against his and the brief contact is enough to confirm that he’s hard behind his zipper.
“No,” I say in a meek voice. “No, you don’t.”
“What did you hope to gain by going into my office?”
“Protection,” I answer honestly.
“I am your fucking protection,” he snarls at me. His silver eyes burn bright like a pair of full moons. “I am the only thing standing between you and pain. So you need to make a decision. You need to choose wisely. Do you understand?”
I want to scream: No, I don’t understand!
Because I don’t.
I don’t understand a thing that’s happening here.
Not his hands on my body.
Not the trail of heat that he leaves wherever he touches me.
Not the way he’s looking at me right now. Like he wants to devour me and destroy me at the same time.
“You want me to trust you?” I ask, pulling out of my defensive position and pressing my body against his. “Why? Because you’re asking me to? What makes you think you deserve my trust at all?”
His eyes narrow when he realizes that I’m not backing down.
He’s not succeeding in subduing me.
He’s only getting me riled up.
“It’s not about me at all,” he bites back. “Trusting me is your only option.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Who else do you have?” he croons. “The blonde bimbo whose only card is her rack?”
I push against him again, but he might as well be a steel wall. He doesn’t budge and I feel my body slap uselessly into his.
“You don’t know anything about her,” I protest. “And you don’t know anything about me, either.”
“Oh, micetta, you’d be surprised at how much I know.”
I still. The moment I stop struggling, I feel my heartbeat rise with panic.
That note of all-knowing arrogance terrifies me.
Does he know about Xander?
Is this his way of playing with me? Drawing out the tension before he delivers the final killing blow?
“You keep forgetting who you belong to,” he rasps, his eyes searing into mine.
An answer rises to my lips. I’m not sure where it comes from. Maybe, in a strange way, it comes from my mother. A reaction to her.
To seeing her throw herself again and again at any man who would have her.
I swore I’d never do that.
And I intend to uphold that oath.
“The only way I’ll ever belong to you… is if I give myself to you,” I say, pressing my chest up against his. “And that’ll never fucking happen.”
He’s still got his hand around my neck. And I return the favor by grabbing his neck with my one hand that’s not trapped beneath his body.
“That’s why I piss you off so much, isn’t it?” I continue.
I’m shooting in the dark. But it’s all I have.
“It’s because you know you can never truly possess me,” I continue. “Not really. Not truly. And deep down, that makes you very, very angry.”
I expect to see fury in his eyes.
But all I see is amusement. That, and a fierce sense of confidence that leaves me feeling scared.
I gave him my best shot.
And he’s just… laughing. Absorbing it wordlessly, easily.
That’s the scariest thing he’s done yet.
“Sometimes, Charlotte, when you give yourself to someone… it happens in stages,” he tells me. He peels my hand gently off his neck, one finger at a time. “It happens so slowly—bit, by bit, by bit—you don’t even realize it. Until it’s too late to ever go back. Far, far too late.”
Then, my wrist captured in his grasp, he pushes me back the last half-inch into the floor-to-ceiling window suddenly and forcefully. My back cracks against the glass and all the air goes whooshing from my lungs.
In the same motion, he takes both my hands and smashes them over my head. The window reverberates with the force of it.
His cock presses against my inner thighs. Automatically, unconsciously, I spread them open for him.
I’m doing exactly what he just said I’d do—giving myself to him.
Bit…
By bit...
By bit…
I shudder as he leans in, but we’re long past words. This is happening. It was inevitable from the start.
He runs his lips along my neck, then up towards my ear.
“Lucio…” I try to protest.
But I’m breathless and his name comes out in a strangled moan.
It sounds as though I’m turned on.
It sounds as though I want him.
It sounds as though I’m ready to give it all up.
And—God help me—I am.
I do.
I will.
He pins both my hands against the pane of glass with one palm. I struggle, but I’m no match for his iron strength.
His free hand dives between my legs. He starts to snake upwards as I tremble.
But I refuse to ask him to stop. I glare at him, even as his fingers travel up to my center. Past the hem of my dress. Above my inner thigh.
His fingers slip into my panties and stroke against my lips.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
Again.
He pulls away and I gasp at the abrupt lack. The sudden chill where his heat had just been.
He releases my hands and steps away from me.
“You’re wet,” he says. The victory is clear in his eyes.
My heart is hammering hard against my ribcage. I can’t even bring myself to deny it.
“Am I wrong?” he taunts. He slides forward once more, getting in my space again.
He leans in. I can feel his breath on my face.
“If that’s your argument…” I start.
I keep my eyes on him as I reach out and cup his crotch with my hand. His erection is firm—and so fucking huge I nearly do a double take.
“…then it goes both ways.”
We stare each other down. I’m not sure how long passes—seconds? Hours? Centuries?
I honestly don’t know who has the upper hand anymore. How we’ll ever solve this brutal stalemate of power and hunger.
Then we hear footsteps on the stairs a few feet away.
Lucio and I jump apart at the exact same moment.
Just in time, too, because Enzo emerges onto the landing with Evie in his arms.
“Evie,” Lucio says, voice drenched at once in concern.
Enzo sets her down, and I can tell from her face what happened—she’s had a nightmare.
She takes only one glance at Lucio…
And then she runs straight into my arms.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, patting her hair as I lift her into my arms.
It takes some effort to hoist her up because my limbs are trembling so bad, but I manage in the end.
“I was outside her door when I heard her calling for you,” Enzo informs me as I cradle the poor girl and rock her gently back and forth.
“Thank you, Lorenzo,” Lucio says. “You can head home now.”
He nods and lets himself out of the room, leaving the three of us behind.
Our eyes meet over the top of Evie’s head. I wonder if he resents the fact that his own child chose me instead of him.
But there’s no resentment in his gaze. Only concern.
Honest-to-God empathy.
I never thought I’d see the day.
“She has bad dreams sometimes,” I tell him, looking down and away in a hurry. “I’ll take her up now.”
He just nods. I take that as
my dismissal and head for the stairs once more.
I hear him call out softly, “Goodnight, sweetness.”
I don’t know if he’s talking to Evie…
Or to me.
20
Lucio
I walk to my room in a daze.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. This wasn’t the fucking plan.
I was supposed to get in her head.
Not the other way around.
I shut the door to my office and look towards the bar cart in the corner of the room. It’s never looked more tempting. I stride over and pour myself a glass of scotch.
I shoot it down in one gulp, but it does nothing to distract from my rolling thoughts.
Neither does the second drink.
Or the third.
The encounter with Charlotte has me shook.
It wasn’t just the way her body felt against mine. It was the way she started fighting back halfway through. It was the blazing determination in her eyes when she reached out and grabbed my cock.
And the jolt of burning electricity that shot through my body at the intimate contact.
Fuck.
I wasn’t prepared for that.
Women have never affected me like that before.
Yes, I feel desire for them. I feel lust. But this is more.
There’s longing. Craving. Carnal fucking need.
I desire Charlotte. I have from the moment I laid eyes on her.
But my desire for her isn’t just limited to her body. It’s something more, something different, something deeper.
I’ve never wanted to fuck a woman—and then talk to her afterwards.
I pour myself yet another glass of scotch, but when I pick the tumbler up, I hesitate.
I was hoping the alcohol would dull my senses. Make it easier to forget what has just happened.
Instead, it seems to have the opposite effect. It’s pulling the encounter into sharper focus, forcing me to confront one extremely inconvenient fact: taming Charlotte is going to be much harder than I thought.
So, with a growl of disgust, I set the scotch back down untouched.
I spin on my heel and stalk into the bathroom. Stripping off my clothes, I step under a shower cranked to a frigid temperature.
With one hand planted on the tiled wall in front of me, I keep my head down and let the water pummel my neck and shoulders.
But just like the scotch, it’s close to useless.
I’m still hard.
Hard as fucking rock.
And I know that it’s not going down anytime soon.
One phone call is all it would take to get a woman in my bed tonight. Or I could just drive into any nightclub in the city and take my pick.
But I know without thinking that either option would only me feeling hollow. It wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t satisfy this burning, all-consuming hunger.
Which leaves me with only one real choice.
I wrap my free hand around my shaft and close my eyes.
It’s alarming how quickly Charlotte’s face comes into focus. Her aqua blue eyes are a contrast of frost and tenderness. Her dark hair is a flurry of waves around her pale face.
Then her body takes shape.
The swell of her breasts, the curve of her ass, the V of her legs.
I’d been between those legs tonight, if only for three seconds. I hadn’t explored her like I wanted to.
Because it wasn’t supposed to be about sexual gratification.
It was about control.
And yet, those two concepts had somehow gotten intertwined with one another.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to pull them back apart.
I picture the shocked look on her face when I slid my fingers through her wetness. There was no mistaking the desire in her eyes, either.
You’re wet—that’s what I said to her.
And the strained gasp of her answer was the most perfect thing she could’ve said back.
That’s the memory I hold on to as I start stroking my cock.
I go slow, picturing her face close to mine, her breath on my neck, her wide eyes fighting for control even when she knew she was losing it.
I have yet to taste her, but I can smell her on me still. I start stroking myself a little harder, a little faster.
In my head, I do what I wanted to do so goddamn badly just moments ago.
I press her up against the glass wall, ignoring the way it shivers against us.
She gasps, her arms struggling to push against me. But it’s a useless fight. Because it’s not just me she’s fighting—she’s also fighting herself.
Her own hunger. Her own desperate, surging need.
My lips scorch up and down her neck. She trembles against me as I slip my fingers into her panties and find that delicious wetness again.
My cock wants to dive into her.
But not yet. Not quite yet. Wait a little longer. Drag it out. Make her beg.
She clenches around me—hands on my elbows, forehead buried against my chest, pussy tightening down on my fingertips. She tries to talk but no words come out. There’s nothing to say, anyway.
When she realizes that there is only one way out of this moment, she stops struggling. Surrenders to me. Gasps with relief and desire and the searing anticipation lighting our skin on fire.
I can feel her lips on my neck, at my ear. I fuck her with my fingers. Relentless. Unapologetic.
And she comes on them like the little fuck doll she wants so badly to be.
She cries out my name in the moment of her climax. “Lucio!” Her juices are all over my fingers.
“Tell me what you are,” I order her.
No answer.
I swipe across her clit with my thumb and the veins in her throat stand out in stark relief.
“Yours,” she gasps. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
In the shower, in the present, my own climax is coming.
It rips through me like a tornado. A head-to-toe clenching and bursting.
But when I finally erupt, I find only a few short seconds of relief…
Followed by a return to exactly where I was before.
Frustrated as fuck. Brimming with energy I can’t unleash. Tempted by the one woman I cannot allow myself to have.
Or can I?
Technically speaking, I could. I have the key to her room. All it would take is walking there.
She’ll fight me at first. She’ll pretend.
But inevitably, her body would betray her again.
I wrench the shower off and run a towel over my wet body.
The door is right there. It’d be easy. Just a few short steps from my room to hers.
I force myself to turn back around.
I will not go to her.
When the time is right… she’ll come to me.
21
Lucio
A Few Days Later—Lucio’s Mansion
Sunday dinner.
A Mazzeo family tradition that’s persevered through decades.
The only real difference is the man sitting at the head of the table. It used to be my father, may he burn in hell.
Now, it’s me.
One day, if I have a son, he will take the seat and listen to his family members bitch and whine about all the things he’s not doing for them.
It’s a fucking nightmare.
Ever since Charlotte and Evie became permanent fixtures in the house, I’ve managed to find excuses to cancel it.
But I can’t postpone any longer. Thus, here we are.
The thing about Italian families: they’re fucking big. I have no siblings. But I’ve got plenty of aunts and uncles. And they’ve all bred like rabbits.
So the house is alive with the sound of Mazzeo laughter and conversation. Glasses clink; wine pours; music hums in the background.
I have to admit—it gives this house some life.
I’ve informed the family about Evie, with the understanding that
her existence should be kept under wraps. And, understandably, everyone’s curious.
My cousins and uncles don’t have the balls to push me for answers. But my aunts are another story.
They poke and prod and pry for every detail imaginable.
The only person whose questions I don’t mind answering is the one who took the news with pure, unblinking apathy.
Story of my fucking life.
I find her in a room on the other side of the house. She’s sitting by the window, looking out into the garden. Her expression is distant.
But then again, what else is new? Her expression has been distant since the day I was born.
“Mother?”
She turns only after a full five seconds. Her eyebrows have always sat a little too high on her forehead. It makes her look like she’s constantly surprised.
“Lucio,” she murmurs. “Did you just get home?”
“A little while ago. I already said hi to everyone.”
“Your servants let me in.”
I wince at that. “Servants” always felt a little medieval to me. I prefer “staff.” But she doesn’t make the switch no matter how many times I correct her.
“How are you?” I say instead.
She gives me a grudging little side glance. “Gianna takes good care of me.”
“And you’re happy with the apartment?” I inquire. “It’s not too small? Because I have bigger properties in the city. There’s a nice four-bedroom I think you might like.”
Her eyebrows crease for a moment. “What would I need with a four-bedroom apartment?” she asks. “No one visits me.”
“I visit you,” I remind her.
“Once or twice every few months,” she tells me with disdain.
But we both know she’s just putting up a front. She doesn’t give a damn whether I visit or not. It’s always a painful ordeal, anyway—for both of us.
Too many skeletons in the closet.
So I drop the subject.
“Have you met Evie yet?” I ask.
“No.”
I stare at her profile, waiting for some form of interest to flare up on her face.
Nothing.
“She’s an interesting kid,” I offer when she doesn’t say a word.
“I look forward to meeting her.”
I grit my teeth. “She’s not a business client, Mother,” I say. “She’s a six-year-old. She’s your grandchild.”