by KD Robichaux
“I will,” I reassure him before resuming my previous position in front of DeLuca.
“Take him to his car. Make sure you’re not followed back,” DeLuca orders Maxwell. My father and my captor share a look I don’t understand, but when they do, a silent agreement is made. Moments later, the two other men are gone, leaving me alone with DeLuca.
He doesn’t speak. We don’t move. I now have to face him to get answers.
I drop my head and ask the first one.
“You work for The Ruin?”
“Yes,” his hoarse voice sounds out. His grip on my hip doesn’t loosen.
“You were going to kill me?” I can’t help the whimper that leaves me.
“No, no, baby.” He moves us, turning me and lifting me by my hips to place me on his desk. Standing between my legs, he leans in and put his face within inches of mine. “The moment I laid eyes on you, I knew I could never hurt you. I knew I would be bringing you home to protect you from the monsters of The Ruin. Of the fucking world, piccolina.” He wipes away the tears cascading down my face.
I place my hands on his wrist and bring my forehead to his. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t. Don’t be afraid. I have you, and I will die before anyone touches you,” he declares, and that has me crying harder.
“That’s scares me too. The thought of you dying. Of you not being here,” I admit my biggest weakness. Me falling in love with my—
And then it hits me.
DeLuca was never my captor.
He was always my savior.
“That will never happen. I need you to breathe, okay? I’m here. Feel me?” He grabs my ass and scoots me all the way to the edge so that every part of my body from my core up is aligned with his. I want to feel his words. Feel his safety. Feel him. It’s all I want. All I need in this moment.
“Take me to bed, please. Just… take me.” I’m not above begging at this point.
“Anything. You rule this kingdom, Arabella. You rule over me,” he growls seductively, and I whimper, feeling his hard cock against my core. I want to feel like I’m a person worth more than being a pawn or a bargaining chip. I want to feel what it’s like to be DeLuca’s.
Our lips meet, a raging storm of desire taking over. His tongue against mine, mine against his, our tastes becoming singular. As he picks me up, I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist. We keep at it, our moans and heavy breathing trying to escape between the small cracks.
“Fuck, baby. I want you,” he confesses as he separates us before leaning in to bite my chin, then ear.
“Hurry and get us to our room.”
“Our room. That’s a good girl.”
I bite my lip and nod, looking into his eyes. This is more intimate than sex, this longing lust-filled gaze we share.
“Promise me something,” I prompt.
“Anything.”
“Keep me safe. Keep me away from anyone who would dare try to get between us.”
“You love me, don’t you? You’ve realized only I can give you all of this, haven’t you?” he asks, and I respond with a nod.
“Good. Because I am. I will never let anyone come into our world and try to take you. Ever. You belong to me now, piccolina. Always. You live for me. Breathe me. Dream of nothing but me. I have stolen you from the very world itself.”
I cry out when he leans in and bites my neck, surely leaving a mark.
We make it to the bedroom, and he lays me down. Standing back up, he undresses, exposing his perfect body to me one article of clothing at a time. My core is throbbing, so wet with need. I have to have him now. I can’t wait any longer.
I reach for the hem of my shirt and remove it, exposing my chest to his longing gaze. He takes off his pants and boxer briefs. My eyes widen.
Holy hell, will I ever get used to his length and girth?
“All yours. And you’re gonna take it, aren’t you, Arabella?”
“Yes, all of you. Please, I’m aching,” I admit as he leans to help remove my jeans and panties in one effortless move. I’m naked in seconds, and the only thing stopping us is him.
“You’re going to always ache and hurt for me. You will need this cock to keep you satiated.”
I moan, “Yes. God, yes.”
“Spread your legs. Let me see that pretty clit.” I lie back and lift my knees before spreading my ankles. “Mmm, beautiful cunt. I’m so goddamn hungry.” I watch him as he strokes himself while admiring my body, and I feel like a fucking work of art at the look he gives me. It makes me squirm. “We’ll play later. I need to come inside that body. Claim it. Mark it. Own it.”
I nod eagerly, biting my lip and watching him climb on the bed. Wrapping his hands around the front of my thighs, he pulls me against him, my ass hitting his taut quads. Moving his wide palms down my legs, over my hips, along my ribcage, and stopping to cup my breast, he growls in pure male appreciation for my feminine form.
“Mine, all mine. Offer yourself to me.”
I peer up and look into his eyes, questioning him, “Wh-what?” I’m at his mercy; how else can I offer myself to him?
“Take those fingers, spread your swollen pussy lips, and offer me your cunt, baby.”
Could there be anything more DeLuca than that?
I think not.
“Yes, sir.”
He tweaks my nipple in appreciation for my words. I do as he says when he grasps me and lifts my hips from the bed to line me up with his cock. Spreading my lips with my pointer and middle finger, I offer him my most intimate place.
“Fuck me, that’s sexy. Hold on, baby.” With that, he slides in, inch by thick, long inch. We both gasp, our eyes never leaving one another’s while flesh meets flesh.
“Oh God,” I cry out when he hits my cervix and still isn’t all the way in.
“So fucking good.” He starts to thrust in and out, in and out, slow and languid so that we savor every inch. “Lick it, pretty girl,” he orders, bringing his thumb to my lips, and I lick the tip seductively, trying to drive him as mad as possible. I feel him pulse in me, and he groans.
“I’m going to come. You need to come with me. We have all night to go at each other. Right now, I just need to dirty you up and fucking mark you.”
I cry out when he takes his now-wet thumb and presses on my clit.
“Shit, DeLuca. I’m gonna come. Please. Condom.” I remember I haven’t taken my pill in two days since they’re still hidden in my bathroom at home.
“No, you get my come.”
“But we aren’t protected.”
“As if I fucking care, baby. You take all of me, right, piccolina?”
Oh God, his words are like molten lava. I can’t resist the heat.
“Yes, oh God, yes, right there. Don’t stop!” He hits a part deep inside me that has my knees shaking and my core exploding with butterflies, a place that’s never been touched before.
“Come. Fuck. Come now, Arabella.”
And I do just that. I orgasm with him, his come filling my body in warm spurts.
Holy hell. I’m gone. I’m his. Never will I be able to walk away now.
16
DeLuca
“If you could be anyone or anything in the world, what would you be?” I ask her, my fingers sifting through her hair as her head rests on my chest, her sated face looking up at me, her eyes at half-mast.
We’ve been lying here for hours, going back and forth asking each other questions before making love, then falling back to the pillows to continue our conversation. I can’t get enough of her. Can’t get enough of her body, her words, her hopes and dreams. I could listen to the soft, lyrical voice of hers and never grow tired of it.
“Honestly?” she murmurs, biting her lower lip. When I nod, she sighs. “A mom. But not like… my mom. A real mom. I wouldn’t pawn my kids off on nannies and boarding schools. I want to be… one of those Pinterest moms, ya know?”
“No.” I chuckle. “I don’t know. What exactly is a Pinterest
mom?”
She smiles languidly, turning onto her back, her head still resting there on my ribs, but she looks up at the ceiling now. My hand moves down to cup her breast now peeking out from beneath the sheet. She closes her eyes as she speaks.
“I want to find recipes on the internet and cook them up for dinner, my son or daughter playing the part of my sous chef and making a mess for us to laugh at and tidy together after we’re finished eating. I want to bake homemade cookies for their classroom, having to make sure there’s no gluten, peanuts, sugar, or anything remotely delicious in them, but still figure out how to make them yummy. I want a jogging stroller to put my baby in to run around the park, then take a mommy and me yoga class with all the other mamas lucky enough to stay home with their kids. I want to take them to the library when they’re toddlers for story time to plant that seed of loving books from a young age, like I always have. I want my world to revolve around my children… and the man I love, and block out everything from the ruined world I was brought up in.” She swallows and opens her eyes, turning her head to look up at me once again.
She painted such a clear and pretty picture I can see it perfectly in my mind, her becoming round with my baby, holding our child in her arms, her smiling face as she runs around with our little one at the park, flour smudged on her and our kids’ faces. And for the first time in my life, I know without a shadow of a doubt what I want in my life.
Her. And her dreams. They’re my dreams too, only I never knew I wanted those things.
“Is that why you were so unhappy in your marriage? You wanted a baby and he didn’t?” I prompt, forcing myself to tamp down the jealousy even the thought of her carrying another man’s child brings forth.
“Heavens no.” She shakes her head, her hair tickling my nipple. “That’s all I was good for to Ferro—to give him an heir. But you wanna know a secret?” she asks in a whisper, a little devilish gleam in her beautiful eyes, and she lifts an eyebrow and smirks conspiratorially.
I can’t help but grin. I love this new, playful side of her. “I want to know all your secrets, piccolina.”
She does a little dance with her shoulders as she singsongs, “I was on the piiill.”
My own brow rises at that. “You were on birth control? Why? How?”
She turns back on her side to face me fully, bringing her hands up to rest beneath her cheek. “Fertility specialist. I was lucky enough not to get pregnant the first couple of months after we got married, and he sent me to Dr. Lizith Stein, because she and her husband are on The Ruin’s approved list. As I imagine you are, doctor.” She practically purrs my title, and it immediately sends images of us playing doctor and patient in bed—something that’s never crossed my mind before, being an oncologist. A gynecologist—maybe. A chiropractor—for sure. But a cancer doctor—not so much.
“You got birth control… from a fertility doctor?” I prompt, not making the connections of how that would’ve taken place.
She shrugs against me. “She’s still a gynecologist. She just specializes in making babies. And I took a chance. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I had to just trust the girl code—that she wouldn’t throw me under the bus and tell my husband I didn’t want to have his baby. I told her what my life was like, which didn’t surprise her, being in The Ruin herself, and she took pity on me and started sneaking me birth control pills. I mean, she’s no saint or anything. I have to pay a fortune for the lack of paper trail and to keep her mouth shut, but she is an ally, one of my only ones. Hell, maybe the only one.”
My brow furrows at this. “Not anymore, Bella. That may have been true before, but no longer are you alone in this fucked-up world. You have me now, and there’s no one who would fight for you harder than I will.”
Her face softens, and her eyes grow misty, but she smiles through the unshed tears. “I’m truly starting to believe that, DeLuca. Going to my father… I don’t think there’s anything else you could’ve done to prove how much you are on my side and actually… care about me. Which is just crazy, because we only met a few days ago. This is all so fast and—”
“It’s no more crazy or fast than being betrothed to someone at birth. It’s less wild than marrying someone just to solidify family business. While I’ve never been in love before, I find the notion of marrying someone because of that emotion far more adequate a reason. Business dealings, making people pawns of manipulation, that has nothing to do with God and joining two lives together in holy matrimony,” I tell her, speaking openly like I never have with a woman before, or anyone for that matter.
“Are you a religious man, darling? I thought doctors leaned more on the side of science than God.”
Darling. The way she said it… almost lovingly, in no way mocking, made my heart feel heavier in my chest. No one had ever called me something endearing like that before.
“I’m not exactly religious, more spiritual, I’d say. I believe science proves God is real every day. In my line of work, I see miracles happen, completely unexplainable recoveries, people with Stage 4 cancers who suddenly go into remission when it seemed like no treatments were working and all hope was lost. Plus, there are quantum scientists out there who claim they can prove humans have souls. Yet a soul is a purely spiritual thing. It’s something I choose to believe in, if not because I think it’s true, then because it hurts to think something like that doesn’t exist.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, watching my lips as I speak.
“I don’t want to know if there’s nothing after this world, that my mother is now just a pile of bones in her grave. I choose to believe the essence of her lives on, if not in what we call heaven, then at least… I don’t know, hanging around here, watching over me, relaxing in her garden. It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around… not existing. It’s actually eerie when I try. Not many things make me uncomfortable when it comes to the human condition, but imagining nothingness—that, piccolina, freaks me the fuck out, if you will,” I admit with a chuckle.
She nods, her lips pursing as she nibbles the inside of her cheek. “I get that. I feel like I’ve been stuck in a sort of purgatory all my life. Not really living, just existing. But it is odd to try to imagine… nothing. Like, you wouldn’t even be staring at the lid of your coffin, because even that is something.” She shrugs. “So yeah, I guess you’re right. There’s gotta be something after you’re gone. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this? I believe what we do in this life is a test, and maybe we get to choose at the end of it whether we go to so-called heaven, or maybe we get to come back as something or someone else. Or if we were really bad, maybe that’s when there’s no second chance or choice, and that’s when hell comes into play.”
I think over her words, applying them to myself and letting out a heavy sigh. “Where do you think I’d go, sweet Bella?”
She ponders my question a moment, seeming to truly think about her answer before she speaks. “I think you’d get the second chance. You spend your days doing all you can to save the lives of the sick, and then at night, you take the lives of evildoers. In my mind, those kind of cancel each other out, leaving you in a neutral position. You don’t get into heaven, but you don’t go to hell. You have to retake your test, doctor.” She gives me a small smile.
“And what about you?” I ask, taking my pointer finger and grazing the tip down her pert nose.
She sighs. “I’m definitely hoping for a do-over. Because this life… this life sucked. I don’t know what I did in my past life to deserve this shittiness, but hopefully because I haven’t done anyone harm in all my years, I’ll at least come back as like… someone’s pampered pooch or something.”
A laugh bubbles out of me that I wasn’t expecting, and it bounces her head that’s still using me as a pillow. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this, if ever. This woman has been in my life such a short time but has already brought me more joy in this one night than I’ve felt in all my life.
If this conversation i
s anything to go by, we could talk about anything and everything, never tiring of diving into deep topics just for the hell of it. I’ve never had that with anyone before, and it makes me think that having Arabella in my life will be good for me. Not just because I want her beyond reason, and not just because I’m completely and utterly obsessed with her and crave to keep her as mine, but because I feel like I could learn a lot about myself just from talking to her about mundane subjects I’ve never actually thought about before.
“I must tell you.” I look away then meet her eyes once again. “You, piccolina, make me want to be a better man. I never cared much before, whether I erred on the side of good or evil, but in this moment, all I want to do is give you a better life. A life so good you’ll forget the first two decades… ‘sucked,’ as you so articulately put it.” She swats my chest, but the dreamy look that’s come over her face while I’ve been talking doesn’t disappear. “And wanting to make someone else as happy as I want to make you… that can’t be anything but good.”
She swallows, blinking away the glossiness in her eyes. Her words are a whisper. “No, that can’t be anything but good. But… you’ll still be on neutral ground if you continue your role in The Ruin.”
My hand pauses midstroke through her hair. In all this time, I’ve never once thought about… “retiring” from The Ruin. As far as I could imagine into my future, I always thought I’d be doing the same thing until my time on earth came to an end. What I do outside the hospital doesn’t take brute strength, so I could potentially continue euthanizing deserving villains until I’m old and gray.
But the way Arabella is looking at me, like she has hope I might one day put that part of me in the past, it doesn’t sound like I’d be giving anything up at all. In fact, I’d be gaining so much more.
Too fast.
I’m letting my mind wander to life decisions way too fast. This woman has some sort of spell over me, and I need to stay strong until I’m sure everything will work out the way I want it to. No decisions can be made until Ferro is taken care of and I know her father isn’t going to give me any kind of shit when I make his daughter mine in every capacity.