He stood her in the middle of his palatial bathroom and peeled her nightclothes off of her, then her panties.
Panties? he thought. Had he given her permission for those? He thought not—but here they were.
He held them up in front of her by his index finger in their waistband. "Disobedience, my love, will not be tolerated, even at a time like this."
She bit her lip and he saw a light in her eyes that he recognized. It was the first flicker of response of pretty much any kind he'd seen in her in nearly a month, and he knew he was on the right track with her, finally. He would never have thought of it, himself—that pandering to her sadness was really only making her worse—but there was the proof.
"Into the shower with you. I'll be there in a sec," he said, swatting her on her bottom and using that contact to encourage her in the direction of the shower door.
She did as she was told—slowly—but she did it, although she wasn't getting anything accomplished when he got there. She was just standing there, not even under the spray. He had delayed getting to her because he knew there wasn't any of her favorite body wash in the shower, and he brought a big bottle of it to set it on one of the shelves and pump a ton of it onto a wet washcloth.
He washed her like a babe—giving it no real sexual overtones, although it practically killed him to do so—and she let him, too, even the more intimate parts of her, although he was satisfied to hear a bit of a groan from her as he let the cloth move and his fingers caress her clit amidst all that slippery soap.
It was a sign of life—small, but a sign. He welcomed every one.
Chapter 8
After having been more thoroughly washed than she probably ever had been in her life, Enzo dried her off with a fluffy warm towel—his towel racks warmed any towel that was put over them. She'd only ever seen that at his place and had quickly fallen in love with it. When her hair was shorter, just rubbing it with one of those warm towels would practically dry it completely.
Now that it was longer, it was still a bit damp but dry enough so that it wouldn't make her cold.
Enzo was torn as to whether or not he should tuck her back into her jammies—minus the panties, of course—but then he decided against it and, instead, led her into the bedroom, stopping by the thermostat to bump the heat in the entire place to a temperature he knew would make him hot but keep her comfortable without her pajamas, although in just a few minutes, one particular part of her was going to be plenty warm.
Sometimes, he bent her over things—his desk, the bed, the back of the couch—to punish her, but that position lacked an intimacy that he felt was important to maintain right now. So instead, he sat himself down on the end of the bed and positioned her in front of him, gathering both of her hands in his and kissing the backs of them reverently, then using them to pull her even closer to him, so that she was standing between his legs, her head down dejectedly.
"I know this has been a horrible time for you, and I'm very sorry that you've had to go through it." He'd said the exact same thing to her before in a million different ways, and it hadn't done a blasted thing to help her, but he wanted to say it again before he continued. "But I'm not going to allow you to wallow forever, Allegra."
He saw her toes twitching, and he counted that as a response. It was a measure of just how desperate he was getting for some sign of life from her.
"So we are going to resume the life we've put on hold," he said firmly, reaching down to tip her chin up, forcing her to look him in the eye. "You are mine."
Her seconds of hesitation had his stomach doing back flips, but, after much biting of her lip, she responded, much more tentatively than she used to, or that he preferred, but at least she did respond.
"I am yours."
Enzo smiled down at her and couldn't resist kissing her at that moment. He'd had to do a lot of resisting his impulses the past few weeks, and it felt good not to, for a change. "Yes, you most definitely are, young lady. And I found a pair of unauthorized panties."
She was smiling softly, almost laughing, and he was glad of it, but he wanted to know what had struck her fancy just when he was beginning to lecture her for doing something she knew she oughtn't.
Still smiling slightly, Ally answered, "It just struck me funny. 'Unauthorized panties'. Sounds like the name of a punk rock group or something."
Much as he didn't want to discourage her recovery, he also wanted her to reclaim her submission to him. "Be that as it may, you know you aren't to wear these, don't you?"
She twisted at the waist a bit, a sure sign his scolding was getting to her. "But you let me wear pajamas! They covered me up completely. Panties only cover one particular area."
"Well, you were granted permission to wear your nightclothes because I wanted you to be comfortable, to be soothed by them. I did not give you permission to wear panties, because, as you said yourself, they cover one particular area, and it's an area that I intend to have access to at all times."
Ally opened her mouth to point out the fact that the pants of her pajama set had a crotch that prevented him from having access, too, but as soon as she did, he gave her a raised eyebrow look that had her closing it again without having uttered a syllable. She had learned the hard way that it was much less important to be right than to do everything she could to lessen the punishment that was coming.
And when it did, she learned that she needed to do everything she could to stop herself from ever getting spanked after a shower again, because, for whatever reason, it made each thwack of his hand against her flesh just that much worse. Way, way worse.
"If I had wanted you to wear panties, I would have dressed you in them that night, Allegra Marie Olivia."
If she hadn't been so beside herself from the spanking, she would have grimaced at his use of her full name. As it was, she had another reason entirely to sob, because that didn't bode well for the length of her punishment.
When he finally stopped, he twisted her on his lap and stretched himself out on the bed, rearranging himself so that he was free and burying himself deep within her with one tremendous stroke, then rolling the two of them over so that she was beneath him. "Dear God," he panted, nearly at the point of no return, himself. "I will never again go so long without you."
He hadn't so much as touched himself since the night he'd taken her away from her friends, hadn't even looked at another woman, and he was rock hard from the moment he got home until the moment he left in the morning. As it was, after all that time, he thought his orgasm was going to out and out kill him. It didn't, but it made him do something he didn't think he'd ever done with her, and he always hated that men were always described as doing it—he rolled off her and was asleep within an instant or two, his big hand still splayed on her lower belly, leaving Ally hanging for her own pleasure, which she knew she wasn't allowed to do anything about, so she rolled over and went to sleep, feeling marginally better than she had in nearly a month, but somewhat depressed that it had taken a spanking to accomplish it.
She became a kept woman, which is what he liked to tease her about being, although he thoroughly enjoyed the concept that she was always at home waiting for him, warm and wet and willing. Hell, he'd even taken to coming home for lunch rather than eating out or skipping it entirely, and food was rarely on his mind when he did so.
Ally recovered more slowly than he would have liked, despite his attempts to fatten her up. He didn't like the idea of making rules about eating for her, but he did tell her she had to eat something at least three times a day. He already kept the place stocked with the things she liked, including fresh navel oranges and pink grapefruit, celery and baby carrots to snack on, as well as the occasional treat like cheesecake and ice cream.
He worried that she might be becoming a bit bored just hanging around the house—and he didn't allow her to leave without permission, for which she had yet to ask—so he began to take her to the office with him, just for decoration, at first, but she quickly became an extremely valuable
asset.
People talked to her. He was big and intimidating, even when he wasn't trying to be. She was small and warm and welcoming, and everyone seemed to stop by where she was sitting before they got to him to talk to her, and unload their problems—which occasionally involved him—as if he couldn't hear them when he was only about ten feet away. Passively and actively, she gave him insights into people that helped him manage them better. Small things made his crew happier overall and big things that garnered pledges of undying loyalty from individuals who could be of great help to him in the future.
No wonder her father had given her control of her family. No wonder Frankie was jealous of her.
She didn't come in to his office every day, sometimes, particularly after a long night of loving her—or punishing her—or both—he would tuck her in just about the time he was getting out of bed and tell her to sleep—sometimes she did, sometimes she didn't. He didn't worry one way or the other. If she was exhausted that night, he'd put her to bed early, and that would take care of that.
This particular morning, she got up and had breakfast with him and kissed him goodbye before he left. He liked it when they ate together; it reminded him of her family, where everyone ate together morning and evening, every day.
Ally was just puttering around the house, and she got to thinking about something he had said when he'd first brought her here from the city, the night she and the girls had gone to see that male revue. She'd been too distracted by the awfulness of what was going on to pay attention at the time. He'd said that the house was always surrounded by his men when they were there.
Always surrounded. By his men.
Even when it was hot and the windows were open. He was a nut about fresh air and preferred it to air conditioning whenever the weather allowed. Their windows had been open quite frequently—before, during and after what she had come to think of in her mind as 'the crisis'.
She picked up her phone and texted him. "When I first got here a month ago, did you tell me that we were always surrounded by your men here?"
"Yes," he replied.
"And that's always been so? Since we first got together?"
"Yes."
She knew he had to be wondering what she was getting at, and she was just about to hit him with it. "While the windows were all wide open?"
Nothing.
"While I was groaning and moaning or screaming and crying because you were—"
The phone rang as she was texting.
"Good morning, sunshine," he began.
"Sell it somewhere else," she growled.
"Watch your tone, Allegra."
"I'm not happy," ground out from between clenched teeth.
"I got that idea. But I want you to remember a few things. They're my men, and they know they'll pay dearly if they say anything crude to anyone. And they like you—way more than me—so they're much less likely to, anyway."
She didn't bring up the fact that he was the reason they'd keep their mouths shut, not her.
"Plus, it's not like they're standing outside our windows. They're checking the perimeter. And they all have ear pieces, which means they're half deaf, anyway."
She was not assuaged in the least by all of his careful reasoning.
"Why do we still have them when the situation has been neutralized?"
She knew he didn't like that question at all because he didn't respond immediately, and she was amazed when he finally did answer. "Because it makes me feel a bit safer."
Now, that had her chuckling, regardless of how unhappy she was. "You? Afraid? Not likely."
Another long pause. "Not for me."
Ally stood up, her back straight. "Is there still that much of a danger?"
"Not from that quarter, anyway, but…" He didn't want to say that he liked the idea that she was well protected when he wasn't there to do it for her. Did he?
And she wasn't going to let it go, of course. "But?"
The thing was that she was probably right. There wasn't an imminent threat any more. There was no need for the extra guards. There was no need for any guards, for that matter, considering how much he'd paid for all of his redundant security systems.
"They'll be gone in the next fifteen minutes," he said and hung up the phone.
Ally wasn't sure whether he was angry with her or not, but she wasn't going to worry about it. She'd certainly find out, tonight, if he was. She checked her watch. Eleven-forty-five. And he was as good as his word; they were gone by noon.
Around one thirty, he texted her, asking her to scan a document he needed that was on his desk and email it to him. She walked into his office, where she rarely went, and located it easily—it was on top of a slew of spreadsheets that caught her eye, and then, when she moved them, there were also what looked like surveillance reports beneath them.
What intrigued her about them and had her bothering with them at all was the fact that she recognized the account numbers that were listed along the left side—with their withdrawals, deposits, beginning and ending balances filling out the information to the right.
And they were her accounts—well, the family's accounts. But some of them were her personal accounts, too. And the reports, even just with a quick skim, she could see that they were almost entirely about her—her trips to the grocery store, her trips to the doctor, who came to see her, who she went to see.
Although she wasn't the type to spy—she'd never checked her lover's answering machine messages while he wasn't around, even when he wasn't Enzo Matroni, never scrolled through his texts or tried to read his email. She knew that, if something wasn't right, she'd find out about it soon enough, one way or the other. And because of who she was, there were precious few men who would have had the guts to cheat on her.
But she had to make an exception, considering the information she held in her hand was, essentially, everything about her and what had been her family, and it had obviously been thoroughly perused—parts of it were highlighted, some items were circled in red or underlined in blue. Everything—credit scores, credit card balances, names of her friends, names of her men, her business associates—right down to the names of the men she'd dated since she was—
Tears filled her eyes and she began to crumple the top page. Anger surged through her the likes of which she had never felt. But then she forced herself to release the page. Stiffly, she turned to do exactly what he'd asked her to—she scanned the innocuous piece of paper he wanted into her phone and emailed it to him, sending him a text when she was through, then turning to head into the bedroom.
When Enzo locked his car and began to walk up to the back door, which was the door everyone but Girl Scouts and bottle drive people used, he saw that there was something unusual pinned to the door. It was probably a flyer about something and he frowned. If she'd let him keep his men around the place, they would never have made it this far.
He checked his cell habitually one more time, but she hadn't sent him anything in a while—since she'd sent the email—but then, he hadn't sent her anything, either. He'd been extremely busy, still cleaning up after Frank Antonelli. But when he got to the door, his heart hit the pavement beneath him and he began to kick himself.
He'd sent her into his office to look for a piece of paper for him that wasn't all that pressing—just something he wanted to take care of before he forgot about it—but he'd forgotten that it rested upon all of the printouts he had about her. She must've seen every bit of damning evidence and tacked a handful of it up on his door. He knew he didn't even need to bother to go into the house. She was gone. He had no doubt at all.
But, of course, he had to put himself through it and he went inside. The house was eerily quiet. She almost always had something on in the background of whatever she was doing—usually cooking him dinner, which he'd never asked her to do, but she apparently enjoyed and he certainly wasn't going to tell her not to.
All of the little tchotchkes she'd left around the place were gone, even the magnets on the fridge,
her knitting, her celebrity magazines, her favorite pink coffee mug that had sat on the counter next to his—well, not really, he thought with a painful smile. They'd had a running feud going that they never talked about, but they each liked their cup of coffee in the morning and the Keurig only dispensed one at a time, so they were constantly replacing the other person's coffee mug with their own just to see who got the first cup of the day. He thought he was probably ahead in the game because he usually got up earlier than she did, but that hardly mattered now.
He even went as far as the bedroom, finding the crushing blow on the top of his dresser—the two rings he had given her had been placed there with care, where he was unlikely to miss them. He picked them up and kissed them, then put them in his pocket. The rest of the room looked exactly as it had when he'd lived here alone—she'd been very thorough. Of course, they really hadn't settled anything important between them, so there wasn't that much stuff of hers here. She still had the home she grew up in—
Her house! She could be there!
He drove himself in record time, only to get there in time to see a real estate agent pounding a 'For Sale' sign into the front yard. "Where is she?" he growled, frightening the poor man to death, inches from grabbing him by the lapels and shaking him like a rag doll.
"She, who?" he asked.
"The woman who owns this house!" he roared.
The man actually cringed. "M-Miss Cerone called me this afternoon to tell me she was putting the place up for sale."
"When did she call?"
"Around two."
For the first time, he noticed that there was a moving van parked outside the house and boxes were being carted out into it. He turned away from the useless realtor and headed for the man who seemed to be in charge of the move. "Where is all of this stuff going?" he asked.
The man, who was no slouch, himself, in the height or weight department, sized him up and said, "Storage."
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