I turned wide eyes up to my husband, even if I had known what was coming. “That can’t be necessary.”
“Those are my conditions, Little Dove. This is the only way that I can protect you and allow you the freedom to come and go as you please. I won’t apologize for doing whatever it takes to keep you safe,” he said, and his hand tightened around my waist.
With a sigh, I nodded. Ivory’s words rang in my head, that if nothing else I was safer with Lino than alone. I had to accept that his protection came at the cost of my privacy. “Okay.”
Lino let out a sigh of relief, and I felt immediate guilt that he’d anticipated me arguing the point. Deep down, I knew he honestly just wanted to protect me.
Even when he went about it in all the wrong ways.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said to Emilio, before he turned his attention back to me. “I want to dance with you.”
Even though I wasn’t much of a dancer, I let him guide me to the lower level. I knew Lino probably had business he would need to tend to, and that when the time came, I would need to navigate the waters of his club without him. Having him with me all the time—the perfect little bubble we'd existed in for half a month—couldn't last forever.
Reality hovered just on the edge of our bubble, threatening to pop it and the safe haven Lino's home had become for me. So when he tucked me into the front of his body, moving with mine to the edgy pop song I knew he probably despised, I didn't fight it.
I settled in against him, letting him guide me through the motions that didn't come naturally to me. My musical ability as a singer hadn't translated to rhythm.
"I want to sell your house," he murmured in my ear. "You don't need it now that you live with me. We can get you a good price in this market." Seduced by the movement of his body behind mine, there was no fight left in me when I murmured to him.
"Okay." It wasn't like I wanted the house where I'd been raped, anyway. It wasn't a battle worth fighting for.
Lino was.
And I intended to fight.
Twenty-Two
Samara
Lino sighed as he stood from his place in the chair at the island when the doorbell rang. He seemed determined to get some work done, avoiding me where I sat on the couch reading in favor of being in the kitchen. It was unusual for him, considering the way my stomach had started cramping up, and the separation left me feeling unusually teary. It neared the point that a jewelry commercial could set me off. I knew what loomed on the horizon, and I hated it as much as any woman. I could see him through the arched doorway, but only if I really turned my body to look at him. I did it more often than I liked to admit, enjoying the way his forehead scrunched just the slightest bit as he focused on whatever consumed his time.
I could only imagine what that was. Yavin kept me in the dark as much as Lino did, but I also wasn't totally naive or idiotic. I knew they were criminals, or at least, connected to criminals. I hoped they kept their hands clean, but the best way for me to help them through whatever they did do was to stay ignorant and give them a respite from all that. Knowing the truth, I worried I would lose that for Lino. That he would no longer see me as separate from the life that I knew often weighed on him and made those distinguished lines form at the outer corners of his eyes sooner than they probably should have.
They did nothing to detract from his breathtaking looks, and somehow in spite of them he didn't look any older than he actually was. I just knew him well enough to recognize them as they formed, because in all my life, he was easily my favorite person to look at. My favorite sight in the world, and I loved that he had become the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw at night.
"Samara baby! Where are you?" Ivory’s friend Sadie shrieked, giving Lino a hasty kiss on the cheek as she hurried into the house and left him floundering at the door momentarily.
"What did I do?" he asked the ceiling, closing the front door. "Seeing as you have a guest to keep you entertained, I'll just move this to my office and give you some privacy," Lino said, turning to me. He glared at Sadie in fake annoyance, but the warmth he gave me when he strolled into the living room and kissed me briefly let me know that he was happy I had a friend to socialize with. Someone checking in on me.
"I can’t believe you didn’t call me! I had to hear the news from Ivory when I’ve been rooting for the two of you for decades, I tell you.”
“It’s been a crazy few days,” I admitted, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck. With my hair tied up into a bun on top of my head and my glasses on my face, I felt disoriented. Sadie somehow always looked flawless, even when she showed up without makeup.
“Alright bitch you’re forgiven, show me the ring!" she squealed, flopping down onto the couch next to me. She snatched the book out of my hands, sliding the bookmark off the coffee table into it in a very considerate move that kept me from clawing her face off. Then she turned my hand over, staring at the three bands on my ring finger. "Oh my God they're beautiful," she whispered.
"Aren't they? He did good."
"Well duh, only the best jeweler for the Bellandi's I tell you. How are you liking married life?"
I laughed in her face, because aside from the rare kisses and the cuddling at night, nothing had changed between Lino and me. He was everything I could ever want in a partner, but then, he always had been. "It's good. I mean, I'm sure you know that it wasn't exactly normal circumstances, but we make the best of it. Hopefully we can eventually take it to that next level, but for now it works."
"You haven't had sex?" she hissed. "I thought for sure you would have bagged and tagged that shit by now girl!"
Shaking my head with a laugh, I decided to admit the truth to Sadie. Given her occupation, there was something I'd been meaning to ask her, and I suspected that it would require honesty from me. Unfortunately. "We will. I just think I need time to get there. He's giving me that time, but I don't know how to tell him when I decide I'm ready."
"You need time to get there? Samara, you have wanted to fuck that man since you hit puberty," Sadie teased, studying my face when I didn't laugh. It wasn't like what she said was untrue in any way. I had, even if it hadn't been quite so casual as Sadie made it sound.
I'd been obsessed with him. As a teenager, every time I saw him shirtless to go for a swim in the pool it felt like my ovaries had seized and I'd had to tell them to back off. "Connor hurt me," I admitted in a rush. "I'm not over it, and I don't know if I ever will be. If it were anyone other than Lino, I don't think I'd even consider going there."
She narrowed her eyes on me, suddenly serious as she tried to read between the lines. Her nostrils flared, and her jaw tensed when she saw it. "That fucking piece of shit," she hissed. "Is he dead yet? I want to kick his corpse."
Only Sadie could make me laugh in the face of my demons, and I leaned forward until my face hit her shoulder and muffled the sound. "Not yet."
"Good. I'd really hate for him to be decomposing and shit. I do not need the nasty that is Connor on my shoes. My shoes are too fucking pretty for his innards. Even my gym shoes, and I swear sometimes those already smell like they're dead."
"Thank you," I wheezed into her shoulder, knowing she'd turned up the ridiculousness that she was for the sake of my awkwardness. It was a unique gift of Sadie's, making everyone else feel more comfortable by embarrassing herself. Or at least, the way she acted would have embarrassed a normal person.
But not Sadie.
She was a ride or die kind of woman.
She took no shit, kicked ass, and took names. And apparently didn't like to kick corpses once they started decomposing.
"Seriously though, I've been meaning to ask if you could help me. I just kind of got sidetracked with all the changes, not to mention Lino won't let me leave the house until he can arrange full-time security like a psycho." She stood, picking up my favorite violet pillow and tossing it into the air to catch it. Ever the Queen of fidgeting, I should have known she wouldn't sit on the couch
with me for long.
"Yeah? How can Mama Sadie help, darling?"
"I need to know how to protect myself. I won't rely on any of the security Lino is no doubt arranging. Look at what happened to Ivory. I just, I don't ever want to be vulnerable like that again. So can you teach me to protect myself?" I asked, watching as she turned a thoughtful face my way.
"Sure," she responded, dropping to the floor and sitting with her feet pressed together in a lotus position. "I doubt Lino will object, though he might want to be the one to teach you. I have to say, it would be much more fun for him to teach you."
I had no doubt about that. None. Whatsoever. "I'm not learning to have fun. I'm learning to defend myself. I can't think when he touches me. I swear my brain turns to oatmeal in my head and there's absolutely no ability to function. I wouldn't remember a thing he tried to teach me."
"Okie dokie," she shrugged. "Your loss. If you do decide to let him spar with you at any point, can I watch? You guys have some serious unchecked chemistry, and I just broke up with Patrick. I'm having a dry spell."
"No!" Lino yelled from his office down the hall, where he'd clearly been eavesdropping like the creep he was. I knew my eyes must have darted over to the wall that separated the living room from the hallway, calculating just how hard he had to have been focusing to listen that efficiently.
"Fucking creeper!" Sadie yelled back. Never one to be daunted by the fact that she was yelling at a criminal mob guy, she grinned at me even as I had to admit that listening in was in fact creepy.
"Really? You just asked to watch Samara and I roll around on a gym mat!" he pointed out, and I hung my head as I laughed silently. "Voyeurism much?"
"Don't knock it until you try it," she teased more quietly.
What the fuck had happened to my life? Like seriously.
I just couldn't
✽✽✽
I loved Sadie.
Really, I did. Her energy was infectious, her smile made even the most callous of men melt, because she was always just so damn happy.
But during my period, she was exhausting. Catching the tail end of Lino’s phone call and the rage in his voice hadn’t helped. Connor was gone. Vanished without a trace, and in spite of how he tried to hide it, I knew it weighed on Lino every day.
By the time she left, murmuring congratulations again and giving us a warning to tell my brother as soon as possible because rumors were making their rounds, I flopped onto the couch in a puddle of nothingness.
Lino chuckled, abandoning me to my misery from the entryway. I closed my eyes, content to pretend to sleep in his absence.
I only opened my eyes when the sound of a can hitting the coaster on the coffee table snapped me out of my misery. A can of diet soda, my favorite chocolate bar, and two pain pills on a napkin sat on the table. All lined up and ready for me while Lino fetched the remote and took a seat next to me on the sofa.
I hadn't breathed a word. Hadn't mentioned my period or anything of the sort. While we'd had no conversations that dove into the intricate details of my womanhood, Lino most often gave me a refuge during that time. A place to watch a movie and curl up on the couch with my favorite treats. He'd paid far more attention than I gave him credit for, taking care of me and expecting my needs better than I could have ever hoped for in a spouse.
And he'd done all that when we were just friends.
When he settled on a lighthearted romantic comedy, my spirit soared. The ridiculous over-the-top connection was exactly what my insane brain needed. I scooped up the pills and popped both into my mouth, swallowing them with a swig of soda. "Come here," Lino murmured, patting his lap.
“Do you even know how to ask for anything?” I snapped, and I immediately winced. As true as it might have been, the appropriate time to point that out was not when he provided a service I desperately needed.
I couldn’t even remember a time when I hadn’t had Lino to baby me through my period.
He only looked at me with his brows raised. “Oh please, my darling wife. Would you bring your head over yonder so that I might ease your pains?”
I glared at him one last time before rolling my eyes. My head hit his thighs, so I stared up at him while we waited through the previews. One strong, deft hand guided my shirt up to bare my stomach, and he pressed lightly against it in an easy massage that eased some ache. One might have thought his strong, muscled thighs would be a poor pillow.
But I didn't think I ever loved a pillow so much. The movie continued, but I drifted in and out of sleep as his hands worked their magic. I couldn't have cared less that I only caught bits and pieces of the movie, that it seemed to filter in one ear and out the other. The only thing that mattered was the fact that Lino was there, his hands working at my belly to ease the pain that came every month. I didn't know a single man who cared for a woman the way he did, didn't know a single one who loved so fiercely.
As a friend, it had seemed like a horrible reality I would one day have to face. The day that he fell in love with a woman, and she wasn't me. As his wife, I hoped one day I'd be that woman. That the way he took care of me would continue into the next phase of our relationship, that everything would shift to take a new meaning as we became more intimately acquainted with one another's bodies. There was nothing I wanted more.
"Sit up and lean forward for me, Little Dove," he murmured, and the sound of his voice echoed through the fog. Like I could find him anywhere, without seeing him or feeling him.
He was just there. Always.
I did as he said, letting him pull me to sit between his legs on the couch. There was no space between us, the very back of my ass resting in his lap. His hands stroked over the skin at my nape, kneading the muscles of my neck and shoulders so intently that I moaned. "You should be careful about the sounds you make." There was humor in his voice, but there was no mistaking the way it deepened to a level that made every muscle in my core, all the muscles he'd worked to relax, tense in anticipation.
"I have my period. I think I'm safe," I teased, groaning again when his hands moved to slide up the back of my shirt and work the muscles of my shoulder blades.
"If you think there is one damn thing in this world that would stop me from getting inside you, then you're wrong. I'm dying to feel you, dying to know how wet I can make you and how much you'll squeeze my cock like a vice. The only thing keeping me from taking you upstairs and finding out is the fact that you just aren't ready. The only thing keeping me from you is you. You should know that I'm not afraid of a little blood," he chuckled, and I bit my lip.
"I don't want to know how familiar you are with blood," I joked, trying to lighten the conversation away from the dangerous topic of sex we might never have.
I didn't think I had too many hard no's in the bedroom, but it felt safe to say period sex was one of them.
Because yuck.
"Is that a no go for you?" he asked, and I nodded my agreement. The couple in the movie finally kissed, but for the first time it didn't feel awkward. In the past, sex scenes in movies I watched with Lino had made me want to crawl in a hole and die of humiliation. He'd always seemed just as uncomfortable with them but tolerated the romance movies for me. "We should probably have a conversation about limits."
"Limits? Are you going to need me to sign a contract too?" I whispered, wincing when he snuck a hand into my side to tickle me briefly before pulling me back and tucking me into his chest. I appreciated the move, appreciated the fact that if we were really about to have a conversation about sex, that I wouldn't have to look at his face.
"I'm not a Dom," he laughed. "But I don't want to cross any lines with you. Is there anything off limits?"
"Threesomes," I blurted. "I don't want you to let anyone else touch me or touch anyone else. I don't want to be fisted or anything too extreme—"
"I meant normal limits, Samara," he laughed. "I'm not going to just whip out some kinky shit and push it on you."
I laughed uncomfortably. "I uh, I don't think I
've ever been adventurous."
"Let's start simple." He touched a finger to my lips, tapping the flesh there once to get my attention. "Can I put my cock here?" I flushed, but nodded, wondering if women ever put absolute limits on blowjobs. That finger slid down between my breasts, and I watched it glide over my shirt as my nipples pebbled in response. "Can I put it here?"
"Yes," I whispered, loving the way he groaned in my ear.
That hand slid lower, and my hips writhed on their own when he cupped me through my leggings. "Can I fuck you here?"
"Of course," I whispered with a laugh.
His other hand grabbed my ass cheek in his hand, squeezing the flesh so harshly I could feel his desperation. "What about your ass, vita mia? Can I fuck you there?"
I paused, biting my lip and considering. But I decided on honesty. "I've never—"
"Will you let me?" he asked, cutting off my explanation that I'd never done it. I knew, from the way his voice morphed into a growl that he didn't want to know what I'd done or who I'd done it with. I imagined the thought felt like chewing on glass, if it was anywhere similar to how it felt for me to think of the women he'd had before me.
"Yes," I whispered. He groaned into my ear behind me, and no other questions followed. "Is that all?" I teased, wanting to push him just a little bit farther.
"Quiet Samara, or I might just forget that you aren't ready and take what's mine tonight."
Well, that escalated quickly.
With a chuckle, I reached forward to grab my candy bar. Lino stole a bite, handing it back to me while I grinned at him.
I had a feeling I would very much enjoy tormenting Lino when I was ready.
And I couldn't wait.
Twenty-Three
Lino
I wanted to bash my head against the wall. Why in the fuck had I asked Samara where I could fuck her? Why had I told her I couldn't wait to get inside her?
Since the day I'd had her ass on my island counter the night of the event at Indulgence, I'd felt incapable of functioning. I needed her with a ferocity that would have terrified her, given her history. And she had every right to be afraid of me.
Forgivable Sins: A Dark Mafia Romance (Bellandi Crime Syndicate Book 2) Page 15