Going Once, Taken Twice: A Dark Romance

by Claire St. Rose

Claudia nodded, clearing her throat. Over Boris’s shoulder, the sun sunk bloated and crimson on the hillside. “Boris, things have moved quickly between us. And we’re just beginning a long and interesting adventure. But something has felt right with you since the day I laid eyes on you. I promise to be by your side, as long as we can make it. I promise to be your travel companion, your adventurer, and together, we’ll be hell-raisers. I choose you. And I’ll do everything I can to make you happy and make us happy.”

  Boris smiled, tears shining in his eyes. Filitov turned to him and said, “And you?”

  Boris jerked his head into a nod, clearing his throat. “Claudia, you’re the only one I’ve ever wanted to share my life with. There’s never been a comparison. I felt it from the day we met too, even though it made no sense. Even though I had no right to want that with someone like you. I promise to protect you until my last breath on earth, to protect what we have. What we’re building. I’ll fight for our future as long as I live.”

  Claudia swallowed a knot of emotion, wiping away a tear that had spilled.

  “Well then. Claudia, will you repeat after me?” Filitov grinned, turning to her, guiding her to repeat the simple lines of her devotion. Boris did the same, and when they were both done, Filitov stood tall, a mischievous look taking over his face.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss your bride!”

  Boris cupped her face in his hands and pressed his lips to hers. Claudia clutched him against her, emotion washing over her as she tasted him: salty lips, rock-hard biceps, a warmth that felt like coming home.

  They kissed over and over again, his scent rooting her to the earth, the first kisses of the rest of their lives.

  THE END

  Read on for your BONUS book – Touch Me Bad Boy

  TOUCH ME BAD BOY

  Chapter One

  Isa

  “Ack!” I cried, shoving my finger into my mouth. The taste of blood and dish soap made me cringe. I looked at my finger and watched the small cut bloom red again as the blood resumed seeping out. It was small, but it stung.

  I looked into the soapy water, afraid to stick my hand back inside to locate the offending knife. From the other room, vibrating through the walls, was the joyful sound of my husband and his dinner guests enjoying a dinner party.

  I sighed. This was ridiculous.

  My life was like the terrible version of ‘Cinderella’, set in New York City, where instead of an evil stepmother and stepsisters, I was under the tyrannical thumb of my new husband and his laundry list of household duties he demands I fulfill.

  The ways in which this situation was pathetic and painful were nearly too many to count. Not only was I washing dishes in the kitchen, I was handwashing them. This wouldn’t have been so bad if there wasn’t a fully functional dishwasher in the kitchen, directly to my right. I could have put it to use for all the money it cost, but Lorenzo forbade it.

  Forbade it, as if I was a child.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was in the kitchen washing dishes while he was at the dinner table entertaining guests. We both lived here, but for some reason, Lorenzo didn’t want his wife present as a co-host for the guests. He wanted me to take care of the dishes. He wanted me to prepare the table and cook the food, but beyond that, he claimed he needed me in the kitchen. He said he didn’t like it when the kitchen was messy, the dishes could not remain dirty all night. He and his guests laughed over alcohol and food…as my blood dripped red into the soapy water.

  I ran it under the faucet and left to find a Band-Aid. We kept them in the pantry, and frankly, we were running out. I had been having accidents in the kitchen more often than I was proud to admit.

  I had grown up in the kitchen. I worked in one professionally, but not as the dishwasher.

  I had done my time in the trenches and worked my way up to executive chef in my kitchen. That meant it had been years since I had had to wash dishes by hand. It had been years since that…and it had been two weeks since it had become my new normal. Lorenzo wouldn’t even wash his own coffee cup in the morning when he was on his way out to work, just leaving it by the sink for me to take care of. It had been two weeks of this shit, and somehow I still hadn’t managed to get any better at it. I looked sadly at my hands; they felt dry and tight.

  How did you end up like this, Isa?

  How did you become a depressed housewife with an awful husband?

  My wedding band glinted on my ring finger. A delicate, simple rose gold band that Lorenzo didn’t like me to take off, even when I was doing the dishes.

  Completing the awfulness trifecta was the fact that Carlotta, our housekeeper, would be coming in the next day. Yes. There was a woman, a professional who Lorenzo paid to do this sort of shit, but he still insisted that I do it. He said that I was the woman of the house and I should be able to keep it. Some ridiculous excuse about girls these days being wild and crazy. He wanted a simple, honest girl. That meant humble. That meant handwashing dishes when there were several reasons not to have to do it. Carlotta had been working for Lorenzo for years, and when I showed up, introduced as his wife, she had actually laughed.

  Not a polite laugh either.

  A real, full-bellied laugh, holding her midsection and wiping tears from her eyes. The worst part was Lorenzo had joined her. There needed to be a name for the feeling of the hybrid of embarrassment and mortification you feel when your husband treats your marriage like a joke in front of other people while you are present.

  “Can you believe it?” he had asked her. I had stayed quiet, but the truth was no, I couldn’t believe it either.

  I had thought it was a joke. If not a joke, then something I would be able to get out of if I just talked to him or screamed loud enough. If I was Cinderella, then my loving father, like hers had unwittingly turned my life into a living hell. There were things you just didn’t do to your children, and marrying them off should be one of them.

  I was his only daughter, why would he do this to me? Then again, if you thought about it. I was his only daughter, why wouldn’t he do this to me. Dad had told me to come over to his house because he had something important to tell me. I had sat for twenty minutes in a room with him and two men I had never met while they spoke among themselves. We were in his office, the room where, when I was young, he used to let me spin around in his chair and sit at the massive desk where I could barely see over the top, my feet dangling over the front of the chair, not touching the floor. When I was little, the room and the man who used it had been larger than life. I always had to knock on the door when I wanted to come in, and sometimes there would be people in there with him, guys who he wouldn’t bother introducing and who wouldn’t bother addressing me.

  The situation felt surreal, replaying itself just like when I was little. I had knocked on the door and waited to be let in. I had seen him with two tall, darkly dressed men who he didn’t bother to introduce and who virtually ignored me right back. Finally, my dad pointed at the younger of the two and said the words that should have been a lie: “Isa. This is Lorenzo Montorini. Lorenzo, this is Isa, my daughter. Your new wife.”

  The man who had later been revealed to be Lorenzo Montorini’s father had smiled and said that he had always wanted a daughter, before coming up to me and kissing me on both cheeks. Lorenzo himself had just smiled.

  “She’s beautiful,” he had said. It must have been meant as a compliment, but ice ran up and down my spine, and I balled my hands into fists, trying to figure out something to say. Something to do. The way he looked at me didn’t help the situation either. His eyes were so dark they looked black. His hair was inky black, thick and slightly wavy. His skin had that natural Mediterranean, golden glow that he didn’t need to spray or rub on. His eyes had a look I could only describe as hungry, and not for food. It made me feel small. Small and something else. Hot.

  As simply as my father had asked for me, he had sent me away, just like how he would when I was a kid and had come up to his office w
hen he had work to do. The exchange had been so casual, I halfway wondered why he hadn’t just texted me. He had taken the time to call me to the house and tell me to my face in the presence of the other people who were apparently involved but that didn’t make it better. I still felt as insulted, as I would have if he had actually sent me a text message informing me that I was to be married to a stranger.

  That was the part that got me. He was informing me of plans that had already been set. He was just letting me know that an entire discussion about my life had been had in my absence, and he was just making sure that I had the memo, too—before they proceeded.

  It took a second to catch up to what was happening, but the moment I did, I was seeing red. I had never raised my voice to my father in my life, but in my defense, he had never married me off to a man I didn’t know before.

  “Wife?” I had asked.

  “Mrs. Lorenzo Montorini,” Lorenzo had said to me, answering the question I had directed at my father. He was smiling, a real smile, as if this was the funniest joke he had ever heard. I didn’t know who the guy was, but I was sure of one thing. I didn’t like him. Had he been in on that whole arrangement, too? He obviously was told about it before I was because he wasn’t reacting to the news like this was the first time he had heard it. Was I, apparently the bride, the last person to know about my own wedding?

  “No. I don’t know this man. You can’t make me,” I had said bluntly before leaving the room. It was the petulant move of an angry teenager, but I wasn’t going to just stand there and let my father continue to update me on the plans he had been making with other people about my life. Did he even realize the amount of disrespect that they were showing? Did they care? I didn’t even know the other two guys. My alleged husband and father-in-law. My head spun as I fled the room and left the house.

  I had taken off of work to come listen to what my father had had to tell me because he had given me the impression that it was important. I suppose that was one thing to call it but I had a load of other things I would call it before I used the word ‘important.’

  I had taken the fact that none of the men had tried to follow me out or convince me to stay as a sign that they agreed with me. There was no way I was supposed to marry that guy. Who even was he? Lorenzo who? People didn’t get married to people they didn’t know. Or if they still did, I wouldn’t be.

  They had let me run off, and it wasn’t because my father and the men were respecting my wishes. It was because it wasn’t even worth going after me because the deal had been set in stone. It didn’t matter what I wanted, or what I thought. His answer, though I had left before he said it, was basically, “Yes, it doesn’t matter that you don’t know this man because I do, and yes Isa, I can and will make you marry him.”

  I had had to swallow my defiantly uttered words barely a week later as Mrs. Montorini, my future mother-in-law stood behind me in my hotel room, fastening the corset back of my wedding gown. Barely a week. The shocking shortness of the duration between when I had heard I was getting married and when I had actually gotten married only occurred to me after the fact. How long had this plan been in the works?

  When I was little, I had always sought support and a shoulder—or a lap—to cry into from my mother. She fell in line with what my father and what the Montorini’s had declared. She let me cry and rant as much as I wanted to, but at the end of the day, she broke it down for me like this. We weren’t who I thought we were. I had grown up thinking the D’Agostino family was nothing but my father, my mother and I, a loving Italian-American family who lived in Lower Manhattan. However, our family—along with the Montorinis and a couple others—had the city cut up like a pizza and ran everything that happened there. Marriage was the oldest and best way to settle disputes between warring communities apparently, and that’s what we were, families at war. I didn’t know what that had to do with me and why that meant I had to marry a total stranger, but I got the picture that there was no getting out of this one.

  The ceremony had been… honestly, and to the credit of our parents for planning it behind our backs, beautiful. It was no slap-up affair, definitely. We got married in a cathedral—Catholic, of course—and had the reception in the Astoria ballroom. I wouldn’t have gone with the pink roses if given the choice, and the centerpieces weren’t the tall, modern style that I favored, but what did it matter? The wedding wasn’t for me. I was just getting married at it.

  That day I had stood in front of the man who was introduced to me as my future husband. Lorenzo Montorini. Those words from my father should have been the worst possible thing he could have said to his only daughter, but they weren’t. As if it were even possible, things continued to go downhill from there.

  At least I was a beautiful bride. Everyone said so. The dress was something covered in crystals and lace. It was obscenely expensive, apparently flown in from Milan. It went down to the floor in the front and in the back had a long train. When I saw it for the first time, the day of the wedding, it was difficult to be angry that I had been excluded from the wedding preparations. It was gorgeous. Even Lorenzo had had a visible reaction to seeing me in the dress. I know I had one when I saw him in his tux.

  If the man looked good in a suit, he looked even better in a tuxedo. In the room with my father and him, I had attributed the fact that he was so intimidating to the fact that he was so tall. He towered over me, even though I wore heels, both that day and the day of the wedding. Though his height played a part, it was also the air he had about him. He was confident—palpably confident—and sure of himself.

  His presence was suffocating. His eyes felt like lasers burning my skin as he looked at me. He had smiled at me in a way I had originally thought was encouraging as I walked down the aisle. I was able to keep it together until he lifted my veil, and he held my hand as he said his vows and put the ring on my finger.

  To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

  That was when the tears came. To my credit, I didn’t bawl like a baby as this man—whom I didn’t know—put a ring on my finger. The tears just ran down my cheeks, completely powerless against my waterproof bridal makeup. Another bright idea I couldn’t take credit for. I was so scared. I was scared shitless. What do you mean I have to commit my life and happiness to a complete stranger? I didn’t even know his middle name. I suppose it was dumb luck that people cry at weddings all the time. Lorenzo had reached a thumb out and wiped one of my cheeks, saying it was okay. The pastor made some sort of foolish quip about how overwhelmed the bride was to be marrying her beloved. I would have rolled my eyes if I wasn’t crying so much.

  The only reason I hadn’t had a panic attack was because my body was probably in shock from everything I had learned up to that point. That—and Lorenzo had kissed me. I hadn’t thought about that part of the wedding until I heard the words from the pastor’s mouth. Could you blame me? This guy was a stranger. The people in attendance at the wedding were only closest friends and family; it was not a secret that he and I had just met. None of them knew me except by name. That wasn’t enough of a deterrent for Lorenzo though. No. He had looked me dead in the eye and held me by the back of my neck.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” he had said to the pastor’s prompt to kiss the bride. His lips covered mine and moved against mine in a way that elicited hoots and applause from the wedding guests. I can’t claim to be innocent because I kissed him back.

  Why the hell not. We were married, weren’t we? I could touch him however I wanted.

  My married bliss lasted the exact duration of the kiss. We were given a short, four-day-long honeymoon, which was the first time we got to be alone together. Our first night together was the hottest I have had in my recorded twenty-seven years of life. I wasn’t a virgin, but I had never been handled the way he had handled me. I had gathered that Lorenzo was probably attracted to me, at least on a physical level. We had to be riding on the high from the ceremony. That and probably the ‘duty’ we both felt to
consummate our marriage. It wasn’t that hard getting into the mood in our Hawaiian honeymoon suite. The days that followed, till we eventually got back to the city, were made up of me waking up to an empty bed and returning to the room for bed to find him already asleep.

  I had only lived with a man once before, and it had been fine. That was because that man was neither my husband, nor was he Lorenzo. Lorenzo had two extremes; he either completely ignored me, or he teased and goaded me enough to start a fight. We were so badly suited. We could hardly stand each other. He had been born and raised in New York, but he talked to me as if we were in 1900s in Sicily.

  One thing he made clear to me repeatedly was that I didn’t measure up to what he wanted in a wife. He didn’t say it in as many words, but he definitely implied it whenever he would tell me he wanted me doing the dishes because it kept me in line, and when he would insist that I stay home instead of working because his job was more than sufficient to support us.

  The kind of woman he wanted didn’t exist. The last one died in the 1950s. He was real big on traditional gender roles, meaning he didn’t like the fact that I had a job where I used my hands and made my own money. He, at the same time, wanted me to be his Suzy Homemaker while he went out to work or whatever it was that he did all day. He never told me.