Mafia Bride: The DiLustro Arrangement #1

by CD Reiss

  He’s mine.

  The words feel strange. Not quite a lie, but an unbelievable truth.

  I focus on twisting my hair up into something that looks effortless and cute, which is more difficult than making it look as if it took all afternoon.

  Rosetta was the one who would do my hair, my whole life growing up, until she was gone.

  “Rosetta, what would you do?” I whisper, still watching the king outside. He doesn’t pace, only scrolls through his phone, like waiting for me doesn’t bother him. “Why does he care so much about me? Why aren’t you here to help me figure this out?”

  Because she’s dead, like everyone else.

  Except Santino, for now.

  A tight knot creases in my chest, and I leave the room in the hopes it’ll loosen with a change of scenery.

  Downstairs, Santino smiles when I walk outside. It immediately slides off his face and is replaced with concern. Because, for some fucked reason, he cares about me.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Just thinking.” I try to wave it off.

  He frowns with disbelief. I’m going to have to work harder than this.

  “Do you like it?” I open the robe to show him the red bikini. His eyes go from incredulous to ravenous, and I close it up before I become a meal.

  Without a word, he throws his arm across my shoulders and escorts me down to the private beach. Immaculate blue water rolls across the postcard-pristine sand.

  There’s a cabana set up in the center with two comfortable loungers around a table full of drinks and snacks.

  We settle into the armless loungers set close together, and it only takes a minute before my body almost instinctively rolls into him. We haven’t shared a bed yet, but the night before, we spent it curled up on the couch watching old TV shows and now I gravitate back to that position.

  I hear his heartbeat and the crash of ocean waves. Everything smells salty and musky. A cool breeze dances through the spaces between us.

  “How long can you be away from work?” I ask, suddenly feeling guilty.

  “You want to go home?”

  “No, no.” I shake my head slightly against him. “I just wish...” The words feel stuck in my throat but I fight to unstick them. “I wish we could be alone like this forever.”

  “Pretend this moment is forever.”

  I wish I could see his face. Do I make him feel the same way? Does he get flustered around me? Do I make him feel strange things he must fight? Or does the king never get flustered? “Memorize it,” he continues. “Because it could end any time.”

  He lifts my chin and captures my lips with his own. It’s a beautiful kiss, one that leaves every inch of skin in tingles. My body tries to crawl up his and force it back down, just to enjoy this moment for as long as possible.

  Because it could end at any time.

  “Why?” I ask. “How about you quit doing whatever it is you do.”

  “You think it’s so easy?”

  “Yes. You do it between now and when I get my nursing license. I’ll support us.”

  “I can cook and clean, then?”

  “I cook,” I lay my hand on his naked chest without thinking about it, and keep it there when I do. “You clean.”

  “Will I have the babies, too?” he asks and my body and mind are aware of what has to happen before anyone around here gives birth.

  “Shush,” I say.

  “Who are you shushing?”

  “You.” I pick my head up to face him.

  “Why is that?”

  “You’re not taking care of babies.”

  “No?”

  “Conosco i miei polli.”

  I know my chickens, and I know him.

  The old Italian saying comes to me more easily than any modern sentence, and I don’t know why.

  “Tale padre, tale figlia.” He has a half-smile as he says such a father, such a daughter and I know why I could spit out the saying about the chickens so easily.

  “My father used to say that when my mother forgot where she put something.”

  I get wistful thinking about the slices of memory I have of them. In the house paid for with dirty money. The grocery store that was a front for a criminal empire.

  I flop back on the lounger with my wrist over my eyes to block out the afternoon sun.

  “She’d be looking everywhere for her car key or a shoe,” I say. “And he’d know exactly where it was.”

  “He said that about the men who worked for him.”

  He knows my father better than I ever will.

  “Were my parents happy together?” I ask, still staring into the darkness of my wrist, because it doesn’t matter.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Why?”

  I find the question valid, which could be an illustration of a compatibility between us that I’ve suspected and denied. It doesn’t matter if they were happy. I am who I am no matter if I was conceived in love or obligation. My first five years with them are all I have, and my memory of them has taken enough of a beating.

  “Rosetta,” I say. “She thought they were perfect. I wouldn’t want her to die believing a lie.” I lean on my elbow, facing him. “Did I ever tell you the last thing I ever said to her?”

  “You had a fight?”

  I shake my head. “Even worse. It wasn’t cruel. I don’t even regret it, honestly. It was just, ‘See you later.’ In my Z’s front hall. I got back from school and she was on her way out. Bags packed. ‘See you in a month!’ she said. I was jealous she was going to Italy and I wasn’t, so I just said, ‘Okay, see you later,’ and went to my room.”

  He pauses to see if there’s more. There isn’t. That’s all there ever was.

  “You did not see her later.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  It goes quiet again, and in the silence, a thought presses impatiently behind my teeth.

  “Sometimes,” I say, sure I’m going to regret this. “I think that’ll happen to you. I’ll say ‘see you later’ and you won’t come back.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “What if you get killed?”

  Santino tsks, nonplussed.

  “No, really.” The fear I’ve denied finds its way into words. “I don’t know what you do when you’re not in the house, and I know you won’t tell me. I trust you won’t leave but I don’t trust your career choices.”

  “All you need to know is my word, and I swear, Violetta, you will not be left alone. Not ever while I breathe.”

  “And if you’re not breathing?”

  “I want you to know this…” He takes my chin in his hands. “If we’re separated, even by death, as long as your heart beats, I will walk the earth until I find you.”

  He’s being insanely poetic to make a simple point, and I get it, but his expression is serious. To him, death is an inconvenience to his devotion.

  I’m swept up in it.

  I believe every word he says.

  29

  VIOLETTA

  We eat in a neighborhood café.

  We get in the car.

  We drive back to the house.

  With every word and every moment, I met him where he stood. I knew what he knew and believed what he believed.

  Tonight is the night. He’s already chosen, and I’m going to catch up to him because I want to. Because it is what it is. I can’t avoid it any more than I can abstain from the sun rising and setting, nor do I want to. I won’t grin and bear the inevitable turn of the earth. I want him with every cell in my body, and there’s joy in wanting what’s true instead of wishing for something that isn’t.

  When we get back to the house, it’s dark and empty. He slips the light jacket off my shoulders. I can feel his breath on my bare skin.

  I don’t trust my words, so I don’t say anything. This trip has shown me an entirely different Santino. A man who enjoys my company. A man who listens to the things I have to say. A man who doesn’t take everyt
hing so seriously, except me.

  I yawn in contentment, and he walks me to my bedroom. At the door, he takes hold of my chin with a commanding hand, and kisses my cheek. “Good night, my blood violet.”

  He lets go, and I feel unmoored. We both know the facts of the night, and he’s walking away? I couldn’t have misinterpreted that badly.

  I haven’t. But both my hands have a part to play here.

  “Don’t go.”

  “Go where?” He knows exactly what I’m talking about. His eyes lock onto mine and hold me still.

  “I want… I…” I gape. I don’t know how to ask. I don’t know what to say.

  “What do you want?”

  I study his tall frame, his regal stature, the shoulders back and chin tilted up so slightly he’s still making eye contact with me.

  My request comes out as only a whisper. “Stay with me.”

  “And do what?” He’s toying with me now. He takes a lock of my hair and runs it through his fingers. His voice drops an octave. “And do what, Violetta?”

  “Whatever you want.” I breathe the words out, as though they are a part of me, a desperate wish offered up to the universe.

  Both of his hands encircle my neck and slowly rest on my collarbone. He becomes the king once again, erect and regal. “What do you want? Say it.” He presses the slightest pressure on my throat. “Say the words, Violetta.”

  I struggle to breathe, to put words together in a coherent fashion. Everything in my mind has gone fully blank, as if I’m a preverbal animal, and I have to think hard about making sense of my body’s need.

  “I want…” God, this is so hard. I close my eyes and feel the nearness of him, the intensity of his hands on my skin. In my mind, I see him laid out against me, with no one else in the world around. “I want you to mark inside me.”

  There’s no hitch in his breath. I don’t feel nervous energy rolling off him like it does off me. Instead, he’s like a wall of calm.

  “Where?” A fierceness creeps into his voice and it melts the last remaining walls of my defense. I should ask for options. Check off acceptable boxes, but I can’t. Places I barely think about want to be penetrated and defiled.

  “Everywhere you want.”

  “Say it,” he whispers urgently. His hands dig into my skin. I was wrong. He isn’t calm. He’s practically vibrating.

  He wants me like I want him.

  “I’ve never done this before, Santino. Please. You’re the first.”

  He pushes me against the wall and I feel everything inside me turn to molten desire. “Wrong. I am the only one. Ever. Say it. Say what your mind thinks but your mouth avoids.”

  “I want you.” My fingers grasp the silk of his shirt as tightly as he grasps me. There is something powerful about knowing our desires are mutual. That I can make this man, this king, desperate. “I want you to take my virginity. I want you to own me. I want you to fuck me. Okay? Santino, fucking take it. All of me.”

  “Your. Mouth.”

  He kisses me, tongue deep and demanding, while his hands grab at the fabric of my dress. He leans away and rips it open, and I gasp at the hot shock of my sudden exposure. He pushes me back against the wall so he can see. I’m fully bared in a lacy red underpants and bra that I put on because fate said so, not because I thought about being seen in them.

  No man has ever eaten me alive with his eyes the way he is.

  No man has ever caused my entire body and soul to be this intensely alight with hard, deep want.

  “You’re offering me this?” He runs a finger down the swell of my left breast and toys with the edge of the lace. I can barely move. “You’re saying yes?”

  I close my eyes and feel the press of him against my body—the hard girth against the smoothness of my belly, the strength of his hands against my sensitive spaces.

  I can only moan. “Yes.”

  He kicks my bedroom door open and carries me inside. He places me in the center of the floor in my ripped dress and commands, “Stay.”

  He walks around me, circling like a tiger wondering which part to eat first. I feel exposed and in danger, and desperate, so desperate, for him to just fucking take me already.

  “You’ve kissed a man before?” he says from behind me.

  “I don’t see the—”

  “Answer.”

  My panties are soaked clean through. “Yes.”

  “Has a man touched your tits?”

  A chill ravages my veins. “Yes.”

  He moves just enough to yank the remains of the dress off my shoulders. His massive hands reach around and unhook my bra. He flings it behind him like it is a naughty, naughty thing to get in his way.

  I long for him to handle me the same way. To exercise his strength against me. To command me.

  He comes around and inspects me from feet to face.

  “Have you touched another man’s cock?”

  They aren’t even questions anymore and he looks like he’s ready to devour me by the strain in his pants, but the rest of him looks in absolute control.

  “No.”

  “Has a man’s finger touched your cunt.”

  “Do I get to ask you the same questions?”

  Santino takes me by the throat—gently, but the threat is there and the threat is arousing as hell.

  “No. You do not. Answer. Has any man ever gotten his fingers on your cunt?”

  “Only for a second.” I breathe, watching him, waiting for the minute he breaks to touch me. He finally relents and rests his hands back on my throat. The pressure nearly ends me.

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “I didn’t tell him he could. So I slapped him.”

  His hands drag from my throat to my breasts and steal all the oxygen from my body. He teases my erect nipples and everything threatens to go dark.

  “Have you ever sucked a cock?”

  He’s so filthy and erotic. And he talks about my mouth?

  “No.”

  “Has anyone tasted your cunt?”

  “No.”

  He circles once more, his hand dragging across my near-bare skin.

  “Do I have to ask about your ass?” He smacks it, and I want more.

  “You can.” All I can see behind my eyes is the night he spanked me. “You’ll get the same answer.”

  I hear him undressing. The click of a belt buckle. The rustle of expensive fabric. The thud of shoes kicked away. The very scent of him intensifies as he comes behind me. He’s all I can see, smell, breathe. His erection presses against my ass and it feels terrifyingly huge.

  Our bodies mold together, skin igniting skin. Santino reaches around me and pinches my nipples, twisting just enough to send a cable of pleasure from my head to my toes.

  “Grazie. Now I know how gentle I have to be with you.”

  My heart stops.

  The questions weren’t designed with wrong answers. He only wanted to know how to please me.

  He slides my underwear down, kissing my back as he goes. A kiss on my shoulder, another on my shoulder blade, my lower back, my ass cheek, the back of my knee. I’m both terribly aroused and terribly impressed someone as towering as Santino could reach down that low.

  I step out of the panties and then my shoes. They go flying somewhere in the room with the rest of my dress and bra.

  I’m now fully naked and exposed in front of the man who stole me, made me his bride, and then cracked the entirety of my heart open. I want him, I hate him, I want him again.

  Santino slowly spins me to face him. He spins in a slow circle, letting me take in all of him. I’ve seen half of him like this, bare and glistening, at the pool. Today at the beach. But to see all of it, including the length and thickness of his cock, renders me speechless.

  He’s beautiful. He’s always been this beautiful, but to see him like this is a revelation all its own. Muscles stack on muscles and shape him into the most sensual human being I’ve ever seen.

  The most intense part of him remai
ns his eyes. They never stray from me, never lessen in heat, never soothe.

  He is a predator. I am his prey.

  I am his property, and he is my master.

  He runs his hands across my body, like he’s trying to claim all of it, with all the gentleness of a flower. It’s sweet, it’s kind. Only, I want so much more than what he’s giving. I want to plead for more but I also don’t want to miss a second of our bodies uniting for the first time, all under his rules.

  He lays me down on my back, spreads my legs, and runs his fingers straight to my center. I gasp as his fingers slowly pull me apart, exposing me fully. I try to cross my legs out of instinct, suddenly anxious.

  Oh God. What if I am terrible at all of this? What if he realizes I have no idea what I’m doing and the sex is bad?

  “Don’t make me tie you to the headboard.” Santino threatens, then adds, “On your first night.”

  Every thought in my head disappears.

  He kisses me from ankle to inner thigh. He makes a map of my body. He creates rivers and roads with his tongue. I am flying high on euphoria and nearly die each time the softness of his hair tickles the sensitive skin of my thighs.

  When his tongue makes contact on my clit, the heavens open up and rain down over me. My life ceases and I ascend to the next level of living, sparkling and powerful.

  His tongue coaxes against my swollen clit and I cry out, tears falling down my face, body seizing and contracting. Drowning in a new, foreign pleasure of an orgasm I didn’t give myself.

  Santino laughs and I’m so embarrassed but also so rocked by the waves of the orgasm that I can only whisper out an apology. He only laughs again, but his face is so kind. So kind, so open. So…delighted.

  “You will have many, many more tonight.”

  I take back everything cruel I’ve ever said about this man. I didn’t mean it. I’ll never mean it again.

  He kisses my face, my tits, my neck, until I’m on fire again. He dips his head back between my legs and licks my cunt clean as I come hard for a second delirious time.

  When he kisses me, I taste myself on his lips and grow immediately wet again. But now I want more. I take his cock in my hand, feel the hardness, the thickness, the heat of blood engorging it as I stroke it. I have never in my life held anything so remarkable.