Which begs the question why would he want me? Or any unwilling Willow Girl? He’s good-looking, he has money. Granted, he has a shitty family, but still. Why bother with me?
I shake my head and open the folded sheet of paper. It’s a bank statement. My eyebrows go up at the figures I see.
I don’t come from money. The Willows used to have money, but it’s long gone. Even though we live on a huge piece of land, in what was once an opulent mansion but has lately been cheaply refurbished, even some parts of the house closed off. What we could do with money like this.
He must have been going through it with a fine-tooth comb, because there are markings along some of the lines, but it’s the note scrawled on the side that catches my attention. I don’t have time to investigate, though, when, out of the utter stillness of the night, the bedroom door crashes open and the lights go on and Sebastian is standing in the doorway, looking all huge and pissed off.
It takes me a full minute to process that I’ve been caught, and I stand there, dumbfounded as he looks at me, looks at the sheet in my hand, the open drawer.
“I saw you leave.” It’s all I can manage.
“I guess you saw wrong.” He steps inside and closes the door, making a point of locking it and pocketing the key.
I swallow.
“What do you think you’re doing in here?”
I look down at my hand, at the paper I’m still holding, and set it on the nightstand.
“Nothing. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d see if anyone was here.” I’m so bad at lying.
“You thought you’d look in the drawers to make sure no one was hiding inside?” He gestures to the open one beside me.
“You said I was welcome—”
“In certain rooms of the house. My bedroom wasn’t one of them, not to mention you rummaging through drawers.” His eyes on me, he walks to the end of the bed across from me.
“In my defense, I didn’t know this was your bedroom.” I move to the other, and we’re both watching each other.
“You have no defense,” he says, shifting a little, me mirroring his move. “Whose shirt are you wearing?”
“Your brother’s.” I notice the slight narrowing of his eyes, the tensing of his jaw.
“Did he touch you?”
“To take me down from the whipping post you stuck me on, remember? And he was a perfect gentleman.”
At that, he raises both eyebrows and seems on the verge of laughter. “I wouldn’t bet on that, Helena.”
I take advantage of his distraction. “I’ll go back to my own room now if you’re going to be that weird about things.”
I take a step, trying to appear casual, like I don’t know how much trouble I’m in, but he lunges toward me and I jump to the other side and scramble onto the bed to cross it to the door.
But it’s a trick, because he anticipates my move and catches me easily, tosses me onto my back on the bed.
I let out a scream and roll onto my belly, get up on hands and knees to make my escape and about a second later, I’m yanked flat on my belly and he’s got his full weight on me, his mouth at my ear. I feel his cock hardening.
“I don’t want my brother’s smell on you,” he says, his voice low and deep, his breath at my cheek making me shudder.
I’m having a hard time breathing, but he gets up, kneels over me, and practically tears the T-shirt off me.
“What, are you worried he’s marking your property?”
“Exactly.” He turns me onto my back, keeps me safely tucked between his powerful thighs, and gives me a grin. He takes my wrists and spreads my arms out to the sides and leans in close. “Time to pay, Willow Girl.”
He transfers my arms into one hand and reaches under the bed with the other, pulling out a pair of leather restraints. Squeezing my thighs between his, he binds my wrists and draws them over my head, clicking the cuffs into a ring attached to the headboard.
“What the hell is that?” I ask, trying to pull free.
He pulls his shirt over his head in one brisk move and fuck, he’s so beautiful, all tanned olive skin and cut, hard muscle and all that ink. From the look on his face, he fucking knows it.
Sebastian leans down, inhales at my neck. “You stink of my brother.” He licks my cheek. “I’ll take care of that, though,” he says as he starts licking me again like we’re animals, like he’s an animal licking his dinner.
I yank at the restraints even as my body remembers what he did earlier. Remembers how he made me feel. Even as it traitorously wants more.
“Get off me! Let me go, you fucking inbred prick!”
He stops at that, looks at me, and laughs outright.
“Not inbred, sweetheart, but I will give you prick.”
I can see every one of his perfect white teeth as his eyes take a quick sweep of me, pausing at my pussy, which is open to him given he’s sitting between my legs. He runs two fingers over it before dragging his gaze back to mine.
“I like looking at you, Willow Girl,” He wipes his fingers on my inner thigh. “And you like me looking.”
“I don’t, you sick inbred.”
He leans down, pulls my pussy lips apart, and licks the length of me. I try to squeeze my legs closed, to shove him off, and pull on the cuffs, all to no avail.
“Told you already, not inbred,” he says, straightening.
Giving me a wicked grin, he flips me onto my belly, the cuffs linked to allow it. He wraps his arms around my thighs and forces my ass up, my legs wide.
I crane my neck to look over my shoulder at him at eye level with my ass.
“Inbreeding would require blood relatives fucking and reproducing,” he says, shifting his gaze to my ass.
“What are you doing?” What a stupid question. I know what he’s doing. I just don’t know what to do, how to react.
“I’m explaining how inbreeding works. Try to keep up.”
Before I can reply, he buries his face in my pussy and ass, and I suck in a loud breath at the sensation, at him, his tongue soft, a day’s growth of beard rough as he licks my pussy, teases my clit, then drags his tongue up to my asshole and shifts his arms to tilt my hips so he has better access to me. A better view of me.
“Stop,” I squeak. “You can’t do that.”
“I can do anything I want. Don’t you know that yet?” He draws back, looks down at me, then dips his head down to taste me again, tastes all of me. “Your body is so responsive, Helena.”
I bury my face in his pillow, and I can smell him on it. And fuck, what he’s doing. His hands are on my ass, keeping me spread, fingers on me, tongue inside, and my body is like one giant nerve ending.
“Please,” I arch my back. I’m pressing into him, and I’m so close when he pulls away and flips me onto my back.
“Not yet,” he says. “Tonight, you’re going to take my cock, come all over it while you keep telling me you don’t want it, don’t want me, Willow Girl.”
He gets off the bed. His eyes are black, and he doesn’t take them off me when he strips off his jeans and briefs and I see him for the first time.
He’s huge and thick and ready.
“I don’t want you!” I scream, trying to scramble away from him.
He climbs back on the bed and drags me back toward him by the ankle.
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“I mean it.” I squirm, but between him and the bonds at my wrists, I can only move inches.
“You’re not going anywhere, Willow Girl,” he says, again kneeling over me, his thighs on either side of my belly now. He leans back, eyes still on me as he scoops my pussy, lubricating his hand before taking his cock in it.
It takes all I have to drag my gaze up to his.
“You’re not a virgin. Don’t pretend to be scared, sweetheart.”
I look down again, at his cock, at how it’s growing even bigger in his hand. He reaches over my head and unhooks the cuffs from the headboard then unlocks each of them and throws them on
the floor. He takes my wrists and spreads my arms wide again and lays on top of me so I can feel the wet tip of his cock on my belly and his face is so close, our eyes locked.
He kisses me, and it’s deep and hard. I know it’s how he’ll fuck me, too—deep and hard and unforgiving. He shifts his grip from my wrists to my hands and interlaces our fingers together. I feel him start to slide inside me, and it hurts. He’s too big, and I may as well be a virgin for all the sex I’ve had.
He turns my head to the side, kisses my cheek. “Relax.” He draws out a little, pulling back to look at me. His eyes are shiny and completely black now. He’s watching me and moving inside me, and I know he’s not even halfway in yet.
“You’re too big. It hurts.” When he releases my hands, I pull mine in and set them on his shoulders, try to push him off at least a little.
He touches my face, the side of my cheek, and I realize he’s wiping away a tear. “You are so pretty when you cry, you know that?”
My belly quivers. He lifts up a little, and when he pushes one of my legs up, I look down and I see us, and we’re connected. He’s inside me, at least the tip of his cock is.
He touches my clit with his fingers and rubs, and I close my eyes and feel, feel his fingers on me, his cock stretching me, hard and soft and pain and pleasure.
But then he pulls out and turns me onto my belly. He’s lifting my hips high, and when I try to rise, he pushes my head back down.
“Like this.” He wraps one hand in my hair and squeezes my scalp. “Stay. Ass up, head down.”
His other hand is between my legs, and it feels so good.
I lay my cheek down, and I watch him. He has one hand on my hip, the other underneath me, his gaze locked on my ass as he brings his cock to my pussy and pumps a little, penetrating me, taking a few inches more.
“You’re wet and tight.”
With that, he pulls his fingers from my clit and grips my hips. With his thumbs, he’s pulling me wide open.
“So fucking tight.” He meets my gaze and thrusts into me. The breath I’m taking catches in my throat, and I think I’m going to choke on it.
I grip the sheets, groan into them, and when I try to bring my head up, he again fists a handful of hair and shoves it back down.
Sebastian thrusts again, then draws out. He’s hovering at the entrance of my sex.
He brings his thumb to my asshole, and the fingers of his other hand are at my clit again. He fucks me, really fucks me, and he’s not gentle and it hurts and it feels so fucking good.
I can’t tell what’s what. All I feel is him, him all around me, his scent on the pillow my face is buried in, him behind me, his fingers on me, inside me, his cock tearing me in two, tearing me apart.
And then, when I think I’ll rip apart, when I think I can’t take any more, I come. I fucking come, and the sound I make is strange, foreign and the pain and the pleasure are mixed up, confused. I can’t think anymore, not when I feel him throb, not when I hear him grunt, call out, not when he slams into me one last time, and not when I feel him empty inside me, using me up, filling me up, taking all of me, owning me.
I fall onto the bed when he releases me. The room smells of sex. I feel cum slide out when he gets up and goes into the bathroom. I hear the water go on. I lie there, trying to make sense of this, of what just happened.
He comes back a few minutes later and climbs back onto the bed, rolls me onto my back, and cleans me. He’s so gentle that I want to cry. It makes no sense, but I can’t help it. I just lie there, and I cry. I fucking sob, and I don’t understand why.
I hate him.
This is easy.
Simple.
Fucking simple.
I’m a Willow, and he’s a Scafoni, and I hate him. And that’s all.
But I didn’t fight him. I didn’t even try. He untied me, and I didn’t even try.
I came instead.
My eyes are closed, but I feel him watching me.
Maybe he likes it. He thinks I’m pretty when I cry.
I don’t think he meant sobbing, though. Sobbing is all choked breath and snot, and this is that and I don’t fucking understand what’s happening to me.
He switches out the lights from somewhere beside the bed and pulls my back into him.
I shake my head no, and push off, press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“Let me go. I want to go to my room.”
“Shh. Lie down now, Helena.”
“Willow Girl. I’m the Willow Girl.”
He shouldn’t call me by name.
“Shut the fuck up and go to sleep.” He forces me down, holds me to him, his arm like a vice around me.
“My aunt…My Aunt Helena, she said there’s a reason I was chosen. Because I shouldn’t have been. I had the blood on my sheath to mark me.”
He’s quiet, listening. I can hear him breathing behind me, feel his heart beating against my shoulder. Feel his warmth, his strength, envelop me.
“She thinks I’ll be the one to end this.”
The crying starts again, but this time, it’s this choked sound, and I have to force down the lump in my throat to keep going.
“She thinks I’m strong, like her.” I touch my ring with my thumb. “But she doesn’t know that when I found out, when my mother told us what would happen to us, what we’d have to do, she doesn’t know what I did.”
“What did you do?”
“We were sixteen. I don’t think any of us even ate the birthday cake after that. It’s kind of a spoiler, huh?” I almost laugh but this isn’t funny.
“What did you do, Helena?”
“I went out to the barn, and I fucked the boy who worked for us. I fucked him because I didn’t want to be the Willow Girl.”
It’s quiet for a long minute.
“Just go to sleep, Helena. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“My mom caught us. The boy and his father both lost their jobs. I just got a belting. The only time my father laid a hand on me, and it was my mother who demanded it. I guess she knew why I did it. Knew she’d lose one of her golden daughters because of me.”
I roll onto my back, then turn to him. His eyes are open, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“I guess we have that in common,” I say.
“What?”
“My mom and your stepmom. They’re more violent than our dads. At least mine, I guess.”
“Go to sleep, Helena. You can join the shitty childhood club tomorrow. Just go to sleep now.”
“I couldn’t walk for three days after that, and it was all for nothing, wasn’t it?”
It’s quiet for a long time. I think I doze a little too, but every time I open my eyes, he’s there, still awake, still keeping watch over me.
“I don’t think you’re weak, Helena,” he says finally. “Scared isn’t the same as weak. Forget the past. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“No, it doesn’t. I’m still here, and I’m still scared.”
Chapter Nine
Sebastian
Forget the past.
That’s the thing about being a Willow or a Scafoni. You can’t ever forget the past. It doesn’t let you. And neither does the present.
I know about her aunt, the woman she’s named after. The other Willow with black hair and a silver streak through it. The Willow Girl who almost beat her Scafoni master. Who almost broke him. Who almost broke the family apart.
But that wasn’t the end of the story.
Helena should know better her history.
And the thing about ending this, there’s no such thing. Not for her. Not for me. And not for future generations of Willow daughters or Scafoni sons.
I look over at her standing beside me as I dock the boat. It’s been three days since the night I caught her in my room, and I can’t seem to stop looking at her.
We’ve just reached Venice proper, and her eyes are as wide as saucers as she takes it all in. It’s summertime, which means one part of the floating city
will be overrun with tourists.
It’s amazing to me that people will travel hundreds of miles over hours and days and never leave one tiny part of Venice with all its vendors selling worthless trinkets, the noise and smell of a thousand people taking pictures of the filthy pigeons in the square, of the gondola with the singing gondolier. Fucking tourist traps. What they’re seeing isn’t Venice—at least, not my Venice.
“I thought there would be more people,” Helena says when we disembark.
“There are. On the other side. This is the Cannaregio district. It’s the better side, without the throngs of tourists. I’m not much of a people person.”
She stops, turns to me. “That’s a shocker.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass. Come here.” She’s already walking off, distracted.
It’s been one week since she’s been on the island with us, and I should have brought her here sooner. Should have done it on the day she arrived.
“I want to see the church,” she calls over her shoulder.
“We can see it after.”
“It’s just a few minutes. I want to light a candle.” And she goes off ahead of me, following the two nuns toward the small wooden door at the side of the old church.
“Do you ever listen?” I ask, taking her by the arm when I catch up with her. I walk her around the corner and to the steps of the entrance. “Here.”
“Oh.”
She looks up at it. It is a beautiful church. Most of Italy’s churches are, and Venice’s especially, although I’m partial, since this is home. Religion is an important part of Italian culture—at least for most people.
“Thanks,” she says.
I nod, and we walk in, my hand at her lower back, her heels clicking on the stone steps. The clothes I ordered for her had come, and today she’s wearing a gray skirt and a white, short-sleeved blouse with dark pumps. When I told her what we were doing, she’d chosen the most somber outfit she could find.
The soft scent of incense hovers outside the church. We approach the doors and I pull one open only to have that incense rush my senses. We walk inside, and she stops. Me too.
There’s a stillness here, something rare and unique to churches. Even if there’s a mass in session and a hundred faithful in the pews and an organ blaring out a Gothic hymn, underneath it is stillness. It’s here now, something I not only hear but feel deep in my bones, right to my marrow.
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