by Cora Reilly
When I stepped back into the bedroom fifteen minutes later, Aria was mostly hidden beneath the blankets, only her golden hair spread like a halo on the pillow. I turned off the light and got into bed. She was so still, she might as well not have been there at all. I knew she wasn’t asleep. Her breathing was off. It screamed fear.
I crossed my arms behind my head and glared into the darkness, and then I heard it.
A sob.
Soon, more followed, and I could feel the mattress vibrate as Aria shook under the force of her crying. I was furious, but beyond that, there was an emotion I didn’t think I was capable of: compassion. I wanted to console her. I hated that weak part of myself. A Vitiello never showed sympathy, and he certainly never bowed down to the ridiculous whims of a woman. That’s what my father taught Matteo and me.
“Will you cry all night?” I asked sharply, letting my anger run free. It was the more familiar choice.
Aria didn’t reply, but I could still hear her muffled sobs. “I can’t see how you could possibly have cried any worse if I’d taken you. Maybe I should fuck you to give you a real reason.” This was the man my father had raised me to be. Letting my fury out had always felt good, so why didn’t it this time?
Aria shifted, but her cries got only worse. I switched the light on and sat up. For a moment, I was stunned by the sight of my wife curled up in a fetal position beside me, shoulders curled in protectively and body shaking with sobs. It was hard to hold on to my anger, seeing her like that. There were men who got a hard-on if a woman cried. I never understood them.
The problem was that I had no clue what to do with a crying woman. I’d never consoled anyone in my life. I touched her arm. That obviously wasn’t the way to go, because she flinched and would have rolled off the fucking bed if I hadn’t grabbed her by the hip and pulled her toward me.
“That’s enough,” I said, trying to keep my frustration in check. She was already scared out of her mind; if I let my anger out on her, things definitely wouldn’t improve.
I rolled her onto her back. She lay unmoving, her eyes scrunched shut as if she were waiting for me to make a move on her.
“Look at me.” Her eyes peeled open, big and blue, and filled with tears. “I want you to stop crying. I want you to stop flinching from my touch.”
She blinked once, then nodded. She would have agreed to anything in that moment. I’d seen that look in other people’s eyes before. “That nod means nothing. Don’t you think I recognize fear when it stares back at me? The moment I turn out the light, you’ll be back crying as if I’d fucking raped you.” Rape was one of the very few despicable things I wasn’t guilty of, and I had absolutely no intention to change that. “So to give you peace of mind and shut you up, I’m going to swear an oath.”
Hope filled her face, making her look even more stunning. I wasn’t sure why I even cared. I shouldn’t. She licked her lips, and I almost groaned. “An oath?”
I took her small hand and pressed it against the tattoo over my heart. Her palm was warm and smooth, and it felt too good. I spoke part of the words I’d said many years ago during my initiation. “Born in blood, sworn in blood, I swear that I won’t try to steal your virginity or harm you in any way tonight.” If Matteo could see me now, he wouldn’t let me hear the end of it. I pointed at my cut. “I already bled for you, so that seals it. Born in blood. Sworn in blood.” I covered her hand, then waited for her to say the words.
“Born in blood, sworn in blood,” she said softly. There was the tiniest smile tugging at her lips, and the sight of it shouldn’t have made me feel so…content. I let go of her and turned the lights off. She didn’t cry again. Eventually, her breathing deepened. Of course I was wide-awake, but I couldn’t even leave the room. If someone saw me running around when I should be banging my wife, that wouldn’t go over well. Nobody could ever find out.
Listening to Aria’s even breathing, I wondered if I’d get a sliver of sleep tonight. I hadn’t ever slept when I had to share a room with anyone. I was a light sleeper, always vigilant, waiting for someone to stick a knife into my back or eyeball, and lowering my guard was out of the question when others were around. But Aria was my wife. And to be honest, she wasn’t a threat in any regard. Not because she was weaker and untrained—that wouldn’t matter if she poisoned me in secret—but because she didn’t strike me as someone who could seriously injure, much less kill someone. It wasn’t in her nature.
Slowly, my muscles slackened. Aria’s breathing never hitched. It was calm, soft, her sleep unperturbed. No horrors in her past haunted her nights. Knowing what kind of man I was, I hoped her sleep would stay as innocent as it was.
CHAPTER 7
Something soft tickled my fucking nose. My eyes shot open, and I stared at hair the color of spun gold. I was spooning Aria’s small body, my arm wrapped around her narrow waist, and she was completely relaxed in my embrace. I had slept with her body against mine. I’d never let a woman sleep in my bed. I’d thought it would take months before I’d get a decent night of sleep now that I was forced to share a bed with my wife.
Fuck. Aria was my wife.
And still a fucking virgin.
I propped myself up on my elbow. She didn’t stir. Her pale eyelashes rested on her porcelain skin, lips slightly parted. Fucking perfection, that’s what she was.
Her stomach lifted and fell under my palm as she breathed peacefully. I could feel her warmth through the little nothing she was wearing. I wanted to slide my hand down between her legs, wanted to feel the heat there. Wanted to bury my fingers in her—and my cock. Fuck. My cock sprang to life.
I wanted to claim her, because it was my right.
She was mine.
My wife. And because of that. I wanted to protect her, even from myself—the hardest task of all.
Aria’s breathing changed, her stomach tightened under my palm, then her entire body stiffened. She was scared of me, of what I might do.
“Good, you’re awake,” I murmured.
She stiffened even further and, slowly, her eyes peeled open. Gripping her hip, I rolled her over so I could get a better look at her face. Even without a hint of makeup, with tousled hair and sleepy, Aria was stunning. Her eyes lingered on my chest, a blush spreading on her cheeks. While I’d never fallen asleep beside a woman, I’d spent more than enough time in bed with them, but for Aria, this was the first time she was so close to a man. The early morning sun let her hair glow in golden hues. I reached for a strand, marveling at the silkiness. Everything about her was soft, smooth, silky—beckoning to be touched, to be claimed.
“It won’t be long until my stepmother, my aunts, and the other married women of my family knock at our door to gather up the sheets and carry them into the dining room where undoubtedly everyone else is already waiting for the fucking spectacle to begin.”
Her blush deepened, acute embarrassment flickering in her eyes. The epitome of innocence, so different from me and yet at my mercy. She glanced down at the cut on my forearm.
I nodded. “My blood will give them what they want. It’ll be the foundation of our story, but we’ll be expected to fill in the details. I know I’m a convincing liar, but will you be able to lie to everyone’s faces, even your mother’s, when you tell them about our wedding night? Nobody can know what happened. It would make me look weak.”
Weak. People said many things about me. Weak wasn’t one of them. I had no trouble doing what was necessary, no trouble hurting and breaking others. I shouldn’t have hesitated claiming Aria, shouldn’t have been bothered by her terror and tears. I should have pushed her down on her knees so I didn’t have to see her fear and fucked her from behind. That’s what people expected from me.
“Weak because you didn’t want to rape your wife?” she asked, her voice shaking.
My fingers tensed on Aria’s waist. Rape— we both knew nobody in our world would see it that way. No matter how brutally I fucked Aria, they’d see it as my privilege, my right.
My
lips pulled into a tight smile. “Weak for not taking what was mine for the taking. The tradition of bloody sheets in the Sicilian mafia is as much a proof of the bride’s purity as of the husband’s relentlessness. So what do you think it will say about me that I had you lying half-naked in my bed, vulnerable and mine, and yet here you are untouched as you were before our wedding?”
Fear simmered in Aria’s eyes. “Nobody will know. I won’t tell anyone.”
“Why should I trust you? I don’t make a habit of trusting people, especially people who hate me.”
Aria touched the wound on my forearm, her eyes softer than before. “I don’t hate you.”
She had every reason to hate me because I owned her, because I would never release her now that she was mine. She’d be trapped in an expensive golden cage, safe from violence because I vowed it to myself, but condemned to live without love and tenderness.
“And you can trust me because I am your wife. I didn’t choose this marriage, but I can at least choose to make the best out of our bond. I have nothing to gain from betraying your trust, but everything to gain by showing you that I’m loyal.”
She was right. It was a matter of survival instinct that she’d try to gain my trust, even if it was a futile endeavor. She was at my mercy and needed to stay in my good graces. Aria was a clever woman, but she didn’t know my treacherous uncles and cousins like I did.
“The men waiting in that living room are predators. They prey on the weak and they’ve been waiting for more than a decade for a sign of weakness from me. The moment they see one, they’ll pounce.”
My Uncle Gottardo had never forgiven me for crushing his son’s throat. He was waiting for a chance to get rid of me.
Aria’s brows puckered. “But your father—”
“If my father thinks I’m too weak to control the Famiglia, he’ll gladly let them tear me apart.” My father didn’t care about me. I was his guarantee to uphold the bloodline. As long as he considered me his strongest, most brutal option, he’d keep me alive. If he thought I was getting weak, if he thought I wasn’t fit to become Capo, he’d put me down like a fucking dog.
“What about Matteo?”
Father still believed Matteo would taste blood the second he saw his chance to become Capo instead of me. He would never understand that Matteo and I weren’t enemies, that we weren’t only bound by necessity and pragmatism. My brother and I would die for each other. Father hated his brothers as much as they hated him. He kept them alive because honor dictated it and because it gave him a fucking thrill to give them orders as their Capo, to have them grovel at his feet and try to stay in his good graces.
“I trust Matteo, but he’s hot-headed. He’d get himself killed trying to defend me.”
Aria nodded as if she understood. Maybe she did. She was a woman, shielded from most of the violence of our world, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hear about it.
“Nobody will doubt me,” she said. “I’ll give them what they want to see.”
I didn’t know Aria well enough to gauge her lying skills. Slowly, I pushed into a sitting position, which allowed me a better view of my wife. She lay on her back, her hair fanning out around her head, and the outline of her breasts teased me through the flimsy material of her nightgown. Aria’s eyes trailed over my upper body curiously, and my groin tightened at her unpracticed appraisal. When her eyes finally met mine, her cheeks were flushed.
“You should be wearing more than this excuse for a nightgown when the harpies arrive. I don’t want them to see your body, especially your hips and upper thighs. It’s better they wonder if I left marks on you,” I said, my eyes lingering on those pink lips. “But we can’t hide your face from them.”
I moved lower, reaching for Aria’s cheek to kiss her when she closed her eyes and flinched as if she thought I’d hit her. Revulsion filled me at the mere idea of raising my hand against my wife.
“This is the second time you thought I was going to hit you,” I said in a low voice.
She looked at me in confusion. “I thought you said…”
“What? That everyone expects you to have bruises on your face after a night with me? I don’t hit women.”
Even Grace, who had a talent to drive me to the brink, had never been on the receiving end of my violence. I’d spent my childhood and youth listening to my mother’s broken crying, and, once she was dead, to Nina’s. That wasn’t what I wanted in a marriage. If I felt the need to break people, I had enough enemies to choose from. “How am I supposed to believe that you can convince everyone we’ve consummated our marriage when you keep flinching from my touch?”
“Believe me, the flinching will make everyone believe the lie even more because I definitely wouldn’t have stopped flinching away from your touch if you’d taken what’s yours. The more I flinch, the more they’ll take you for the monster you want them to think you are.”
I chuckled. “I think you might know more about playing the game of power than I expected.”
“My father is Consigliere,” she said. Aria wasn’t only beautiful, she was also clever.
I pressed my palm against her cheek. This time, she managed not to flinch, but she still became tense. Before annoyance could claim me, I reminded myself that she wasn’t used to a man’s touch. That I was her husband wouldn’t magically make her comfortable with the unfamiliar closeness. “What I meant earlier was that your face doesn’t look like you’ve been kissed.”
Aria’s eyes grew wide. “I’ve never…”
Never been kissed. All mine. Always only mine.
I crashed my lips down on hers, and Aria’s hand flew up to my chest as if she was going to push me away, but she didn’t. Her palms shook against my skin. I tried to soften my kiss, not wanting to scare her, but it was a fucking struggle to be gentle and slow when all I wanted was to lay my claim on the woman beside me.
My tongue stroked her lips open, and Aria responded hesitantly. Her blue eyes flickered with insecurity, but I didn’t allow her to worry. I took the lead, gave her no choice but to surrender to me. The feel and taste of her stirred the embers of my desire into a raging fire. I pressed harder into her, my kiss turning more forceful even as I tried to restrain myself. My fingers twitched against her cheek, wanting to travel south, wanting to stroke and discover every inch of her body. I pulled away before I could lose control. Aria blinked up at me, licking her lips, almost dazed. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips red.
I wanted her.
A knock burst through my lustful haze. I rolled over and got up, glad for the distraction. Aria gasped. I chanced a glance at her, catching her staring at my hard-on with widened eyes.
“A man is supposed to have a boner when he wakes up beside his bride, don’t you think? They want a show, they’ll get a show.” My aunts, cousins, and especially Nina were eager for new tidbits of gossip that would make their dull lives a bit brighter. They’d descend like bloodthirsty hyenas on us if they suspected I hadn’t claimed Aria. “Now go and grab a bathrobe,” I ordered.
Aria obeyed at once, practically leaping out of bed and rushing into the bathroom. I had to admit her fighting spirit last night had pleased me more than her obedience.
My eyes strayed toward the fake blood stains on the bed sheet and a flicker of regret overtook me. There was a reason the Famiglia insisted on the bloody sheets tradition, particularly my father. I still remembered the sheets after his wedding night with Nina, and I had been only a child then.
Sighing, I headed toward the table and picked up my weapons. The knocking became more insistent, but I didn’t give a fuck. Aria returned dressed in a long white satin bathrobe and holding her cut corset in one hand. She curiously watched me strap my knife and gun holsters onto my naked body, one of them covering the small cut on my forearm. Before I headed for the door, I shifted my boner so it would be even more prominent. That would give the furies of my family something to gossip about. Aria’s gaze slid down to my groin once more, and the blush returned to her chee
ks.
Aria moved toward the window, wrapping her arms around herself, looking breakable and perfectly beautiful.
Tearing my eyes from her, I opened the door to the eager faces of Nina, Cosima, and Egidia. Behind them, more women from mine and Aria’s families had gathered.
Their eyes traveled the length of me. Some of them feigned shock even when it was obvious that they enjoyed the sight, considering the ugly old fools they were married to.
Only Nina pointedly ignored my undressed state, but I knew her and caught her nervous swallow. It was impossible not to know a person’s mimic and gestures if you’d seen them at their lowest. Being married to my father, I’d seen more than enough of that side of her. “We’ve come to collect the sheets,” she said, putting on her usual mask, smiling spitefully.
I allowed them to enter.
They practically shoved each other out of the way to reach the bed first. They whispered when they saw the stain, then looked toward Aria, who squirmed under their attention. She was already embarrassed as it was. I wondered how much worse it would have been if they would have actually been the proof of her lost virginity.
Nina and Cosima removed the bedsheets, giggling in that fake way that gave me a fucking headache. “Luca,” Nina said with feigned indignation. “Did nobody tell you to be gentle to your virgin bride?”
More of those fucking giggles. I held Nina’s gaze, my mouth pulling into a cold smile. “You are married to my father. Does he strike you as a man who teaches his sons to be gentle to anyone?”
Her smile became even less honest, and a flicker of pure animalistic fear flashed in her brown eyes. In this room, probably no one knew what she had to endure.