“I’m close,” I panted. At my words, he stopped his hook movement, pressing his lips against my temple. “Frankie…”
“What’s the poison for?”
“Him!” I shouted out, bucking against his hand, so desperate for more. “It’s for him. Okay? For Tommaso. Now make me come.”
He pulled out of me, unzipped his slacks, turned me so I faced him, and sat us both down until I was straddling him with his cock positioned just at my entrance. “Explain first.”
I bucked against him, rubbing his head against my slick slit. So desperate for him, I could barely speak, let alone form a coherent sentence.
“I’m going to kill him during our honeymoon.” I reached between us, grabbed his thick length, and rubbed the tip of it against my clit. In the distance, I could hear some of the clergymen, but I didn’t care. I was too far gone. “Then, I’m going to run away.”
“Such a bad girl,” he whispered against the column of my neck, smacked my hand away, and thrust inside me.
I felt my hymen break at the same time he pinched my clit. My teeth met his shoulders and bit down, transferring my pain onto him. I lost myself in the pleasure with each thrust. We were lust, and recklessness, and heavy breathing, and pain, and pleasure.
And by the time we came together and I realized what this meant for my life, I considered that we were the closest thing to love I would ever have the opportunity to experience.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Frankie
“It’s done.”
My voice echoed throughout the silent room at the back of Mama Sofia’s restaurant. I’d never seen the Family so silent. Even the fucker Angelo was quiet as a nun at confession, his hands clasped in front of him, head bowed and eyes trained on the surface of the table Amato men had sat around for decades.
For a moment, I thought they hadn’t heard me, which was fucking impossible because I’d said the words loud and staccato to punctuate their importance.
“It’s done,” I repeated. “She won’t pass the deflowering ceremony.”
Don Amato finally stirred from his old-man stupor. Italians revered things with age as if that made them inherently and automatically wise, better than their younger counterparts.
Don Amato, in my humble, never-voiced opinion, was evidence to the contrary.
His bones creaked as he moved back in his chair to fix his beady eyes on me over the steeple of his joined fingertips. “Bene. We can move to propose our own marital union between Angelo and one of the Vitalis when the dust from the scandal settles.”
“And Liliana?” I asked despite my best intentions.
Don Amato scoffed, prompting the rest of the men to chuckle. “She won’t be viable after she fails the deflowering ceremony. She will be dead… perhaps excommunicated if she is lucky.”
Guilt ignited in my belly and raged into a cataclysmic wildfire that razed my heart to ash.
Liliana dead.
Because of me.
There was no way around it. I might as well have been the one to shoot her in her back courtyard instead of Paolo.
Lily would die just as her beloved Carlotta had.
She would die for following her passions, for being too bright to stifle with our antiquated mafia rules.
I struggled to focus on my breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
Fuck. Me. Fuck. Me.
I couldn’t let this happen, not without warning her at the very least.
She deserved that, didn’t she? After what I’d taken from her.
I could still feel the hot blood of her virginity on my cock, the way she’d rippled and clenched around me like an iron vise.
We’d fucked in a confessional like two ultimate sinners, but the feeling that lingered wasn’t shame for our actions.
It was a haunting sense of wonder, as a man who has suddenly rediscovered his sight. Lily had colored in my black and white world with her sass and brightness. I found myself horrified that all her goodness would be so unjustly snuffed out.
These were dangerous thoughts, skirting far too close to caring for comfort. But I couldn’t stop them if I tried.
“I can attend the engagement dinner tonight as the Amato representative,” I offered. “Scout the eligible Vitali women for prospects.”
Don Amato’s wet black eyes pinned me to a stop, searching me for weakness. I held fast, chin tipped the way Lily did, lips crooked in my habitual cocky smirk.
Finally, he nodded. “Stay away from the spoiled Vitali girl. Your job there is finished.”
But it wasn’t.
I’d do anything in my power to make sure Lily at least had a chance of making it out of this alive.
The restaurant was empty of civilians and packed to the rafters with mafia families. A cacophony of voices raised in passionate tones was made even more aggressive by the amount of wine imbued, people calling to each other from across the room, and the swell of Umberto Tozzi singing over the sound system.
It was after dinner and its requisite formalities. Everyone was distracted by their own drunkenness and what late night revelries they might indulge in.
I’d bid my time, tucked away at a table in the back with lesser made men than myself. The grunts and wannabes who reeked of eagerness and greed.
To make matters worse, Lily had been out of my reach the entire night, sequestered at the head of the long table in the middle of the room with Paolo and Tommaso. The latter was all over her.
My poisonous Lily delivered only reluctant politeness and a barely acceptable level of impudence in return.
I wanted to touch her.
My cock had been half hard in my trousers all night as I watched the way her thick black hair shone blue in the low light. How her chest flushed that delicious wine red when we caught eyes across the crowded room.
I wanted to sit her on my cock and watch her squirm again.
Tom said something to her. She turned her head away, pretending not to hear, only for her father to chastise her. My Lily furrowed her brows and lifted her wine to her lips. Her future husband clucked his tongue and forcibly unwrapped her fingers from her glass.
I wanted to steal her away from those assholes and break their spines so they’d never bother her again.
Heathen. She was making me heathen.
A man ruled by his base needs, incapable of higher thinking.
And I didn’t care.
I needed to see her one more time.
The opportunity came when she made her way to the restroom as people started to say their goodbyes and drifted drunkenly home. I took advantage of the chaos and followed her into the room.
Her startled gaze snapped to mine in the reflection of the mirror, tiny fingers clutching her pink lipstick.
“Don’t pretend to be surprised,” I scolded her, locked the door behind me, and stalked forward until my front was flush to her back. “You knew I’d come for you.”
“You’re a fool for taking such a risk,” she countered, but she was already melting back against me, rubbing her sweet ass on my groin.
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool,” I quoted, skimming my nose down her neck and breathing in her floral scent.
“Shakespeare. How erudite you are for a common foot soldier.” But she was breathing heavy, probably soaked for me.
“Your homeschooling must really be top notch,” I teased, reminding her of how we’d met before sinking my teeth into her neck just to hear her gasp. “Come away with me tonight.”
“With such a good education, you think I’d do something so stupid?”
“I think you played the good girl all night, and you’re bored out of your fucking skull.” Before she could protest, I wrapped a hand around the front of her body and raised the skirt of her dress to expose her underwear. We both watched as I edged my thumb under the elastic and played it over the edge of her wet pussy. “Come play with the devil for a while.”
Picking the lock was child’s play, but the alar
m system took a little more work. I’d always been good with tech. It was the primary way I’d helped the family business in the past, hacking and circumnavigating security systems.
The jewelry store in downtown Gerosa was laughably easy.
“What are you doing?” Lily hissed from behind me.
I tugged her into the store, closed the door behind us, and grinned. “Do you want to see the ring your husband had made specially for you?”
“Not especially,” she said dryly as I let go of her hand to let her explore the glass cases and shelves filled with precious jewels. “Definitely not enough to commit a felony to see it early.”
Nothing was a felony when we had the police and politicians bought. I didn’t say this.
Instead, I shrugged a shoulder, leaned against the wall, and watched her move through the space. “We committed a felony for the fun of it, my sweet Lily. You want to be a bad girl. I figured you needed at least one illegal activity on your record.”
Neither of us brought up the murder, which she still didn’t know I’d faked. Sweet, naïve Lily. She’d followed me to hell and didn’t even know it.
Lily snorted, but a small, thrilled smile teased her lips, which told me she loved the edge of danger. “Thanks for looking out.”
I didn’t tell her I knew old man Garibaldi or that he wouldn’t have cared I’d broken in because he was my deceased mother’s favorite cousin.
I didn’t tell her he’d left Tommaso’s ring out ‘for cleaning’ on a velvet cushion, so it would be easy to pilfer.
“What is that?” Lily moved toward me when the ring in my fingers caught the low light from the street.
“Tommy’s gift to you.”
She reached for my hand to lower it but didn’t touch the ring, as if it had teeth and she was in danger of its bite. “God, that’s ugly.”
It was easy to agree with her. The diamond was large, but garishly cut into the shape of a heart on a rose gold band. It was too gaudy, too girly and sweet for my poisonous Lily.
“It’s not you,” I told her.
She looked up at me through her lashes and cocked her head. “If you know me so well, Amato, what is me?”
I moved away to peruse the glass cases and almost immediately found the perfect one. I picked the lock and hid the ring in my hand before walking back slowly to Lily.
“If you were to get married to the man you love and not the man your family wants for you,” I started, stalking toward her, “he would be dark and dashing enough to surprise you constantly, to keep you on your toes. He wouldn’t ask Paolo for permission. He would whisk you away in the middle of the night, stolen straight from your bed, and take you somewhere dark and intimate, say… a crypt or a confessional. He’d fuck you senseless before asking the question just because he couldn’t keep his dirty hands off your tight body, and in your post-orgasm haze, you’d think it was a dream.”
I stopped before her, eyes locked to her dazed, dreamy gaze as I dropped to my knees and produced the ring I’d picked for her. A large, princess-cut black diamond on a white gold band. Simple, dark, and utterly compelling.
Her fingers reached out to touch it, hovering as if asking for permission.
I continued, “You’d think it was a dream because you’re living in a nightmare, where you marry the mafia prince instead of the villain.”
“What are you saying, Frankie?”
I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just giving voice to the impossible dream that seemed to link us like spider webbing, an inescapable and deadly trap.
“I’m saying, he’s not right for you and I’m not either. I’m saying I’m sorry you might die for this.”
Lily stared down at me, transforming before my eyes. Chin tilted, hair tossed over her straightened shoulders, face set to benevolence like a queen faced with her subject.
“Well, then,” she practically purred. “Let’s make sure I go out with bang instead of a whimper.”
Her lips swallowed my dark chuckle. She fell into my arms. We went tumbling to the ground, where we fucked for hours, until her pussy was raw and so swollen I couldn’t fit a finger inside her, until we were glued together with sweat, wet and dried.
We fucked like convicts on death row.
The metaphor couldn’t have been more fitting, because the next day, the day of Lily’s wedding, neither of us doubted she might die.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lily
I held lilies between my palms.
Papà thought it would be cute.
Poetic, even.
Lilies for my Lily, he’d said, handing them to me before we were set to begin.
They weren’t the poisonous kind, and he didn’t realize I thought of death every time I looked at them, especially as I walked down the aisle in my hundred-thousand-dollar wedding gown.
A gaggle of Vitali and Amato children held my train. Papà’s arm steadied me, more threatening than reassuring. In front of me, a row of bridesmaids I’d barely spoken to in my life stood at the front of the chapel, hand-plucked by the Vitali elders.
My soon-to-be-husband was a virtual stranger, so much so, I only just noticed the small mole above his eye as I inched closer. And I had absolutely no idea who his groomsmen were or if he’d even been the one to select them.
Each step closer was a step closer to my death.
I’d lost my virginity.
In the very confession booth I’d just passed.
I hadn’t even considered the consequences over the fog of lust that clouded me whenever Frankie Amato neared. The same Frankie sitting close to the front with a few other Amato members.
I was so fucked.
I would never make it past the deflowering ceremony, let alone the honeymoon to poison my husband.
The option of excommunication was rarely given, and such benevolence was wasted on Carlotta, who’d dismissed the idea with a fucking laugh. I passed Frankie, swallowed the lump in my throat, and forced myself not to stare at him too long.
I expected him to wink at me. A wicked spark in his eyes or something equally playful. But he appeared serious. More serious than I’d ever seen him.
My final step onto the alter felt like the last I’d ever take.
Tommaso smiled at me while his eyes descended a path to the swells of my cleavage. “You look beautiful,” he mouthed.
I swallowed the vomit climbing up my throat and shifted my attention to Father Luigi. The sympathy in his eyes was almost too much. Maybe that was why he kept it short and skipped over most of the vows.
“Liliana Aurora Vitali and Tommaso Roberto Amato, have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other in marriage?”
“I have,” I lied.
Freely? What a joke.
“I have,” Tommaso echoed.
“Will you honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives?”
God, I hope not.
“I will,” we spoke in unison.
“Will you accept children lovingly from God and bring them up according to the law of Christ and his church?”
Children with Tommaso sounded as appealing as binge-eating rotten eggs.
“I will,” I lied. Again.
How many lies did it take to burn in flames on the alter steps? This had to be some sort of blasphemy. At this point, I welcomed the flames. It would happen sooner or later. Better now than during the deflowering ceremony.
“I will,” Tommaso parroted.
Father Luigi continued, “Do you, Tommaso Roberto Amato, take Liliana Aurora Vitali as your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
Tommaso winked at me. “I do.”
“Do you, Liliana Aurora Vitali, take Tommaso Roberto Amato as your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?�
��
Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.
My eyes shuttered closed. I couldn’t say this with them open. No way.
“I do.”
I tuned out the rest of his words. Father Luigi took his time blessing the rings. I plucked a thick band from a satin pillow and slid it on Tommaso’s finger, careful to touch as little of his skin as I could. He grabbed the replacement ring, a thinner band with a smaller diamond than the original gaudy one Frankie had stolen from the jeweler’s.
I preferred this smaller one over that monstrosity, but Tommaso’s lips turned down with displeasure as he slid it up my finger.
The weight of the ring felt like shackles, binding me to a man I couldn’t stand, a life I’d never chosen, a future that ended in my death.
I barely focused in time to hear Father Luigi finish his speech. “You may now kiss the bride.”
The second Tommaso’s dry lips touched mine, my eyes shot open. His tongue dove past my lips, stroking every surface it could reach. I drowned in his saliva, wishing it would end. That I could fade away.
Away from my family.
Away from this church.
Away from the hoots and hollers of the made men in the audience.
And finally—fucking finally—when I couldn’t take it anymore, my eyes slid to where Frankie sat, his expression harder than the granite lining the church floors.
And I realized, if this was to be my last kiss, I didn’t want it to Tommaso’s.
I wanted it to be Frankie’s.
CHAPTER NINE
Frankie
Watching Lily marry fuck-face Tom was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life, and that included watching Manuel decide between death and excommunication.
At least Manuel had a choice.
Lily had none.
No one else would have noticed the strain in her delicate jaw. The way her hands strangled the lilies in her grip until the spines snapped and the blooms lilted to the left.
Tales of Darkness & Sin: An Anthology Page 11