No one else knew what hell she was going through in this holy place, because no one knew Liliana Vitali.
Not really.
Not even me.
But what I did know made me crave her to the point of sin.
My lust consumed me enough to give me a hard on just watching her at the altar in virgin’s white.
My envy enough to spur my imagination to morbid daydreams, where Tommaso’s blood was wet and hot on my hands. A murderous baptism as I plunged a knife into his back.
My greed and gluttony were so acute, my stomach cramped and my hands itched to stalk to the front of the church, rip open her expensive dress with a mighty tear, and gorge myself on her sweet body for all to watch.
And I was proud enough to believe I could have her against all the odds.
As I watched her marry a man who was in every way inferior to her, the only sin I followed through on was sloth.
I sat there, and I watched.
By the time the ceremony ended, my heart had successfully corrupted my more highly evolved instincts.
The beast that lurked in the pit of my belly broke free from its bonds, overriding my humanity. I was an animal with hatred. All instincts. No conscious. Wild and deadly.
When Tommaso disappeared behind a door near the altar, I followed.
He was tall, maybe handsome if you liked men with weak chins and weaker minds.
But he was no match for me.
The shadows were deep between the narrow walls of the ancient church, so he didn’t notice me until I was on him. My arm banded around his throat like a boa, compressing the scream that rose to a soft wheeze.
“Did you enjoy that kiss with your new bride, Tommy?” I hissed into his ear, raised the knife in my free hand to his belly, and played the edge against the thin fabric of his dress shirt. “I sure as fuck hope so, because it’s as close to Liliana as you’ll ever get again.”
“You’re a dead man,” he managed to croak before I slammed him up against a wall.
The tip of my knife dug into his side so hard, it tunneled through the fabric and skin. Red bloomed like a flower over his kidney.
“You were a dead man the moment you put your mouth on what’s mine,” I growled, lost to the dark pleasure of my rage. “Any last words, Tom? Before I stick you like the suckling pig they served at your wedding dinner?”
“Fuck. You.” His weak gasps barely reached my ears.
“I’ll pass. But I did fuck your wife, and trust me,” I paused, angling the knife so it slid beautifully between his ribs, “if I’m dead like you say, it was fucking worth it to see Liliana’s blood smeared on my cock as I took her.”
He dragged in a raspy breath of furious surprise. It choked off into a wet gurgle when I plunged the blade into his body and the tip broached his poisonous heart.
I held him close as his struggles weakened, just to feel the life leave his body.
This was the man who was ready to indenture Lily to a loveless marriage just so he could rise in the ranks. This was the man who was willing to rape her on their wedding night, because he felt it was his right.
This was the man who’d insisted Don Amato kill my brother.
And now, in some Shakespearean twist I knew Lily and her dark heart would relish just as much as I did, he was nothing.
Because he was dead.
It was too easy, really.
I disposed of Tommaso’s corpse in the crematorium attached to the back of the church and snuck through town into the courtyard of the Vitali home I’d been stalking for weeks.
It was tradition for the bride to lose her virginity in the house of her father. A symbol of her passing from his possession to that of her husband’s.
Lily hated the patriarchal cast of our culture. Knowing her and what it was doing to her, I did, too.
Everything I’d ever known and believed in was poisoned by this feeling that bloomed in my chest. Maybe I’d sprung a new organ. One bigger and stronger than the one that had pumped my heart before.
And with each beat of this new pulse, it seemed one name echoed through my thoughts.
Lily.
I had to get to her.
Because of my mindless obedience to the laws written by my forefathers, I’d manipulated and seduced her like sport. And now, she was going to die for it.
Killing Tom wasn’t enough.
I had to ensure she lived, even if it was only for one more day.
The Vitali house was oddly quiet as they prepared for the deflowering ceremony. Servants hustled with heads down, lighting candles and placing flowers in a path leading up to the bedroom.
Lily was the only one in her chamber, sitting on the edge of her bed with the curtains of the four-poster bed tied open on one side. Her eyes fixated out the window, across the street to the place I’d sat and watched her. She was lost to her thoughts, face pale, lips in a thin, pressed line.
Before the bed, a row of padded leather seats had been laid out like the seats of a luxury theater. Within minutes, they’d be filled by representatives from all major Sicilian families. All there to witness her supposed deflowering.
When I padded across the floor and leaned into the bed, Lily didn’t stir. My breath wafted over her neck a second before my hand wrapped around it.
“What a pretty fake virgin you are,” I whispered, squeezing her throat when she jumped and tried to turn to me. “What a lovely, filthy little liar.”
“Frankie,” she breathed. A shiver ripped up her spine. “What are you doing here? They see you, and we’re both dead.”
“Don’t you want to live a little before you die?” I breathed, running my nose down her ear and inhaling her fragrant floral perfume that made my dick hard. “What are the odds of either of us getting out of this alive?”
“Tommaso and the Council will be here any minute,” she argued, even as she tilted her head to give my lips better access to her neck.
“Then, we’d better close the curtains.” I pulled her farther onto the bed and into my arms.
She gasped at my touch. It occurred to me that, if we died tonight, it would be intwined with lies. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
I slipped her silk robe off her shoulders and ran the pad of my thumb across her collarbone. “I lied to you.”
Fierce eyes met mine. So strong for a wilting lily. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“A union between the Brunos and Vitalis would weaken the Amatos. They sent me to ruin your marriage.”
Anger flew across her face before resignation took its place. “They sent you to take my virginity. It was all a game.”
I lifted her hand and pressed it to my heart. It beat faster at her touch. “Does this feel like a game?”
“You’re such a talented liar, I have no doubt you could convince your heart to lie for you.” Her nails scraped my skin, digging into my chest as if she intended to tear it from my flesh. “You’re not a good person, Francesco Amato.”
“I’m evil, my poisonous Lily, and you like it.”
Her eyes flashed with warning, but I was right, and she knew it. “You need to leave. They’ll see you. Tommaso—”
“Fuck Tom. The only man inside you will be me.”
I sunk my teeth into her neck and sucked hard, bringing a bruise to the surface. A physical reminder of my possession. When I was done, I pulled back to study the wet purpling skin and adjusted her small form, so she laid spread out for me on the pristine white bedspread.
I rose to my knees over her and leaned to flick the curtains closed, ensconcing us in warm, sheltered darkness, sheer enough to hide all but the shape of our bodies.
She laid there on her back, slim legs spread, that flush I loved warming her skin to rose gold. Desire rimmed her eyes. She might not have said it verbally, but with every inch of her body, she told me she trusted me.
And I intended to take ruthless advantage of that.
I fell on her, hands in her hair, tugging and twisting. Her mouth fel
l open in a gasp for my plundering tongue. She tasted of communion wine and heat so incendiary it sent flames racing through my blood.
Heavy footsteps pounded the old wooden steps leading to the bedroom, followed by low grumbling voices speaking in antiquated Italian.
The Council had arrived.
Lily stiffened beneath me as she heard them too, but I didn’t let her protest.
Instead, I reached beneath the hem of her long lace dress and ran my fingers up her thigh until I reached her underwear. I pulled back, so I could see her eyes, and smirked at her as I snapped the fabric between my fingers.
“I own this pussy,” I whispered into her ear and played my fingers in her soaking wet folds. “The moment I broke your hymen, you were mine.”
“Only because I didn’t want my fate dictated by others,” she argued, and fuck me, if I didn’t love her sass even in the face of such a fucked-up situation.
“And you chose the more charming of two evils,” I teased, sliding two fingers inside her and watching her brown eyes blow to black with lust.
“I was damned whomever I chose.”
Her breath stuttered when I pulled away and unzipped my pants to tug out my steel cock. It visibly throbbed, weeping a pearl of precum just at the idea of being inside her again. Her little fingers tore at my shirt until it opened.
She brushed the piercing on my nipple, surprised by its existence. We knew so little of each other, but it was enough.
Around us, hidden by the curtain, the councilmen took their seats. A rush of heeled footsteps pattered across the floor, signaling their escorts had arrived.
I slotted my hot crown against Lily’s wet entrance and teased her by thrusting just the tip back and forth inside her. “At least this way, you’ll earn your spot in hell.”
And then, in one cruel thrust, I seated myself inside her.
Her yelp of lust-tinged pain echoed in throughout the room, prompting a low murmur of pleased voices from outside the curtain and a swell of applause.
Liliana’s virtue was long gone. All that remained was the corrosive, dangerous levels of desire swallowing us whole.
“Brace,” I warned her, voice low for only her to hear. “I plan to give these old perverts a show they won’t ever forget.”
Her nostrils flared, but her limbs wrapped around me almost as tightly as her pussy around my cock. “I want them to hear you make me cum.”
I groaned, shoving my face in her neck, so I could lick and suck at the salty skin there. My hand arrowed between our bodies, playing and pinching at her swollen clit.
She mewled and arched like a cat into my body, needing more.
I thrust shallowly, dragging the head of my cock against her front wall until she writhed and begged for more.
“You like my cock, don’t you, Lily?” Her moans drowned out my low murmurs. I squeezed the raspberry peak of her breast and thrummed my thumb against her clit. “You want to come all over me, don’t you?”
In answer, she threw her head back into the pillow, mouth pink and slack as she hissed then scream with pleasure and came apart all around me. I gritted my teeth at her walls clenched around me like a fist, desperate to fuck her hard through the climax while staving off my own.
I wanted to fuck her until that newly broken-in cunt was swollen closed with overuse.
“Bite me,” I ordered as she panted after coming. I pressed my wrist to her damp lips. “Do it, Lily.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Your death would hurt me more. Now, bite me.”
Her eyes flashed. She bared her little teeth and wrapped a hand around my wrist. I groaned, cock kicking. She tore into my skin, blood spilling over her lips.
Quickly, I pulled my hand away and smeared the blood between her thighs, against my dick as I held it halfway inside her wet heat, and across those pure white sheets beneath us.
“You bled for me,” I whispered into her ear when I’d finished. Red still glistened on her lips. I leaned down to lick it clean, kissing her deeply. “Now, I bleed for us.”
Her moan vibrated through our bloody kiss, her hips surging up against me, already eager for me.
“My slutty virgin,” I practically purred, dragging my cock out of her tight folds and savagely beating back into her. Again and again until sweat beaded on her crown and her legs shook. “My poisonous Lily loves to be fucked, don’t you?”
“Only by you.” She gasped when I hit that spot inside her that made her soar.
“You like my thick cock inside your snug cunt?” I needed to possess her in every way. Needed to hear how much she wanted me. To see if it was anywhere close to as much as I wanted her.
“Yes,” she chanted. I planted another bruise against the minute swell of her breast. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“I’m going to come with you,” I warned and grounded my hips against her, the wet sounds of our joined bodies loud in the cocooned bed. “Deep inside you, so you’re entirely filled up with my cum, and when you face the Council, it will drip down your thighs.”
“Oh my God,” she cried out, so loud, the soft sound of the escorts pleasing the councilmen paused for a brief second. Lily’s eyes squeezed shut. She clutched me to her and convulsed with the violence of her second orgasm. “Please, I need to feel you cum inside me.”
I was a goner the second those breathy words left her lips. The base of my spine tightened. With a roar like a conquering heathen, I planted myself to the root inside her and came.
Again, our climaxes were met with leering calls and applause from the old men gathered around the bed, ruining the bliss of our post-coital glow.
“Come, child,” Paolo Vitali called from beyond the veil. “Present to us your bedclothes and the evidence of your union.”
Lily bit her lip, her eyes wide with panic. I brushed my hand over her forehead into her hair and anchored her with a sharp tug.
“You’re fine, my poisonous Lily,” I murmured against her lips. “There’s blood to show, and no one will be any the wiser. They’ll leave the room after you’ve shown them what they want to see.”
“The wrong man is in my bed,” she hissed, careful to keep her voice low.
I cocked my head, studying the sweet blush in her cheeks, loving the way she still clung to me even after our fuck. “Maybe, but I think the right man is in your heart. If you want a different kind of life than the one your father has bought you, you’ll go on your honeymoon as planned. I will find a way to meet you there.”
“Are you serious?” she gasped. “There’s no way.”
“You let me worry about that,” I ordered, punctuating my words with a hard kiss before I rolled off her and started to strip the sheets off the bed. “Now get your sweet naked ass out there. The pervy old guys want to see my cum and your blood on your pretty thighs.”
She hesitated for only a moment before collecting the sheets. A thin layer of sweat and lust coated her naked body.
Before parting the veil, she paused to look over her shoulder at me and whisper, “If this is the last thing I do, I’m glad it was with you.”
And then she slid out from the curtains, naked and beautiful and mine.
A moment later, a raucous cheer erupted from the men, and I knew it was done.
Liliana was saved from death and disgrace.
Now, I had to make sure I would be, too.
CHAPTER TEN
Lily
I’d never been inside the High Council’s chambers, but the fact that I still had Frankie’s cum dripping down my inner thigh as I sat before the Council seemed on brand with the shit show of my life.
Papà sat near the center of the elevated curved benches, right beside Uncle Vanni, my cousin Renata’s dad. Growing up, she’d described him as cruel and vicious. I’d never talked to him long enough to confirm her assertion, but gossip ran rampant in Sicily.
Mamma’s best friend Luna once whispered about how Uncle Vanni had forced his wife Margot, a frenchwoman who’d had the misfortun
e of marrying into my family, to have a threesome with them.
The hottest orgasm of my life, Zia Luna confessed over a cup of Lavazza.
I’d run to my room and looked up the words “threesome” and “orgasm,” falling down the rabbit hole of Pornhub for a solid hour before Papà knocked on the door to check on me. The same Papà currently staring at me like I’d chopped off his arm and fed it to one of Carole Baskin’s tigers.
“Do you know why you are here, Liliana?” Uncle Vanni’s voice boomed across the chambers.
Representatives of every major mafia family flanked him on the raised bench, including my husband’s and paramour’s. The sight would have intimidated me, had I not been so resigned to my death. Maybe that was why I hadn’t bothered holding back during the deflowering ceremony.
If it was going to be my last time, I wanted it to feel good.
And it did.
Holy shit, it did.
They say sex follows love.
I wondered what follows sex.
Probably nothing short of a miracle.
I sighed, drawing it out as if it’d change my fate. “No.”
“We will ask a series of questions about the events that took place two hours ago in the ceremonial chamber.”
“I’m not sure what I could tell you that you don’t already know. You all were there with me.”
They’d probably enjoyed it, too. I’d heard a few groans and grunts past the canopy. No matter how serious they made the deflowering ceremony seem, rumor still had it that escorts were rushed in and out of the ceremony before the bloodied sheets were offered.
I didn’t even have it in me to blush at the thought of these men getting off with me.
The don of the Amato family cleared his throat. “Our vision was blurred by the veil.”
Piero Bruno sneered at me. “We couldn’t tell it wasn’t my son you were fucking.”
I wanted to shutter my eyes shut, to fade away into the wall and reappear when it was safe. Instead, I swallowed my reaction long enough for Uncle Vanni to speak.
“Enough, Piero.”
Tales of Darkness & Sin: An Anthology Page 12