“You are leaving so soon?”
“I stayed far longer than I intended,” Luca replied.
“I hope you enjoyed yourself.”
“Far more than I thought I would,” he replied cryptically.
The host laughed. “I am happy to hear that. Perhaps you will come again soon.”
“I will see you on Thursday at the office.”
“Of course. Have a good night.”
“The same to you,” Luca said formally, then his hand was guiding me towards the front door where a man was standing guard.
“Do you have a coat?” Luca asked me.
“Yes,” I said and walked over to the hat check girl. I gave her my ticket and she came back with my aged green coat. Before I could take it from her and slip into it, Luca had taken it and was helping me into it. His warm fingers brushed my neck and I shivered.
The doorman nodded at us politely and opened the door.
A gust of cold wind blew into us as we stepped out into the night.
When we started to descend the steps, a man got out of the long black limo that was parked directly in front of us, and nodded politely at Luca. He was obviously Luca’s chauffeur. Salvatore had parked his car further down on the driveway, but it seemed as if Luca Messana had been given the honor of being able to park his mode of transport right in front of the entrance.
“Home, Cullinan,” Luca said shortly.
Cullinan, the chauffeur, was a thin man in his fifties or maybe even in his sixties. He had a stoic, distant expression on his face as he came around to hold open the door for me. Brand new, luxurious black leather waited for me inside.
For a moment I hesitated.
There would be no going back after this. I turned and looked at Luca. In the light from the overhead lamp, he looked almost sinister, the scar on his face, glowing livid, and yet that heat, that unnameable thing between us, sizzled in the cold air. He was not Salvatore. I never felt this with him.
This cold, heartless man had zero feelings for me beyond wanting me as a temporary toy to discard as soon as he was bored. But for me it was already different. Different than I had felt for any man I had ever come across before. I felt a cold finger of fear run up my spine. Some instinct told me to run away. Now. While there was still time. For this man would break me and I would never be the same again.
Then, an image of my father flashed into my head. Bald from the chemo and looking older than his years, his pale hands laying limply at his sides, but smiling bravely at me. I had known he wanted to say something to me, so I had bent my head towards his bloodless lips. “Don’t worry about me. I’m just going where I belong, with your mother,” he had whispered in my ear so my stepmother, who was standing by the door wouldn’t hear.
“No, Daddy. It’s not time for you to go. Mama can wait a little longer for you. Don’t leave me now,” I had whispered in his ear, my voice choked, and tears welling up in my eyes. At that moment, I had decided I would do everything in my power to keep him on this earth.
And I had. And not a single regret either.
I would do it all again for you, Dad. All of it. Even those unbearably long nights with Salvatore when I felt battered and bruised because he had tried and tried but couldn’t come because he was too damn high.
It was easy to slip into the car and listen to the door seal my fate with a quiet click.
Seconds later, Luca entered the plush space. I turned to glance at him. In the dim of the interior, he seemed even more aloof and forbidding. The driver took his place and the car started. Almost immediately, I noticed the two cars that rode with us. One in front and the other behind.
“Can you amuse yourself for the next hour?” Luca asked.
“Of course,” I replied woodenly.
He opened his laptop, and I turned my head and stared out of the window. I stared at the scenery and watched buildings become houses and houses become trees and countryside. Then finally, we arrived at a big set of black gates. Black lion statues sat on the pillars of the gates.
Of course, this was his house. Torrington Hall was one of the most famous houses in Boston. Once it had stood in England. Then a billionaire fell in love with it and decided to import it to the states. Every block of limestone, decorated tile, oak panel, and marble slab in it had been meticulously taken apart and put back together again in a vast estate he had purchased in the countryside. It had made the news two years prior when the billionaire who owned it sold it for sixty-two million to an opaque off-shore company.
Very bizarrely, I had once been so fascinated by it, I had even dreamed I was living in it. In my dream, I was Beauty from Beauty and the Beast and I was in its grand, tall-ceilinged dining room. I was sitting alone at a long dining table set for two. The room was lit by the many candles inside the many chandeliers and the great candelabras positioned around the room. I was dressed in a long white dress and my hair was done up in an old-fashioned style. It was as if I had gone back in time to a different century.
I knew I was waiting for Beast.
I could already hear his heavy steps thundering through the house, making even the floor quake with fear. In my dream, I felt no fear. Calmly, I stood and turned towards the entrance of the beautiful room. As the Beast’s footsteps came nearer even the huge double doors started to shake.
Just as the golden handle turned, I suddenly woke up.
Chapter 7
Skye
And now... here I was.
It was too surreal to believe I was at the house of my dreams until the limo rounded the unforgettable and massive fountain of a group of lions shooting water from their mouths, and stopped in front of its limestone steps.
My hands trembled slightly as the driver got out of his seat and came over to my side to pull the door open. His face was still and expressionless and his eyes did not meet mine. And yet I could feel the judgment in his body. I was there for his master’s entertainment. Just a slut.
A wintry night breeze had picked up when I stepped down from the vehicle, I felt the cold rattle my bones. My old coat didn’t have any pockets that I could hide my hands in so I held my hands behind my back, and followed Luca silently, in awe of my surroundings and the colossal wealth, beyond anything I could comprehend, that was necessary to own such a place.
The stunning mansion and its environs were generously lit. Rays of light shone from the buried lamps scattered amongst the surrounding shrubbery and dense trees. As we climbed the steps, I noticed the massive lion-head knocker. There were two lamps on either side of the great doors, and I noted that there was no switch for a bell, and decided that it was reasonable since only those granted access through its gates would be able to arrive before this door.
In seconds, the door was pulled open revealing a uniformed woman with a healthy amount of white in her dark chignon. She had a round face and a motherly figure, but her sharp gaze on me through round rimmed glasses was discomforting. She stepped aside so that we could come in.
“Melania, this is Skye. She will be staying for a month. Settle her in the Oyster room,” Luca said.
“Yes, Sir,” she replied immediately with a deeply respectful nod.
Without another word or glance at me Luca took his leave, and I was left standing in the midst of a gigantic foyer with a woman who very obviously disapproved of me.
“Follow me,” she said coldly, and started walking away quickly.
My throat tightened with emotion because some small piece of me secretly knew and recognized that was what I had become, but I swallowed my feelings of despair. So what, if she and the driver thought I was a whore. Their condemnation changed nothing. They knew nothing of my circumstances. I was doing this for my father and nothing anyone said or did could change my mind or make me feel as if I was doing something wrong.
I caught up with her quickly and followed her ramrod straight back through wide hallways dotted with marble statues and walls decorated with huge chilling dark art until she opened a door and we reache
d a different section of the house. A much poorer section with plain walls and poorly lit, narrow corridors. It was also much colder here. We went up a wooden staircase and walked through another corridor so badly lit that my shoes caught on the edge of a strip of carpet.
At my gasp, she stopped and turned around to glare at me.
“Sorry,” I whispered. I was no shrinking violet, but the things that had happened that night, meeting Luca, this intimidating house, her stern disapproval had all made me feel unsure of myself.
She turned around and continued on her way. Suddenly, she stopped and opened another door, and to my surprise we were back in the majestic part of the house. Halfway down the wide corridor full of doors, she turned the handle of one of the doors, and opened it.
I followed her into an absolutely stunning room and looked around me in awe. At the exquisite wallpaper, the wonderful huge bed full of snowy white pillows, the fairytale lead windows, the gorgeous velvet curtains. It was an almost magical room. When I was young, living in my tiny home, I would read fairy tales about princesses and always imagine rooms like these.
“This will be your room,” she announced robotically.
I turned to look at her unsmiling face and it dawned on me then, she had deliberately taken me through the servants’ quarters to demonstrate how lowly my position was.
“This way,” she said, and proceeded towards a pink marble bathroom. There was a claw feet bath on a pedestal. I was so in love with it I could hardly pay attention to her as she explained how the shower and bath worked.
“The dressing room is through there,” she said pointing to a door. Then she turned around and started walking back towards the room.
I followed her.
In the middle of the room she stopped and turned around to face me. She pointed towards a bell on the wall by the bed. “There’s the service bell if you need anything. Press it and someone will come to you, or if you just have a query, you can pick up the phone and dial 9. You can have breakfast brought up to you here, or you can have it in the sun room. If you require a full cooked breakfast, please give us half-an-hour notice. Dinner is served at eight. Attire is formal. If you require nothing else, I bid you goodnight.”
“I require nothing else,” I said.
She nodded and withdrew from the room.
When the door closed the tension in my body snapped. I walked over to the bed and sat down on it. My finger stroked the rich damask bedspread. It felt cool and silky under my skin. It felt real. And yet… in a state of disbelief, I looked around me. Was this really happening to me? It felt like a dream. Utterly unreal. I stood and walked to the romantic windows.
My window faced the front of the house. Below I could see the lion fountain, and follow the line of lamps that lit the driveway, but most of the estate’s grounds were shrouded by the darkness of the night. I turned my face towards the sky and found it full of twinkling stars.
Even though it was freezing outside, I opened a window and leaned out to look at them. For a second, I felt as if I was a charmed Princess in a fairytale. And just for that fleeting moment I forgot I was a bought woman. Then the enchanted air was shattered by the thunderous engine of a high-end sports car. Headlights appeared at the end of the driveway and instinctively, I pulled back, and stood hidden behind the curtain.
A canary yellow Lamborghini screamed to a stop in front of the stone steps. The driver’s door floated up and rap music blared out. A balding, portly man, hopped out. He was wearing a blue shirt, and had his sweater slung flamboyantly around his shoulders the way men from the Mediterranean sometimes did. In his hand, he carried a large envelope. Nimbly, he ran up the stone steps and disappeared from my view.
Frigid winter wind blew into the room I was in, but I didn’t move an inch.
I couldn’t see her face, there was a young woman in the car, a redhead with very pale hands. I watched her change the channels of the stereo. She pulled down the visor mirror and applied lipstick. Then she examined her nails. Afterwards she pulled a small tube of cream from her purse and creamed her hands.
The man reappeared. The car door floated up once more. Pop music blared out. He got in and the car roared off. I realized the room was now freezing cold and I was shivering. I closed the window and went to sit on the bed and wait. There was a steel claw tightly furled around my heart.
I didn’t have long to wait.
Chapter 8
Luca
I pushed open the door to her room. The room was cold and the only illumination was the lamp by her bedside. Still wearing the same white dress she’d worn to the party, she perched on the edge of the bed. In yellow glow from the lamp, her blonde hair shimmered like spun gold. She seemed ethereal, almost unreal. I felt as if I’d snared an unsuspecting angel into my lair of sin.
I shut the door and leaned against it.
We stared at each other and I could feel the lust spreading through my veins. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this pure, visceral, uncontrollable lust for a woman. I was intrigued by the effect she had on me. I understood that it was not just her beauty. There was something about her… something I couldn’t put my finger on. From the first moment I’d noticed her walking towards the summerhouse, even before I had seen her face properly, my attention had been arrested.
Yes, I wanted to listen to her scream as I brought her past the brink of sanity, her body quaking and shuddering at the storm of pleasure engulfing her, but it was more than that. I was already falling into the trap Salvatore had fallen into. I wanted to keep her, make her mine for a long, long time. I pulled back the thought. That was moth to flame stuff. No, she was here for a month and not a day longer, and whatever this ‘fascination’ was had to be completely and totally purged by then.
I straightened from the door and walked over to her. Stopping a couple of feet away from her I held out the thin sheaf of papers in my hand. She took them from me wordlessly and glanced at it.
“Ah, the contract… and NDA. So quickly,” she murmured.
“Yes, I had my solicitor draw it up as we drove here. It’s pretty standard stuff.”
“Do you have a pen?” Her voice was small, defeated.
It made me angry. I didn’t want her to be small and defeated. I wanted her to be wild and strong. “Don’t you want to read it first?”
“Not really.”
I frowned. “Haven’t you learned anything from your dealings with Salvatore? Read the contract. It’s only a page long. You can go through the NDA tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she said.
I brought my pen out of my pocket and handed it to her. Then I headed over to the velvet armchair that directly faced the bed and settled into it.
Silence descended upon the room as she went through the contract.
There wasn’t a time in my past when I would have sat down to watch someone read a contract. I’d have been bored to tears, but I couldn’t stop watching her. It seemed as if she wasn’t quite reading the thing. Just letting random words jump out at her. She exhaled softly and lowered the documents to her lap. Then she uncapped my fountain pen and began to sign, date, and enter her address into all the places that required it.
A quiet excitement buzzed through my veins. Now she was mine.
When she was done, she placed the signed papers on the bed next to her and raised her eyes towards me.
“Let your hair loose,” I said.
She lifted her arms to undo the pins that held up her hair and I saw again the ugly bruises the two-bit hustler had left on her skin. It made me angry. I examined the emotion curiously. Strange, anger was not an emotion I associated with women. Actually, other than the deep feelings I had for my mother, I never felt anything for the female species. Other than lust, of course.
Shiny blonde hair fell in a cascade down her shoulders and back. Her beauty took my breath away.
“Good. Now, strip,” I ordered.
Her blue-eyed gaze collided with mine, and what I saw in them sent a powe
rful kick to my libido. I was used to timidity, flirtatiousness, eagerness to please, sometimes even fear in the women I took to bed, but never outright defiance and smoldering hate.
“Changed your mind, Skye?” I taunted, when I knew she had done nothing of the sort. She was so desperate to save her father and get out of Salvatore’s clutches she would have sold herself to Shylock himself.
She didn't say a word. She didn't look away from me, and she didn’t stand either when she hooked a hand under the thick strap of her white dress and let it slip off one shoulder. She was trying to make the strip as unsexy as possible. She had no idea. There was nothing she could have done to make this less sexy. The other strap followed, a couple of buttons at her side were unhooked, and the material slid down her torso.
She was wearing a nippleless lacy black bra. I knew instantly she would be wearing matching crotchless panties, and that the hustler had forced this unimaginative paraphernalia of a sexual slave on her. I let my eyes travel over her pink nipples and creamy skin and felt my dick hot and hard against my stomach.
She had to do a slight shimmy to get the dress off her hips and down to her knees. Then the dress slid down her legs and pooled at her feet. I saw more blue-black bruises on her hip which pissed me off. She sat in her matching slut’s bra and panties and stared at me as though she was hoping I wouldn’t ask her to go any further than this.
As if that were possible.
I always got my money’s worth.
“Open your thighs. Wide,” I commanded.
She pressed her lips together, looked away from me, and spread her legs. And I saw what I had stolen away from her captor. Both her inner thighs had ugly bruises, but inside the crotchless panties her pussy was young, freshly shaven, and sweetly pink. It looked like a fruit that had just been cut open to reveal the juicy insides. My mouth began to water.
Beauty and the beast: A Modern Day Fairytale Billionaire Mafia Romance Page 3