An elegant crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling, and the cream-colored walls are sparse, punctuated only by occasional gold-framed hotel-grade art.
Down the hall, I see a white kitchen with marble countertops and the seascape through a bay window above the sink, separated by a stretch of lawn and more privacy hedges.
With his palm still trained on my back, Kal guides me to the left side of the staircase, motioning for me to take the steps up. Gripping the rail so tight it makes my knuckles ache, I walk a few paces ahead of him, trying to ignore the way his touch intoxicates me.
Honestly, Elena, get it together.
We round the top of the stairs and his hand leaves me, wrapping around my shoulder, and turning me to the left. Passing a dozen closed doors on either side of the hall, we finally stop in front of the last one, and he removes himself from me entirely.
“This is… our room,” he says, pushing the door open with a sweep of his hand.
“Ours?”
Unlike the rest of the house, the master looks distinctly Kallum—still no personal effects in sight, all-black furniture strategically placed in different spots around the room, and long drapes above the windows blocking out any chance of the sun poking through.
“Yes. Did you think I’d make up a room special for you?”
Shrugging, I press my palms into my thighs, rolling back on my heels. “I don’t know how fake marriages work. I guess I just assumed our living arrangements would be separate.”
The creases around his eyes deepen, a glare rippling between his brows. He takes a step forward, a harsh glint liquefying his irises, and I move back until my ass hits a dresser, trapping me in place.
“This isn’t the first time you’ve suggested our union is less than legitimate,” he grumbles, stopping when the toes of our shoes touch, keeping his body a hair’s distance away from mine. “What the fuck do you think is going on here?”
I swallow, my nostrils flaring as I choke on the way his scent envelops me. “I don’t know. You haven’t told me anything.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, little one.” His hand grabs my ass, squeezing harshly before sliding up my side and around to my neck. Wrapping his fingers in a collar around my throat, he presses in at the sides, expelling the air from my lungs as he leans in and drags his nose along mine. “We’re married. Husband and wife before the good Lord himself. It’s as legitimate as yours to Mateo would have been, except maybe even more so since we know each other so intimately.”
Rising up on my tiptoes, I try to gain purchase and relief as the lack of oxygen burns the back of my throat. Desire stirs low in my belly at the rough feel of his hands on me, and even though fear is a close accompaniment, that’s what I find myself focusing on.
“Do you remember how I felt inside you?” Kal asks, shifting so he can push my jaw up and capture it between his teeth. Biting down, he latches onto my skin, the flash of pain sending a jolt of red-hot lust down my spine. “The way I split you apart with my cock and made you beg me to hurt you?”
Releasing my jaw, he skims down the slope of my neck, sinking his teeth into the base. I draw in a sharp gasp, a burst of red clouding my vision as my flesh breaks for him.
“Do you?” I grit out, rotating my hips in a slow grind against him, goose bumps popping up along my arms as I become acutely aware of his arousal.
“It’s the subject of my every goddamn nightmare,” he hisses, shoving his erection into my stomach, swirling his tongue over the sensitive spot he’s just made on my neck.
His free hand finds my left breast, plucking at the nipple with ghostlike strokes, making my back arch as pleasure courses through my veins.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see you. Spread out and bleeding beneath me, your sweet little pussy weeping, just waiting to get fucked.” He pinches my nipple, grunting when I let out a soft moan.
I stare at the recess lights in the tray ceiling, trying to ground myself as they distort my sight, but Kal’s touch demands my attention.
Straightening, he abandons my breast to trail his fingers over the bite mark on my neck, a heavy look of satisfaction hooding his gaze.
“Would that prove to you that this marriage is real?” he asks, his thumb smoothing back and forth over my mangled flesh. “If I took you again? Was the first taste of ruin not enough for you? Do you still crave my darkness, little one?”
Lust clogs my throat even as he releases me, moving backward. My hand comes up, rubbing over the now raw area, and he just chuckles to himself, adjusting the collar of his shirt.
Shame scalds my cheeks, both at the fact that I’m little more than putty to this man and that he seems to know it, too.
Whatever resistance I might have thought myself capable of when it comes to my new husband disappears the second he touches me, and it causes a cramp to flare up in my stomach like a bad omen, warning me of what’s to come.
Clearing his throat, he moves back through the doorway, gripping the knob with the same fingers that just held my windpipe beneath them.
“Supper is at eight. I’ll have Marcelline bring you a new phone, and you’re free to explore the property.” He hesitates for the briefest moment, and I wonder what he’s thinking.
If he wants me as badly as I want him, or if this is all a game to him. A means to an end, just like I was to Mateo.
I know he’s said he was blackmailed into the marriage, same as me, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something else going on, either.
My gaze flickers to the large windows across the room, sizing up the likelihood of them being accessible. I wonder how far of a fall it is from this floor, if I could make it out of this marriage before it destroys me.
Mamá’s voice rings in my ears, screaming at me to get out while I can. Her shoving things into my suitcases, trying to push me over my balcony herself when she learned who I’d married instead of Mateo.
I knew then that there simply wasn’t time, but that didn’t stop her from trying. Didn’t stop her from planting the idea in my head.
“If you run,” Kal says, somehow reading my thoughts, a cold note to his tone that contrasts deeply with the man who just had his hands all over me, “I will find you. And you will regret it.”
With that, he pulls the door shut, leaving me to sag against the dresser and collect myself in this strange, new place.
Chapter 9
“You treat all your house guests like prostitutes, or just the ones you need something from?”
As my hand drops away from the doorknob, I turn around and see Jonas leaning against the wall at the opposite end of the hall.
His dark brown hair has grown since I last saw him in person, the ends curling around his ear lobes and brushing his bearded jaw. Bright, violet eyes stare back at mine, disapproval lining the extraordinary irises.
Wearing a black leather jacket with his bar’s logo—a fire-breathing Minotaur driving a chariot—and dark jeans ripped at the knee, he looks completely out of place against the backdrop of modern, unused decor littering my home.
When my mother and I visited Aplana, we stayed at the Asphodel Inn on the southern, more isolated border; the stretch of beach behind the hotel was rockier and lacked a proper marina, so tourists tended to avoid it altogether.
Each year, my mother pinched and saved every extra cent she earned from a daycare in Boston, walking from our crummy apartment in Hyde Park, foregoing dinner after ensuring I had enough to eat, and making our own clothes on an electric sewing machine she’d found in an alleyway when I was an infant.
In all honesty, I’d probably have preferred a meal that didn’t consist of beans just once growing up over a weekend vacation in the dead of winter—the only time she could ever seem to get off work—but it was important to Deidre Anderson that her only son experience some life outside of Boston.
Outside the poverty my sperm donor had thrust us into, that her eventual cancer would exacerbate.
The first time I returned to t
he island years after my mother’s death, Jonas Wolfe was something of a household name; one of Aplana’s few year-round residents, his parents moved from London when he was a child, and he grew up on the north end of the island where businesses flourished and everyone seemed to flock.
One summer, a talent scouted him out for their modeling agency, catapulting him to fame before he was even a teenager.
Given that Aplana is primarily known for its crab export and wild mint, Jonas’s discovery gave the island an advantage over those included in the Harbor’s National Recreation Area, and for a long time they did whatever they could to lure people to the very place where America’s Next Heartthrob lived.
Until his twenty-first birthday, when he was arrested and charged with attempting to assassinate the owner of the island, Tom Primrose. After a brief stint in jail, during which he confessed to having ties to some secret organization, Aplana mostly shunned him, with a restraining order being taken out that didn’t allow him even within spitting distance of the Primrose mansion.
I recognized a lot of myself in him when news broke out about his arrest, and so I hired a lawyer, got his sentence reduced, and was there to greet him as soon as he was released.
During his incarceration, I acquired ownership of the Flaming Chariot, his dive bar that clearly operated as a front for whatever gang or society he was loyal to, then offered a partnership in exchange for his services.
He’d only failed at the attempt because of a leak, it turned out.
Among the criminal underground on the East Coast, Jonas Wolfe was evidently known for quick, traceless hits, and I made sure to make myself indispensable to him. Even back then, I knew one day my time with the Riccis would come to an end, I just hadn’t realized how soon it would be.
As with Elena, Jonas plays a huge part in the success of my plans, though I wasn’t expecting him to show up at my home unannounced. His presence now notches unease against my spine, curling over each vertebrae like a boa constrictor, squeezing until my vision blanches.
Leaning against the bedroom door, I stuff my hands in my pockets, forcing a casual stance. “You looking to find out?”
He chuckles. “Seems like an odd way to treat your wife, is all. Are you trying to make her hate you?”
Yes. Her hatred would be so much easier to deal with than the liquid heat blazing in her gaze every time she fucking looks at me. It’d probably also help if I wasn’t so keen to shove her against a wall every chance I seem to get.
“She’ll be fine.”
“Windows still painted shut in there?” he asks.
I shrug, pushing off the door and starting down the left staircase to my office at the back right corner of the house. We pass Marcelline dusting the top of the refrigerator in the kitchen, and she averts her gaze immediately, probably still traumatized by the things I made her an accomplice to yesterday.
Jonas follows, hot on my heels, and still his presence unsettles me. “Did you come here to talk about the logistics of my house, or because you have something to give me?”
“Bloody greedy, aren’t we?” He shakes his head, moving past me to the bar behind my desk, pulling out two tumblers and ingredients for a cocktail.
I settle in behind my desk, pulling up the house’s security feed and finding the one set up in the master bedroom instantly. As I click into her camera, a wave of déjà vu washes over me, reminding me of the last time I saw her like this from behind the same screen.
How she’d been sporting a few new bruises, ones I knew her fiancé had caused, and how I lost my fucking mind and showed up to demand she tell me what happened.
How we fucked instead.
My dick jerks to life inside my slacks, and I rub a palm over my zipper, watching now as she perches on the edge of the king-size bed and runs a hand over the black upholstered headboard.
God, I want more than anything to march back upstairs, flip her over on the mattress, tie her to the bed posts, and reenact our time together at Christmas.
This time, I’d stay. When she awoke in the morning, bloody and raw from my cock and fingers and knife, I’d work her over until she was pleading for another ride. Begging for me to cause her pain all over again.
And then I fucking would.
“Blimey,” Jonas says, rounding the desk with two dark pink drinks, strategically keeping his eyes trained above my head. “If you need a moment alone with her, just say the word and I’ll take my information and skedaddle.”
Rolling my eyes, I shift so my lap is situated better beneath the desk, taking the tumbler he extends to me. The drink is refreshing and tangy as I tip it to my lips, sipping slowly, waiting for him to continue.
He gulps his vodka cranberry down in five swift swallows, dragging the back of his hand over his mouth when he’s finished. “Right then. On to why I’m here. We’ve been trying to trace the identity of the person who sent you that sex tape for three days now. We’re no closer than we were seventy-two hours ago, and Ivers says there’s no end in sight. Whoever uploaded it onto that flash drive didn’t want to be found.”
“Ivers International is supposed to be the best fucking security firm around, but you’re telling me they can’t find a simple origin file or computer?”
“They’re running the drive through the wringer—Boyd Kelly’s words, not mine—but evidently it’s quite the process. He just wanted to inform you that he’d need an extension.”
Clasping my hands together, I exhale, irritation making my skin itch. “Fine. But if I have to step fucking foot in King’s Trace myself, there will not be an Ivers International when I leave. Make sure he gets the message.”
Jonas raises his eyebrows, his purple eyes piqued with curiosity. “Isn’t that your protégé’s family company?”
True, Kieran Ivers took over for me when I scaled back on my work for the Ricci’s remote operations in Maine; the twenty-seven-year-old hermit took to fixing the way I took to Elena Ricci—as easily as inhaling a single breath and releasing it back into the air.
Though he’s hardly my protégé. I taught him everything I know because I knew he could do it and I needed him to step in, not because I was looking to become a mentor.
Just another cog in my machine.
I wave Jonas off, gesturing for him to go on as I take another sip of my drink. He pulls out a small notepad from the inside of his jacket, flipping to a middle page.
He hesitates, then sighs. “Violet is still rejecting your payments.”
My jaw tics, but I nod still. “To be expected. I didn’t think she’d really warm up to the idea until she met Elena, anyway.”
Jonas scowls. “Does the mafia princess have a particularly persuasive tongue?”
His question sends a wave of desire through me, and I smirk. “Not one she’ll be able to use on my sister, no. I thought maybe if Violet saw me as part of a familial unit, rather than as some random drifter trying to get to know her and pay her debts, that she’d be more receptive to the idea.”
“Right.” He taps his thumb on the side of the notepad, pursing his lips. “About the whole... familial unit, thing.”
Setting my drink down, I pin him with a look. “If this is about me marrying her again, you need to let it go. What’s done is done, and I’m not going to be reversing it. She needs my protection from whoever is trying to blackmail the Riccis, and I need—”
“A wife,” he finishes, setting his notepad down on the desk. I just stare, confusion jumbling my thoughts, and he shrugs. “I know what the terms of your trust are. Your lawyer talks a lot when he’s drunk.”
I make a mental note in the back of my mind to find Miles Parker the next time I’m in Boston and slit his throat.
Jonas’s gaze shifts to the computer, where Elena reclines back on the bed in her room, stretching her arms out above her head. The movement makes her tank top ride up, exposing the smooth expanse of her taut stomach, making me pulse between my legs.
I grip the edge of the desk, trying to get a fucking
handle on the visceral way my body reacts to her.
“Anyway, it’s not that.” Jonas pulls his phone from his jeans pocket, unlocking the screen and holding it up for me to see.
My name is entered in the search engine’s box, a dozen news articles trending, some with live updates listed below my scarce bio from when I was a resident at Boston University. Annoyance ratchets down my spine as I scan the headlines, my hand already reaching for my own phone, dialing Rafe’s number before I can suck in another breath.
Disgraced Doctor Kidnaps American-Italian Socialite; Original Media Mogul Fiancé Missing in the Aftermath.
Rage bubbles up inside me, red hot as it licks a path up my sternum, spreading like hot lava through my chest. When my call is declined, crimson splashes across my eyesight, the dial tone making my body vibrate with violence, and I slam the phone down so hard on my desk that the screen shatters.
Shoving back, I push to my feet, smoothing my hands down the front of my suit, sucking in deep, shallow breaths as I try to maintain my self-control.
All he had to do was keep his fucking word, just this one time. I should’ve known better—the only thing Rafael is really known for these days is being a snake, and biting when backed into a corner.
Just days ago, I uprooted his life, taking his most prized possession right out from under him, and while my plan had been to navigate my next steps carefully and intelligently, this little ploy changes things.
If Rafe wants a war, I’ll bring the fucking battle to his feet.
Walking over to the wardrobe in the back corner of my office, I yank the door open and pull out a fresh pair of black leather gloves. Sliding them over my hands, reveling in the familiar stretch of the material against my skin, I admire the sleek look, knowing that soon they’ll be painted red.
And despite the noisy, intrusive thoughts playing on repeat in my head as I leave the Asphodel with Jonas, my nervous system has never been more at ease.
Promises and Pomegranates: A Dark Contemporary Romance (Monsters & Muses Book 1) Page 7