SWNOVELS Sold to the Italian Mafia Boss: Chapter 11
I meet Luca in the dining room for dinner, and the minute I step into the room, I feel the tension. It’s wound so tight that it stops me on the threshold like I’m detecting some kind of danger before I see it. He stands beside a record player on an ornate table, both objects so beautiful and old and well-kept that I’d be scared to touch them.
Even from behind, Luca is as beautiful as ever. He wears a suit so deep a sapphire it’s nearly black, his dark waves swept back. He stands with practiced ease, hands in the pockets of his silk trousers. He looks amazingly expensive, refined. He looks like he’s not from my world at all, and in many ways, I guess he’s not.
But in so many others…we have so much in common. In so many ways, we know one another better, more intimately, and more closely than outsiders ever could. We might be enemies, poised on different sides of the battlefield. But at the end of the day, Luca and I are still, and have always been, soldiers in the same war.
“How was your work today?” He asks. There’s a hint of something dangerous in his soft voice. I reluctantly cross the room, hands clasped in front of me. When I join him before the record player, he doesn’t so much as look at me. “Did you discover any other traitors on your list of contacts?”
He means Arthur. “No,” I say, still embarrassed that I didn’t catch Arthur skimming off the top. He’s already paying for it, but I’ll make sure he pays with far more than cash. As soon as I’ve gotten some power back, he’ll have much more than Luca to contend with. “Luca, are you OK?”
“I’m very well, thank you.” But the smile he gives me is made of ice. It doesn’t even get close to touching his eyes. “What would you think,” he asks, shifting his gaze back to the soft ripple of the record on its wheel, “if you were one of my men?”
I could play coy and act like I don’t know what he’s talking about. But I’ve sensed a shift in the atmosphere here over the last few weeks, and it’s no wonder. With how things have gone… “I would be nervous.”
His glance is sidelong, muted. Like he’s watering down every emotion inside of him. It scares me. I’ve only known Luca to wear his heart and his intentions on his sleeve, for better or for worse. I’m not sure what to make of a man I can’t read at all. A man that is hiding himself from me.
“Why?’ He asks. “Why would you be nervous?”
“You had a massive security breach last week,” I say. “You were shot. Six of your men died here, in your home, within days of kidnapping a kingpin’s daughter. But the most significant piece of it all is that it wasn’t even the Irish that invaded and almost killed you. It was the Russians.”
“Does it matter which Russians?”
“Hardly. Russians shooting up your house aren’t the ones on your payroll.” But I hesitate as I say it, shifting to look at Luca more closely. “Unless they are.”
“You don’t trust Ariana.”
“I’d be a fool to.”
He looks at me sharply. “You’re calling me a fool.”
“You don’t trust her,” I say, even though it’s more a hope than an actual belief. “I’m not calling you a fool at all.”
He nods, running a hand roughly over his beard. “I was too hasty.” He paces away from me, crossing to an ornate gold and glass liquor cart between two towering windows. The crimson velvet drapes, four founts pooling on the floor, are pulled aside and bound. Outside, the wind howls, whipping currents of snow through the pitch-black night. They look eerie. Like ghosts. “I should not have taken you for a wife.”
It’s a punch to the gut. It shouldn’t be. Luca is my enemy. My kidnapper. My captor. And I know, I know better than to think that whatever has transpired between us is anything but calculated. Still…the way he’s touched me and talked to me, the way he’s been with me—maybe it makes me an idiot, but some part of me was starting to believe it was real.
Stupid, stupid girl, I think, shamed at how stung I am. At the flush that I feel creeping up the back of my neck. I steel my voice, school my face into a mask. “Why?”
“I’ve made a target of myself.”
“You were already a target, and you were only brought into the crosshairs more by bringing me here.” Slowly, I cross to him, stopping with one hand on the cart as he pours both of us a glass of whiskey. I don’t take mine when he offers it. “Marrying me was a calculated risk. One that is already paying off.”
“One that is already costing me.” He faces me, his eyes finally flashing, finally filling with life—with anger. “There are rumors circulating that I may make an ally of your father.”
I stare at him, confused. “You may.”
“No, Kate. I will never call your father a friend.”
My stomach drops. “You’re acquiring my contacts,” I say with a humorless laugh. “You’re binding yourself in business with me, with my father—”
“No. Not with your father. With you, yes. With his organization, or whatever the fuck is left of it.” He brushes past me, drinking, and kicks out a chair from the table. He sits in it, legs splayed, eyes narrowed, grip loose on his whiskey glass. “But this week has reminded me how much blood has been spilled between our families. Your father is the reason mine is dead.”
“Luca. Please.” I go to him, kneeling, taking his hands in mine, and looking up into his face. “Don’t make this a mission to kill my father. I’m here because you called in his debts. I’m here to pay them off. With my accounts, with my contacts—with myself, and my body, and my future.” I feel tears well. Usually, and so far, I’ve kept myself from showing emotion to him. But right now, with panic fluttering behind my ribs, I can’t help myself. I just don’t have the self-control. “Let me pay those debts. Let my father live. Better yet, befriend the organization. We’re married now, whether you like it or not. We can make this a true empire. With longevity, with legacy. Don’t you want that?”
He looks down his nose at me, beautiful, cold, brutal. He finishes his whiskey and places the glass on the table. And I sit there on my knees like a supplicant, his eyes brooding. “I don’t know if that’s what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“Your father, dead.”
“But why, Luca? Why now? What changed?”
His expression darkens. “What do you mean, what changed? This is not a marriage of love, Kate. Don’t be naïve. I care about you as far as you’re worth financially, politically, and powerfully. You’re not my girlfriend. You’re barely an excuse for a wife.”
I flinch, embarrassed again that he has the power to hurt me. When did that happen? When did I make the mistake of handing that control over?
“Ariana wants me in bed with Pyotr Petrov.”
It’s a knife, cold and blunt, thrust up between my ribs. I look up at Luca in astonishment. “He’s a snake,” I say, almost breathless. “He is notorious. The worst of the Russians. Your father and mine worked together to route him out of Eastern Europe in the nineties; that’s how my father’s debt was acquired—”
“I know that.”
“You’re considering it?”
“Of course, I’m not considering it,” he says frigidly. “But the fact that he thinks he stands a chance is a testament to how I’m being perceived at large right now. And Ariana’s intent…” He releases a sharp breath through his nose, scrubbing his jaw roughly with one hand. “You’re out of control, Kate. I’ve given you too much leash.”
I crumple my hands into fists on his thighs. It’s the first time I notice the bandage on his hand, stained rusty with blood. What the hell really happened today? What changed? What the hell did Ariana say to him?
“Luca,” I say softly, firmly. “Look at me.”
After a moment, he does.
“You have no leash,” I say, holding his gaze. “I am not yours. I will never, never be yours. You have a set of literal controls over me. My geography. This house. The lock on my door. The contract we signed.”
He stares at me, something sparking in his dark eyes. Anger? Interest? Hatred? I can’t tell. I don’t care.
“But at the end of the day, Luca, I am not your friend. I am not your ally. And in every sense but the most literal, I am not your fucking wife.”
His mouth twitches. It’s the hint of a cold, hateful smile. It’s an admiration of me. Not as a girl he’s captured, but as an enemy, as an equal.
“What I am,” I continue, leaning closer, sliding my hands, intuitively, a little possessively, up over his thighs. “Is an opportunity. A door to a world you’ve been annexed out of for decades. And I’m more than willing to work with you—I want to work with you. Whatever has transpired between our organizations, between our fathers, I’m overlooking now. This is a new time. And if you can just trust me, trust that we can change everything. Write a new narrative for both of our families. For the family, we can make together.”
His brows are low, his eyes narrowed to slits. But he doesn’t look angry anymore. He looks calculated, thoughtful. Like maybe he’s considering what I’m saying.
“Luca,” I say. “You will never put me on a leash. But why would you want to? That’s not the kind of wife or partner I can be for you. But what I can give you is better. I can give you an equal.”
“You’re cocky,” he murmurs after a moment, studying me. His expression is intense, but now in a different way. And when he reaches for me, I don’t pull away. Coward, fool that I am, I lean forward, heat flooding through me as his fingers dance over my mouth. “I should kill you.”
I gently slide my hand over his wrist, bringing his palm to my lips while holding his eyes. “You don’t want to kill me, Luca.”
“No?”
“No.” I remember what he said in bed, the way he practically ordered me to beg, and yet, in a way, didn’t he hand control to me then? Hasn’t he done that already, more than once? He trusts me more than he wants to, more than he’s letting on. I should be happy about that. That’s a vulnerability I can weaponize and use against him. That may be my ticket out of this. But…do I really want one? “You want to fuck me.”
His eyes flash. “Is that so?” His voice is husky, and when I slide his finger slowly into my mouth, I don’t miss the way his jaw clenches, the way his eyes narrow. “If I were wise, I would sell you off. Burn the marriage contract. Take your archives and cripple your father.”
“You are wise,” I say softly, pausing to drag my tongue up the bottom of his finger, my eyes never leaving his. “And that’s why you haven’t done any of that. You know I’m more valuable to you alive here.”
“Do I know that?”
“I suppose you’ll have to find out, Luca.”
“How do you suggest I do that, Kate?” His eyes fall to my mouth, to his fingers, sliding in and out of it. He’s tensing, getting aroused. Good. Is it the control I like, though? Or is it just that when I’m with him, all logic dissolves? That when I’m with him, all I want is for him to fuck me and make me forget everything else?
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He pulls me to my feet and stands, lifting me and pushing me roughly onto the table. Plates clatter, and he swipes a hand across the table, sending glasses and silverware crashing to the floor. But I barely even process it. I wore a dress for him tonight. Hopeless. I was embarrassed at first, feeling like a fool to find him in a mood like this. Now I’m happy that I did.
He slides his hand roughly up the back of my neck and into my hair, gripping a fistful of my curls so tightly that I gasp, my hands flying to his chest. He looks at me hard down his nose, his eyes blazing. He looks so beautiful, so powerful, so dominating that I can barely look at him. My heart is in my throat. A little tremor works through me. And he doesn’t kiss me as his hand drops to his belt buckle. Our gazes remain locked as he pulls himself free, as he shoves my thighs apart with his, as he yanks my panties aside.
“You’ll be the death of me,” he says coarsely, his voice low. He clenches his jaw, pressing closer. Pressing himself between my legs, teasing me. I tremble, weak, wet. Unable to tell him no. I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Because right now, at this moment—I don’t want him.
I need him.
“Look at me,” he orders. I didn’t even realize that I had dropped my gaze. My fists are balled against his chest, my pulse going absolutely haywire, every inch of my skin burning, feverish. Slowly, I drag my eyes up to meet his. “Good girl.”
Without waiting, without hesitation, he thrusts himself inside of me. And I gasp, gripping his suit jacket, pleasure erupting through me instantly. “Fuck,” I whisper, stunned. Luca scoops up one of my thighs, bringing it up around his hip. His hand is still in my hair, still gripping so tightly my scalp stings. I love it. More than I could ever admit. “Luca…”
“Open your mouth.”
I look at him sharply, fear lancing through me. But his eyes are clear and lucid, stormy with desire. With possessiveness and jealousy and domination that makes me—powerful, self-assured me—want to get on my knees for him. His hand shifts from my hair, locking around my neck. His thumb moves up over my chin.
“Open,” he repeats, more roughly, “your mouth.”
Slowly, I part my lips for him, my whole core shaking. Luca tips my chin back and draws close, our eyes meeting again. I can barely breathe. Everywhere we’re touching, we’re throwing sparks, the very air electric, dangerous to the touch. He leans toward me as though he is going to kiss me. Instead, he spits in my mouth.
Holy fuck. In the same instant, he does kiss me, hard, his tongue shoving into my mouth. I moan weakly, hands shaking where I cling to him. And as he kisses me, he thrusts into me again and starts fucking me right there, my dress hiked to my hip, on the dining room table.
How the fuck did I get here?
Why, why do I love it as much as I do?
But I do—I do love it. Who cares why? We’re here. We’re together. Nothing else matters. Let it all fucking burn. I run my hands roughly into Luca’s dark waves, sitting back on my ass and spreading my thighs for him. The way he kisses me could end the world. It’s brutal, possessive, and hungry. It’s full of something I would never say out loud: affection.
Love?
The thought is a bullet, catching me hard in the ribs. I don’t dare let myself think of it again. Instead, I fall against him; I give myself to him. He grunts, his hands on me rough but delicious, his rhythm fast and hard and almost careless. “Fuck, Kate,” he mutters, clenching his jaw. “Fuck.”
I rock my hips into him. When I lean in to kiss him, his hand around my neck tightens, and he holds me there, at bay. Close enough to touch, but not touching. Maddening. He’s driving me crazy. He’s going to make me beg. But I’m already slipping into the pleasure, and I’m already forgetting everything but the heat of his skin, blazing against mine. I’m already forgetting everything but the weight of him against me, the delicious pleasure of him inside of me.
My moans rise, sharp, high, and I let my head fall back, let my body fall against his. He’s fucking me hard now and fast, his hand flattening against the flat of my back as he enters me deeply. Fuck, fuck, fuck. His breath hitches, ragged, and he groans softly: it sends me straight over the edge. I gasp, throwing back my head, crying out my pleasure as the orgasm swells within me and breaks like a dam.
“Luca,” I gasp, eyes shut, head back. I grasp for him blindly, catching a fistful of his shirt, throwing my hips against him as the pleasure shatters through me. It’s a flood, pulsing, and he groans as he, too, hits the climax, spilling himself inside of me. We move together in that perfect, sweet, dangerous space of simultaneous climax, a place where, at this moment, in this place, only we exist. “Fuck…”
I collapse back on the table, gasping for breath. He plants both palms on the table, breathing hard himself, bracing himself as he comes off the high. I can’t think straight. Why bother? I just lie there, my body wonderfully spent and weightless. Until finally, after a few moments of our pulses slowing, Luca pulls away and zips up his pants.
I can tell he’s angry. I don’t need to ask him why. I could probably formulate a numbered list. The enemy in me wants to strike while he’s vulnerable, convince him to my side, use this—us—against him. But the softer side of me, the wife (in whatever context that I am a wife), the girlfriend, the lover, wants to care for him.
But he doesn’t give me a chance. He paces slowly back to the liquor cart and pours himself another drink. And he says, without looking at me, “Go to bed, Kate.”