“I was wrong. I’d had a bad day, I took it out on you, and I’m sorry. And just to be clear, I did not bring you here so I could have someone to fuck. That’s not what you are to me, okay?”
She turns her head to rest her cheek against my chest like maybe she’s too tired to hold it up. She brings her eyes to mine and I see the tears inside them.
“You never told me what you want,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
“You said you’d let me go after I give you what you want. But you never told me what it is you want.”
“That’s gotten…complicated.”
“What does that mean?”
I slide my hand down over her belly between her legs.
She makes a sound, then furrows her brows and tries to push my hand away.
“Shh. Look at me.”
“Tell me. Just tell me.”
“I meant one thing I said last night.”
“What’s that?”
“I like having you around.”
Confusion creases her forehead.
I cup the back of her head, and when I rub her clit between my fingers, her mouth falls open.
“Damian—”
I pull her closer, kissing her open mouth. It’s a very different kiss from last night. This is soft. This is gentle. This is me giving for a change. Because I know all I’ve done is take when it comes to her. And I know I’m not done taking.
I also know she doesn’t deserve any of this.
The thing is, I can’t let her go. Even now as I draw back and touch her cheek, I look at my hand against her pretty face, and I think about how ugly it is. How ugly I am. How monstrous my world.
And how I’ve plucked her from hers to force her into mine. To ruin her for my own selfish ends.
“Sometimes, I look at you,” she says, licking her lips and swallowing as I bring her closer to orgasm. “I look at you and think about what you said the first night we met. The thing about monsters being out in the open so you can see their eyes.”
I don’t look away even though I should. Because I should shield my true nature from her.
Because what am I but a monster to do what I’ve done?
I told her it was for her own good when I forced that ring onto her finger. I think some part of me believed that, too, at the time.
At least I’d be saving her life.
No, not saving it. Let’s be clear here. I’d be sparing it. But if I go through with things, by the time I’m done, I’ll have taken more from her than she can imagine. And she won’t recover.
Something twists inside me at that. My brother is right. There’s no denying it. I will break this girl because it’s what I do.
I should let her go. But I won’t. And it’s not just that I don’t want to.
I can’t.
“Damian,” she says, and when her eyes close, I watch a tear slide down her cheek. It twists something inside me, all her sadness. Her constant sadness.
“Cristina.”
Her nails dig into my shoulders and she makes that sound. It’s soft and quiet and just a whisper, a breath. All I can do is watch her. Watch her beautiful face as she’s about to come.
But she abruptly opens her eyes then, pushing my hand off her, sending water all over the bathroom floor.
Turning to face me, she studies me for a long moment as she gets to her knees. I can’t read her. For the first time since I’ve had her, I can’t read her.
“Not like this,” she says and stands. She looks down at me as water spills from her, feet straddling me, pussy at eye level. Wet and pink and making me harder than I already am.
She climbs out of the tub and walks to the door. Glancing over her shoulder at me with an almost forlorn expression.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Not like this,” she says, and I follow her out of the tub, grabbing a towel and walking into the bedroom.
I watch as she climbs onto the bed, getting on hands and knees, ass to me. She lowers herself onto her elbows and arches her back, knees wide enough to make my dick throb at the sight of her like this.
Like she’s an offering.
An offering to me.
She lays her cheek on the bed and looks at me. “Fuck me, Damian. Fuck me like you want to fuck me. I know you’re holding back. I feel it. I don’t want you to anymore. I want you to show me who you are.”
I drop the towel, my cock a steel rod. Placing my hands on her ass, I spread her wider, then lean my face down to kiss her, lick her from hole to hole.
“God, Cristina.” I climb onto the bed behind her and situate myself between her open legs. She feels different than any other woman. She is different than any other woman.
“Do it,” she demands, facing forward as if bracing herself. “Fuck me hard. Make it hurt, Damian. Make it hurt when you make me come.”
Arousal overrules confusion as I slide into her wet cunt, moaning with the sensation of it, of the tight fit of her. I look at us like this, look at her take me, then touch my thumb to her asshole and hear her moan. I want that, too. I want to fuck that tight little hole too.
“Harder!”
“You want it hard?” I slap her ass, then dig my fingers into her hips and hold her steady, making her take my thrusts. “You like it like this?” I spank her again and again, watch her skin redden as I do, hear her suck in a breath, and feel her cunt drip around my dick.
Driving into her, I move one hand to her clit and push the thumb of my other hand into her asshole. She’s tighter there and tenses momentarily. I curl my finger, hooking her.
“I’m going to fuck this tight little hole too. I’m going to watch your face when I take your ass.”
She moans, arching her back for more.
“I’m going to come,” she manages, pushing into me as I rub her clit, finger buried in her ass, my cock thrusting with punishing strokes into her pussy.
“Come. I want to feel you come with my dick in your pussy and my finger in your ass. Come.”
“Make it hurt, Damian. Make it hurt.”
Caught up in the fucking that’s now become frantic, I do. I fuck her like she wants. Like I want. She cries out as she comes, her ass pulses around my finger, her cunt around my cock. When she looks back at me with those beautiful eyes, I lose it.
“God, I fucking love you,” I groan.
I register the words. Does she? But any thought is overridden by this animal rutting, this beastly fucking.
When I come, I lose all thought, only feeling her from the inside. Only hearing her moans as I drill into her, pushing her flat onto her belly as my cock throbs deep inside her. Deeper than I’ve been yet, emptying inside her.
Spent, it takes minutes to roll onto my side. She turns her face to mine, our heads resting on the same pillow. The only sound in the room is that of our combined breathing, ragged and worn out.
We just look at each other for the longest time, her eyes soft, quietly watching. Does she see that monster, I wonder? Is that what she’s searching for? She won’t have to look hard.
It’s when I touch her cheek to push back the hair that’s matted to her face that everything changes. It’s then she shutters her eyes and locks me out. The instant is so marked, I feel it like a chill.
It was too much too fast. “I hurt you,” I say. Fuck. I should know better even if she asks for it. She doesn’t know any better. I’m the first man she’s been with.
“You will always hurt me,” she says as if reading my mind. “You should always hurt me.”
I get up on one elbow, a weight settling in my gut.
“Never make love to me or touch me like you did in the tub. Never be gentle.”
I look at her, confused as fuck.
She sits up and looks down at me.
“I see you.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I don’t ever want to forget who you are. What you are. I don’t ever want to forget that you’re a liar and a monste
r. I want to see you with clear eyes, Damian Di Santo. And whatever feelings come up when you’re fucking me, know that mine will never change. I will always hate you.”
She spits the words and I’m dumbstruck as she wipes away a tear. Looking more hurt than angry, she slips off the bed and walks out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
24
Cristina
I’d moved some things into another bedroom earlier. It’s the one with the lock and although I already know he has a key, it makes me feel better to know it’s one more barrier he’ll have to get through to get to me. I don’t even care that I’m walking naked down the hall. I’m sure at least one of Damian’s soldiers is standing in the other room with a clear view of me.
It’s then that I realize something.
Lucas never answered one of my questions. It’s been niggling at me all afternoon but with all the other crap going on, I’m only now getting to it.
When I’d asked Lucas if he’d set the fire, he said he hadn’t, and I believe him. I think he’s too smart to actually do it himself.
But I know what I saw, and I can’t doubt myself. Not now. Not when everyone around me is using me to get what they want.
Now that I know about the fire, I wonder if what he was carrying out there was gasoline. When I asked him if he’d helped the men who’d set the fire, he deflected me expertly. He asked me a question in return, distracting me. And I’d so easily been distracted.
In a way, what I learned today has made me accept my situation. My captivity. And strangely, I’ve made some peace with it. Maybe it’s knowing the truth, as horrible as that truth is. Maybe it’s just finally having all the pieces and seeing them as they are, not as I want them to be.
Not as I want him to be.
Because I do want them to be different. And I want him to be different.
I didn’t miss what Damian said to me in there. I think it hurts more because he did say it. Because I do want to hate him, and if I say it enough times, maybe I will. If he hurts me enough, maybe I will.
Maybe one day, I’ll grow a brain and hate him like I should.
I looked at some of the birth control pills and compared them to my original pills. Although I couldn’t see any difference, I’m not sure what Lucas said isn’t true. It makes sense.
My arm throbs at the injection site. I look at it. The skin is an angry, swollen, red, and the bruise has darkened. I touch it lightly, but it’s so tender I pull my hand away.
I’m just picking up the key I’d put into the nightstand drawer to lock the door when it opens. Before turning around, I wrap my hand around the hilt of the blade instead.
I’m not surprised but my breath still hitches when I turn around to face a very angry Damian.
“What the fuck was that?” he asks, eyes falling to the switchblade I haven’t opened.
Keeping it in my hand, I pick up my robe to slip it on. I don’t bother to tie it closed. All the while, I’m very aware of the cum growing sticky on my thighs.
He’s put on a pair of jeans but is naked otherwise. When I see him like this, I can see him working in that shed. See his body slick with sweat as he painstakingly carves the intricate details on the Gates of Hell doors.
“If you open that, we have a problem. A bigger one than you made inside.”
I meet his eyes, stormy, a tumultuous gray. When he approaches me, I don’t have any room to back up.
He takes my wrist lightly. “Are we going to have a problem?” He squeezes just a little, showing me that if I fight him, I’ll lose.
“No,” I say, turning my hand over for him to take the switchblade from me.
“Good.” He pockets it. I guess he’s not risking it. “What the fuck was that, Cristina?”
“Which part?” I ask, sounding strangely calm even though my heart is racing.
“The part where you ask me to fuck you hard, come, then call me a monster and walk out.”
“Aren’t you a monster? Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to tell me? Isn’t that what you warned me about when I was just ten years old?” I feel my eyes warm with tears, and I know he sees them, too. I wish I was harder, more resilient.
I wish I were a monster too.
“Don’t you see anything I do? Hear anything I say?” he asks.
He told me he loved me. I heard that. But it was in the throes of fucking, so I call that the unreliable ramblings of a man thinking with his dick.
Yet something inside me twists because I am just stupid enough to want it to be real. I am just pathetic enough.
“I think that apart from Scott and Liam, every single man I have ever known wants something from me.” I walk away, needing space. When my back is turned, I wipe my face.
He doesn’t let me get far though. He’s standing in front of me again in the next second.
“Does this have to do with your impromptu meeting with my brother today?”
He must see the shock on my face.
“You didn’t think Cash was the only soldier I sent with you, did you?”
“You said—”
“I told you I’m not going to let anything happen to you. That means anyone who’d hurt you. Even my own blood.”
“You were having me followed even though you sent me with a soldier?” I ask, remembering Liam’s comment about the goons out on the street, and how I’d dismissed it when he’d suggested they were Damian’s men.
“Four additional soldiers were tailing you. That’s how I knew about Liam yesterday.”
“Did you do this for my own good, like everything else you apparently do?”
“One man—and a disloyal one at that—wouldn’t be able to stand against an attack. I wasn’t going to take any chances with you. They’ll hurt you to get to me. Don’t think they won’t try.”
It takes me a minute to digest those last words.
“And if you’re wondering, Cash has been dealt with,” he says.
“What do you mean ‘dealt with’?”
“I don’t tolerate traitors, Cristina. I hope you won’t become one.”
The way he says the word traitors and the way he’s looking at me make me shiver.
“If you think me a traitor, will you deal with me like you do your men?” My belly quivers, my courage fading.
He narrows his eyes to search my face. He’s not angry, though. He’s curious. And something else. Something I can’t quite put my finger on. Hurt, maybe?
Don’t be stupid.
“You’re my wife. I’ll deal with you differently if I have to. But I hope I won’t have to.”
It’s strange when he talks about me being his wife. It doesn’t fit. I’m his wife because he needs me to be. Period. If Lucas is telling me the truth. If my uncle is. Even if Lucas would lie out of hatred for Damian, why would my uncle?
“Now do you want to tell me about the poison Lucas spewed into your ear? Because I’m guessing that’s the cause for your little show in there.”
He lays his big hand on the flat of my belly and nudges me backward. When I reach the wall, he leans in close. He eyes the expanse of exposed skin and my mouth goes dry. I’m hyper aware of him being so close. Hyper aware of his body. His strength. His heat.
“And as far as that goes,” he starts, licking his lips and returning his eyes to mine. “I did like it. I liked you waving your little ass at me. I’m happy to bend you over and fuck you raw anytime you like. And like I said in there, I will fuck your asshole too. Just make sure I don’t do it as punishment, or you will know pain.”
I swallow so hard it’s audible.
He exhales a short, sharp breath, then steps back, looks around the room, and pulls a chair forward that had been placed against the wall.
“Sit.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” This time, he doesn’t wait for me to move. He puts me into the chair roughly. When he releases me, I stay there.
He’s bigger and stronger than I am. There’s no way I will beat
him physically and I won’t waste my energy trying.
“Now tell me what you did with my brother.”
“Didn’t the men you had following me already tell you?”
“Unfortunately, they couldn’t see into your uncle’s apartment.”
“How can two brothers hate each other so much?”
“Betrayal is betrayal, blood or not. Talk. And just to be clear, you get one chance to tell me the truth. If I even think I smell a lie, you will lose the few privileges you have gained.”
“Like being allowed out of my room, you mean? Only to be followed and spied on by your goons?”
He braces his hands on the arms of the chair and leans his face toward mine. “Talk.”
“I wanted to see my uncle, so Lucas brought me to him. I didn’t think you’d allow me to go, after all.”
“No, you’re right. And there’s a reason for it. It was nice of my brother to play taxi driver for you. He’s a nice guy, though. It’s what he’s known for.”
“Funny, he said the same thing about you.”
“Did you call him to meet you? Remember, I can check your phone, but I’d rather we learn to trust each other.”
“Trust each other? Are you serious?”
“Did you call him to meet you?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get his number?”
“He gave it to me yesterday. When he barged out of your study after your argument. He told me when I was ready to hear some truth, I should call him. Given how things went with you and me the night before, I figured I’d take him up on his offer.”
He grits his teeth and some stupid part of my brain tries to remind me how he apologized for that.
“Don’t keep me in suspense. What did you want to see your uncle about?”
“Liam said he’d been drinking, and I wanted to see for myself how bad it’s become. I thought if I talked to him—”
“Bullshit. You just lost your phone.”
“No!”
He sits on the edge of the bed and folds his arms across his chest. “Start again.”
Unholy Intent Page 14
