After climbing the stairs, I veer to the right toward my rooms. The house is built in a large U-shape. We each have our own wings—my father, my sister and her son, and I. Even Lucas, the prodigal son, still has his rooms. Although those are untouched and left exactly as they were the day he left.
I don’t miss my brother—he’s a fucking bastard—but I do wonder where he’s gone.
With all the stone, this house is almost always deadly quiet. We take three turns down various corridors, then climb another set of narrower stairs up to Cristina’s bedroom. She’ll be lost for days if she wanders out of her room on her own.
Elise opens the heavy wooden door and steps aside.
I walk in and look around.
This room is at the back of the house with a large window overlooking the forest. I wonder if she’ll appreciate the view. It’s almost as large as mine with warm lamps burning on various surfaces, and the antique, four-poster canopied bed the focal point of the room.
Elise draws the plush duvet back, and I lay Cristina down.
“Thank you, Elise. That’ll be all,” I tell her, dismissing her. I want to be alone with my captive now.
The door clicks closed behind me. I first take off my jacket and toss it to the foot of the bed, then start by removing her sneakers. Ugly things. Her socks are next, and I drop them on top the shoes. Her feet feel cold, so I press my palms around them, warming them up as I take in the soft pink polish on her pretty toes.
Clearing my throat, I straighten. She doesn’t resist when I sit her up to take off her jacket, then pull the sweater over her head before laying her back down to glance at the delicate lace bra in a similar shade of pink as her nail polish.
Pretty in pink.
Pretty even for the scar that I trace down over neck and throat to her chest and finally, to her heart where it’s thickest. Where I see the shadow of how they stitched her up.
Laying the flat of my hand there, I feel her heart beat slow and soft beneath the swell of her breast. I shift my hand, sliding my fingers beneath the lace of the bra to cup her breast, and feel her nipple harden. Then hear her let out a soft moan.
I draw my fingernails over that nipple and watch her face contort, watch her turn her head, her eyes never opening.
Leaving her bra in place, I adjust my cock before undoing her jeans and sliding them down over her hips. They’re tight, and her panties, which match her bra, come down a little to expose the top of a neat triangle of dark hair between her legs.
My mouth waters at the sight, and I haven’t seen anything yet.
Is my reaction to this girl because I’ve been counting down to this moment for nearly a decade? It’s not as though there has been a shortage of pussy but my dick is acting like it’s starved at a mere glimpse of Cristina’s pubic hair.
“Christ.”
Once I strip off her jeans, so she’s lying in just her bra and panties, I think about how vulnerable she is.
How she is the sacrifice.
How in a way, we both are.
She mutters something, her forehead furrowing. She must be dreaming. I want to know what it is she sees when she closes her eyes. We share a common horror. Is it that?
She turns her head, eyes still closed, then settles back down. I look her over—I can’t not—and take in the soft mounds of her breasts, flat belly and slender legs.
Hooking a finger into the waistband of her panties, I drag them down just a little. Just enough to see the pink lips nestled between her thighs. The mound of dark hair is trimmed neatly and leaves just enough to grip and tug.
I swallow hard at the thought but draw my hand away. I don’t touch her. Not like that. I’m not monster enough to fuck a drugged, unconscious woman, so I’ll be taking care of myself tonight.
Although I should strip her bare, take away everything from her life before me, I leave both bra and panties in place. I wonder if she’ll be grateful. I doubt it. If it was up to my father, she’d be lying on the cold stone floor in one of the rooms below ground. But it’s not up to him.
I pull the blanket over her, then switch out the lamps one by one before I make my way to my own room, through a locked door in hers, to which only I have a key. There, I strip off my clothes, dropping them on the floor, appreciating the modern furnishings against the ancient walls. The brightly lit spacious bathroom I renovated just a few years ago is fitted with modern fixtures, a large shower big enough for two, and a separate bath.
I switch on the shower, step beneath the flow, and turn my face up into it. I’m glad today is over. Glad to have the girl here in my possession.
Mine.
Remembering the weight of her breast filling my palm—how her nipple hardened, and she moaned at my touch—I grip myself with the same hand I used to draw her panties down to look at her pretty pink pussy. I pump my cock as I imagine how she’ll look with her legs spread wide. I wonder if I’ll have to force her or if she’ll open her legs for me. My dick growing harder at the idea. I imagine how she’ll taste, how tightly her cunt will squeeze my cock when I fuck her. When I stretch and fill her.
I imagine how she’ll try to resist even as she comes.
That thought has my muscles tensing as I press my forehead against the wall. Squeezing my fist, I come against the glass as I think about how much she’ll hate herself for it. For wanting the pleasure I give her. For wanting me.
Because she’ll learn that I am her master. And that while I’m her jailor, I’m also the only thing standing between her and the true evil in this house.
7
Cristina
Lightning shatters the heavy veil of silence. I groan, desperate to wake up and open my eyes.
A pounding rain threatens to break the windows as the storm rages. I’m a little girl again. A little girl on that terrible night.
No. I don’t want this dream. This nightmare.
Not this one. Please not this one.
Another explosion of light and sound. It’s just like the night of the accident. I was scared then too. My parents had been arguing louder than ever. But maybe my mom just wanted to be heard over the lightning. Maybe she just wanted my dad to stop yelling and listen to her.
Scott and I are sitting in the back seat. Neither of us are in car seats anymore. We’re big enough to just use the seat belt.
When I turn to him, he’s watching me. I wonder if he knows why they’re fighting. What’s gotten into them this last year. They used to be so close and so happy. We all used to be happy.
Don’t they know what they’re doing to us? He must see the tears I’m trying to hide because he reaches out a hand to squeeze mine, my ever-protective big brother. But when he does, the rock I’m holding, the one he gave me a few weeks ago, slips from my hand and drops to the floor.
It’s heart-shaped and smooth in a spot almost like someone had rubbed it away there. I’ve carried it with me ever since Scott gave it to me. Whenever their arguing gets too loud or I get scared, I tuck my hand into my pocket and worry that stone.
A train sounds its horn in the distance. My dad slows the car as we get to the intersection. He mutters a curse because the storm has knocked out the electricity, so the traffic lights aren’t working.
Scott reaches to undo his seat belt. He’s just going to grab the stone.
But I know what comes next. I know. And I’m going to see it again if I don’t stop him.
If I hadn’t dropped that rock, would he still be alive? Would he be here with me?
“Scott, no,” I try to say, but I can’t move my lips. I can’t make my tongue work. I can’t even move. My body too heavy. Dead weight.
Smiling, he puts his finger to his lips because he knows how much trouble he’ll get into if Mom catches him out of his seat belt.
I’m shaking my head. We’re closer to the tracks now. I hear the train, and I want to scream for my dad to slow down, but my mom is already yelling at him, she’s so angry with him.
He doesn’t listen because he’s
too busy being angry back.
Scott is on the floor. Maybe he’ll put his seat belt on before it’s too late and this dream will end differently. Maybe I won’t hear the screeching of tires or my mother’s scream or the smashing of steel on steel. Maybe I won’t feel the shards of glass turned into sharp, deadly daggers slicing my chest open, cutting out a piece of my heart.
“No!”
My eyelids fly open. The sweat that covers my skin chills me as I listen to the sound of the rain outside and squint to see my surroundings. It’s too dark in here. Too cold. It doesn’t feel like my room. Doesn’t smell like it.
My head weighs a ton as roll onto my side, and when I do, I see a shape. A man’s shape. Through the fog of my mind, I know it’s him. Damian Di Santo. He’s sitting in the chair across from the bed watching me, wolf eyes intent on me.
A dream within a dream.
I’m trapped twice over.
I need to get up and get out of here, but I can’t move, and my eyes are closing again. I shiver with cold, but then he’s by my side, towering over me. He pulls the blankets up to my neck like he did when I was little. His eyes are just as unreadable as back then. The furrow between his eyebrows the only marker of emotion. The room fades to black and the sound of the rain grows more and more distant as I drift off again.
I squint against the bright, glaring light coming in from an unfamiliar window. Turning my head away proves to be more painful than I expect, and I groan.
“Warned you about that headache.”
My eyelids shoot open, and I bolt upright, stilling instantly, squeezing my eyes shut again as I process the pain of the sudden movement.
The events of the night before come flooding back. The school library, Barbara’s flowers, then getting home to find him there. Damian and his men.
That contract.
What my uncle told me.
Liam helping me to run away.
The train. Him stopping it. Coming on board.
Him stabbing me with that needle.
It’s real. All of it is real.
I touch a hand to my neck where he stuck me with the needle. It feels bruised and tender. I open my eyes. The room slows its spinning and comes into focus.
Stone walls, furnishings that belong in a house about a hundred years ago, the modern touches like the giant window and in the distance, gray and green and dreary beyond it.
I turn to focus on him.
Damian Di Santo.
Di Santo. It means saint. He’s no saint, though. He’s a demon.
“What are you doing?” I ask when I see him flipping through my passport that Liam had put in the pouch.
“You don’t travel much.” He tucks it into the back pocket of his jeans. Through his black sweater, I can see the muscle of his chest and the broadness of his shoulders and arms as the wool hugs his body close. His dark olive skin is visible from the V-neck collar.
I don’t want to find those things attractive. Not on him.
“Those are mine.” I push the blanket off as he counts out the money before pocketing it, moving on to the credit card and the sheet of paper on which Liam had written down his mom’s address and phone number.
He’s already looked through my toiletry bag. I see he’s set my toothbrush and the container of birth control pills out. My laptop is beside them.
He looks over as I still, the room spinning when I swing my legs off the bed.
“What did you give me?” I ask, following his gaze down to find I’m in my bra and panties. I tug the blanket to cover myself, a new alarm sounding. “Where the hell are my clothes?”
He shifts his gaze casually back to the bag as he tucks the empty pouch back into it and picks up Patty, my brother’s stuffed rabbit.
“Aren’t you a little old for this?” he asks, holding it by the ears in his deformed hand the same way he had held Sofia that first night I met him.
I force myself to stand, the stone floor cold against my naked feet. The room spins, but I grab one of the four posts of the bed until it stills.
He watches me. Like before when he stole me off that train, he’s not in a hurry.
I push through the nausea and the dizziness to get to him, and I reach out to take Patty back.
“Don’t touch that,” I tell him.
He grins and lifts it over his head and out of my reach.
“Careful, sweetheart,” he says, catching me when my knees buckle.
I lean against the dresser, close my eyes, force my knees to lock. I look up at him. I’m tall, but not so much next to him. He’s well over six feet.
My head hurts. I touch it, but the pain is inside.
“Sit down before you fall over.”
Another wave of nausea has me clutching my stomach. It feels sour, and he’s right. I have to sit down. He walks me backward and when my knees hit the leather of the chair, I drop onto it. It’s cold beneath my naked thighs, my almost naked bottom.
I look at the chair. It’s out of place. Too masculine and way too modern for this room. For this time. Because looking around, I swear we’ve gone back in time.
“Better?” he asks.
I lean against the back of the chair. No, not better. I feel sick.
Walking over to the nightstand, he picks up the two pills and glass of water I hadn’t even noticed.
“Here,” he says, holding the pills and water out to me.
“I don’t want more drugs.” I shove his hand away.
“Aspirin. It’s a kindness.”’
“A kindness? You’re the reason I feel like this. What the hell did you give me anyway?”
“Are you a doctor? Would you know if I told you? Take the pills, Cristina. Don’t be so stubborn.”
“But I am stubborn, Damian.” Saying his name feels good. It gives me some of my power back. But I look down at the pills in his palm anyway. It’s the damaged one.
“Is it the hand that’s holding them that bothers you?” He doesn’t move to hide it from me. “Disgusts you?”
I look up at him, surprised at the question. Is that what he thinks? “No.”
He appears momentarily surprised by my answer. “Take them. They’re just aspirin.”
I try to gauge if he’s lying, but I can’t imagine he has a reason to drug me again. He has me right where he wants me.
I take the pills and swallow them, draining the whole cup and watching him watch me as I do. I wonder why he asked if the scar tissue disgusts me. Is he sensitive about it? People must stare. They stare at my scar, too. I wonder how far up his arm the damage goes and then remember my own state of undress.
“Who undressed me?”
“I did.”
He hasn’t let his eyes drop from mine. I’m perfectly aware of how much this bra and panty set leaves exposed.
When he turns his attention back to the stuffed rabbit, I force myself to stand and go to the bed again. I grab the throw blanket at the foot of it, wrapping it around myself.
“No need for that,” he says without bothering to turn around. He’s studying Patty. “You’re not the first woman I’ve undressed.”
“Am I the first you’ve drugged?”
“Yes, actually.”
Jerk.
“What else did you do while I was unconscious?”
He turns to me, eyebrows raised. “I had a look. Not as thorough as I’d like, though. Is that what you want to know?” he asks, wolf eyes narrowed on their prey. “Or do you want to know if I touched you?”
I feel myself blanch.
“I didn’t. Not my style.” He shifts his gaze back to the stuffed rabbit. “It’s not the same one,” he says, confusing me.
“What?”
“The rabbit. Sofia, right? She had pink ears.”
He picked up that detail and remembered it from all those years ago?
“Did this belong to your brother?”
“How do you know about my brother?”
“Don’t you remember what I told you? I know everythin
g about you.”
I go to him, and this time, he lets me snag Patty out of his hand. I retreat. “Don’t touch it. Don’t touch anything that belongs to me.”
“But what’s yours is mine, Cristina. You belong to me, remember?” Walking toward me, he forces me to match his steps in the opposite direction as I back away from him.
This close, I need to crane my neck to look up at him. He’s fully dressed, while I’m almost naked not to mention how much taller and bigger than me he is. I’m at a complete disadvantage and I feel it even more so when the toes of his shoes touch the tips of my bare ones.
“I don’t belong to you. People aren’t things you can own,” I say when my back hits the cold stone wall.
“Hmm.” His gaze roams my face, hovers at my lips, then returns to my eyes. “I’ve never seen eyes that color.”
My breathing is shallow as I process his words, try to understand his meaning. His intention. Because what the hell does he want with me?
“Well, now you have. Let me go.”
“They’re very pretty.” His gaze drops lower to where I’m clutching the blanket, and the look in his eyes sends a charge of electricity through me.
This man, he’s part beast. And he’s hungry.
“You’re very pretty,” he adds.
Why do I feel flustered at that? I don’t get a lot of compliments, so maybe it’s that I’m not used to it. I don’t think I’m ugly, but the scar on my face, well, it is ugly.
“What were you dreaming about?” he asks.
He knows about the dream. He was here, sitting in the chair. He was watching me. I remember.
“Nothing. None of your business.” I try to shove past him, but he captures my arm, stopping me. We’re closer than we were just a moment ago, and it’s hard to keep my breathing level. Hard to mask my reactions to him when I can’t quite figure them out myself.
“Tell me.”
“Why?”
“You were restless. It got worse when the lightning storm started.”
“I wouldn’t have had it if you hadn’t drugged me.”
“Is that right?”
No, it’s not, but I don’t tell him that. I have that particular nightmare every single time it storms.
Unholy Union Page 7
