Captive for Christmas

by Annabelle Winters

  “What?” I say with a frown as I focus on her question. “No, why?”

  “Well,” she says, turning her head and taking a long breath. “Your chefs appear to be cooking up a feast in the kitchens. Cakes, cookies, hot chocolate. Now I smell honey-glazed ham, roast turkey, casseroles, pasta, olive oil simmering on the stove, hints of cooking-wine in the air.”

  My frown cuts deeper as I realize she’s right. “This is how it’s always been done at Christmas,” I say slowly. “But there’s no party. It’s just me and my staff.”

  She blinks up at me like she’s puzzled. “So you spend Christmas with your staff? That’s kinda nice. I bet they appreciate being treated as equals by their boss.”

  I shake my head. “No, most of them leave before midnight so they can spend Christmas with their families. They set the table for us, and . . .” I trail off as I remember that this is my first Christmas since my parents died earlier this year.

  “Us?” Bari says. “Oh, you mean your mother and father.” She pauses and takes a breath. “They died this year too, didn’t they? That’s why you came back from Italy.”

  I nod stoically. There’s no grief in my heart, and I wonder if I ever loved Mother and Father. I don’t even feel guilty for not being sad. Hell, maybe I am the monster people say I am. Why not? That’s what they said about Mother and Father too, didn’t they?

  “How did they die?” Bari asks with a tenderness that surprises me even though there was no love lost between our families.

  “Old age and illness,” I say coldly. “It was a long time coming,” I add.

  She blinks and opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something. But she stays quiet and just nods like she gets it, like she understands that being who we are is complicated, that our parents have a hold on us long after we become adults. Perhaps they have a hold on us forever.

  “You think it’s a strange coincidence that both of us lost our parents in the same year?” she says after we lie together in silence for a while. I’m still on top of her, but the mood has changed, and it’s pissing me off.

  “The last thing I want to talk about right now is our fucking parents,” I growl, rolling off her and lying on my back beside her. “What are you, my therapist?”

  “I’m not talking about our parents, Brusco,” she snaps back at me. “I’m talking about us. The fact is, losing our parents somehow brought us together—albeit in a twisted, roundabout way.” She takes a breath and turns to me. “And that was a long time coming, wasn’t it?”

  A chill goes through me as I turn on my side until we’re both facing one another on the silk carpet. “What do you mean?”

  She blinks and swallows. “Well, I seem to remember our parents having a discussion about . . . well, about . . . a . . . a merger, I guess.”

  I cock my head as my breath catches. “You remember that?”

  “Sort of,” she says softly. “I don’t think the discussions got too far along. In fact I think your mother was kinda insulted at the very suggestion of the mongrel Bellano blood tainting the purebred Barzini line.”

  I grunt and shrug. “Yeah, well, my Mother was from a different time. I don’t believe in that racist crap.”

  Bari studies my expression like she’s wondering if I’m being honest, and her silence pisses me off.

  “What, you don’t believe me? Fuck, Bari, I just came inside you. I just put my seed in you. I just made you mine. What the fuck is that look supposed to mean?! You don’t trust me?”

  She blinks and glances off to the side. “I don’t trust either of us, Brusco. Parents influence their children in ways that are subtle, insidious, hard to escape, hard to even know sometimes.”

  “So this is a therapy session,” I mutter, feeling my anger mix with some other emotion—an emotion so raw it doesn’t have a name, doesn’t have a face, feels darker than the charred remains of what that Christmas fire has burned through as it watches us face our Ghosts of Christmas Past, the clock ticking ominously in the background like there really is a timer counting down to an explosion, a climax that could go either way. What the fuck is happening, I wonder as I stare into Bari’s eyes. I can see the flame reflected on her shining face, and it occurs to me that the same dark, unnamable emotion is rising up in her too.

  My mind spins as all those doubts and suspicions from earlier roll through me, making my stomach tighten as if my body is fighting the thoughts, desperately trying to remind me that if I open the door to logic and common sense I’m done for—we’re done for. I followed my most basic, most simple instincts to claim my woman, to take her like men have taken their mates for two million years. But now I can feel the doubts pushing their way into both of us, reminding us that the game is still on, that although I’m certain as hell we’re together, the question of what brought us together needs to be answered before we can truly find peace, truly claim that forever.

  “Doesn’t the Bellano mansion have a security system?” I say as my need to know bursts through and takes over. “An army of bodyguards? You know there’s no fucking way someone from outside your family could have done it.”

  Bari blinks, her body tensing up like she’s startled. Then her eyes narrow, and I see the rage return, see the fire harden her soft features. My body tingles as it reminds me that she’s mine, my equal, my partner, my lover and somehow still my adversary, that although my instincts are clear as fuck that she’s mine, there’s still a deep, dark mystery that needs to be solved before we can look to the future as one.

  “If someone in the Bellano Family wanted to take over, they’d have killed me too,” Bari snaps back. “It’s still more likely that it was you.”

  “Nah, Princess Bari,” I whisper. “I’d have killed you too. Still might,” I add with a half-grin.

  “Not if I get to that cake-knife first,” she snaps back, a half-smile lighting up her pretty face in a way that reminds me once again that this woman is a worthy adversary, that she knows who she is, accepts the darkness that’s been bred into us, born into us.

  Hell, she’s not just accepting it, I think as I lick my lips and feel my cock harden again. She’s embracing it. Playing with it. Teasing me with it. Challenging me with it. Fucking daring me with it.

  Now my erection bursts to full peak, and I growl like an animal in heat. Those doubts and questions are still swirling in my head, but suddenly they’re fueling something in my body, making a different sort of need rise in me, a need to dominate . . . dominate not just her but also myself perhaps.

  And fuck, she feels it too, doesn’t she, I realize as I see her red lips part, feel her buttocks tighten, smell the fresh wetness ooze from between those heavenly thighs. I slide my hand around her neck, stroking her throat as I feel that unnamable emotion reveal itself slowly, like a snake coming out from its dark hole, showing its glistening body to the light of day.

  The conflict isn’t between us, I realize as I see the need on her face, the need to be held down and taken, possessed, owned, fucking dominated. The conflict is within us! It’s that sense of guilt and shame that’s lurking in the shadows of our psyches . . .

  Guilt that we’re secretly relieved our parents are dead and buried!

  Shame that we’re secretly happy they’re gone!

  A twisted, dark feeling of pure joy that’s racking our bodies with conflicting emotions, emotions that can’t be resolved with simple logic or fucking talk-therapy!

  No, I think as I slowly tighten my big hand around her throat and rise up on my elbow, pushing Bari back down as she gasps and shudders. It’s conflict that has to be resolved without words, without thought. It’s conflict that can only be resolved by each of us coming to terms with the awful truth that losing our parents set us free, that we have to accept that dark truth, embrace that dark truth, love that dark truth.

  “I love you,” I growl as my vision fades like the dying embers in the fire
, and I hear Bari gurgle out a response as I violently kiss her lips, lick her face and neck, coat her breasts with my saliva, biting her nipples as I breathe deep from her wet sex. “I love you and I understand you, Bari. I know what you need, even though you can’t say it. I know why you offered yourself up as my captive, my possession, my property. You didn’t kill your parents, but you still feel responsible, perhaps even guilty.”

  Bari moans as I run my tongue down her belly, circling her belly-button, nuzzling her bush, sucking her stiff clit, licking her long slit until her wetness is flowing down my chin. Then I slowly but firmly turn her over, groaning as I take in the magnificent sight of her big rear globes, her crack spreading for me in the most darkly divine way, her clean asshole gleaming like a beacon in the night.

  “Guilty that along with the grief you feel relief,” I whisper, blowing on her rear pucker as I rub her wet mound from below until she’s dripping all over my hand. “Guilty that along with the sadness you feel joy. Guilty that even though something was taken from you, it feels like a gift. Guilty that the darkness in you is part of you, will always be part of you, is in your blood just like it’s in mine, just like it’ll be in our children’s blood, always and forever.”

  My cock is so hard that I barely know what the fuck I’m saying, let alone what I’m doing. It’s only when I hear Bari moan that I realize I’m circling her dark rear rim with my tongue, pulling her buttcheeks far apart as she pushes her ass into my face. It’s wild, but I understand our need, understand that accepting the worst in ourselves has to happen before we can accept each other. I understand that our bodies are revealing their darkest needs just like our minds are, that what’s happening here is the second part of the union that happened earlier tonight, the completion of what begun with that first kiss, a declaration of freedom that comes with the acceptance that in some ways we’ll still be captives of who we are, who we always were.

  I lean back and spit on her asshole, driving my finger into her anus and then pulling out and spanking her bottom twice with quick, precise strokes that almost make my cock explode all over that beautiful ass. I can feel that deeply masculine need rising up in me, that need to dominate and own Bari so completely and utterly that I can’t even fucking see anymore.

  Then I see her turn to me halfway, her eyes glazed over but somehow still focused, like she’s opening up to her own darkest, most secret needs too, like she knows that when she came here she wasn’t sure if she wanted to kill me or fuck me, like maybe she still isn’t sure, like she’ll never be sure, like we’ll be playing this mind-fuck of a game for the next thirty years, playing it forever.

  “You mean our mixed-blood, mongrel children that might make your mother return from the dead?” she whispers, licking her lips like she’s egging me on, picking at my vulnerability just like I exposed her dark secret about how losing her Mama and Papa was grief and relief rolled into one.

  I lean my head back and roar with manic, wild laughter, grabbing her hips firmly and raising her rump before spanking her hard again, three times on each cheek until she wails and trashes. Her ass is bright red, streaked with the outline of my big palms, and I push my face between her throbbing buttcheeks and drive my tongue back into her wet asshole, ramming three fingers into her cunt from below.

  And with a howl she comes, all over my hand and the rug, the scream so raw and visceral I can’t hold myself back any longer and with feverish desperation just grab my cock, press it against her rear hole, and push my way into that dark space, all the way in, all the damned way.

  10

  BARI

  I’m coming so hard I don’t even understand what’s happening, don’t even know if I’m laughing or crying, not sure if it’s pain or pleasure that’s ripping me apart, ecstasy or anger that’s splitting me in two, joy or guilt that’s bringing me to a realization that’s as overwhelming as my orgasm.

  “Oh, fuck, Brusco,” I wail as I feel him spank me, lick me, finger me, and then take me in the ass so deep and hard that the entire room seems like it just went pitch dark and somehow exploded with light at the same goddamn time. I’m gushing from my slit like I’ve fucking peed myself, and the sensation of Brusco’s cock stretching my rear hole while he drives four fingers and then his entire goddamn hand into my vagina is so dark and twisted I can’t do anything but howl like a she-beast under the full moon.

  I can’t even fathom what I’m feeling, but somehow I understand it at the depths of my soul. I understand that this is part of our union, part of our fate, part of our forever. This is a union so complete that it defies logic and reason. It’s a union in which we’ve opened up to not just each other but also ourselves, an acceptance that we’re both good and not-so-good, that we loved our parents but in a way hated them too, that we love each other but are perhaps cursed to always be engaged in a struggle for supremacy because of the kind of people we are, because of what’s in our blood.

  Brusco explodes in my asshole just as I come again, and he digs his fingers so deep into my sides that I scream and dig my own fingers into the carpet, breaking three nails and ripping holes in the hand-woven silk as if I’m leaving my own damned mark on the night before Christmas.

  Brusco’s roar thunders through the room as he shoots more of his thick, hot seed into me until I’m overflowing down my thighs. But I’m still coming too, and in my wild arousal I reach beneath my swinging breasts, between my throbbing thighs, back to where my man’s heavy balls are swinging and clenching. I grasp them in my soft hands, smiling as I feel him tense up and shoot another torrent of semen into me as I massage him all the way to the edge and then take him over.

  And then suddenly I hear the clock strike midnight, and Brusco tightens, shouts once more, and then collapses on me like I just brought him to his knees, broke him even as he dominated me, showed him that I was his equal even as he held me face-down and took me like he owned me.

  Yes, showed him I was his equal.

  Showed myself I was his equal.

  “Merry Christmas,” I whisper to no one in particular as the clock strikes twelve. “Merry Christmas.”

  11

  CHRISTMAS MORNING

  BARI

  “Merry Christmas,” says Brusco as I shield my eyes from the sunlight streaming through the windows. There’s snow on the trees, ice on the streets, frost on the glass. But the sun is shining from a clear blue sky, and there isn’t a cloud in sight.

  Except the cloud casting a shadow on Brusco’s face, it seems.

  “What’s that?” I ask, rolling over and pulling the blankets up to my chin as I see something small and shiny in his hand.

  My heart jumps, and suddenly I’m wide awake as the madness of what happened on Christmas Eve overwhelms me to the point where I wonder if I’m already getting morning sickness. I squint in the sunlight, wondering what that shiny thing Brusco’s waving at me is . . . what it could be . . .

  “Is that a . . . a . . .” I whisper, not sure what I feel. “Brusco, we need to talk about how we do this first. How we—”

  Then suddenly I stop when I realize that no, it’s not a fucking diamond ring that he’s waving at me. I close my eyes and shake my head, exhaling hard as I almost laugh out loud. Yes, we’re together. We’re firmly and truly together after the intensity of last night. But we’ve got the entire nation’s mafia leaders watching closely, and we need to be very careful about how we make anything public—if we ever make anything public!

  Brusco’s eyes go wide as if he just realized what I thought he had in his hand. He looks at the shiny object and shakes his head, his cheeks going flush like he didn’t mean to mislead me—or freak me the fuck out on Christmas morning. “Oh, sorry. It’s just a flash drive. I guess it caught the sunlight and you couldn’t tell.”

  I cover my eyes and shake my head. As crazy as last night might have been, a marriage proposal the morning after would be too much. There’s too
much to be resolved before something like that can happen. Isn’t there? There is, right?

  Brusco temporarily loses that cloudy expression, and I know he just thought of the exact same thing, that we’re together and now it’s just the paperwork that needs to happen. But that comes with its own complexity, given who we are, how we’ve been brought together.

  “I have a question,” Brusco says after that awkward silence where I know we both almost wished we were normal people who could just get married, have babies, and live a quiet fucking life in the suburbs. He winks. “No, not that question. Not yet, at least.”

  I laugh as that tension evaporates. But it’s replaced with a different sort of tension, and I see the shadow return to Brusco’s lean, rugged face.

  “OK, shoot,” I say, turning to my left and smiling when I see a tray with fresh coffee and hot scones sitting there like Santa had dropped it off without me looking. I grab a raspberry scone and devour half of it in one bite, washing it down with thick, strong, Italian coffee that tastes like the beans were harvested this morning and flown over. Maybe they were, actually.

  Brusco sits on the leather couch that I notice has been cleaned after the debauchery of last night. I almost smile as I think about this weirdo mafia beast who obsesses about crumbs. My weirdo mafia beast, I think as that feeling I got when I thought he was holding a ring comes back to me, making my heart dance as I think about what’s waiting for us, about how close we are to our happy ending.

  Not before another twist, though, I think with that dark humor that I know I got from Mama. I finish my scone and gulp down my coffee, sitting upright with the soft blankets around my bare shoulders.

  “OK, enough with the suspense, Brusco,” I say as the caffeine and sugar kicks my system into high gear, making me almost slap-happy even as his expression goes darker. “What’s the damned question? And what’s on the flash drive?”