I jerked my head up. “That’s it?”
“What’s it?” he asked as he typed.
“I can go to bed?”
“You sound disappointed.”
Ending the night now meant I’d wake up and go through all of this again tomorrow. He would devour me—it was inevitable. The sooner we got it over with, the sooner I’d know my family was safe. “I told you—I want this done.”
“Don’t worry. It will be done. I don’t need you to believe me to fuck me.” Narrowing his gaze on me, he slid his phone back into his shirt pocket. “But I intend to take my dessert in the bedroom.”
5
Natalia
Night had fallen, covering the town like a blanket. Out front, freedom spread in every direction from the precipice on which Cristiano’s home sat. But even in the dark, I could feel how abruptly it stopped at the Badlands’ gates. A light flickered here and there to the soundtrack of a hooting owl but it was otherwise silent and the horizon black.
“Put a smile on your face,” Cristiano said as we stood in his driveway, waiting to see off the next wave of guests.
On the patio, he’d been unable to keep his hands off me, but now, distance was all he seemed capable of. I was once again invisible until I was a nuisance or had done something wrong, like frown.
I forced my mouth into what I hoped looked like a smile when an elderly couple exited the house, the old man walking on a tilt. His wife took both my hands and rushed out a goodwill prayer as Cristiano helped her husband down the steps. Nobody seemed to have cars except Cristiano himself—once they left, they descended into the night on foot.
After the final guest, Cristiano held open the front door for me. This was it. We were alone, and there was no more time. I entered the house to the clink of dishes from the kitchen. Lingering smells of fish stew and baked goods lent me no comfort. As I trailed behind him, Cristiano glanced over his shoulder, as if ensuring I hadn’t made a break for it.
In the kitchen, cleanup had begun. Staff members in rubber gloves and aprons filled the dishwasher, topped plastic containers, and scrubbed the ovens.
“We’ll continue to eat like kings for a few days,” Cristiano said, and some people laughed. “Everyone raved about tonight’s fare, Fisker. Well done.”
Applause filled the room as I hovered in the doorway, trying desperately to piece the scene together. Nobody seemed distraught. Either the staff members were resigned to their situations, or like tonight’s guests, they supported, benefitted, and profited off Cristiano’s business.
Even beautiful Jaz had something quietly ugly and fearful about her, like an elegant cat that purred to lure you in, then used its claws on you. She sat on a countertop, feet dangling, watching me as she dried dishes and slid them onto the top shelf of a cabinet.
As Cristiano spoke to a man who looked like a butler, I inched toward Jaz. “Can I have something to drink?”
She gestured around the kitchen. “It’s all yours. There’s filtered water from the fridge or bottles inside, along with soda, beer, and anything else you want.”
It wasn’t mine. Just because I’d married Cristiano didn’t mean I had a right to anything in his home. I opened the fridge and found a sparkling water I hoped would settle my nervous stomach.
I took a few long sips. Fizz bubbled up my chest, and I pressed my hand to my chest, trying and failing to conceal a burp. Everyone but Jaz laughed—even Cristiano.
An embarrassed smile crossed my face. “Excuse me.”
“Jaz,” Cristiano called across the kitchen. “Please show my bride to her bedroom.”
She cocked her head at him. “Her . . . bedroom?”
He nodded once, and Jaz sighed, conveying her disappointment. Perhaps she, too, had thought he’d toss me in a locked cell and forget about me. Or maybe she knew what was to come, and it was jealousy that plagued her. It didn’t seem like a stretch that there could be more to their relationship than employer and staff. That didn’t sit right with me—that Cristiano would abuse his power that way, then flaunt it in front of the household and me. And if he was an unfaithful husband—did I care? Was there any chance he wouldn’t be?
Cristiano took the dish in Jaz’s hands and popped it on the top shelf. “I’ll finish this,” he said. “Go.”
Jaz shrugged as she hopped off the counter and gestured for me to follow. “Come on.”
“I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable earlier,” I said as we climbed the staircase. “I was just trying to help.”
“We don’t need your help,” she said.
So I was coming to find out. The question was why? I glanced at my interlaced hands. “And if I need yours?”
As we hit the second floor, she dove into an exaggerated curtsy-bow. “I’m at your service, doña Natalia. We all are. It’s our jobs.”
“I hope we can be friends.” We continued up to the top floor. “Coming from university, where I knew lots of people and had rarely a dull moment, I’m afraid I’ll get lonely.”
Jaz didn’t respond. I’d been willing to give up all that so I could have Diego, but now I had neither him nor that life. And how would I fill that hole in my chest? As night closed in on me, all that I’d lost did too. But I couldn’t let it weigh on me tonight. I had to be strong when Cristiano called for me later.
At the end of a hallway, Jaz used her shoulder to shove open a heavy plank door with iron hinges and hardware that made me feel like I was boarding a pirate ship. A breeze passed through the dark room, fluttering the white gauzy curtains of an elevated, four-poster bed. Only the moon shone through arched doorways that opened to a balcony. Jaz flipped a switch and warm light bathed the thick white walls and red-clay Saltillo tile. A weathered, leather chest sat at the foot of the bed across from a sitting area with a red velvet couch, russet-colored coffee table, and stone fireplace.
I turned in a circle. The room paralleled the rest of the house with dark wooden support beams that cut across a white vaulted ceiling with an antler chandelier as a centerpiece. “This is my room?”
“Sí,” Jaz answered.
As far as jail cells went, it was undoubtedly the most luxurious one in existence. I removed my sandals, picked up the hem of my dress, and made my way to the balcony. I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the bedroom’s magnificence. As I neared, the world spread out before me.
Stars shimmered like a city in a black sky that bled into the horizon and became the ocean. Waves crashed below. A refreshing sea breeze misted my face, almost delightful enough to make up for my circumstances.
The house had been built through the mountain, desert and town behind us, jungle around us, and nothing but ocean and sky before me.
“But it’s so wonderful,” I said to myself. I lived on a bluff, directly over the water, and had never seen anything like it. “And so big.”
From my balcony, it was nothing but ocean and sky. And a long drop to the small strip of beach below. I stared down into the darkness as I once had into a tunnel.
There’s always a choice, Cristiano had told me more than once.
There was always a way out.
“It’s the master,” Cristiano’s deep, contented voice answered behind me, rumbling through the beauty of this new world like thunder. “If you’re thinking of jumping, don’t. You’re forbidden.”
I turned and braced myself against the short, stucco wall. A cream and brown woven hammock big enough for two swayed in one corner with the breeze. “I’m forbidden?”
“Rule number one in my home,” he said, his hands in his pockets as a sinister smile tugged one corner of his mouth. “Don’t die.”
Jaz was nowhere in sight—it was just the two of us. “Why do I have the master?” A knot formed in my stomach as the truth hit me. “Where do you sleep?”
“In the master.” His smile broke free and slid over his face. “Where else but by my wife’s side?”
But I wasn’t his wife. I was, at best, the product of a merger and a convenient m
istress, and at worst, a slave to his every whim. Someone to call to his bed when he wanted and to send away when he was finished. What exactly did it make me if I wasn’t that? What would compel him to sleep by my side each night when he didn’t have to?
With a gust of wind, I hugged myself and walked by him, back into a flickering room. The nights were cooler by the water, and Jaz had lit the fireplace and iron candlesticks on the mantel. “I assumed . . .”
“What?” he asked. “That our marriage was for show?”
“Yes. I mean, no,” I said carefully, trying to slow my racing heart. “I know you have certain expectations of me. But there’s no need to encumber yourself with a true wife. I don’t expect us to sleep in the same bed after we . . .”
“After we what?” he asked, not bothering to hide his amusement.
He wanted to make me uncomfortable by forcing me to say it, but I wouldn’t let him. I turned around, lengthening my spine. “I figured I’d go back to my room after you fuck me.”
He inhaled deeply, fisting his hands in his pockets. “There is no after I fuck you, Natalia,” he said. “I’m always fucking you. I should like to be able to roll over and be inside you. To slide down between your legs at your request. To unwrap your pussy and suck on candy at all hours of the night.”
My skin pebbled with the alarming conviction in his voice. His filthy mouth was fit for a devil, and I had no doubt it would be just as bold between my legs. Ashamed by the way I quivered at the thought, I kept my back stick-straight. “Most men would be happy to take what they want and send their whore away. I’m fine with that arrangement.”
“I’m not.” His dress shoes clapped the terracotta as he stepped into the candlelight. Gone was any inkling I might’ve had that his bullishness was for show, or that he acted so profanely just to frighten me. His desire for me showed in his face and in his ragged words. “In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not most men. You’re my wife, not my whore, and don’t ever call yourself that in or out of my presence again. Every night, you will eat at my dinner table. And every night, you will sleep in my bed.”
“Every night?” I asked, my voice breathy even to my own ears.
“Every night,” he replied on a growl.
“Until you grow bored of me.”
“You may wish for that,” he said with furrowed brows that made it hard to tell if he was teasing. “But don’t count on it.”
I swallowed. Just like my confusion over his interest in my virginity, I didn’t understand what would possess him to shackle himself to me when he had the luxury of freedom. The sex, I understood, even if the heat between us continued to bewilder me. We were matched enemies, and that ensured a modicum of respect between us, however small. Walking that fine line between hate and admiration only seemed to kindle our sexual attraction. But I could be both curious to explore that explosive spark and also not want to sleep with him.
I’d only planned to give that gift to one man.
My plans didn’t matter anymore, though.
There was no denying Cristiano when he’d been stoking the embers between us since he’d returned into my life as a haunting calavera. Except then, our chemistry had been harmless.
But a true marriage? It couldn’t be. I’d play a dutiful wife for others as I’d been forced to tonight. I’d placate Cristiano while I listened and watched for opportunities to get myself out of this situation. But what was the purpose of pretending in private that I was anything more than his plaything?
“Forever is a long time to sleep next to someone,” I said.
He prowled closer until we were toe to toe. “As you’ll grow used to the heat behind the gates of Hell, so will you come to enjoy sleeping by my side—and the safety it affords you.”
“Safety from whom?” So far, I’d only lamented what had been stripped of my old life, and feared the dangers that came with being in Cristiano’s grip—but I’d not yet considered any outside threats that came with this new one. “Who do I have to fear more than you?”
“I don’t want to find out. Where you sleep is non-negotiable.” He raised my chin with his knuckle. Candlelight danced over his face, creating shadows around his eyes much like the dark circles he’d painted on as a sugar skull mask. “In my bed, you’ll be safe, Natalia—and in my bed, you’ll be mine.”
The crackling fire was no match for what sizzled between us. Alarmed, I took a step back, and he came with me. A dance with a complex man who had many faces. Earlier, he’d been cold and distant. Now, he was no less hard, but somehow equally warm. I couldn’t fathom him so attentive and serene outside this room. For a man as controlled as Cristiano, there was something alarmingly thrilling about getting a side to him others didn’t—and to unpeeling his layers. “Are you so insatiable that you need me to be within reach all the time?” I asked, embarrassed by the rasp in my voice.
“Oh, yes,” he said as if it were a threat.
“You can have any other woman,” I said. “Those you can’t charm, you can take. Why me?”
He circled me as he had in the church, and my breathing sped. But unlike then, when I’d been too stunned to keep up, I turned my head and watched him until he disappeared behind me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I felt his eyes on me. He would touch me any moment. My body would respond. It already was, my legs unsteady, my heart racing as my mind wandered to a thought I’d had before—what it might feel like to be trapped beneath such a strong body with broad shoulders that shielded us from the world as I took all he had to give.
And he had much to give, I was sure—even before it suddenly pressed into my backside.
He wrapped his arms around my middle, enclosing me in a strong, warm embrace. We faced a floor-length mirror framed by hand-painted talavera tiles that I hadn’t noticed before. Cristiano towered behind me in the reflection, hugging my back to his front. His massive hands slid up my stomach and cupped my breasts through the black lace.
“Why you? See how perfectly they fit in my hands?” he asked, watching my face. “They were made for me.”
Cristiano was hot and cold, ignoring me one second—and the next, so hopped up and hungry that I felt like a drug he needed in order to stay upright. The only other thing that seemed to take him from zero to sixty was a certain trigger word from my mouth. Cristiano held all the control in our relationship, but I had to grasp it where I could. “They fit that way in Diego’s hands, too.”
He snarled near my ear, squeezing my breasts until the place between my legs shamelessly throbbed. “I know you only say that to anger me, and it works. It makes me jealous as a dog. Before you were mine, I hated the thought that you were his. Now that you belong to me, it’s enough to drive me insane that he had your heart and your pussy first.”
The room threatened to spin as my emotions ping-ponged between anticipation and trepidation at being at the mercy of such a powerful and hungry man. To know I’d soon submit, and to have him grow harder against my backside. This was it—what it had all been leading up to. He moved one hand up my neck, jerking my face to the side and my mouth up to his.
“Kiss me,” he said.
With our mouths centimeters apart, I fought the infuriating urge to close that small space between us. “No,” I said.
“No?”
“You’ll have to take it from me.”
“There are many women who’d like to be standing where you are.”
“I know,” I said.
He flinched as surprise crossed his features. “Do you?”
“You’re handsome, rich, and powerful. I’m sure many have spread their legs for you. And I’ll spread mine, too. But I’ll be wishing someone else was between them.”
He tightened his grip on my face, holding me still as he lowered his mouth to mine. “I’ve endured many years of disappointment and suffering, Natalia. I can take a lot. But if you’re going to provoke me in this way, you should know—I’m not sure I can control my response.”
&
nbsp; His warm breath caressed my lips as I swallowed his harsh words. As soon as he’d spoken them, I understood that was what I’d been trying to do—test his control. And if he’d meant to scare me, it was working.
Or maybe it was something other than fear that made my heart pound.
He grazed the bridge of my nose with the tip of his. “The thought that he has had you before me means I will work twice as hard to erase him. To claim you. Now, don’t keep me from that another moment.” He nearly bared his teeth. “Kiss . . . me.”
“No.”
He took my mouth, plunging his tongue deep as mine lashed back at him. He slid a hand between my legs and cupped me through my dress, sending bolts of pleasure crashing through me as he rubbed me in the exact spot to make my knees buckle.
I didn’t realize I’d shoved my hand in his hair until he groaned and growled. He held me in place and thrust his hips into my backside like a bull ramming a fence that detained him. Cristiano was going to fuck me. I’d known it for hours, but now it was happening. And my body was already giving into him, grabbing at him, yielding for his bruising kiss, growing wet under his firm grasp.
He turned me around, cradled my face, and devoured my mouth again. I fisted his shirt, pulling him closer as he walked me backward.
I gasped for more. For him.
And then in shock.
What was I doing? Minutes in Cristiano’s arms, and I was surrendering? It couldn’t be. The bastard didn’t get to take and take with no consequences. He didn’t get to win in every way. He’d succeeded in tearing Diego and me apart, but he would never have me.
I released his shirt and dropped my hands to my sides. The pulsing heat between my legs remained, but I ignored its demands and slackened my jaw. Cristiano curled his fingers into my hair, kissing me harder.
There was no point in fighting—our terms had been agreed upon. But if he was going to consummate this marriage, it would be with the understanding that I didn’t want it.
Violent Ends (White Monarch Book 2) Page 6
