“For you, Josselyn, I have cleared my schedule.” When she only stared back at him, nonplussed, he laughed again. “It is our honeymoon, is it not? And you are a beautiful woman. Surely it cannot surprise you that I have set aside the whole world that I might enjoy the spoils I have gone to such lengths to claim.”
“Wait. Is this... Is this a sex thing?” She shook her head, but she couldn’t make sense of any of this. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
His laugh changed, then. It sounded like less of a weapon, and more like something real. And that wasn’t any better.
Josselyn told herself that what slid down her spine, like a lick of naked flame, was fear. Or fury. Or both, fused together into a molten hot reaction that made her nipples tighten.
Because she refused to let it be anything else.
“I do not kid,” he told her, almost gently. “Nothing will happen on this island unless you beg for it. Know that now. I told you I am not a monster, and I am not. I do not intend to take what will be so freely given.”
Arrogant, she thought then, was really not a strong enough word to describe this man. It didn’t come close to the reality that was Cenzo Falcone.
“If you really wanted me to give you anything,” she managed to grit out from between her clenched teeth, as the boat docked on the small outthrust bit of jetty that looked like it was only available at low tide, “anything at all, you’ve played your hand all wrong.”
“I can assure you that I only play to win.” He moved then, and she found herself turning her body as if to follow him. As if her body simply wanted to follow him. As if he was a magnet and she was helpless before the pull of him. “I want you to know, at every moment, exactly what is happening to you.”
“But I don’t—”
And then his hand was on her face, his hard fingers gripping her chin.
Cenzo tilted her face to his and kissed her.
It was a bruising, punishing kiss that she was shocked to find packed that same punch. That same delirious heat flooded through her, and it was not fear. It was nothing at all like fear, and it pooled between her legs like a new pulse.
When he lifted his head, Cenzo did not release her chin. And she could see from the expression on his hard face he knew.
He knew.
“In a month’s time, we will leave here,” he told her, his voice a rasp that seemed to do the same things in her that his kiss had. “And you will be my slave. Not because I make it so in some show of strength, Josselyn. But because you will beg me for the role. In my bed, of course. But everywhere else, too, because that is how much you will want me.”
“You’re delusional,” she gasped, as something in her roared.
Again, not in fear.
That was more alarming than anything he’d done or said. Josselyn shoved herself back from him, jerking her chin out of his grasp. And found herself chastened at once, because even though she managed to put space between them, she was far too aware that he’d let her go.
“I knew from the moment we met how this would go,” Cenzo said, his gaze so intense it hurt. It actually hurt. “It is inevitable. You should have lost your innocence while you had the chance, Josselyn. For I will shatter it, hoard it, and make it my own. And you will thank me for the privilege.”
“And this is...” It seemed as if her heart was literally in her throat, trying to pound its way out of her body. “Do you truly believe that somehow, breaking me down in this fashion is revenge?”
“Josselyn. Cara. What is it your father wants for you most of all?” But he didn’t wait for her to answer. His ancient eyes were aglow. His cruel face was too beautiful to bear. “He wants you safe and comforted, and so I promise you this. You will never know a moment’s peace. Your life with me will be an agony. I will make you an addict for my touch, my gaze, the barest possibility of my approval. You will live for it. And you will never be happy. You will never feel safe. You will be nothing more than a junkie. Strung out on a man who will never love you back. Ever.”
Then he took her hand in his, a parody of the kind of touch a bride might expect on the first day of her marriage. And he led her from the boat, onto that hateful rock, where the brooding old castle rose into the sky.
But Josselyn knew that her doom was not in those weathered rocks, rich with history and pain. It walked beside her, made of flesh and spite.
Because her tragedy was that despite everything he had said and done since he’d found her waiting for him on the plane, she already wanted him.
Meaning he had already won.
CHAPTER FOUR
BUT SHE DID not have to make it easy for him.
Josselyn jerked her hand away from Cenzo’s once she was off the boat. She charged ahead of him along the jetty toward the narrow, endless stairs that climbed up from the rocky beach. And instead of standing about, politely offering to lend a hand as they began unloading the luggage so she could settle into her imprisonment in style, she did what she’d been wanting to do for what seemed like a lifetime now.
She ran. Up the stairs and away from the boat. Away from him.
His words seemed to chase her, blaring within her and snarling like demons at her heels.
The stairs wound around and around the outside of the castle, and she ordered herself to slow down when her breath deserted her. Before her heart clawed its way out. The climb was steep and his words only seemed to echo more loudly inside her, but as she slowed she noticed something else. This might be a rocky ruin of an island, but the view was stunning.
The Mediterranean Sea stretched out in all directions, an impossible blue. Josselyn assumed the land she saw in the distance, not quite over the horizon, was Sicily. The morning was bright and though the breeze was cool, it felt as if it might warm as the day went on. If she’d found this place on a vacation of some kind, she thought she might have found it charming.
And what struck her then, as she accepted the beauty of even so desolate a place, was the quiet.
She couldn’t think when she’d last been so utterly by herself. If she ignored the evil bridegroom issue—as she felt she needed to do or she would simply scream and leap from the stairs to dash herself on the rocks below, something that felt unduly dramatic—she could hear the sound of high-above birds. Waves below as they surged against the rocks. The breeze rushing through the very few trees and down from the heights.
It was stark and it was lonely, but that didn’t make it any less beautiful.
Josselyn told herself she would hold on to that. Somehow.
And on she climbed.
The ruined part of the castle intrigued her, but she somehow doubted that the richest man alive planned to camp there, exposed to the elements, no matter what lesson he thought that might teach her. She passed the half-fallen walls and the stairs began to widen, eventually leading her up from the rubble to a kind of landing and an old stone gate.
She pushed her way through it and stopped short.
Because she’d expected nothing but stark ruins and crumbling stone, but the moment Josselyn stepped through the gate, she could see that this castle was not nearly as abandoned as it looked from below. Not the highest part of it. She now stood in the forecourt of a small keep, but on this side of the gate everything was...polished. It gleamed. She crossed over the stones, her boot heels beating out a cadence as she moved. And when she reached the other side, the great wooden doors that greeted her opened soundlessly and easily.
Inside, she found the same old stone walls but with new windows to let in the light. In the place of the dreary antiques or possibly prison cells she’d anticipated, she found open spaces, hints of modern steel, every furnishing clearly carefully chosen to make everything seem bright and new.
She was still trying to take that in when she heard the door open behind her, and whirled around to face Cenzo once again.
Her heart, h
aving settled down, leaped into high gear again.
“I told you that you would not be harmed,” Cenzo said. “I see that you did not entirely believe me. Perhaps you even wished that you might end up in the dungeons, all the better to martyr yourself.”
“As a matter fact, I’m not a martyr at all.”
“Are you not?”
He prowled inside, and suddenly the great hall that had felt airy and light to her moments before seemed to close in on top of her. It had something to do with the way he trained those hawk’s eyes upon her, as if he was only waiting for the right moment to swoop in and eat her whole.
Her heart kicked at her and her belly twisted at that notion, but between her legs she was shamefully hot.
“I’m really not,” she told him. “I didn’t do as my father asked because it brought me some pleasure to sacrifice myself to his desires. Or to yours. I did it because I love him. And I understand him. I like that I can take care of him in this way after the lifetime he spent caring for me.”
His smile was a mirthless blade. “You might as well not bother trying to convince me that your father is a good man, Josselyn. I know better.”
“And will you tell me what sins my father committed against yours?” she demanded, taking a kind of refuge in the temper that kicked in her then. It was far better than the other, more worrying things she felt. Like attraction. Or the competing sense that she should not go about bringing up his lost father—and no matter that he seemed to have no qualm using that loss as a weapon. She knew that she would not react well if he threw her mother at her in this way. She hated that she felt shaky, deep inside, as she pushed on. “Surely if the crime requires this kind of punishment, I should at least know the details.”
“In time, cara,” Cenzo murmured, those eyes of his gleaming. “In time.”
His men entered the hall then and did not pause in the great hall, seemingly knowing already precisely where they needed to go. Josselyn had the sudden notion that if she went now and ran full out, she could race down the stairs, take the boat, and leave them all here to rot.
But Cenzo only laughed, dark and low.
“You can try,” he told her, as if he’d read her mind that easily. “But I will catch you before you make it to the gate. And I do not think you will appreciate my response.”
Her lips tingled at that, reliving the crush of his hard mouth to hers. She told herself she’d hated it, but it still took everything she had to keep from lifting her fingers to touch her lips, to see if they still felt like hers after he’d imprinted himself upon her.
The trouble was, she believed him. She believed that he would chase her and catch her, and more than that, she understood what he hadn’t said. That it was not so much what he might do—but the simple fact that running like that would encourage him to put his hands on her body.
Josselyn might have been innocent, an accident that had somehow gone on for more years than she would have thought possible when it had never been a plan of hers or any kind of statement, but that didn’t make her an idiot. Whatever she might want to call what happened when they touched, it was clearly combustible.
And given what he told her he intended to do with her, it was obviously in her best interest that she see to it they touched as little as possible.
She turned away from him then—away from her escape route—and followed his men. Or rather, the men carrying her luggage, hoping that at some point they would veer off from the others and settle her somewhere far away from their master.
But no such luck. She had a brief tour of lovely rooms clearly modernized with an eye toward bringing the sea and the sky inside, then she was led up into a high tower. Where all the men with all the luggage climbed all the winding stairs to the top until they reached the sprawling master suite.
And, naturally, Cenzo was standing there in the doorway when all the men retreated.
Blocking her exit, if she wasn’t mistaken. Again.
“You can’t really think that we’re going to share a room, can you?” Josselyn crossed her arms, but mostly because she wanted to make sure that if she started shaking, he couldn’t see it. “Do you actually imagine that there’s any possibility we’re just going to leap into bed together?”
“I would not be averse to it.” He looked amused when she scowled. “But there are no other bedrooms here, I am afraid. I told you. The castello is a place for solitary reflection. There is only the one bed.”
“Then I am very sorry that you will have to sleep on the hard stone floor somewhere,” she said, with an admirable stab at a sweet tone. “I know you seem to think that I’ll be writhing about on the floor in the throes of a sex addiction soon enough, but I’m happy to say that no such addiction currently exists. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to freshen up after an overnight flight and a round of unwanted kisses and unhinged threats from my brand-new husband.”
Josselyn expected him to argue, but instead, all he did was laugh again. That damnable laugh of his that made her shudder, then overheat. He sketched a deeply mocking bow, there in the doorway. And she couldn’t believe it when he...turned and left. She actually ran to the door herself to make sure that he really was walking down the stone stairs, leaving only the sound of his footsteps behind as he went round the bend at each landing.
Was she happy he’d left her? Or did she feel something...more complicated?
She opted not to analyze that too closely. The first thing she did was go back into the sprawling bedchamber and close the door behind her, not particularly surprised to find it had no lock. Then she pulled out her phone and checked to see if what he’d said was true. Sure enough, there was no cell phone service. No Wi-Fi. Though all around her the Mediterranean lolled about seductively on the other side of the windows, she found the quiet seemed a little more ominous, suddenly.
And the curses she muttered under her breath, then not so under her breath, didn’t help any.
Still, Josselyn did what she could. She checked to see that the bathroom did, in fact, have a lock—and that was the only reason she drew herself a bath, then settled into it, trying to soak her equilibrium back.
And it worked well enough, because she was certainly calmer when she got out. She supposed that if she was to be locked away here for a month, it was a nice touch that the bath was fully outfitted, like a spa, so she could while away her terrible honeymoon with luxurious bath salts and a view.
Josselyn meant to march back downstairs the moment she was dressed, to confront Cenzo yet again, but instead she found herself drawn to a cozy chair that sat in one of the tower’s sunny alcoves, offering her nothing but the sea and the sky. She curled up there, intending to gaze out for only a moment or so, but instead, nodded off to sleep.
And when she woke again, with a start, she could tell from the light outside that hours had passed.
Maybe it was a good thing. Maybe she could spend this month catching up on her sleep—because Lord knew, she had been plagued with sleepless nights ever since Cenzo Falcone had turned up in the family cottage in Maine that day.
She splashed cold water on her face, avoided her reflection in the glass, and then set off to see what, exactly, she was dealing with.
Josselyn told herself she was exploring, that was all. And that was what she did. First to see if what he’d told her was true. And she found that though there were other doors in the tower, they led to rooms...but not to other bedchambers. There was a small library. A sitting room. Something that she would have considered a yoga room if it had belonged to anyone else.
But no other bedrooms. And not even a sofa big enough to act like a bed in a pinch.
Down in the main part of the new castle, she accepted that she was looking for her husband only when she made no effort at all to run toward the door now that no one was guarding it.
Was he right, after all? Was this how it started? Was she to be dra
wn to him against her very will?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she told herself sternly. “You’re trying to salvage something from this situation, that’s all. It’s perfectly rational.”
But she didn’t feel particularly rational when she found him in the large kitchen. His intensity seemed to her like a living thing. Like a hand that reached out and caught her up, then held her in a fist.
Cenzo stood at a center island surrounded by steel and inviting tile, a rack of copper pans hanging above him, while he wielded what looked like a very, very sharp knife. She could see the old hearth on one side and could imagine that it had once been the center of the castle, but today it stood cold. And Cenzo appeared to be preparing food, which struck her as... Well, as nothing short of astonishing.
“I trust you slept well,” he said, without looking up. In a mild tone that very nearly sounded friendly.
Something skittered around inside her at the idea that he’d looked in on her while she slept. She wanted it to be dismay, and she told herself it was, but it was too warm for that. Much too warm.
“I find it difficult to believe that you actually know how to cook,” Josselyn said, maybe too severely. She tried to breathe through her dismay. “Surely in all your other many residences, you are besieged by servants ready and eager to meet your every need before it forms.”
“I am.” He was chopping up tomatoes and tossing them in a small pot before him. “But there are a few places I go where it is only me. And if I would like it to remain only me, that means I must take care of my own needs. The first time I attempted it, I cannot say the cooking was a success. So I hired a chef to teach me. Because it turns out that even on my own, I insist upon a certain standard.”
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