“It matters a great deal to some people,” he says. “It matters to the kind of people you’ll meet on the way up.”
I raise my eyebrows at that. “The way up where?”
Finch laughs at that, and takes a few big gulps of his wine. He picked it from the wine list Nunzio offered us at the beginning of the meal. I didn’t even know what he was ordering, but Nunzio looked delighted at his choices for each course.
“We both know what you’re aiming at,” Finch says, once he’s swallowed down his mouthful. “And I want to help you get there.”
I raise a finger. “Let me stop you right there. There are some things we won’t ever discuss, and business is one of them. You want to help me? Keep your head down. Kick your drug habit. And don’t presume I will share anything with you about what I do. What I’m going to do. What my plans are.”
He laughs again, like I’m daring him instead of warning him, and drains the rest of his glass. “How about this,” he says, getting up from the chair. He drags it down the table until he’s sitting next to me. “How about we just start here. When you have a whole lot of silverware staring at you, most of the time you just start from the outside and work your way in. Watch what other people use if you’re not sure, and do as they do.”
Usually I’m a sponge. I love to learn, even if the person teaching me is a condescending asshole. In fact, I’ve learned a lot of very useful life lessons from one Samuel Fuscone, even if it’s just what not to do. Finch is definitely not condescending to me, and in fact from memory he has the loveliest asshole I’ve ever seen, but I want to make sure he understands his place in this marriage.
I should say something cutting, something to make him retreat, something to make him cry like I’ve made so many other men cry.
“Alright. Show me the cutlery, and later we’ll do wine.” Tino has a vast stock kept on the yacht; it’s enough to begin with, anyway.
“I’m useful in my own way,” Finch says with a grin. “Don’t worry, Eliza, we’ll fool them.”
“Eliza?”
“Doolittle. My Fair Lady?”
Nothing he’s saying makes sense to me, but I find myself not wanting to admit it. I just shrug. “What’s this one for?” I ask, picking up one of the stranger cutlery pieces.
“It’s a fish knife. You won’t see them often; they’re kind of old fashioned. Anyway, when Nunzio brings in the fish course, I’ll show you.”
“Doesn’t a normal knife do the job?” I ask, and Finch laughs like I’ve made the most hilarious joke.
“Probably,” he says. “Like that terrible suit of yours, baby. It does the job, but a real Armani would elevate you.”
I have two choices, here, and I’m not sure I like either one. I can accept that Howard Fincher Donovan the Third knows a lot of stuff I don’t, and learn from him. Or I can feel humiliated, and turn on him so hard he’ll never say a damn thing again about my clothes, and the higher-ups can go on smiling behind their hands at my shitty outfits.
I look at his jeans, or what’s left of them. They’re basically threads hanging together, but I can tell, just by looking, that they’re a name brand, even if I don’t know which brand.
But one day I will. One day soon I could know all these things that Finch knows, and I could use them to my advantage.
“When we get back to New York we’ll go shopping,” I tell him. “You can show me what to buy. How to wear it.”
He reaches out a foot under the table, stroking my calf with his bare foot, and smirking. “My life-size Ken doll. I’d rather undress you than dress you, but sure, I’d love to buy you a proper wardrobe. You Italians all look so good in suits.”
“Not a whole wardrobe. Just one suit.” I’m already calculating what I can sacrifice to afford it.
“You need at least five.”
“I can barely afford one, Finch.” The admission falls from my lips before I really know I’m going to say it, and I’m not sure why I did. But it’s true; Sam Fuscone keeps his crew’s percentages as low as he can, and his own as high as possible. I’m not the only who’s pissed off by that, but it’s not like anyone’s gone over Fuscone’s head about it. The Morelli Family Capos run their crews how they see fit.
Even Finch looks surprised at what I’ve told him. But he just shrugs. “Money won’t be a problem.”
He doesn’t understand. For him, money really does grow on trees, but he seems to have missed the fact that his tree has been chopped down.
“Shouldn’t you take your chair back down there and eat your food?” I ask, irritated at myself for letting my guard down.
He gets up, and I feel a strange twinge at the thought he’s just obeying; that he’s leaving me at one end of the table and going back to his own. But all he does is lean over to pull his plate down the table and puts it in front of his seat to my left hand. He goes back again only to choose one of the heftier knives and forks, scoop up his wine glass and napkin, and then rejoin me.
He pours us out another glass of wine and raises his glass. “To us,” he says. “This could be the start of something incredible, if you’d let it be.”
He already is something incredible, but again, I don’t want to indulge his ego. I simply raise my glass and clink it against his.
“Salut,” he says, and swallows half of it in one go.
There’s a knock at the door, and Nunzio pokes his head around it, hardly daring to come into the room.
“Scusi, mi scusi—you are ready for the next course?”
“We’re still going, Nunzio,” Finch tells him. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll give you a buzz when we’re ready.”
Nunzio looks absolutely relieved and stutters out his thanks.
I look at this new husband of mine after Nunzio disappears again. “You’re good with people.”
“I am.”
“They like you.”
“There’s only one person I want to like me.”
That’s not the way I want this conversation to go. “What do you think about our situation? Really.”
He gives a shrug and starts stuffing his face with the antipasto, pulling it straight off the platter with his fingers and tipping his head back to drop it in his mouth. “I told you,” he says, chewing. “I wanted you since the day I met you, so as far as I’m concerned, this is fate’s way of making it happen.” Then he looks at me, considering, his gaze sliding all over my face. “I think you feel guilty.”
“I don’t feel guilt. That emotion is not an option for me in my line of work.”
“Mm,” he says, and resumes eating. “Well,” he says, once I’ve started eating my food again too, “you’ve got nothing to feel guilty for. And for the record, hostage or not, I really want to fuck you. Now hurry up, husband. I want the next courses. I can’t wait to show you the sexy things I can do with a fish knife.”
He slides his foot up my calf again, higher, higher, into my lap, and pushes his heel between my thighs. I stare back at him as his toes wriggle. “I’ve been useful, haven’t I?” he asks with his usual cheeky grin. His foot is making circles against my rapidly-filling cock.
“You’ve been useful,” is all I say, and drink some of the wine he’s poured out for me. I don’t drink, or rarely. Never more than a glass, but Finch makes me want to drown myself in hedonism.
“And do I get a reward?” he whispers.
He’s an addict, alright, this new husband of mine, an addict of everything that might possibly bring him pleasure. For now, at least, it seems to be in my interests to indulge him.
“You’ll get a reward.”
He throws back his head and laughs.
Chapter Fifteen
LUCA
After dinner, Finch gives me his expectant look. “Reward?” he prompts.
“What would you like?” I ask, playing dumb.
He pouts, but it doesn’t irritate me. It just makes me remember what his lips looked like wrapped around my cockhead. And then, painfully, his face when I walked out of that
hotel suite five years ago.
“You know what I want,” he tells me, and adds in a quieter, almost plaintive voice: “You promised. Please?” He flushes as he begs for it, and my dick responds instantly.
I feel mildly disturbed by the way he so easily baits my self-control, but as it happens, I feel more relaxed about everything tonight. It’s partly the wine I’ve drunk, but partly knowing that there are no cameras, no wires, nothing to invade our privacy in that master suite. It’s almost as if Tino really is giving his blessing to this union.
So if we’re not being watched, what’s the harm in giving Finch what he wants? We are bound together now, certainly for the foreseeable future, and sex is a weakness for him as much as the drugs.
That’s what I’m telling myself, but the truth is, my own willpower is flagging. He’s too charming, too knowing, too much to resist. I threw it in his face this morning that I’d never love him, and I know I’m a convincing liar. He should have believed me.
But even if he did, it just rolled off him, water off a duck’s back. By dinner he’d rebounded enough to talk back, correct me, help me.
He’s irrepressible. A force of nature.
“I did promise,” I say softly. “And maybe you’re right, what you said about Tino. Maybe he does want this marriage consecrated. The last thing I want is you running around telling tales about how you’re still a virgin.”
He laughs, which is what I meant him to do. Usually I don’t care what the men I sleep with think of me, but Finch is different. I want him to laugh, just for me. I want him to smile, just for me. I want to watch him lose his mind in bliss, just for me.
“I don’t know if anyone’d believe me,” he says, fluttering his eyelashes. “But with you, baby, I bet it’ll be just like Mother Madonna says—you’ll make me feel like a virgin.”
I stand, and he bounces up as well, puppy-like. I hold out a hand, and he puts his into mine—his left hand, the ring snug around his finger. “Come on, then.” I pull him with me out of the dining room, up the narrow staircase and into the bedroom.
He slept last night in the adjacent room like I ordered, and that one’s a nicer room than anything I’ve ever slept in, but really he belongs here in the master suite, among the pinnacle of luxury that the room displays. But he doesn’t even notice how beautifully appointed everything is, as though he simply expects beauty and comfort and opulence.
It’s his birthright, after all.
He doesn’t look around. He only looks at me, pausing in the middle of the room, head tilted down slightly, deferentially, almost mocking but not quite. “Take off your clothes,” I tell him, and he obeys, stripping down with the casual air of someone to whom clothes are a decoration rather than a necessity. I stay at the door, leaning against it, watching as his delights are uncovered.
God. My memory did not do him justice. I drink in the sight of him, tan and golden all over, cock pert and pink and inviting, pretty nipples that are already tightening up. He’s more muscular than he was back then, well-defined but tasteful. Nothing about this man would ever—could ever—be vulgar. The bleached hair is a fuck you, not a faux pas.
“Go and prepare yourself,” I say lazily, flicking my head towards the master bathroom. He bolts like he’s being chased by a hellhound, and I lean back against the door, close my eyes, and breathe out slowly.
But by the time he comes back, pristine and nude, I’m still hard. He licks his lips as he watches me. “Now you,” he says. “Undress for me. Please?”
It’s the added please that makes me give in, and I take off my clothes slowly, letting his eyes wander wherever they will, getting wider and wider the more clothes I remove.
“What’s that?” he asks suddenly.
Shit. In all the excitement I completely forgot: I meant to hide my tattoo from him. It will only complicate things.
“It’s nothing. I only got it to hide the scar you left me with.”
He’s turning me around, leaning back to study the damn tattoo on my upper arm.
“Doesn’t look like you’re hiding it. More like you’re celebrating it.” He traces a finger across the scar. “What’s this?” He taps at my skin, delight lighting up his face.
“It’s a bird,” I say flatly.
“Hm. Looks to me like a—wait, what do they call that kind of bird? Let me see…” He takes his finger off me and taps his bottom lip, a parody of thinking. “Oh, that’s right. It’s a finch, isn’t it?”
It was probably foolish to ever let him see the tattoo: a wispy finch poised on the raised, jagged scar as though it’s a branch. But at least it’s out in the open now. Frank is the only one who’s ever guessed at its meaning, but still said nothing when I got it years ago. Didn’t even waggle those damn eyebrows. I could see in his eyes he knew what it meant, though.
Now the very man I got it in remembrance of is gazing into my face, his own bright and knowing.
“Don’t make too much of it,” I warn him.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re just an avian enthusiast,” he says, but his voice is like velvet, not iron. He’s not going to push it, not going to make me say it.
I cup his face in my hands. “Forget the ink. Are you ready for me?”
He swallows. “I’ve been ready for five fuckin’ years, honey. Let’s do this.”
We tumble onto the bed. I want to be careful, but Finch throws caution to the wind, urging me to hold him down even while he fights back. He likes the fight; it gets him horny. It does the same for me, so I spend some time wrestling with him like he wants.
“Fuck me hard, when you do it,” he begs. “This is our wedding night, after all, since you bailed on me the last two nights.”
I have him pressed down on the bed underneath me, my hands hard around his wrists, and my legs wound around his, frog-like, so the only way he can move is by thrusting his hips up at me. That, of course, is exactly what he’s doing.
“I hope you packed condoms,” I say. “Because I didn’t.” I really didn’t think we’d end up like this, didn’t even have it as a contingency plan.
“No rubbers,” he pleads. “I’m clean. I want you in me, nothing between us. Please.”
He is clean. I’ve seen the proof with my own eyes. With Tino’s connections, I had Finch’s biographical details and medical records provided for my reading pleasure. He has a lot of problems, mostly stemming from seeing his mother shot dead right next to him at an impressionable age, but he is STD-free.
As for me, I’m meticulous in my testing regime and I’ve never fucked anyone bare. I’m too cautious. But tonight, it seems, I’ve lost my head over Finch, this charming, manipulative, incandescent husband of mine. His body glows bronze even in the low downlights of the bedroom. He’s almost ochre; the sun’s burnished him where it just burns me. How does an Irish kid get this gorgeous tan? Maybe I should take some tanning tips from him.
I take so long just looking him over that he bucks again, his long, slender cock thrusting into my own, and I love how he makes me look like such a brute in comparison. I’m pretty sure he loves it too.
“It’s our honeymoon,” he whimpers. “Can’t we just do what we want for now? When we get back…” He trails off, but I hear the unsaid words. When we get back, everything will be different. He’s going to find out just how much his freedoms have been curtailed, and my time will no longer be my own. My decisions will be informed, shaped, commanded by others.
But right here, in this bed, with no cameras and no wires, we can do as we please. For once in my life, maybe I can let down my guard.
I lower my head and trail the tip of my tongue down his neck, tasting his sweat, cut by a sharp chemical tang. The drugs are working their way out of his system, but I guess the millions of pills he’s taken over the years have left their residue.
“Fuck me,” he demands. “Don’t tease me.”
“I want you way more desperate than this.” His mouth twists as I say that; half annoyed and half amused. “Maybe I should j
ust fuck that filthy mouth of yours again.”
“Please, Luca.” Just hearing my name come out of his mouth is making my blood pound. “I love that, but right now I need you inside me.”
I know why he needs it so bad. He has a void inside and he thinks my dick’ll help fill it. Who knows, maybe it will? But if we’re doing this, if we’re doing what we want to do, I’m going to do it right. I’m going to put my mouth all over him first, taste him. I’ve never wanted to taste someone so bad, and I don’t mean his spunk; I mean him.
He’s freshly prepped and showered; he took his time while I stood there and waited and let the meal settle. I’ve never had such fine food, and I drank a glass more than I normally would. Finch drank with abandon and ate little. But he said he was satisfied, even made me eat his dessert.
I roll him over on the bed and he goes eagerly enough, expecting that he’ll get what he wants. But I’m not in the business of fulfilling expectations; I always try to exceed them. I plant his hands on the bars of the headboard and lay down on top of him, letting him feel my heat and my sweat and my hard cock nestling between his asscheeks. “You hang on to that,” I say in his ear. “If you let go, even for a second, I stop.”
Finch lets out a whimper, and it almost breaks me, makes me want to drive into him. His hole is right there and available; when I move, the head of my cock drags over it, and it takes every ounce of self-control to hold back. I see his fingers tighten so hard that his knuckles turn white.
“Good boy,” I breathe. “Now we can begin.”
I peel myself off of him and look at him splayed out on the bed, his body begging mutely for mine. His ass is something Michelangelo might have carved; each globe perfectly sculpted with gentle concaves on each side. Christ. I hope he stays young and beautiful forever…or at least keeps his ass looking just like this.
“Knees,” I tell him, and he awkwardly pulls his knees up under him while still clinging to the bars of the headboard. One day I’m going to tie him up. That’s definitely going to happen. But right now it’s fun to watch the struggle.
Married to the Mobster Page 10
