Gianna still hid her resentment better than Gaia ever had. Yet she could feel nothing but resentment considering she was forced to marry me. Her feelings toward sharing a bed with me again that night had been as clear as day.
Trepidation. She should not have worried. Despite the dark hunger for my young wife’s beautiful pussy, I was a man who could control myself.
I abhorred the idea of sleeping with a woman who did not want me again. The years with Gaia had been bad enough.
Even when she had approached me for sex, which only happened when she had ulterior motives, she never wanted to sleep with me.
She didn’t even think about me when I fucked her.
A new wave of fury twisted my insides. I spit the toothpaste into the sink, then washed my face and changed my pajama pants. My anger did not diminish when I returned to the bedroom. Gianna had changed into a silk nightgown with tiny sunflowers all over it.
She stared at a picture of the white beach taken from my summer home on Long Beach Island on a beautiful spring day. An image meant to summon calm within me. In vain.
It was unreasonable to be furious about her wardrobe choice, especially when she looked exceptionally pretty in her dress, but I was.
“Didn’t I tell you to get rid of those sunflower atrocities?” Gianna jerked and turned in on herself. Her hair settled into smooth ringlets on her bare shoulders. Her eyes were wide, as blue as the sky in the picture above her head.
“Excuse me?”
More anger, which was not even directed at Gianna, but roared louder in my chest since I had seen Daniel on his mother’s bed. Every night he went there, no matter how many times I told him not to.
“I sent you some new clothes.
I expect you to wear them.” Gianna lifted her chin.
“Although I understand your need to make me look like a woman in public, I cannot understand why I cannot wear the clothes I love in private. Just because I’m your wife now doesn’t mean I’m not still me. I won’t become someone else just because you don’t like who I am. You chose to marry me. You cannot turn me into the wife you want. You can’t control everything, even if you think you have to.” What did she know? I approached her.
She threw her head back to meet my furious gaze. Goose bumps flashed across her skin and her nipples hardened, clenching against the thin fabric of her nightgown.
“Is that so? I control hundreds of men and an entire city, but you think I can’t control you?” I approached, leaning Gianna against the wall. “Stop intimidating me,” she said, trying to get past me. I extended my arm, leaning my palm against the wall next to her head, caging her in.
“You will obey me.” He looked at my arm, then looked up. He moved closer until we were touching, causing me to fall. “What will you do if I don’t obey?”
That damn strawberry scent filled my nose. Wrapping an arm around her waist, I pulled her toward me and lowered my head for a hard kiss. She stiffened in my grip, gasped into my mouth. What the fuck was I doing?
Gianna
I stood petrified, caught off guard by her sudden proximity. How could he kiss me when he was angry?
He turned with a sharp intake of breath and took a few steps away before giving me a cautious look.
“There is no need to be afraid. I will not force myself on you.
Last night was necessary, but I won’t look for you again until you want me to.” He looked tired again and as if he was sure I would never want him. What had happened between him and his wife? I pushed the thought of her to the back of my mind, and with it the restlessness that accompanied it.
I should have said something, but I was overwhelmed by the situation, by the kiss that still echoed in my lips, by the look in Alessio’s eyes. I felt like I was caught in a current, spinning faster and faster, leaving me disoriented. Yesterday morning I was me, an eighteen-year-old girl who loved art and Pilates.
Now I was a wife, a stepmother, the high society lady by the side of an underboss. With all my new roles, was there still room for me?
Alessio looked at me, nodding slowly, as if my expression gave him an answer to a question he had not even uttered. He walked over to the bed and sank down.
His broad shoulders and back were covered with long, thin vertical scars that I had not noticed before. Many of them. I moved closer to him to get a better look.
Alessio said nothing, just looked at me. I pointed to one of the scars, then touched it lightly, but after a moment I moved my hand away.
“You can touch them,” Alessio said calmly, but his voice had a sharper note. I ran my fingertips over the scars on his shoulder blades and back. Some fathers tortured their sons to make them strong. Alessio was strong and brutal. Was his father the reason for this?
“Who did this? Your father?”
Alessio shook his head. The way he looked at me made me blush. I wasn’t even sure why.
“When I was about your age, I and some of my men were captured by the Bratva. They whipped me before moving on to other methods of torture.”
I gasped at his clinical tone.
“My God, this is horrible.” I slumped beside him on the edge of the bed. His musky scent made me want to get closer, to run my nose over his skin and taste him. What a ridiculous thought.
“Why do you think my father did that?”
“Because that’s how many Made Men make their children strong. You know my uncles. Abusing their children is their favorite sport.” Alessio’s eyes lingered on the small scar on his knee, then moved to the one on his outer thigh and the one on his upper arm. They were not prominent, but sitting as close together as we did, they could not be missed.