89

I was too tired to continue playing with him. I wanted this day to end. I wanted sleep to magically take away my memory. I opened the door, then turned and walked back to the bed. The door swung open, slamming against the wall, and Luca burst in. He grabbed me by the arm and fury enveloped me. How dare he put his hands on me after grabbing that bitch’s ass?
“Don’t touch me!” – I shouted, freeing myself from his grasp. She was panting, her eyes wild with excitement. Her hair was in disarray and her shirt was not buttoned properly. Matteo stood in the doorway, Romero and Caesar a few steps behind.
“Where have you been?” he said quietly, reaching for me again, and I stumbled backward.
“NO! Don’t ever touch me again. Not when you use those same hands to touch your whore.”
His face became very still. “Everybody out. Now.”
Matthew turned and he and the other two men disappeared from view.
“Where have you been?”
“I wasn’t cheating on you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I would never do that. I think fidelity is the most important thing in a marriage. So you can calm down now, my body is still only yours.” I practically spit out the last words. “I just walked around the city.”
“You walked around New York at night by yourself?”
I stared into his eyes, hoping he could see how much I hated him for what I had seen, how much it hurt to know he respected me so little. “You have no right to be angry with me, Luca. Not after what I saw today. You betrayed me.”
growled Luca. “How can I cheat when we don’t even have a real marriage? I can’t even fuck my wife. Do you think I will live like a monk until you decide to put up with my closeness?”
That arrogant pig. He and my father had made sure I didn’t even talk to other men until my marriage to Luca. “God forbid. How dare I expect my husband to be faithful to me? How dare I hope for this small decency in a monster?”
“I am not a monster. I treated you with respect.”
“Respect?” My voice rose higher. “I caught you with another woman! Maybe I should go out, take some random guy with me, and let you fuck me in front of you. How would that make you feel?”
Suddenly he threw me on the bed and was on top of me, arms pinned above my head. Overcoming the suffocating fear, I said. “Do it. Take me so I can really hate you. His eyes were the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
His nostrils flared. I turned my face away and closed my eyes. He was breathing heavily, his grip on my wrists was too strong. My heart beat hard against my rib cage as I lay motionless beneath him. He shifted and pressed his face to my shoulder, releasing a harsh breath. “God, Aria.”
I opened my eyes. He let go of my wrists but I held my arms above my head. Slowly he raised his eyes. The anger had disappeared from his face. He reached for my cheek but I turned away. “Don’t touch me with her on you.”
She sat down. “Now I’m going to take a shower so we’ll both calm down and then I want us to talk .”
“What more is there to talk about?”
“Us. This marriage.”
I lowered my arms. “Today you fucked a woman in front of my eyes. Do you think there is still a chance for this marriage?
“I didn’t want you to see that.”
“Why? So you could cheat in peace and quiet behind my back?”
He sighed and began to unbutton his shirt. “Let me take a shower. You were right. I shouldn’t disrespect you further by touching you like this.”
I shrugged. At that moment I didn’t think I would ever want him to touch me again, no matter how many showers he took. He disappeared into the bathroom. The shower worked for a long time. I sat against the headboard, with the sheets pulled up to my hips when Luke finally emerged. I looked away when he dropped the towel and put on his boxers, then slid into bed beside me with his back against the headboard. He did not try to touch me. “Did you cry?” he asked in a puzzled voice.
“Did you think I wouldn’t care?”
“Many women in our world are happy when their husbands use prostitutes or hire a mistress. As you said, there are few love marriages. If a woman can’t stand her husband’s touch, she won’t mind him having affairs to satisfy her needs.
I scoffed. “Her needs.”
“I am not a good man, Aria. I’ve never pretended otherwise. There are no good men in the mob.”
My eyes rested on the tattoo on his heart. “I know.” I swallowed. “But you made me believe that I could trust you and that you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I never hurt you.”
Did he really not understand that? “It hurt me to see you with her.”
His expression softened. “Aria, I didn’t have the feeling that you wanted to sleep with me. I thought you would be happy if I didn’t touch you.
“When did I say that?”
“When I told you I wanted you, you pulled back. You looked disgusted.”
“We were kissing and you said you wanted to fuck me more than any other woman. Of course I backed off. I’m not a whore you can use when you feel like it. You’re never home. How am I supposed to know you?” He sounded frustrated. Mafia men seemed even more clueless than normal men. “What did you think? I never did anything. You’re the only man I’ve ever kissed. You knew that when we got married. You and my father made sure of that, and yet you expect me to go from never having even kissed a boy to opening my legs for you. I wanted to take it slow. I wanted to get to know you so I could relax, I wanted to kiss you and do other things before we slept together.
Realization finally crept over her features, then she smiled. “Other things? What kind of other things?”
I frowned. I didn’t feel like joking. “This is useless.”
“No, don’t.” He turned my face toward him again, then dropped his hand. He had learned his lesson. “I understood. For men, the first time is no big deal, or at least it hasn’t been for the men I know.”
“When was your first time?”
“I was 13 years old and my father thought it was time for me to become a real man since I was already initiated. ‘You can’t be a virgin and a murderer.’ That’s what he said.” Luca smiled coldly. “He paid two noble prostitutes to spend a weekend with me and teach me everything they knew.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Luca said quietly. “But I was a 13-year-old teenager who wanted to prove myself. I was the youngest member of the New York Familia. I didn’t want the older men to think of me as a boy. And I felt like a big deal at the end of the weekend. I doubt the prostitutes were particularly impressed with my performance, but they pretended I was the best lover they had ever had. My father probably paid them extra for that. It took me a while to realize that not all women like it if you get in their face when they blow you.”
I wrinkled my nose and Luca let out a laugh. “Yes,” he murmured, then took a strand of my hair and let it slip onto his finger. I wasn’t sure why he always did that. “I was really worried tonight.”
“I was worried about letting someone take what’s yours.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I knew it, I know you’re loyal. Things with the Bratva are escalating. If they get their hands on you…” He shook his head.
“They didn’t.”
“They won’t.”
I moved away from his hand that had moved from my hair to my throat. I did not want his touch. He sighed. “You’re really going to make it hard, aren’t you?”
I looked.
“I’m sorry for what you saw today.”
“But I’m not sorry for what you did.”
He sounded exasperated. “I rarely say I’m sorry. When I say it, I mean it.”
“Maybe you should say it more often.” He took a deep breath. “There is no way out of this marriage for you, nor for me. Do you really want to be miserable?”
He was right. There was no way out. And even if there was, what good would it do? My father would marry me off to another man. Maybe a man like Bibiana’s husband. And as much as I wanted to deny it, I could imagine developing feelings for the Luke I had seen at the restaurant. It wouldn’t have hurt so much to see him with that woman if I hadn’t. When he had touched my hair, kissed me or hugged me during the night, I had felt the desire to fall in love with him. I had wanted to hate him with all my heart. If Gianna had been in my place, she would rather have gone through life hating her husband and feeling miserable than give him and our father the satisfaction of caring for him. “No,” I said. “But I can’t pretend I’ve never seen you with her.”
“I don’t expect it, but let’s pretend our marriage starts today. A clean start.”
“It’s not that easy. What about her? Tonight wasn’t the first time you were with her. Do you love her ?” My voice trembled as I said it.
Luca obviously noticed. He looked at me as if I were a puzzle he could not solve. “Love? No.
I don’t have feelings for Grace.
“Then why do you keep seeing her? The truth.”
“Because she knows how to suck a cock and because she fucks well. Truthful enough?” I blushed. Luca ran a finger over my cheek. “I like it when you blush every time I say something dirty. I can’t wait to see your blush when I do something dirty to you.
Why couldn’t he stop touching me? “If you really want this marriage to work, if you ever want a chance to do something dirty to me, then you will have to stop seeing other women. Maybe the other wives won’t mind, but I won’t let you touch me as long as there is someone else.
Luca nodded, “I promise. I will only touch you from now on.”
I considered this. “Grace won’t like that.” “Who cares what she thinks?”
“Won’t her father give you any trouble?” “We pay for his campaigns and he has a son following in his footsteps who will soon need our money too. What does he care about a daughter who is good at anything but shopping and eventually marrying a rich man?” The same could be said for me and every other woman in our world. Sons could follow in their father’s footsteps; they could become members of the mob. I still remembered how much my father had celebrated when he found out that his fourth child was finally a boy.
“He probably hoped you would be that man.”
“We don’t marry strangers. Never. She knew that, and it wasn’t as if she was the only woman I was fucking .”
I glanced at him. “You said it yourself. You have your own needs. So how can you tell me you won’t cheat on me again soon if you get tired of waiting for me to sleep with you?”
Luca tilted his head, his eyes half-closed thoughtfully. “Are you going to make me wait a long time?”
“I think we both have a very different concept of the word ‘long wait.'”
“I’m not a patient man. If long means a year…” He interrupted himself. I couldn’t believe him.
“What do you want me to say, Aria? I kill, blackmail and torture people. I am the leader of men who do the same when I order them to, and soon I will be the Chief of Chiefs, the leader of the most powerful criminal organization on the East Coast, and probably in the United States. Did you think I was going to take you against your will on your wedding night, and now you’re upset because I don’t want to wait months to sleep with you?”
I closed my eyes. “I’m tired. It’s late.” It was so late that it was actually early.
“No,” Luca said, touching my waist. “I want to understand. I am your husband. You are not like other girls who can choose the man they will lose everything with. Are you afraid I might be hard on you because of what you saw today? I won’t be. I told you I want you to squirm under me from pleasure, and although that probably won’t happen the first time I take you, I will make you come as often as you want with my tongue and fingers until you can come when I am in you. I don’t mind going slow, but what do you want to wait for?”
I watched him with half-closed eyes. For something that will never happen: that you will want to make love to me and not take me as your property. Part of me didn’t want to settle for less; the other part knew I had to. ‘Love is something girls hope for when they don’t know any better, something women long for when they stay up at night, and something they will only ever get from their children.
Men have no time for such notions.’ This is what my father used to say. ‘I won’t make you wait months,’ I said instead of what I wanted to say, then I fell asleep.