I gripped the steering wheel tightly as I drove toward the mansion that had been my and Carla’s home for almost twelve years, and would now also become Valentina’s home. Even that felt like sacrilege. Valentina gave me another curious look, but I did not let her glimpse behind the mask. I led her inside the house, then up the stairs to our bedroom.
My eyes found Valentina’s cleavage, her curves seductive.
Perhaps I could get rid of some of the tension building up in my body. Ever since Matteo had danced with her and from the appreciative glances other men had given her, I had felt a depraved need to stake my claim. I had never been primal, had never acted on my basic needs, but I had been a different man at the time, or maybe not different, but my dark nature had not been in the same control. With Carla, I had been restrained, I had never felt the desire for angry sex with her.
She had been the calm of my life, the one that spoke to the good in me, to a part of me that I wished was more apparent but never would be.
I opened the door to the master bedroom and signaled for Valentina to come in, which she did with another probing look at me. My eyes followed the curve of her back to her butt, which the dress accentuated quite nicely as I entered and closed the door. I had moved into the bedroom days after Carla’s death, unable to sleep in the room where I had spent almost every night with her. I put the memories aside, repressed the wave of emotions they evoked and focused on a safer idea: my desire for my wife.
“The bathroom is beyond that door,” I said, as I walked past her toward the window, stifling my desire to grab Valentina, throw her on the bed, and fuck her from behind. She was my wife and deserved at least some semblance of control from me. The fact that I desired her already made me feel guilty. The prostitutes I had sought out in Palermo had been chosen on the basis of their sexual specialties, not their looks. I had not even given them more than a fleeting glance before fucking them, but I had chosen Valentina, and although I wanted to pretend it was based on logic alone, I had to admit to myself that I had found her desirable.
The slight click told me that Valentina had disappeared into the bathroom. I leaned against the window, staring out into the dark night, focusing on the way my groin twitched, on the desire stirring inside me, on the dark hunger that screamed louder than pain and guilt.
When Valentina finally emerged, I was on the brink. She cleared her throat, making me turn and admire the sight of her, dressed in a purple nightgown that hugged her curves. She was elegant and more modest than I had expected. When my gaze finally landed on her face, I knew that I would not find an outlet for my pent-up anger that night, not because Valentina would not respond to my requests, but because I could not allow myself to behave that way with my wife, not when she looked at me with a hint of insecurity and shyness, and even worse, hope. Valentina might have lost a husband, but she wanted me to take his place, to give her tenderness and love.
“You can lie down. I’m going to take a shower.” The words came out like an order, but I did not withdraw them as I headed for the bathroom and closed the door in front of Valentina’s confused face.
I tore off my tie, then pushed it to the floor before removing my remaining clothes just as violently. Only when I stepped into the shower and took a long breath as the hot water rained down on me did I relax.
I grabbed my cock; I needed to get rid of the desire boiling under my skin. The woman waiting for me in our shared bed wanted something I could not give her and was not yet ready to give me what I wanted. Soon she would realize that this was a bonding for outward appearances, nothing more. My release gave me little satisfaction, not that I expected it, but when I returned to the bedroom fifteen minutes later, I felt more myself, in control and calm. Valentina lay on the bed, elegant, beautiful. My eyes watched her, I couldn’t stop myself, but again her expression reminded me why I had tried to control myself in the first place. I lay down beside her, even as her scent crept up my nose, calling out the desire I had tried to quell. I met Valentina’s gaze as she lay down beside me. She looked embarrassed and unsure, almost innocent, and I was taken aback because I had expected her to be different, because I had married her in the hope that she would be different.
“Tomorrow morning I have to get up early,” I said, turning off the lights.
Valentina’s steady breathing echoed beside me and her scent still tantalized me, but in the darkness the past was stronger than my desire as memories resurfaced on the black canvas of night. Carla’s hollow face, her last hoarse breath, the fear and despair in her eyes and finally the relief when it was all over.
I avoided my wife like a damn coward. I was proud of my restraint, but in her company I was shown how wrong I was . Each new attempt on her part to seduce me knocked down another piece of my wall.
Valentina would not give up. Part of me wanted her to keep going until I had lost my battle, the other part, even stronger , needed her to stop before I showed her why I had avoided marriage for so long. Our first kiss awakened something in me that I had difficulty keeping in check, a hunger so unbridled and wild that it threatened to awaken parts of my nature that had no place in a marriage. And so I kept pushing her toward me. For my sake, but more than that: for her sake.
I stared into the darkened fireplace. The last embers had died down, unlike the burning anger inside me. It was hard to pinpoint the source of my anger. Most of it was directed at myself, but some of it was for the woman who did not deserve it.
Valentina.
I resented her for the desire she aroused in me.
She made me feel unsettled in a way that was unfamiliar to me. I had never felt this kind of sexual desire, this need to consume someone.
The sound of heels on the hardwood floor caught my attention, but I did not turn around. Valentina hovered by the door, beautiful as ever, a siren calling to my baser instincts.
“Is it true you used to frequent the Palermo Club?”
My fingers around the glass of whiskey tightened. I didn’t want to talk about the past, much less be reminded of my primal needs. “It belongs to the Outfit, but it was long before our marriage.”
“So you didn’t mind the company of prostitutes, but you can’t take your wife’s virginity?”
Shock swept over me. I looked at Valentina. Virginity?
A desire so all-consuming that it almost tore my control to shreds took hold of me. With sheer force of will I curbed it.
Valentina fled the room.
With forced calm, I put down my glass and followed her, even though keeping my distance from my all-too-tempting wife was damaging.
I found Valentina in the bedroom, staring out the window. I approached her until I could see her face recumbent in the reflection.
“Virginity?” I asked, standing close to Valentina who kept looking out the window, trying to hide her face from me . “You and Antonio have been married for four years.”
I thought about Valentina’s attempts to seduce me. She had seemed inexperienced and impractical, but I had blamed her nerves for being with another man other than her first husband. Now that I reflected more deeply on her actions, I realized that they could more likely be related to the fact that she had never been with a man, but the question remained: why was she a virgin after getting married? “Valentina,” I said more firmly.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she whispered. “It was just a figure of speech. I didn’t mean it literally.
As you said, Antonio and I have been married for four years. Obviously , I’m not a virgin.”
He was lying. I had no difficulty in discovering the lie, and it increased my anger. Few people dared to lie to me and all paid a high price for it, but Valentina knew she was safe.
Safe from the cruel nature of my being, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have other ways to extort the truth from her.
I touched her side. She gasped in surprise and slammed against the windowsill with a gasp.
The sensation of her heat through her clothes had a stronger effect on me than I had intended.
I focused on Valentina’s reaction, ignoring my own.
“Turn around,” I ordered. Valentina turned toward me but did not meet my eyes. I lifted her head, meeting those stunned, damned eyes. As always, she shivered slightly under my touch and that reaction went straight to my cock.
Valentina made no attempt to retreat or lower her gaze.
She held mine almost stubbornly but her chin stiffened. She was nervous, and not just about our closeness. She was clinging to a lie. The question was: which one.
“So your words downstairs were simply to provoke?” I asked in a low voice. I hardly ever raised my voice, even when dealing with my soldiers, and I certainly wouldn’t when dealing with my wife.
Valentina’s eyes filled with tears, and a tear slid down her smooth cheek, bursting on my index finger. I let her go.
The tears didn’t bother me. I had seen grown men crying on their knees before me, but the sight of my wife’s tumult caused an unpleasant pang in my chest. Valentina immediately withdrew from my proximity.
“Why are you crying?” I asked cautiously, trying to understand Valentina’s mood. She didn’t seem like someone who cried often.
“Because you scare me!”
“Until today you have never scared me,” I said.
Evoking fear in others came naturally to me and was something I had used to my advantage in the past and still use. Fear would surely prompt Valentina to reveal the truth, but I did not want my wife to be afraid of me.
“Then maybe I’m a good actress.”
“You have no reason to be afraid of me, Valentina.
What are you hiding?”
Her eyes lowered to my chin, avoiding my gaze, trying to cling to the lie she had no way to protect.
“Nothing.”
I wrapped my fingers around her wrist, a warning and a request. “You’re lying about something. And like your husband, I want to know what it is.”
Valentina’s eyes flashed with anger, surprising me in their vehemence. “You mean that as Chief you want to know, because so far you have not behaved exactly like my husband.”
She was right. I had not behaved like a husband, not a good one , not even a decent one. I had stepped on those vows, but that wasn’t the point, and I wasn’t going to let her make one. “Why should you still be a virgin?”
“I told you I’m not!” She tried to wriggle out of the situation by releasing herself from my grasp, but I would not let her go. Instead, I drew her closer to me until she was pressed against me, but I regretted my decision the moment her scent hit me, a spicy perfume with a floral note and the tantalizing scent of Valentina. Her pulse quickened, her lips parted, her eyes dilated as she stared at me. She licked her lips, a nervous gesture, and my groin contracted with a new wave of desire for the woman in front of me. I wanted Valentina, there was no denying it.
I repelled the feeling downward. “So if I took you toward our bed right now…” I said softly and pushed Valentina closer to our bed. “… and made you mine, I would not find out that you lied to me just now.”
She would not have been able to hide it from me if she had been a virgin. When I had taken Carla’s virginity, there had been no mistake. Pain flared in my chest, burning, and I drove all thoughts of her from my mind.
Valentina pulled my grip. “You wouldn’t because you wouldn’t take me to that bed right now.”
I focused on the woman in front of me. She had tried to sound confident, but a hint of uncertainty remained. “I won’t?”
“No, because you would not take me against my will. You disapprove of rape.”
“Is that what you feel?” I asked laughing.
He looked me in the eye. “Yes. You gave direct orders to the Sub-Chiefs to tell their men that you would castrate anyone who used rape as a means of revenge or torture.”
“I did. I think a woman should never submit to anyone but her husband. But you are my wife.” In our world, a woman’s body belonged to her husband. No one would ever question me, no matter what I did to Valentina, not only because my word was law, but also because our old traditions protected me.
Valentina shivered, the sophisticated mask slipped off, revealing what I often forgot: she was much younger than me. “But still,” she whispered.
“Yes, anyway,” I said firmly and let her go. “Now I want you to tell me the truth. I will always treat you with respect, but I expect the same from you. I will not tolerate lies. And eventually we will share a bed and then, Valentina, I will know the truth.”
“When will we ever share a bed as husband and wife, and not just sleep next to each other? Will it ever happen ?”