Luca Vitiello by Cora Reilly

CHAPTER 7

Something soft tickled my fucking nose. My eyes shot open, and I stared at hair the color of spun gold. I was spooning Aria’s small body, my arm wrapped around her narrow waist, and she was completely relaxed in my embrace. I had slept with her body against mine. I’d never let a woman sleep in my bed. I’d thought it would take months before I’d get a decent night of sleep now that I was forced to share a bed with my wife.

Fuck. Aria was my wife.

And still a fucking virgin.

I propped myself up on my elbow. She didn’t stir. Her pale eyelashes rested on her porcelain skin, lips slightly parted. Fucking perfection, that’s what she was.

Her stomach lifted and fell under my palm as she breathed peacefully. I could feel her warmth through the little nothing she was wearing. I wanted to slide my hand down between her legs, wanted to feel the heat there. Wanted to bury my fingers in her—and my cock. Fuck. My cock sprang to life.

I wanted to claim her, because it was my right.

She was mine.

My wife. And because of that. I wanted to protect her, even from myself—the hardest task of all.

Aria’s breathing changed, her stomach tightened under my palm, then her entire body stiffened. She was scared of me, of what I might do.

“Good, you’re awake,” I murmured.

She stiffened even further and, slowly, her eyes peeled open. Gripping her hip, I rolled her over so I could get a better look at her face. Even without a hint of makeup, with tousled hair and sleepy, Aria was stunning. Her eyes lingered on my chest, a blush spreading on her cheeks. While I’d never fallen asleep beside a woman, I’d spent more than enough time in bed with them, but for Aria, this was the first time she was so close to a man. The early morning sun let her hair glow in golden hues. I reached for a strand, marveling at the silkiness. Everything about her was soft, smooth, silky—beckoning to be touched, to be claimed.

“It won’t be long until my stepmother, my aunts, and the other married women of my family knock at our door to gather up the sheets and carry them into the dining room where undoubtedly everyone else is already waiting for the fucking spectacle to begin.”

Her blush deepened, acute embarrassment flickering in her eyes. The epitome of innocence, so different from me and yet at my mercy. She glanced down at the cut on my forearm.

I nodded. “My blood will give them what they want. It’ll be the foundation of our story, but we’ll be expected to fill in the details. I know I’m a convincing liar, but will you be able to lie to everyone’s faces, even your mother’s, when you tell them about our wedding night? Nobody can know what happened. It would make me look weak.”

Weak. People said many things about me. Weak wasn’t one of them. I had no trouble doing what was necessary, no trouble hurting and breaking others. I shouldn’t have hesitated claiming Aria, shouldn’t have been bothered by her terror and tears. I should have pushed her down on her knees so I didn’t have to see her fear and fucked her from behind. That’s what people expected from me.

“Weak because you didn’t want to rape your wife?” she asked, her voice shaking.

My fingers tensed on Aria’s waist. Rape— we both knew nobody in our world would see it that way. No matter how brutally I fucked Aria, they’d see it as my privilege, my right.

My lips pulled into a tight smile. “Weak for not taking what was mine for the taking. The tradition of bloody sheets in the Sicilian mafia is as much a proof of the bride’s purity as of the husband’s relentlessness. So what do you think it will say about me that I had you lying half-naked in my bed, vulnerable and mine, and yet here you are untouched as you were before our wedding?”

Fear simmered in Aria’s eyes. “Nobody will know. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Why should I trust you? I don’t make a habit of trusting people, especially people who hate me.”

Aria touched the wound on my forearm, her eyes softer than before. “I don’t hate you.”

She had every reason to hate me because I owned her, because I would never release her now that she was mine. She’d be trapped in an expensive golden cage, safe from violence because I vowed it to myself, but condemned to live without love and tenderness.

“And you can trust me because I am your wife. I didn’t choose this marriage, but I can at least choose to make the best out of our bond. I have nothing to gain from betraying your trust, but everything to gain by showing you that I’m loyal.”

She was right. It was a matter of survival instinct that she’d try to gain my trust, even if it was a futile endeavor. She was at my mercy and needed to stay in my good graces. Aria was a clever woman, but she didn’t know my treacherous uncles and cousins like I did.

“The men waiting in that living room are predators. They prey on the weak and they’ve been waiting for more than a decade for a sign of weakness from me. The moment they see one, they’ll pounce.”

My Uncle Gottardo had never forgiven me for crushing his son’s throat. He was waiting for a chance to get rid of me.

Aria’s brows puckered. “But your father—”

“If my father thinks I’m too weak to control the Famiglia, he’ll gladly let them tear me apart.” My father didn’t care about me. I was his guarantee to uphold the bloodline. As long as he considered me his strongest, most brutal option, he’d keep me alive. If he thought I was getting weak, if he thought I wasn’t fit to become Capo, he’d put me down like a fucking dog.

“What about Matteo?”

Father still believed Matteo would taste blood the second he saw his chance to become Capo instead of me. He would never understand that Matteo and I weren’t enemies, that we weren’t only bound by necessity and pragmatism. My brother and I would die for each other. Father hated his brothers as much as they hated him. He kept them alive because honor dictated it and because it gave him a fucking thrill to give them orders as their Capo, to have them grovel at his feet and try to stay in his good graces.

“I trust Matteo, but he’s hot-headed. He’d get himself killed trying to defend me.”

Aria nodded as if she understood. Maybe she did. She was a woman, shielded from most of the violence of our world, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hear about it.

“Nobody will doubt me,” she said. “I’ll give them what they want to see.”

I didn’t know Aria well enough to gauge her lying skills. Slowly, I pushed into a sitting position, which allowed me a better view of my wife. She lay on her back, her hair fanning out around her head, and the outline of her breasts teased me through the flimsy material of her nightgown. Aria’s eyes trailed over my upper body curiously, and my groin tightened at her unpracticed appraisal. When her eyes finally met mine, her cheeks were flushed.

“You should be wearing more than this excuse for a nightgown when the harpies arrive. I don’t want them to see your body, especially your hips and upper thighs. It’s better they wonder if I left marks on you,” I said, my eyes lingering on those pink lips. “But we can’t hide your face from them.”

I moved lower, reaching for Aria’s cheek to kiss her when she closed her eyes and flinched as if she thought I’d hit her. Revulsion filled me at the mere idea of raising my hand against my wife.

“This is the second time you thought I was going to hit you,” I said in a low voice.

She looked at me in confusion. “I thought you said…”

“What? That everyone expects you to have bruises on your face after a night with me? I don’t hit women.”

Even Grace, who had a talent to drive me to the brink, had never been on the receiving end of my violence. I’d spent my childhood and youth listening to my mother’s broken crying, and, once she was dead, to Nina’s. That wasn’t what I wanted in a marriage. If I felt the need to break people, I had enough enemies to choose from. “How am I supposed to believe that you can convince everyone we’ve consummated our marriage when you keep flinching from my touch?”

“Believe me, the flinching will make everyone believe the lie even more because I definitely wouldn’t have stopped flinching away from your touch if you’d taken what’s yours. The more I flinch, the more they’ll take you for the monster you want them to think you are.”

I chuckled. “I think you might know more about playing the game of power than I expected.”

“My father is Consigliere,” she said. Aria wasn’t only beautiful, she was also clever.

I pressed my palm against her cheek. This time, she managed not to flinch, but she still became tense. Before annoyance could claim me, I reminded myself that she wasn’t used to a man’s touch. That I was her husband wouldn’t magically make her comfortable with the unfamiliar closeness. “What I meant earlier was that your face doesn’t look like you’ve been kissed.”

Aria’s eyes grew wide. “I’ve never…”

Never been kissed. All mine. Always only mine.

I crashed my lips down on hers, and Aria’s hand flew up to my chest as if she was going to push me away, but she didn’t. Her palms shook against my skin. I tried to soften my kiss, not wanting to scare her, but it was a fucking struggle to be gentle and slow when all I wanted was to lay my claim on the woman beside me.

My tongue stroked her lips open, and Aria responded hesitantly. Her blue eyes flickered with insecurity, but I didn’t allow her to worry. I took the lead, gave her no choice but to surrender to me. The feel and taste of her stirred the embers of my desire into a raging fire. I pressed harder into her, my kiss turning more forceful even as I tried to restrain myself. My fingers twitched against her cheek, wanting to travel south, wanting to stroke and discover every inch of her body. I pulled away before I could lose control. Aria blinked up at me, licking her lips, almost dazed. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips red.

I wanted her.

A knock burst through my lustful haze. I rolled over and got up, glad for the distraction. Aria gasped. I chanced a glance at her, catching her staring at my hard-on with widened eyes.

“A man is supposed to have a boner when he wakes up beside his bride, don’t you think? They want a show, they’ll get a show.” My aunts, cousins, and especially Nina were eager for new tidbits of gossip that would make their dull lives a bit brighter. They’d descend like bloodthirsty hyenas on us if they suspected I hadn’t claimed Aria. “Now go and grab a bathrobe,” I ordered.

Aria obeyed at once, practically leaping out of bed and rushing into the bathroom. I had to admit her fighting spirit last night had pleased me more than her obedience.

My eyes strayed toward the fake blood stains on the bed sheet and a flicker of regret overtook me. There was a reason the Famiglia insisted on the bloody sheets tradition, particularly my father. I still remembered the sheets after his wedding night with Nina, and I had been only a child then.

Sighing, I headed toward the table and picked up my weapons. The knocking became more insistent, but I didn’t give a fuck. Aria returned dressed in a long white satin bathrobe and holding her cut corset in one hand. She curiously watched me strap my knife and gun holsters onto my naked body, one of them covering the small cut on my forearm. Before I headed for the door, I shifted my boner so it would be even more prominent. That would give the furies of my family something to gossip about. Aria’s gaze slid down to my groin once more, and the blush returned to her cheeks.

Aria moved toward the window, wrapping her arms around herself, looking breakable and perfectly beautiful.

Tearing my eyes from her, I opened the door to the eager faces of Nina, Cosima, and Egidia. Behind them, more women from mine and Aria’s families had gathered.

Their eyes traveled the length of me. Some of them feigned shock even when it was obvious that they enjoyed the sight, considering the ugly old fools they were married to.

Only Nina pointedly ignored my undressed state, but I knew her and caught her nervous swallow. It was impossible not to know a person’s mimic and gestures if you’d seen them at their lowest. Being married to my father, I’d seen more than enough of that side of her. “We’ve come to collect the sheets,” she said, putting on her usual mask, smiling spitefully.

I allowed them to enter.

They practically shoved each other out of the way to reach the bed first. They whispered when they saw the stain, then looked toward Aria, who squirmed under their attention. She was already embarrassed as it was. I wondered how much worse it would have been if they would have actually been the proof of her lost virginity.

Nina and Cosima removed the bedsheets, giggling in that fake way that gave me a fucking headache. “Luca,” Nina said with feigned indignation. “Did nobody tell you to be gentle to your virgin bride?”

More of those fucking giggles. I held Nina’s gaze, my mouth pulling into a cold smile. “You are married to my father. Does he strike you as a man who teaches his sons to be gentle to anyone?”

Her smile became even less honest, and a flicker of pure animalistic fear flashed in her brown eyes. In this room, probably no one knew what she had to endure.

“Let me through!” Gianna screeched and stormed into the room. As an unmarried woman, she wasn’t supposed to be here, but of course the girl didn’t care. Her blue eyes landed on the sheets before they jerked toward Aria. Her face reflected worry and fear, and my annoyance with her decreased slightly. She was concerned for sister.

She turned to me with a look that was probably intended to intimidate. I cocked my eyebrows at her and the little wench actually took a step in my direction to do god only knew what. Like her sister, she only reached my chest and weighed less than half of me, not to mention the only fight experience she probably had was with her tiny midget of a brother.

“Gianna,” Aria said sharply, her eyes darting between her sister and me. “Will you help me get dressed?” Aria turned and walked toward the bath, her movements stiff as if she was sore. I was torn between admiration for her show and frustration over the fact that there was even a reason for her to pretend.

After she’d sent me another scathing look, Gianna followed after her sister and closed the door.

Nina shook her head, turning to Ludevica Scuderi. “Gianna doesn’t know how to behave herself. I doubt her future husband will tolerate that kind of behavior.”

Considering how little Rocco cared about the wellbeing of his daughters, he’d probably give her to a sadistic bastard who’d beat Gianna into shape, but that wasn’t my concern.

Nina held the folded sheets in her palms, the blood stains on display.

Ludevica was pointedly not looking at them or me.

“I don’t have all day,” I said. “Why don’t you head downstairs and prepare everything for the show?”

The women left and I closed the door, glad to have them gone. They hadn’t been suspicious, that much was clear, and why would they be? I was Luca fucking Vitiello. Sparing my bride definitely didn’t fit my reputation.

I headed for the bathroom. I needed a good shave and a fucking cold shower. I pushed the door open when I was met with resistance and Gianna’s angry face came into view in the gap.

“You can’t come in,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes at me. She was a kitten trying to scare the tiger.

“I’m her husband, now step back,” I said. I could have pushed the door open without trouble, but shoving a girl out of my way wasn’t my favorite option.

“I don’t care that you’re her husband,” she muttered.

Okay, I had given all of my meager patience to Aria last night. I pushed harder and Gianna stumbled backwards, her eyes flashing indignantly. The spitfire stepped in my way, trying to stop me, but my eyes were drawn to movement in the shower where Aria whirled around, turning her back to us. Sweet Jesus. That woman’s back was already enough to give me another boner.

“Leave.” Gianna’s hiss brought my attention back to her.

“I need to get ready, and there’s nothing here that I haven’t already seen.” A big fat lie, one I’d have to tell over and over again today when the sheets were presented.

I glared at Gianna. “Now leave, or you’ll see your first cock, girl, because I’m going to undress now.”

I reached for my boxers, but it was an empty threat, unfortunately. Scuderi would lose his shit if I showed my dick to his daughter—the one that wasn’t married to me, at least. He probably didn’t care what I did to Aria, considering he would have let me marry her when she was only fifteen. Not that I gave a fuck about Scuderi but it would have been dishonorable.

“You arrogant asshole, I—” Gianna began, and I was close to forget about doing the honorable thing when Aria told her sister to leave and finally the redhead moved toward the door. “You’re a sadistic pig,” she muttered before she closed the door. No one had ever insulted me like that and lived to see another day, but she was safe, because she was a girl and Aria’s sister.

Stifling my anger, I moved toward the washstand, but my eyes remained on Aria. She tensed when the door shut and we were alone. She was still afraid of me, even though I’d bled and lied for her. I couldn’t even blame her for her distrust. With a man like me, she had every reason to expect the worst. I took my brush and started spreading shaving cream on my face when she finally turned the shower off. Then she turned, and I halted in my movements. My eyes drank her in. She was perfection. Her skin glowed and looked like silk, even her pussy. She’d been waxed for her wedding night, only a small triangle of blond remaining, but nothing hid the delicious crease between her thighs, a place I could have sunk my cock into last night. Aria let me admire her, standing completely still, but a blush traveled over her throat and face.

I set my brush down and took one of the towels from the rack before I moved toward her. Aria’s eyes held insecurity as she opened the shower stall and took the towel with a small thanks. I couldn’t stop looking at her and, so close-up, her nakedness called even louder to the worst in me, the monster in me beckoning to be unleashed.

Aria wrapped herself in the towel and stepped out of the shower. She peered up at me. She was petite, vulnerable, breathtakingly beautiful and unconditionally mine.

“I bet you’re already regretting your decision,” she said, her eyes searching mine, looking for something all women hoped for: tenderness, affection, love. She wouldn’t find any of those things in my eyes…or my heart.

I couldn’t and wouldn’t give her those things, but I could treat her with the respect she deserved as my wife, as the woman I swore to protect. I’d respect her body, would honor her ‘no’ as if it were my own. That was all I could give her.

I returned to the washstand and picked up my shaving brush. Aria slipped past me and was almost out of the door when I gave her an answer: “No.”

She peered over her shoulder at me.

“When I claim your body, I want you writhing beneath me in pleasure, not fear.”

Aria’s eyes widened, lips parting, and then she quickly left.

I set the brush back down, grabbed the edge of the washstand and stared at my reflection. I had no trouble being a monster—it was in my nature and I enjoyed it—but the second I’d seen Aria, I’d made a vow to keep that part of myself away from her.

The women I’d fucked over the years had sought my closeness because they’d been looking for a thrill, had wanted to be dominated and to submit to someone dangerous. For them it had been a game, a sexual role play that got them wet, because those women didn’t understand that it wasn’t a role, not a fucking game. I was a monster. There wasn’t a role I played when I was with them, and it definitely wasn’t a role when I tortured and killed. Aria knew all those things. She knew the monster I harbored because she’d grown up in a world where men domineered women, where they owned them, where rape fantasies weren’t just that. They were horror stories spoken in hushed whispers among the married women. They were the shapeless fears of girls before their wedding night.

With those clueless women, I’d enjoyed being rough, treating them like shit, because they got a thrill out of it and because it was the only way I could at least be partly myself, but with Aria, I didn’t have to pretend I was someone else.

She knew what I was, and for some reason that made me want to be good to her, to show her that there was more than brutality. At least when she was concerned.