I don’t sleep after that. I can’t.
We’re moving the wedding up? Why? What does my getting kidnapped have to do with the wedding?
Is it because he wants to fuck me? Is he so honorable that he won’t do it before the wedding?
Even as I think it, that word, honorable, makes me sneer. Because what if I say no? What then? How honorable will he be then?
There are two sides to Stefan Sabbioni. Maybe more than two. One is violent, filled with rage. The other is the one who carried me out of that well. The one who swore he’d never let anyone hurt me again.
I don’t know if I can reconcile the two.
When the doctor comes the next day, he gives me the birth control shot. After he leaves, the seamstress is back with the final fitting of the hideous wedding dress. Millie’s in and out too and there seem to be double the guards as there were before.
The only person not here is Stefan.
I’m surprised when Millie walks into my bedroom that afternoon to tell me my father is on the line. She’s holding a house phone out for me. I guess I don’t expect him to call me here.
“Dad?”
“Gabriela. Why haven’t you called me?” Not are you okay?
“I’m just trying to wrap my brain around it all myself.”
“Well, I’d have preferred to hear from you that you’re all right rather than that man.”
“That man saved me.”
“He should have had you better protected. I’ll kill him if anyone touches a hair on your head again.”
How heartfelt, I think, rolling my eyes. “Well, I’m on the mend if you’re concerned.”
Silence. “Of course I’m concerned,” he says a few moments later. “Don’t be stupid.”
“The men on the boat, are they both…”
“Gone. Yes.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s their job. They knew the risks.”
Still. It’s two lives. Two more lives gone because of me. “He’s moving the wedding up,” I tell my father. He sighs and I realize something. “You already know, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t what happened change things?”
“Why would it?”
“Because I nearly died.”
He makes a sound like a snort or a chuckle. “Don’t be dramatic, Gabriela.”
I’m shocked. But why am I shocked? I know my father, don’t I?
“Did you arrange it?” The words are out before I can stop them and the instant they are, I swear I feel ice on the line.
“Did I arrange for men to kidnap my daughter and drop her into a well?”
It’s his tone that has me quieting. That has me remembering those moments in the water when I’d thought of her. My mom. His tone and the silence after that remind me of that night so many years ago and even though we’re separated by hundreds of miles, even though I can put the phone down and just walk away, I shudder, freeze up.
My father still scares me.
And I’m very aware that he’s not denying that he had anything to do with it.
“Waverly is sending over a revised contract. Be sure to read the modification before you sign it. I’m sure as heroic as you must think your husband-to-be, he won’t have shared this little tidbit.”
“What modification?”
“It’ll be hand delivered. I have to go, Gabriela.”
“What modification?” I press.
“Goodbye.”
I hear a click and he’s gone. For a moment, I stand listening to the dial tone before finally putting the phone down.
I sit on the edge of the bed and run my fingers through my wet hair. I touch the bruise on my forehead, the one from when Rafa and I were driving, and those men sideswiped us. It’s the same person who arranged for me to be kidnapped because the man Stefan was asking about was at both events.
Why didn’t I tell him that? Tell him about Rafa and Taormina and that man?
There’s a knock on my door and Miss Millie comes inside with a tray of food.
“Shall I take this?” she asks about the phone once she sets the tray down. She doesn’t ask me how the call was. She knows better. Or maybe she just reads it on my face.
“Yes, thank you.” She’s about to leave when I stop her. “If he calls again, can you tell him I’m not here please?”
She studies me for a moment, then nods her head. “Of course, dear.”
On the second evening, I go downstairs for dinner because if I spend one more minute in this bed, I’m going to go crazy. There’s a replacement cell phone on the table at my place with a note from Stefan stuck to the box.
Don’t drop this one at the bottom of the sea.
S
The joke is in poor taste, but I find myself smiling anyway.
I take it out of the box. It’s the same pretty rose gold as the original phone and the same numbers are programmed.
I check the time. It’s almost noon on the East Coast. I program the number for Clear Meadows and ask the receptionist for Melanie. She connects me a few minutes later and I ask if it’s a good time to FaceTime Gabe. I can hear the smile in her voice and a few moments later, using Melanie’s cell phone, I’m looking at Gabe sitting in the community room with a smock on that has paint smeared all over it.
“Gabi!” he calls out and I see his finger coming toward the camera. I guess he’s trying to touch my face.
“Gabe! It’s so good to see you!”
“What happened to your face?” he asks.
I touch my bangs, push them down to cover the bandage.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just fell down. You know how clumsy I am.”
“You’re not clumsy.” He peers closer, the camera showing me just part of his eye and nose for a moment. “You’re hurt,” he says, his expression so worried, it breaks my heart.
“I’m okay, Gabe. I promise. It’s just a little bump.”
He just sits there studying me for a moment and his expression is almost like it used to be. Like he used to be.
But then it’s as though he suddenly remembers something and shifts the phone to his knee where there’s a scrape covered by a band-aid.
“I fell too, Gabi. We have matching band-aids.”
I smile when I see his face again. “How did you fall?”
“I tripped when I was running.”
Melanie comes into the picture. “We had a rainy day and the minute we could get outside Gabe went charging, didn’t you, Gabe?”
“Yep,” Gabe says. “But it doesn’t hurt. Are you coming for lunch, Gabi?”
“Not today, Gabe, but soon, okay? I promise.”
“Tomorrow?”
Crap. “Not tomorrow, no, but soon. It’ll be a surprise!”
“You used to come visit me more.”
“Gabe, why don’t you show Gabi your painting?” Melanie asks, saving the day because Gabe gets a proud smile on his face and a moment later, I’m looking at a large canvas of mostly smeared paint in all different colors.
“It’s modern,” Gabe says.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. I think about what Alex said in his last message about wondering if he’ll ever be able to talk to Gabe without breaking down afterwards. I wonder the same thing.
“This one is for Alex,” he says, as if reading my mind. “But I’ll make you one next.”
How am I going to tell him that Alex is gone?
“I can’t wait to see mine!” I say, my enthusiasm overdone.
We talk for another five minutes, but I can see Gabe getting distracted as he picks up his paint brush again and, after a promise to FaceTime him again the following day, we disconnect the call.
Miss Millie must have been waiting for me to wrap up because no sooner have I put the phone down then she’s outside serving dinner. Tonight, there is a whole roasted chicken with potatoes and green beans.
“This smells wonderful,” I say, inhaling. “But it’s a lot of food just for me. Is Stefan going to be home for dinner?”
Home. The word weirdly sounds more and more normal.
“He’ll be here later tonight, after dinner. You just eat what you like.”
“You know you don’t have to wait on me,” I tell her.
“I like it, Gabriela. It’s my pleasure. I’m just happy you’re home safe and sound. Now go on and eat. Let me know if you need anything and make sure you save room for dessert. I made you something special.”
My smile is authentic. “I will, thanks, Miss Millie.”
I eat on my own. I eat more than I think I will but that’s probably because the last few days, I’ve been eating so little.
When I’m finished, I go into the library, take a book off one of the shelves and curl up on one of the armchairs.
I’m so absorbed in the story that I only realize three hours have passed when I hear footsteps approaching and sit up, closing the book.
It’s Stefan.
The library door opens, and he stands in the doorway.
My heart thuds against my chest as I look at him. He’s wearing a black V-neck T-shirt and jeans. His thick hair is perfectly in place, and the dark shadow on his jaw accentuates the sharp line of it.
I look at his big hand on the doorknob and see that ring and I think about what he’s done with those hands. The violence he did to those men. The gentleness with which he held me.
My gaze lifts to his forearms, the muscle beneath the dusting of dark hair. Something stirs inside me. Inside my belly. It’s like a fluttering of butterfly wings.
I’m attracted to him. In spite of it all, or maybe because of it all, I’m attracted to him.
He saved my life.
But it could have been him to set me up, couldn’t it? Why would I rule him out? He’s the one who gave me the phone. Maybe it was like I thought. Maybe it was bugged.
I shake off the thought. I don’t believe that. I just don’t. Maybe it was the look on his face when he took that wretched, vomit-stinking hood off me. Maybe it was the fact he climbed that ladder down and wouldn’t let me go as he carried us both back up, even as the rope tore. I don’t know, and although I’m sure he’s no saint, I don’t believe Stefan would do that to me.
When I draw my gaze back to his, I find him watching me.
I think about how he was when he came to get me. When he brought me up out of the well on that ladder. When he held my hand and swore he’d never let anyone hurt me again.
When he came into my room drunk later that same night and warned me my reckoning was coming.
The look in his hazel eyes tells me tonight is that reckoning.
“Gabriela,” he says, coming into the library and closing the door behind him. Locking it.
Why do I note that one act?
He walks toward me and perches on the ottoman before my chair.
I sit up and put my hands on my knees. “Stefan,” I say, because he’s not the only one who feels justified to a reckoning.
“Doctor says you’re doing better, healing nicely.” He looks me over. When he reaches out to touch me, I pull back, making him pause for a moment before his hand is on my middle, my ribs.
He’s feeling for the bandage.
“It’s gone,” I say.
“Good.”
“Where have you been?” Thoughts of Clara cloud the edges of my mind, but I force them away.
“I spent a few days with my uncle in Taormina. He’s the one who told me where you were.”
“What?”
“Rafa’s father, Francesco Catalano. Our relationship is…difficult, but I owed him a debt of gratitude.”
“Rafa’s father?” Was he the man Rafa met with when we were out there? Why didn’t he tell me?
“Yes.”
“How did he know?”
“Someone overheard something probably from the men on the boat bragging about what they’d done.”
“I don’t understand.”
He studies me, stands up and walks across the room to look out the window into the dark night. “You don’t understand because people are duplicitous.” He turns back to me and when he approaches, I see his gaze momentarily drop to the photo album on the side table beside my seat before shifting back to me. “Only a fine line delineates between an ally and an enemy, and that line is constantly shifting.”
“What are you saying?”
“Just be careful.”
“Careful?”
“Who here knows you understand and speak Italian, Gabriela?”
I feel my face heat up. “Only you.”
“Keep it that way.”
He walks to a cabinet and opens it. I haven’t looked inside that one yet and I see now it’s a liquor cabinet. He takes out a bottle of whiskey and pours one. He turns to me and extends it.
I shake my head so he closes the cabinet then returns to sit on the sofa across from my chair.
“Who was the man you recognized?” he asks, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee as he sips his drink.
“I didn’t recognize anyone,” I lie because I haven’t figure out how to handle this yet.
“Don’t you want to find out who did this to you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Come here, Gabriela.” He sits up so both feet are on the floor, and points to the space between his legs.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
I get up, walk over to him.
He takes my wrist and pulls me closer so I’m standing between his wide-spread legs. He leans back against the couch, sips his drink and watches me.
“Take off your dress.”
“Why?” My heart pounds, blood throbs loud like a drum in my head.
“I want to see you. See if you’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“You know what,” he says.
I do. Time for a reckoning.
He sets his drink down and stands.
I try to take a step backward, but the backs of my knees hit the ottoman and I almost fall, but Stefan catches me easily and holds tight to one arm, his expression hardening. He’s so close, I feel the heat coming off him, smell the scent of him and some part of me, it wants to curl into him. To have him hold me again like he did when he carried me out of that well. Out of that house.
But what he does is so opposite.
With his free hand, he unzips the dress and strips it off me.
“Step out.”
I look down and realize what he means. Step out of the puddle of the dress. I do and he shoves it aside. I cover my breasts.
He sits back down and picks up his drink again, casual as his gaze glides over me.
“Bra off.”
“Why?” I ask again, beginning to shudder a little.
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“I don’t see why you need me to take my bra off.”
“Don’t make me get up again.”
He’s seen me naked before. He’s touched me. Why is this hard?
“And don’t make me repeat myself.”
“I just don’t understand—”
“I’ve coddled you,” he says, setting his drink down again. This time, instead of standing, he tugs me down by my wrist so I’m leaning into him. He reaches around to my back to unhook the bra. A moment later, it’s falling onto his lap.
He releases me and I cover my breasts again.
He looks at the bra, then sets it aside. “Arms at your sides.”
“Stefan—”
“Arms at your sides. And whatever you do, don’t fucking cry. Don’t be a baby.”
I swallow back my tears, bury the twisting inside me, that feeling of betrayal.
Why do I feel betrayed, though? He is my enemy. Why do I seem to constantly forget that? He only rescued me because I’m not worth anything to him dead.
I let my arms drop and I force myself to stare at him, my hands fisting, even as he blurs with the build-up of tears because I can’t just stop them. Emotions don’t work that way, but he wouldn’t know that because you’d have to be human to know and he’s made of stone.
“Good,” he says.
I swipe the back of my hand across my eyes, wipe away those stupid tears.
He looks me over, pausing on the healing bruises as if taking inventory. He reaches to take my wrist.
I try to tug it away, but he holds tight and just gives a shake of his head.
He pulls me down so I’m sitting on his right thigh. I cover myself again with my free arm. He takes that wrist too and holds both in one hand, turning them upward. And when he touches me, trailing his fingers from wrist to elbow and back, it’s with a feather-light touch and it’s so soft, the contact makes me physically shudder.
“I can be gentle, Gabriela. And I want to be gentle with you.”
My nipples are hard, and I want to say it’s because I’m cold. He sees too and having him here fully dressed and me in my underwear, it makes me feel exposed and wholly vulnerable.
He shifts my wrists so they’re behind my back, keeps them in one of his giant hands. His eyes are locked on mine.
I can’t read him. Can’t read what he’s going to do. I just know he’s going to do something.
“But if you don’t deserve gentle,” he starts, cupping his free hand around the back of my head, fingers massaging my scalp for a moment before they make a fist in my hair.
I make a sound as he tugs. His expression remains level. Hard.
“Then you force me to be rough,” he says, slowly pushing me down over his other knee so my face is in the seat of the couch and my legs are trapped between his thighs, my ass in the air.
He releases his grip on my hair and I feel his hand on me, feel him slide my panties between my butt cheeks, exposing me fully. Then, as if to demonstrate what he means, he gives me eight sharp spanks on one cheek.
I don’t know if it’s the shock or the sting or the sound of it, but it takes me a moment to find my voice, to cry out.
“Stop!” I try to free my wrists, but he’s got an iron grip around them and I’m not even sure it’s taking any effort for him to keep me pinned like this.
“Do you remember my warning from the other night?” he asks as he begins to rub the spot he just spanked. That part feels good, him rubbing out the pain.
“What are you doing?” I ask, turning my cheek into the couch so I can see his face.
He drags his gaze from my ass to my eyes.
“Getting the truth out of you.”
Keeping our eyes locked, he raises his hand and brings it down again, just once on the same spot.
I grunt. It stings. “Stop, please.”
“Are you ready to tell me the truth?”
“What truth? What are you—”
He delivers eight more smacks on the opposite cheek and I’m whimpering, gasping for breath by the time he’s done.
“Let’s get these out of the way,” he says, shifting his grip to drag my panties down, releasing me from the trap of his thighs only momentarily as he lets them drop to my ankles so I’m naked. Naked and bent over his knee.
I turn my face into the couch and tug at my wrists. I try opening my hands when I can’t free them to cover my ass because I’m sure he can see everything.
“Look at me,” he says.
I shake my head. I’m embarrassed and hurt, and a part of me hates him for doing this to me.
“Gabriela, I said look at me.”
I suck in a shuddering breath.
In reply he brings his hand down in the center of my ass, making me arch and twist in my effort to get away from him.
“Look. At. Me.” He’s not even a little winded and I think he can do this all night long. He probably enjoys it.
I turn my cheek into the couch and force myself to meet his eyes. “Why are you hurting me?”
“Because you force my hand.”
“I don’t…I—”
“I can make you feel good. I want to make you feel good,” he says, rubbing my butt again. He makes circles on one cheek, then the other. I calm down a little and his hand slides to the tops of my thighs.
I bite my lip, holding my breath because this touch, the look in his eyes, it’s different.
He never shifts his gaze from mine while his fingers travel to my center, to touch me lightly, like he’s testing. I realize then what I feel against my belly, it’s him.
He’s aroused.
And as little sense as it makes, so am I.
His hand is gone for a moment, wrapping around the inside of my thigh and I feel wetness from his fingers—my wetness—as he guides my legs apart, just a little, just enough.
I press the balls of my feet into the carpet. I don’t move as he shifts his gaze to my ass. His fingers slide up along my pussy, through the wet folds and up, just touching my other hole before sliding back down. My back arches involuntarily when they brush my clit.
“Gabriela,” he starts, and I realize I’ve closed my eyes. “Look at me, Gabriela.”
I shake my head, eyes tightly shut.
He slides a finger back up to my asshole and holds it there. I’m mortified and turned on and I can’t seem to breathe.
“Open your eyes and look at me.” He brushes his finger over tight hole.
My face burns as I open them to find his eyes on me, darker now, pupils dilated.
He slides his fingers down to my pussy again, rubs a moment longer. Him touching me, it’s different than when I touch myself. Better. He softens his hold on my wrists, lets me slip them from his grip.
“Put your hands underneath you and don’t move.”
I should fight him. Push him off. Tell him to go to hell. But instead, I put my hands underneath myself like he said and watch as with his free hand, he rubs one cheek, then spreads me open.
I’m embarrassed and aroused as he shifts his gaze down and his fingers are moving in my folds, circling my clit.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, drawing his hand away, turning me, sliding me to the floor between his legs so I’m kneeling there.
He cups one hand on the back of my head to draw me up. He kisses me while he slides his other hand down over the seam of my sex to cup me, to rub. When he bites my lip, I open my mouth and my breathing comes in gasps as he slips his tongue inside my mouth and his finger inside my sex and I think this is the most intimate, erotic thing. This. Connected like this. Him and me. Close. So close.
His thumb circles my nub, presses against it. The finger inside me hurts a little but then it’s gone and he’s rubbing my clit and I think I’m going to come.
He shifts his mouth to my ear and my hands are squeezing his thighs, my body arching into his palm. Moving against him.
“That’s good, Gabriela. Like that. You’re so wet.”
I tilt my face up. I want to kiss him again. I want him to kiss me.
He must know because he smiles down at me and when he does kiss me it’s more a sucking of my lower lip than a kiss. I close my eyes and taste him, and I hear myself, my gasps and sighs. And when I slide my hand up along his thigh, I can feel him.
“I want to taste you,” he whispers, and my eyes flutter open as he draws his hand from between my legs and lifts me to lay me back on the ottoman. He spreads my legs and drops down between my knees. With his fingers on either side of my pussy, he opens and looks at me for a long time and him looking at me like this, it makes me feel so strange and all I can do is watch him as he takes me in.
“Stefan,” I start, but I stop because I don’t know what I’m going to say.
“You are so beautiful,” he says.
He runs his chin over my clit, making me gasp at the rough feel of stubble and the instant his mouth closes over it, I gasp, the sensation foreign, his mouth wet and soft and when he begins to suck that hard little nub, I cry out, reaching for him, gripping his hair to pull him closer as my thighs squeeze around him and I come. I come hard, harder than I’ve ever come and I think I’m saying his name. I think that’s me saying his name again and again and again, gasping it, desperate, like I’m gasping for life’s breath.
I don’t know when he finally lifts me onto his lap. I don’t remember him doing that, but he’s cradling me, and I’m limp in his arms, my head against his chest and this is what I want. For him to hold me like this. Safe and sound. Protected.
“I like how you taste,” he says. He tilts my face up with one finger beneath my chin and kisses my lips. I taste myself on him and I want more. More of him. My hand slides to his stomach, to the hard muscle of it. He takes my wrist and pushes it lower and I blink my eyes open to look at him when he closes my hand around himself over his jeans.
He’s big. Big and thick.
“Squeeze,” he tells me.
I do and he makes a sound and the way he looks at me, it’s dark and dirty and it makes me want him more.
“I want you to say my name like that every time you come,” he says, his voice a hoarse breath against my ear.
I close my eyes, not sure what I feel. So many things.
He tucks me closer into him, wrapping his strong arms around me, and I rest my head against his chest and think how I wish I could stay here forever, like this.
When he rests his hand against my thigh, I open my eyes and look at that hand. It’s the one he spanked me with. The one he touched me with.
That’s what I’m thinking when he interrupts me.
“We have some business to settle between us.”
My reckoning.
I turn my gaze up to his.
“Are you ready to answer my questions or do I need to take you back over my knee?” he asks.
We’re not finished yet. Did I think for a second, we were? That he’d given up asking me questions I don’t want to answer?
I shake my head.
“Good.” He draws back and I try to burrow into him, but he pulls away and I’m suddenly cold.
When he perches me on the ottoman, he keeps his hands on my knees and I look at his watch, big and masculine and his hands, big, too.
What did Rafa tell me? To stay in his good graces? I understand that as I look at those hands and remind myself of what he can do with them—good and bad.
I give a shake of my head to clear the fog from my brain. What am I doing?
“Eyes on me, Gabriela,” he says.
I look up at him, at his mouth, it takes all I have to not look away. What did he just do? What did I just let him do?
I hug my arms to myself, shivering, and I sit there, mute.
Who am I? I’m a fighter. I don’t cower to men. And yet, here I am and look at me now. Naked and trembling.
But this game Stefan is playing, it’s new to me. And he’s a pro. I’m out of my element. So far out of my league.
“Were you in Rafa’s car when he was sideswiped?” he asks.
No point in lying anymore. I have no loyalty to Rafa, after all. “You know the answer, or you wouldn’t ask the question.”
“Answer me anyway.”
Silence.
“Is that where the bump on your forehead came from?”
I blink, not denying, not affirming.
“Words. Tell me now.”
“Yes.” He knows. It’s not news to him. It can’t matter anymore.
“The man at the well, who was he?”
“He was the one who sideswiped us. One of them, at least. There were two cars. One on each side.”
“Where were you?”
“Taormina.”
“Why?”
I shake my head. “He invited me along. It was after you and I…after our fight.” I look at this hand, the one I sliced open with my stolen knife. It’s healed mostly. I wonder if it will leave a scar, though. I shift my gaze back to his. “He said he had a meeting and felt bad that I was cooped up. We had lunch. We were on our way back when it happened.”
He doesn’t like this. I can see it in his eyes, in his posture.
“Meeting with whom?” His eyes narrow a little.
“Can I get dressed? I’m cold.”
He looks around, gets up, picks up a throw from the arm of a chair and wraps it around my shoulders, then resumes his seat.
“Meeting with whom?”
“I don’t know. I stayed on the beach.”
“Unprotected?” Now he looks pissed.
“No, there were two men.”
“But he took you there without soldiers?”
“I don’t want to get him in trouble, Stefan.”
He gets up, shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair, and I think how just moments ago, I had my hands in that hair, was gripping handfuls of it and pulling him to me.
“Did he tell you not to tell me?”
This question, it’s the one I don’t want to answer.
“Gabriela?”
I nod. “He was just doing something nice.”
His jaw tightens and when he resumes his seat, I see the effort it takes him to keep his voice controlled and calm, even though I know calm is about the farthest thing from what he is.
“Rafa isn’t nice, Gabriela. Don’t you know that yet?”
“I do know that, Stefan, but I also know he’s here when you’re not. When you just lock me up here. I don’t know why you brought me if it was only to lock me away on my own.”
He looks confused for a moment, then one side of his mouth curves upward and he snorts.
“What do you think this is exactly?”
I don’t answer him. This is Stefan the jerk. This is a whole other side of Stefan to the man who carried me out of that well and it hurts to hear him now. To hear him like this after everything.
He leans back and the look on his face, that, too, hurts. Twists something inside me.
“Do you make up stories? Make yourself the princess in the tower? Locked away by the beast?”
I feel so small and I have nothing to say.
“Maybe you are that. And I admit I’m more beast than prince. But you don’t really fantasize that I’ll be a doting husband, do you? That we’ll play house? Please tell me you’re not falling in love with me, Gabriela.”
My face burns and I look away. I hug my arms to myself.
No. Never. Never that.
I hate him.
I hate Stefan Sabbioni.
I just need to remember that. To channel that hate. Use it like a weapon, like he does.
Who are you? A voice in my head asks sharply.
This is where my upbringing comes in handy. This part I can do. I’m not so out of my element now. I can hate with the best of them.
“You asked me a question. I answered it. That’s all.” My tone is flat, forceful almost.
He rubs his hand over his mouth. “Yeah. You did.” He retrieves my dress, returns to me. “Arms up,” he says.
“I can dress myself.”
“Arms up.”
“I’m not a fucking doll.”
He grips my jaw and pulls me up so I’m half sitting, half standing. “Watch your fucking mouth. Arms. Up.”
“So you can say what you like, but I have to watch my mouth?”
“Maybe I need to spank you again. For real, this time.” He hardens his grip but I take it. I grit my teeth and take it. “Do you want that, Gabriela? Tell me. Do you want to feel what it will feel like when I spank you for real? Because what I’ve done up until now is child’s play.”
“Let go.” I say, feeling the stupid fall of tears.
He shakes his head. “Tears don’t move me. Have you not figured that out yet?”
“Just let me go.” My voice breaks and I sniffle back a sob. I hate him. I hate him so much.
“Then raise your arms so I can dress you.”
My arms shake as I do it, and he releases my jaw and slips the dress over my head.
“Stand up.”
I look up at him, and all I can think is how alone I am. How completely alone. Why does it feel worse now than it did before? I’ve always been alone. Why does it hurt so much now?
“Why didn’t you just leave me in that well? You should have.”
At that he pauses, and I swear that for one split second, I see that other Stefan. The one who came for me, who climbed into that well to carry me out. The one who swore he wouldn’t let anyone hurt me again.
I want that Stefan. I need him. And that is the worst part of this.
I turn away when more tears fall. I don’t wipe my eyes fast enough though because one drops to my knee and I know he sees. I feel so small, so incredibly, stupidly small, that I just sit there and keep wiping at these stupid never-ending tears. And here I thought I was so strong.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get up.”
I stand up, using my wrists to wipe my eyes.
He leans in toward me, wraps his big arms around me and I hate myself for wanting to lean in to him. For thinking that he means to hold me. I hate myself for wanting that. For wanting him to fucking hold me.
Because all he does is zip the dress before he steps backward.
He only did what he did to get me to talk. But I don’t understand. The spanking, I can see that. Hurt me to make me talk. That’s what the mafia does, right? But why the rest? Why tell me he can be gentle? Why did he lay me back on that ottoman and do what he did? Why did he hold me afterwards?
I shake my head, dislodge those thoughts.
He doesn’t care about me. That is all I need to remember. I’m sure he’s got women lined up to fuck, Clara at the front of that line. What use would he have for an inexperienced virgin who happens to be his enemy’s daughter?
“Why did you do that?” I ask
“What?”
“What you just did.”
He grins. “Eat your pussy?” I hate that I feel my face burn. “I should take my belt to your ass for running away in the first place, you know that?”
“Why don’t you? You’d like that, right? I felt how hard you were when you spanked me. Is that what gets you off? Hurting women? Overpowering them to hurt them?”
He steps closer, the look on his face base, degrading. “Don’t forget you got wet when I spanked you.”
How can he turn everything around on me? Am I that easy a target?
I spin to go, but he catches my arm.
“I want to go to my room, Stefan.”
“One more question.”
I don’t have a choice, so I wait for it.
“Who put the marks on your back?”
“You already know that too.”
“Say it.”
“I hate you.”
“Say it.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to hear it.”
“My father did! My father. All right? Happy?”
He pauses like he’s really considering that question. “Not really, no.” He doesn’t release me.
“Let me go. Please, Stefan, just let me go. I want to go.”
“Away from me.”
I nod. It’s what I want, right?
It takes him a moment, but when he releases me, I bend to pick up my panties.
He steps on them, blocking me from taking them.
“I’ll keep those,” he says.
It takes me a moment, but I leave them and straighten. “Whatever, pervert.” I walk to the door. I’m twisting the doorknob when he calls out my name.
“Gabriela.”
I stop. I don’t look back. I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Because what the hell just happened in here?
“Tomorrow is Alex’s memorial service. I thought you’d want to go.”
At that, I turn. Does he mean to take me?
“Do you?” he asks.
I nod, but I’m cautious. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I would do anything to go.
“Car leaves at nine.”