It takes me a minute to focus my eyes on Madelena. She is stunning in the shimmering black gown. I chose it especially for her, but I missed seeing her in it tonight.
The high heels emphasize her long, slender legs, and one thigh is exposed by the dramatic slit of the dress. I don’t know if it’s the years of self-imposed celibacy or what that have me so drawn to this woman. I want her. But it’s not only physical. I have a responsibility to her—but again, it’s not that simple.
I drag my gaze to her face. Her hair is coming apart, and her makeup is smudged, with remnants of deep red lipstick across her cheek. Her eyeliner is smeared, the whites of her eyes pink.
She hugs my jacket to herself. I’m not sure she’s aware of how tightly she’s holding it, and on the back of one hand I see the same red as on her cheek. It’s the hand she used to wipe it away.
“Where were you?” she asks quietly, her gaze cautious, a line creasing the space between her eyebrows. That relief I thought I saw moments ago has vanished. Was it there at all? Does it make sense that she’d be relieved to see me?
The whiskey I’ve drunk over the last day and half churns in my gut. I stopped drinking a few hours ago, but it’s going to take longer than that to burn off the effects of this quantity of alcohol.
I glance at Val. “Leave. Make sure no one interrupts us.”
He looks at Madelena, hesitating.
“I said, go.”
He goes. I turn my attention back to my wife and my strange conversation with Thiago echoes in my mind.
“Do you care about her then?”
“What?”
“Santos, Santos, Santos. Take good care to make sure Camilla never knows that.”
I clear my throat, then close the space between us. I touch her cheek, brushing my thumb over the smear of eyeliner. I do care about her, but it’s not what he thinks. I am responsible for her. I have been since the moment I slit the palm of her hand and made my oath. Hers was forced. Mine, well, I held the knife. She can’t navigate my world and all the people in it who will do her harm, who will take what they need from her and discard her… if she’s lucky.
No one is to be trusted. No one. Not our brothers, not our mothers, not my sister. You and I are truly alone.
“Madelena. Were you crying?” My voice is hoarse. Raw. I take my jacket from her and toss it aside, but when my fingers graze the curve of her neck, she shrugs me off and takes a step backward.
“You disappeared.”
“I had to take care of something.”
“You were gone overnight. A full day and night.”
“I’m back. I’m not leaving again.” I reach for her once more, but she puts more distance between us.
“Did you tell your brother?”
I raise my eyebrows, assuming she’s not done yet because I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about.
“The cuts. He knew.”
Now I’m confused. “No. Of course not.”
“Then who…” she trails off, shakes her head. “You’re drunk. You told me you don’t drink, yet you stink of a distillery. You lied to me. How many times have you lied to me?”
I close the space between us, then wrap an arm around her shoulders to weave my fingers into her hair. She won’t be walking away from me again.
“What else are you lying about?” she asks. I want to ask what she’s talking about, but she continues before I can. “You left me here alone with them,” she says and for a moment, she’s that girl from five years ago. She was alone then, too, with only her brother to protect her—a brother too young and ill-equipped against men like the Augustines.
I realize as the whiskey-induced fog in my mind clears that she was scared.
“No one would hurt you,” I say, running the backs of my fingers over her cheekbone where her tears have left streaks. “They know they can’t touch you. I’ve made it clear.”
She laughs a short, ugly laugh. “You don’t know them.” She turns, but I catch her arm before she can walk away.
“Madelena?”
She shakes her head. “Let me go, Santos.”
I don’t. “Are you hurt? Is that why you were crying?”
“I’m not crying.” Her eyes dart away like she’s embarrassed.
“If they hurt you, touched you…”
She searches my face before her gaze moves down to my open collar. I’m sure I look like shit. A bender will do that to you, and I should shower, get out of these clothes, and eat something. But the look on her face has my gut tightening. Something happened.
I take hold of both her arms. “What is it?”
“If you were so concerned for me, why did you just leave me here with them?”
“They know they are not to touch you.”
“The rules aren’t the same when you’re gone.”
I look her over, seeing the dress anew. The hair and makeup. She would have attended tonight’s dinner. My mother would have given her no choice… and she wouldn’t have let her show up alone. I lean in and sniff her neck then bring her wrists to my nose and inhale.
No one is to be trusted. No one. Not our brothers, not our mothers, not my sister. You and I are truly alone.
“Why do I smell my brother on you?”
“I don’t think you get to interrogate me. It should be the other way around, don’t you think?”
“Why, Madelena?”
“Let me go.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re hurting me,” she says, twisting a little, and I realize how hard I’m squeezing her wrists.
I loosen my grip, look her over. Shifting both of her wrists into one hand, I grip the draped neckline of her dress and tug.
She gasps but I keep hold of her as I tear the dress away. She won’t be wearing it again anyway. It’s not violent or rushed or angry. I just want her naked. I need to have her naked. To know for myself.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Once the dress is gone and she’s standing in panties, a strapless bra and high-heeled shoes, I look her over.
“He touched you?” I ask, using my free hand to unhook the bra and let it slip away.
Her expression hardens, jaw setting. “Of course he did,” she says, her tone goading. “You weren’t here, remember? Tell me something, Santos.”
I let my gaze move over her bare chest, her breasts. I can see the beginnings of the scars that line the undersides of her arms. What state of mind is one in to do that? To self-mutilate?
That dark presence inside me laughs out loud at that because I should talk. But my scars, they’re different. They’re punishments I deserved. I can’t imagine she deserved that mutilation, the self-harm.
“Are you even listening to me?” she asks.
I blink, forcing my eyes to focus on hers because she was talking, and I was so lost in thought I didn’t hear.
“Tell me something,” she starts again. “Am I yours?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Like that jacket is yours. Am I yours?” She points to the jacket I’d tossed aside. I’m not sure where she’s going with this. “Because you discarded that easily enough. Am I like all your possessions? Easily discarded?”
“Christ, Madelena,” I say, the beginnings of a headache throbbing against my temples. I shake my head, lift her. She yelps when I do, but I carry her to the bed and sit her on the edge of it, standing close enough so she can’t run away. I undo more buttons of my shirt, hearing it tear as I tug it off.
She sets her hands on my stomach, gaze moving over me momentarily and her eyes widening as she takes in the map of a violent past. She tries to push me backward to stand, so I let her, holding her close, skin to skin. She is still for a moment, and I take in the warmth of her, lean in to kiss her neck. But what I smell is another man’s scent on her. Brother or not, I don’t like it.
I meet her eyes, wrap my hand around the back of her neck, and weave my fingers into her hair to tug her head backward and sniff like I’m a fucking dog. I draw back, and she stares up at me.
“Why do I smell my brother on you?”
“Because you weren’t here, remember?”
“What did he do?”
“Do you care?”
“What. Did. He. Do?”
Her gaze falters. I hear how I sound, and I know how I must look because she looks wary of me. “He took me to the dinner.”
I grip her jaw, see that smear of lipstick. I touch it, wondering suddenly if it was her who wiped it away or if it’s smeared from kissing because Thiago’s damning words keep going around and around in my head.
Caius wouldn’t touch what’s mine. Would he?
“Did he see you?”
“See me?”
“Like this.” I draw back, sweeping my gaze over her. Her nipples pebble, and her arms are dotted with goosebumps. “Did he see you undressed?”
“Would you care if he did?”
“Damn it! Did he see you?”
“Would you care if he did?” she asks again, dropping into a seat, no longer fighting. Just quiet. Just sad.
It’s that sadness that makes me pause. “You are my wife, Madelena. You belong to me. Only me.”
“I’m your possession.”
I study her. And I see her. Beneath that sadness, I see her—and I see hurt.
I draw her up to stand, pull her to me, because I realize something as I look into those honey-colored depths and see the stain of tears. I know it as I caress her hair, my touch gentle. Careful. It’s a thing I’ve always known about her on some level. And I know it now in the twisting of my gut.
“Are you so unaccustomed to being wanted?” I hear myself ask, and it’s those words that make her go perfectly still, that have tears streaming from the corners of her beautiful eyes. Those words that have her resisting, fighting, but also giving in, hands coming to my shoulders not to push me away but to hold onto me.
She looks at me through that veil of sadness, touches my face, pushes my hair back. And then she kisses me. Eyes open, she kisses me. It’s the first time she’s done that, the first time I haven’t taken the kiss. And that kiss, it moves something in my gut. My chest.
That kiss, it’s everything.
My exhale is her name as I lay her on the bed, stripping away her panties and pushing into her. She clings to me, arching her back with an audible exhale as I watch.
I’ve only fucked one other woman apart from her. I’ve never wanted anyone else, not even for simple release. What I want with her now, it’s not sex. It’s not to come. It’s more, so much more. I need to be inside her, to be close to her. It’s raw and full and I can’t get close enough to this woman.
What we’re doing, me moving inside her, her clinging to me, it’s love making. Deep and soft and hard at once. And needy. So fucking needy. I can’t fucking stop kissing her, looking at her. I can’t stop breathing in her breath, and I can’t fucking look away from her eyes, from the brokenness, the openness. The vulnerability inside them. She’s giving it to me like a gift.
That thought and the damage I can do is more terrifying than any game the Commander could play, any sadistic punishment he could think up.
Because in my arms, beneath me, is my redemption.
But it’s a double-edged sword because I know I can break her.
Madelena sucks in a ragged breath and her teeth find my lower lip. When the walls of her pussy throb around my cock, I feel the pain of this knowledge. The only relief is the fact that just as I can break her, so can she break me.
I know it as I draw back to look at her soft face in the aftermath of our love making.
She and I have always been destined to be together. For better or worse. Even before our blood oath. We can each be the other’s savior. Or the other’s destruction. This is our destiny. Until death do us part.