AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I took her hand when we got to the stairs, and we started upward. I reached down and grabbed a handful of her heavy skirts and lifted them for her, catching a glimpse of her thigh-high suspenders. My cock had already been hard the entire day, since the moment I’d walked into the penthouse suite where the bridal party was getting ready.
She’d been standing in the window, the winter sun blazing down on her, looking like something holy. I might never recover from the sight. She’d already worked under my skin like a splinter, and nothing would take her out. Not even discovering that she was spying on me.
I wanted her to tell me about the cops herself.
I wanted her to trust me.
If this woman could trust me, the sinner to her saint, then she would fully belong to me.
We got to the master suite. I hadn’t been sleeping there. It was a set of rooms that hadn’t been used for decades. They’d been my mother’s rooms. Elio had had them completely overhauled. I didn’t want to live with ghosts anymore.
Charlotte was nervous; I could see it in the slight hunch of her slim shoulders and the way she kept glancing at me through her lashes.
We walked into the room. I was pleased to see that Carmella had gotten it ready. Candles were lit, red rose petals scattered on the bed. I’d asked for four lengths of silk to be left at the bottom of the huge, four-poster bed, and I already spied them there.
Waiting for their captive.
Charlotte looked around with awe. She walked around the perimeter while I took off my tux jacket and hung it on the valet stand. At the sound of my cuff links hitting their mother-of-pearl tray, Charlotte paused her inspection of the room and looked at me. I tugged my silk bow tie off and tucked it into my jacket pocket. Her eyes scanned me, and her cheeks went pink.
What a delightful contradiction she was. At times as brave and ballsy as any of my men, and at others, a blushing ingénue. I never felt our age difference more than when her cheeks were rosy and her eyes were avoiding me. It made me want to corner her, take her on my knee, tilt her chin up, and pry her secrets out of her.
Secrets like hiding a bug in my office.
I took a long breath, pushing the fury I felt at Detectives Vane and Whitely from my mind. Charlotte wasmine. Claimed, wed, and soon to be bred. How dare they interfere with my woman? I knew what they were thinking. Their small minds were pitifully easy to read. Charlotte was powerless, without influence or connections – exactly the kind of person they could lean on and suffer no consequences should she crack under the strain.
Well, now she had power, connections, and billions to her name. Let’s see them break her now, with me at her back.
“This room is so beautiful. I’ve never seen it before,” Charlotte babbled.
I knew this tactic. She was stalling. I reached for the buttons of my dress shirt. I undid them quickly, and my shirt joined the rest of my clothes.
“You talk a lot when you’re nervous,anima mia. Did you know that? It’s your tell.”
“I’m not much of a poker player.”
“Tells are useful in all sorts of games.” Like the game of chicken we played now, without her knowledge. She would continue to spy on me, and I would wait and see when she would stop, her guilt getting the better of her. The day she confessed to me would be the day I'd know she'd accepted her new reality. It would show that she trusted me more than the cops. That I’d worked under her skin just as much as she’d gotten under mine, and the playing field would be level again.
“Undress.”
She stopped in her tracks at my order and spun around. Her blush had spread across her décolletage, too. A heavenly rose color.
“I mean, I know we just got married, but you can’t think—”
“We’re not about to fuck because we just got married,” I interrupted her, approaching her slowly in case she bolted for the bathroom and locked me out. I'd just had this room renovated. Kicking in a door would be annoying.
“We’re about to fuck because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the taste of your cunt since yesterday. It’s mine now, and I won’t waste one more second without indulging in it.”
I reached for her dress, and she put her hands over mine. “Wait. This is all a lot,” she whispered. Her eyes rose to mine. “I think I’m freaking out.”
“You look completely calm to me.”
“Maybe I do have a poker face after all, then.” Her gaze landed on my chest.
It was the first time I’d been shirtless before her. She frowned at the tally marks tattooed in even rows across my heart.
She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “Are those the people you’ve—” she broke off, struggling. “I mean, is it your kill count?”
Her hand floated in the air over my skin, and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to feel her flesh against mine. I took her fingers and guided them to the marks, encouraging her to touch them.
