Keeping his bride

Luca

VERONA’S EFFORTS AT ignoring me have reached a new high. As I sit alone at the dinner table, the housekeeper informs me that my wife refuses to dine with me tonight.

Last night has been on my mind all day. I can still taste her sweetness on my tongue. And no matter how hard I try to forget her soft skin, I simply can’t. I want her again. One taste wasn’t enough. I’m fucking addicted.

“If she doesn’t want to eat with me, then she won’t eat at all,” I inform the housekeeper. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

After she disappears from the room, I stare down at the rest of my steak, having suddenly lost my appetite.

What I did last night was cruel. But I can’t deny that it made me feel better. Call it jealousy or what you will, but Dante needed to be put in his fucking place. I’ve seen the way he stares at my wife, like he could take her at any moment into his arms and comfort her like she’s his. She is not his.

She is mine.

My hand curls into a fist, and I pound it hard against the top of the long wooden table. She can ignore me all she wants, but it’s not going to change things. I won’t cave. I was born into hatred for her and her family. And even though we were friends when we were kids, that doesn’t mean shit now in the real world while we’re adults. Even though she’s my wife, that doesn’t mean I have to like her or, god forbid, love her.

Even though my feelings haven’t changed for her, last night something did change. I have a craving for her that I can’t stop. A need for her to be under me, calling out my name as I pound my cock into her tight pussy. I want her to know who owns her body, and I want to reinforce it again and again and again.

My cock twitches in my pants. And when I press my palm down over it, I groan out loud. I’m so fucking horny I can’t even think straight. Just thinking about her red lips wrapped around my cock drives me insane.

Frustrated, I pour myself another scotch and drink it down in one swallow. And then I pour another and another until I start to feel numb.

I’ve been known to down bottles of expensive scotch in one night. I would like to say I’m drowning my demons, but unfortunately, they know how to swim.

Verona

M

Y STOMACH GROWLS with such intensity that it almost makes me dizzy. I’m so hungry. I skipped breakfast, lunch and dinner today just so I wouldn’t have to face Luca, and now I’m paying the price.

For some reason, I thought maybe he would come up after dinner to apologize and offer me some food. But now I know I was way too naive to think that would happen. It’s nearly ten o’clock at night, and I haven’t eaten a single thing since yesterday evening.

Fuming, I wrap a sheer flowered kimono around my midnight blue nightdress and venture out of my room. I tiptoe down the quiet hallway and make my way downstairs towards the kitchen. I’m crossing the dining room when I see movement coming from the table and stop dead in my tracks.

My eyes meet his from across the room. I can tell just by looking at him that he’s drunk, but the almost empty bottle of scotch is a dead giveaway.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his words slurring.

At first, my mind draws a blank. I’m so taken aback by his relaxed state. His suit jacket is slung over the back of his chair, and his button-up shirt is hanging open, revealing a muscular chest that could easily be on the cover of a fitness magazine.

“Let me guess,” he says, drawing out every word.

“You’re hungry.” “Yes,” I whisper.

“Should have come down for dinner,” he says with a shrug.

“You can’t starve me,” I say forcibly.

“I could if I wanted to. I could do anything I wanted to do to you actually,” he confesses. “It’s not like you don’t deserve it.”

His words have me taking a step back. “I don’t deserve any of this!” I tell him vehemently. I’m tired of his constant animosity towards me. “I never did anything to you, Luca.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

He closes his eyes when I say his name. “You are one of them.”

“One of them?” I ask, not understanding.

“A Moretti,” he sneers as if the name leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

I don’t know what happens next, but I think I honestly have just reached my breaking point with him. “Fuck you, Luca,” I hiss.

His eyes open and narrow as he stares at me. “What did you just say to me?”

“Fuck you!” I yell.

Before I can even blink, he is up and out of his chair and coming straight for me. Squealing in terror, I turn to run, but he’s too fast. He hauls me up in his arms and over to the table, bending me over the edge and pushing my face into the wood. He grasps my arms behind my back and holds them in place with one of his large hands while his other hand grabs the nape of my neck.

“Say it again,” he hisses at me through clenched teeth.

“I dare you.”

And so I do. “Fuck you!”

The next thing I hear is a ripping sound as my kimono is torn from my body, the lacy, delicate material falling into shreds around me.

His hand reaches for the hem of my nightdress, and I cry out, “Don’t you dare!”

He hesitates and then says, “What will you do, Verona, if I touch you? Will you cry out my name and beg for release just like last night?”

My face flames with embarrassment.

“Maybe you want me to spank you and make you wet again,” he whispers into my ear, the scent of expensive scotch sweeping over my face.

“Please. Stop,” I beg.

He squeezes my arms before releasing me, scoffing in disgust. He starts walking away from me out of the room when I call after him, “I don’t know what you think my family did to you, but we didn’t do anything!”

He stops and turns, and the look in his eyes scares the hell out of me. In a few long strides, he closes the distance between us, wrapping his hand around my neck. He slams me up against the wall and leans in until he’s only an inch away from my face. “Someone in your family killed my mother. I was only twelve years old when she was murdered in cold blood in our fucking kitchen,” he says, his voice dangerously low.

“W-wh-what?” I sputter.

“Do you know what that does to a boy, seeing his mother die right in front of his own fucking eyes, in his fucking arms?”

“Your mother was murdered?” I whisper.

“I bet your dear old dad didn’t tell you that one, did he? No, you were too spoiled, always sheltered and kept out of the loop on all of that shit.”

“How do you know it was my family that did it?” I dare to ask.

“Because they always killed their enemies in the same way. By slashing their throat three times. The same number of daggers in the Moretti family crest.”

Tears fill my eyes as I realize he’s telling the truth. It all makes sense now. The reason why our families went from acquaintances to sworn enemies almost overnight. I knew his mom died, but I never knew the why or how behind it all.

I swallow hard against his hand wrapped around my throat. He squeezes, and I instinctively bring my hands up, grabbing his wrist.

“But I guess our grandfathers thought this marriage would bring some kind of peace even though I could never truly love anyone that bears the name Moretti.”

My brain is working on overtime, trying to process all of the information. I guess I was kept in the dark, because my father never told me any of this. I had no idea that the Vitales blamed my family for the death of Luca’s mother. No wonder their hatred runs so deep for us.

“Go get something to eat. Starvation isn’t a cruel enough death.” He releases me then, leaving me stunned into silence.

He walks out of the room, and I’m left alone. I glance at the kitchen, but I couldn’t possibly eat anything now. My stomach cramps in protest, but I’ve completely lost my appetite. In fact, I feel as if I could throw up. The fact that Luca witnessed his mother’s death makes me sick. He was so young and innocent. It explains why he grew up into the cold, callous man that he is now. Her murder changed him.

Now that I know the truth behind his hatred for me, it makes me fear for my safety here, for the safety of my father. With me in Luca’s home, right next to the enemy, it makes us all vulnerable.

I decide right then and there that I will go visit my father in the morning and get to the bottom of all of this. If my father really is to blame for the death of Luca’s mother, then that will change everything.