The Skull King (Skull 1)

I never allowed the beautiful surroundings to fool me. This was a prison, a prison with no escape until Lucian died. He was much older than I was, but he was still only forty years old, so he had a lot of life left to live. If he lived to be ninety, then I would have to spend a lifetime in suffering. I would be seventy-five by the time he was gone, and I would have no interest in men or sex by that time. I would only have the children I made with him to keep me company in my last years of life.

It was a depressing thought.

I tried to remind myself that it could be worse. Lucian said insulting things to me from time to time, but he rarely ever hit me. He focused on work and lived his life and didn’t spend much time terrorizing me. He told me when he wanted sex, and when he was satisfied, he left me alone until he was horny again. Whenever he had special occasions, he expected me to look my best and be the star of the evening. He seemed to care more about making me his trophy wife than actually having a relationship with me.

So it could definitely be worse.

Lucian never lasted long when he fucked me. Sex took five minutes at the longest. Since this was the only sex I would ever get for the rest of my life, I tried to enjoy it as much as possible, but because I wasn’t attracted to his appearance or his spirit, that was nearly impossible.

So I pictured the man from the bar instead.

The mysterious stranger with the skull on his card.

I closed my eyes as Lucian rocked into me, and I pretended that gorgeous man was the one thrusting inside me. I pictured his stunning blue eyes, his hard jawline, the masculine rasp of his voice.

I felt myself grow wet.

“You like this, sweetheart?” Lucian pressed his face into my neck and kept thrusting, the hair on his chest scratching the soft skin of my breasts.

My hands clung to his back, and I imagined that muscular man on top of me. I visualized my nails slicing his skin. I pictured how big his dick must be, how tight his body was. That made me wetter. My imagination was so powerful, it also made me come.

Lucian came at the same time. “Fuck…” He filled me with his come and stayed on top of me, so lazy that he left all of his weight on me until I could barely breathe.

I never orgasmed during sex, and that climax was particularly weak, probably because I knew this man wasn’t the one from the bar. My imagination wasn’t strong enough to truly convince my body that it was experiencing that fantasy.

Lucian finally rolled off me and onto his side of the bed. He lay still, closed his eyes, and was asleep just minutes later.

I lay there, filled with such emptiness that the sorrow nearly swallowed me whole. I’d sold my soul to this man to save someone I loved, but that ended up being a mistake. My life had no meaning, and every day felt worse than the last. There was no point to any of this. I spent my time trying to find something to do because I wasn’t allowed to work or go to school. I just lay by the pool all day in the summer, and in the winter, I took long baths and drank as much liquor as I could.

That wasn’t really living.

I’d contemplated suicide before. There was no way out of this unless he died…or I did. But I had two brothers who loved me deeply, and they would never get over my suicide. It would haunt them every single day, even when they reached their seventies. I had to stay for them, no matter how hard things got.

No matter how much sorrow I felt.

3

Cassini

Lucian bought me a car and granted me a generous amount of freedom—after I fought for those things. I told him our marriage would be much happier if I had the ability to go shopping, to meet friends for drinks, or just to get a cup of coffee while reading a book in a café. There was nowhere for me to hide, so I wasn’t a flight risk.

As the time passed, he stopped being concerned about me.

I think he actually trusted me.

I drove into Florence and entered the large pasta factory my brothers owned. Our grandparents opened it in the early 1900s, and it’d been passed down through the generations until my brothers inherited it. I was part of that inheritance too, but then I married Lucian, and my involvement in the business was eliminated.

I stepped inside the pasta room and saw the different types of pasta dangling from the drying rack in the center of the table. There were also various cheeses on the wooden table, like they’d been pairing them with the sauces. My brothers oversaw the manufacturing, but they also invented new recipes to accompany the pastas my family had been producing for generations.