I head toward my room, but a motion to my left startles me. Casso steps out from his office as I pass it, and he stares at me, as surprised as I am. I go to walk away, but he reaches out and catches my wrist, the hand with the ring on my finger, and pulls me back toward him.
He lifts my wrist in the air.
“You still haven’t taken it off.” He looks hungry, starved.
I stare into his eyes and I see that same look, the one he’s always given me, so filled with longing and anger, the Casso from ten years back and the Casso of today merged into one man, flawed and broken but trying his best to do what’s right, to provide for his family, to lead the Famiglia, to live up to his promises. I can see it etched in his skin, in the weight on his shoulders, on the tension around his full lips. I reach up with my free hand and touch his cheek, and he turns into it, releasing a soft purr.
“You keep mentioning it. I think you like that I’m wearing it.”
“I do like it,” he says, so softly it kills, the burn of velvet pulled too taut. “And that’s what scares me, princess.”
I stand up on my toes and kiss him, tumbling forward against his chest. He catches me and crushes my mouth with his and I release a whimpering moan, a noise that I don’t remember ever making before, but I don’t remember ever feeling like this. He staggers back into his office and I go with him, drawn inexorably forward, unable to stop this kiss even if I wanted to. The door slams shut behind me and I’m pinned against it, my hands up above my head, his mouth on my neck, on my lips, his tongue against my tongue.
He tastes like clean sheets and soap and something minty. I bite him and he bites back, grinning like he enjoys the pain. He pins both my wrists with a single massive hand and uses the other to trace a line down my neck, along my breasts, toward my shorts. I’m trembling with fear and desire, unable and unwilling to stop what’s happening, and I keep seeing him move with insane speed and deadly force, punching, breaking, blood and agony, but for me his pain is mixed with pleasure, never one without the other.
That’s how we work: a duality, the two of us as opposites, pleasure and pain, love and hate. In tandem, orbiting each other. Everything he does is intensified ten-fold because of the contrasts he stokes in me and the heat of him is like an oven as he sucks my neck and whispers in my ear.
“When you said I do, I kept picturing you spread wide in my bed, shaking with anticipation, naked and dripping wet. I wanted to make you my bride that night more than I’ve wanted anything in my life, but I respected your wishes. I left you alone. Was that a mistake? I wonder if I should’ve taken you regardless, made you moan, made you scream.”
“I don’t know,” I answer and it’s the truth. Would I have wanted him in my bed? No, not at all, but would I have sent him away?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m afraid I wouldn’t have, and that scares me more than anything, but it scares me just as much that I wouldn’t have sent him away if he’d come.
“And yet now you’re here and I know what you’re thinking. You want me to ruin you the way only I can ruin you. Nobody else, my princess, my wife. Nobody else can touch you this way.” He unbuttons the top button of my shorts with one quick motion and I suck in a breath.
“This doesn’t change anything,” I whisper as his fingers slip down along the front of my panties and I release a gasp and a moan. God, it feels so fucking good, the anticipation like candy on my spine. “This doesn’t change a thing. Our deal stands. You can do… fuck… you can do this all you want. I still hate you.”
“I know you do,” he says, smirking that devilish grin as his fingers move up and down the front of my panties, down to my dripping with pussy, and oh, god, I’m so wet he slides along my folds and pushes slowly inside of me before teasing my clit in incredible circles. “You despise me and that’s why I love this so goddamn much. The way you look at me like you want to kill me, but you also want to fuck me, is like heaven. It’s like your moans are music and your tongue is candy and god, Olivia, I hate you just as much, but I want you even more.”