Bound By Love (Born in Blood Mafia Chronicles 6)

I swatted his chest. “Be serious. I’m worried he’s going to hurt her.”

“Of course, he will. He’s been waiting to fuck her for months and he’s going to have her tonight. If she doesn’t tell him he’s her first, he’ll take her like he would any other woman.”

Luca was doing a bad job trying to ease my worries. I really hoped Gianna had changed her mind and told Matteo that she hadn’t done what he and everyone else thought she had.

“What was the purpose of running and ruining her reputation if she didn’t even have fun? Trust your sister to fuck it all up.”

I’d asked myself the same question. Gianna had been so eager to run away, to make her own decisions, to escape from the shackles of an arranged marriage, but in the end she’d hardly gotten anything out of it. Perhaps she should have tried to come to terms with her marriage to Matteo from the start. I was wary of Matteo, but I knew he would have tried everything to win her over. Now I wasn’t so sure anymore. “If I’d done what Gianna did, what would you have done?”

Luca’s expression darkened but he was careful not to let me see the full force of his emotions, so I knew it was bad. He pushed the strap of my nightgown off my right shoulder. “You didn’t,” he said as he planted a kiss on the top of my shoulder. “I’m glad you’ve always only been mine. Every little inch of you has always been mine alone, and that won’t ever change.”

I rolled my eyes at his possessiveness. It thrilled and annoyed me equally. With him being Capo, possessiveness was to be expected. He ruled over the East Coast, over hundreds of men, practically owned them and his territory; of course he wanted to own me as well, wanted to control me. It wasn’t always easy to make him see me as an equal, to have him rely on me, and not expect unquestioning obedience. It was a struggle I still hadn’t won completely, but we were on a good path.

What annoyed me more than his possessiveness was him not giving me an answer to my question. His tongue slid over my shoulder, then up to my collarbone. It made it hard to concentrate, but I was determined not to let him distract me like that again.

“Stop worrying about your sister. She can handle herself. And Matteo knows how to make a woman come.”

He wasn’t taking this seriously, nor me either. I sat up, leaving Luca no choice but to stop his kisses, and hoping the higher vantage point would give me an advantage. Luca rolled on his back, relaxed, as his arm eased around my waist. I knew his mood would change soon. “I don’t want to stay at home anymore. I want to do something. I want to be useful.”

Luca’s dark eyebrows climbed his forehead. “You are useful to me.”

“How?” I challenged.

Luca smirked, and that was the last straw. I escaped his grip and slid off the bed. “Regardless of what you think,” I muttered as I reached for my bathrobe, “my sole purpose in life is not to be pretty and warm your bed.”

Luca was quick to react, swinging his legs out of bed, sitting up and snaking his arm around my waist to pull me back against him. I tried to resist but he was way too strong. I let him pull me flush against his body so I was peering down at his tense face, but my body didn’t soften in his embrace. I needed him to see how important this was to me. Since Gianna had run I had done a lot of thinking. I knew I’d grow depressed if I stayed holed up in the penthouse.

“Aria, you are my wife. When you married me, you knew your options would be limited. This life will always be a golden cage. You need to be protected from the Bratva and other threats.”

“If I went to college, that wouldn’t pose an additional risk, Luca. It’s not like the Bratva is going to attack campus. What you mean is that you prefer to have me where I’m not surrounded by other people, especially men.”

Luca’s lips thinned, his arm muscles twitching. “Yes,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t trust men around you. Every guy with eyes in his head is going to want a piece of you. You are fucking gorgeous.”

His compliment did nothing to appease me. I’d heard those words all my life, from everyone around me. My beauty was all I’d ever been known for. It was why I had been given to Luca in marriage. “I’m surrounded by Romero and Sandro and other men all the time.”

“They are my men, and they know the consequences of touching what’s mine,” he growled, eyes filled with the promise of violence. “They would never dare to even leer at you, but outsiders aren’t bound by our rules. I would kill them for touching you like I would my men, but that would only be after the deed was done because they don’t know who you are. They might risk touching you.”