With This Ring (To Have And To Hold Duet 1)

“Please.”

“Hurt is when her husband is humiliated before her eyes. When her first-born is bound, immobile, and executed with a bullet to the back of his head. Hurt is when his blood splatters across her face and the terrified screams of her children begin. Hurt is when we are made to watch my mother—”

His voice breaks and he has to look away, to swallow hard. When he returns his attention to me, the fist in my hair tugs even harder.

“Hurt is when your mother is stripped and what she doesn’t give is taken from her before your eyes by your fucking fiancé,” he jams his finger into the middle of my chest but at least he releases my wrists. “While your brothers stood by with guns at the backs of two children’s heads to force them to watch when they turned away. To force them to bear witness to the unspeakable assault on their mother. That’s fucking degradation, Scarlett. That’s true degradation. So, don’t you dare use that word. You have no right to it. You have no idea what it means to be degraded.”

I’m sobbing now, not for myself, not because he’s hurting me but for her and for him and for all of them. For my parents and for Noah, too.

“I’m sorry,” I blubber. “I’m so sorry that happened—”

“That didn’t just happen,” he spits. “Don’t you get it? They did it. They made it happen. Your brothers. Your fiancé.” He shakes his head then, abruptly releasing his hold on my hair and stepping backward so I fall forward onto my hands.

He turns away, walking to the sink.

I watch from my place on the floor as he turns on the tap and washes his face, mutters a curse into the towel he uses to dry himself.

Cerberus whines from the corner.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I’m sorry I said those things to you when I knew you hadn’t touched me. I’m sorry that my brothers hurt your family like they did. I’m so sorry that it was my family who did that to yours. I’m sorry…” I trail off, sitting back on my heels, thinking, blubbering now because I am sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.

I rub my face, look up to find him watching me.

“I understand if you need to hurt me. Punish me for what happened. I do. And if you’ll let my brother go—”

“We’re back to your brother again. You’ll do anything for your brother.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Thing is that my family’s gone. Nothing will ever bring them back. Not hurting you or him or crossing off every god damned name inked into my skin. Nothing.”

“I don’t know what you want. I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.” I wipe my eyes but the tears keep falling.

He comes at me fast and I scramble back but hit the wall. He takes me by my arms and hauls me to stand. He takes my wrists when I push against his chest, raising them over my head, pinning them there.

That’s when I notice the red on his collar, the dried blood on his neck. That’s when I realize what he’s been out doing.

When I look up at his eyes again, I find them on my mouth.

“You’ll cross off another name tonight, won’t you?” I ask, my voice small.

His gaze slides to mine, then down to my mouth again. I lick my lips.

“Burnt sugar,” he says instead of answering me.

“What?” Thick lashes cast shadows over his eyes, shielding them from me.

“Your eyes. They remind me of it.”

I just stare up at him, unsure what to do, what I’m supposed to say or do or even think. He’s not making any sense. He touches my cheek with his free hand, brushes fingers lightly, softly over my cheekbone, down to my jawline, over my throat and down. Down to close one hand over my breast.

I gasp.

He swallows as his hand weighs my breast.

“Are you afraid of me?” he asks more quietly but no more gently.

I stare at him.

“Not for Noah but for yourself. Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes.”

He leans in close, inhales deeply. “Good. Because you should be,” he says, his lips brushing my cheek, the corner of my mouth when he does. “Because you don’t know what I want to do to you.” He slides his hand over my belly and down.

“Cristiano,” I say, his name a gasp as his hand travels farther south.

“Do you know?” he asks again and when he cups my sex over the dress, I rise higher on tiptoe. I wasn’t even aware I was on tiptoe. “There’s an emptiness inside me. A hunger,” he starts, and I whimper, my hands fisted, wrists caught in one of his hands. His eyes appear almost black now. “And I want. God. How I want.” Both of his hands tighten for one moment before he abruptly, unexpectedly releases me.