“I’ll be fine, Luca. I learned my lesson.”
He reached across me to grab the body wash. “Sit back and relax,” he instructed. “Let me take care of you.”
I did as he asked, and Luca grazed a soapy loofah down my arm. He was quiet the entire time he washed my body, careful not to touch my bruises.
Luca was never a big talker, so I had learned to savor these moments of silence with him. We were alike in this regard. When I was a child, I could never express myself in words. I used my paintings to give meaning to life, to understand how the world worked.
We both had traumatic childhoods, Luca’s much worse than mine. His abuse and my neglect had turned us into different people. Because of our families, we grew up faster. The darkness of the world had become more apparent. Painting kept me sane, allowed me to unleash my feelings on the world in different ways than Luca.
I heard a noise outside of the bathroom and turned my head. The door was closed.
“What’s going on out there?”
Luca glanced over his shoulder, then back to me. “I told Marcello to move your stuff into my bedroom.”
My mouth widened in surprise. “Really?”
“You’re going to be my wife, Drea. What’s mine is yours now.”
“I never accepted your proposal,” I pointed out.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are you saying no?”
I shook my head.
“That’s what I thought.”
“I still want a real proposal with a ring and you down on one knee, begging me to marry you.”
He smirked. “Whatever my queen wants.”
Luca leaned over the tub, fisting my curls in his hand, and kissed me. His lips were soft against mine. He didn’t seem to notice or care about my rough, scratchy lips as our tongues tangled. Luca’s free hand fell onto the side of the tub, and I pulled him toward me, desperate for his touch. I moaned in his mouth as I moved his hand between my thighs.
He laughed against my lips. “So impatient, my queen. You’re too sore for sex tonight.”
“Make me come.” I shoved his fingers inside me. “I need to release this pent-up energy.”
He sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, his fingers moving inside me. I rocked my hips, and Luca added another finger, stretching me out.
Luca kissed his way down my jaw and neck. “Baby,” he whispered between kisses. “You make me lose my mind. I will do anything to protect you. To keep you safe. To make you mine.”
His fingers plunged deeper inside me, in and out, until I was screaming his name. My body trembled, my orgasm working its way through my body. Parts of me ached so much I couldn’t tell where the pain started and stopped. But as I chased my high, I’d never felt more alive. I no longer cared about the bruises and the scars those marks would leave behind.
“I’m yours,” I moaned.
A ghost of a smile stretched across his beautiful lips. “Damn right, you’re mine.”
His blue irises flickered with madness right before he tugged on my lip with his teeth. I came on his fingers so damn hard my legs shook for a solid minute after I found my release.
I looked up at Luca with a satisfied smile plastered on my lips. “Take me to bed.”
“To sleep,” he countered. “You heard what your grandfather said about your ribs. I won’t risk hurting you.”
“Between my orgasm and the pain meds, I’ll be sleeping like a newborn by the time my head hits the pillow.”
Luca grabbed a towel from the rack and helped me out of the tub, cradling me against his chest. He kissed the top of my head, and his arms wrapped so tightly around me it was as if he were afraid to let me go.
Luca
Alex slept for days in a row, only waking up for short periods to eat and use the bathroom. She was like a zombie moving through the motions.
For three nights straight, Alex woke up screaming from night terrors. I tried everything to console her but nothing worked. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get her back to her old self. The kidnapping, torture, and almost sale on the island had undone all of our hard work.
“Marcello,” Alex screamed, her eyes closed. “Marcello, don’t go.”
She often called out for my brother in the middle of the night. It crushed my heart, killed my soul, but I knew she needed him. I lifted my cell phone from the bedside table and texted Marcello. It was three o’clock in the morning. Like me, he was a light sleeper and never slept more than a few hours a night.
A minute later, he creaked open my bedroom door, standing in the doorway shirtless and wearing his usual Tom Ford boxers. “Is Alex okay?”
I knew my brother loved Alex. He would have done anything to protect her, even when the job sometimes required him to protect her from herself.