Page 67 of Isle of Seduction
“And we slept in the same bed once…”
“Twice,” I counter again.
Fuck, I should be taking as much pleasure in riling her up, but I can’t help myself it seems. But as much as I enjoy fighting with her, she’s resisting me, resisting us despite what we shared, and I won’t have that.
“Be fucking serious, Andrea.”
“I am. I love you.”
The words are out before I can think better of it. It was supposed to be all cute and shit. Maybe with flowers. But the truth remains. And Giulia doesn’t like flowers. She likes honesty and brutal truths. “I won’t take it back.”
She’s shocked into silence, her eyes wide as saucers. I see her pulse thrumming a wild rhythm at her neck.
“I don’t want to let you go. What we have, it’s precious, it’s rare. I know you feel it, not just because you came on my cock, but because you fought to have me out of jail. Because you fought for me, because you called my brother your brother, because deep down you know you love me too.” I take her hands in mine, begging her with my eyes to listen. “Don’t trample on what we have because you’re scared. Let go. I’ll catch you.”
Her eyes water, giving the green of her irises an iridescent glow, but the tears don’t fall. She squares her shoulders and gulps.
“I’m terrified. Andrea, last time I loved a man, he used that love to gain things I wasn’t willing to give.”
Even silence has sounds, the sounds of the room, of the nightlife outside. When she utters the words, the silence in my head is deafening. Everything other than her leaves my mind. Ice fills my every cell, the rage so potent I’m sure I’m sweating it through every pore.
That man is dead already, but the knowledge doesn’t help quiet the need to avenge her, to make her nightmares disappear.
I turn around to go into the kitchen and take a knife out of the wooden block.
“Andrea, what are you doing?”
Concern taints my wife’s voice but I can’t hear it. I take her hand and put the knife in, closing her fingers around the handle then pressing it at my throat. It’s sharp. A drop of blood glides down my throat at the small nick where I press the knife while Giulia tries her best to pull it away. “If I ever hurt you, slit my throat right away because I’d rather die than hurt you.”
My wife is as deranged as I am because she smiles kindly and presses the knife into my skin, making me hiss. “Gladly.”
She removes the knife and licks the blood off my neck, making me grow hard in an instant.
“Now, marito, are you gonna make me beg for your cock again, or can I assume that we seal our new deal with you inside me?”
TWENTY-SEVEN
HOME IS… NOT HERE ANY LONGER
It takes longer to clear Andrea of the charges than we expect. The way Andrea’s handprints were submitted to the police, via anonymous sender, was inadmissible in court, as Shelly and DeRossi had argued. They were found on Mia’s arms but not her throat and she died by strangulation.
I wish I could say we’re relieved, but it doesn’t change the agitation coursing through Andrea’s body.
Each night, he takes it out on me, our bodies writhing with lust and hunger for each other. Every time is more delicious than the last. The way he learns to play my body like his favourite instrument settles what I thought was broken forever. He’s performing kintsugi with the pieces of my soul, glueing them back together with gold.
It’s like I’m relearning sex all over again, with him as my centrefold. I’m not in control when he touches me and that excites me more than anything else I’ve ever attempted with a partner before.
The attention on Mia’s murder hasn’t died down. Everywhere we go, we’re followed by the press. People are wary of Andrea, and by extension, of me.
Rouge building site is on pause because the workers I had on contract refuse to be associated with me and the Capaldi name. It helps that Andrea owns his own construction company and can take over, but the transition isn’t happening until the new year.
And accepting his help as the gesture of a husband rather than a handout is still difficult for me. Just because we have sex doesn’t mean I’m healed from my trust issues.
That’s how we end up on a luxurious private jet on December 26, flying to Kalliste, in need of a break from it all.
I’m holding on by a thread, between Nico’s silent frustration of not finding Addam’s nanny, the murder investigation being at a moot point, and Andrea falling back into who I believe he really is. A cold-hearted killer ready to pounce on his prey.
I witness the shift in the weeks since his arrest. He has nothing to lose anymore, and it shows. He’s back at the helm of his security company, hacking into government files like it’s his day job, which I guess it is, ordering his people to follow whoever he suspects to be against him. His paranoia and obsession with Addams is at an all-time high, but I still have that voice at the back of my head telling me we’re missing something.