Page 113 of Coerced Kiss
The truth leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. The envy that stabs into my gut feels a lot like the jealousy of last night. It’s petty and immature, but I can’t stop myself from being stupidly envious of therealgirlfriends, of the women he loved and the wife he will love one day, of the woman he’ll bring here for the right reasons.
“Anya,” he says, reminding me that he’s waiting for my consent. For my understanding.
Yes, I get it. This is a stage act, a fake performance. I definitely don’t want it to be more. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. I must be developing the infamous pregnancy porridge brain.
“Anya,” he says again, this time, more insistently.
“Yes.” Even as I give him that affirmation, something twists inside me. “I understand perfectly.”
Instead of making him happy, my words put a frown on his face.
Before I can ponder the reason for that, a woman sticks her head around the jamb of the adjoining door and says, “We’re about to start, guys. Come grab your place in the hall.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Saverio
“What’s up with you?” Dante asks when I answer the doorbell on Saturday morning.
I turn for the kitchen, leaving him to let himself in. “Why do you think anything is up?”
“I know that look on your face.”
The door shuts with a bang before his footsteps fall on the floor behind me.
I grit my teeth. Didn’t anyone teach him how to close a fucking door? Slamming them is one of my pet peeves.
In the kitchen, I head straight for the coffee machine. The strenuous run this morning didn’t relieve my frustration. Neither did the cold shower or the hand job. I dressed in a sweater and jeans instead of my usual office attire, thinking I could take Anya somewhere today. A movie, maybe. Or lunch. We need to be seen together more in public.
I raise the carafe. “Coffee?”
“Please,” he says, slipping onto a bar stool by the island counter.
“I assume this isn’t a social call.”
“Fuck, bro. What’s eating your ass? I’m sorry to say this, but Giorgio is right, and you know how seldom I agree with him. You need to get laid. Aren’t you getting any? From the way you’re stomping around like a bear with a sore head, the only thing you seem to be getting is a cold shoulder. Did you and Anya have a fight?”
“Our private life is none of your fucking business,” I grumble as I pour a mug and take a sip.
The brew turned bitter. I empty the carafe in the drain, rinse it, and start a fresh pot.
Abstaining from fucking Anya takes every shred of my self-control and then some. Only the fact that my need for her to recover is bigger than the need to bury my cock in her soft, tight heat prevents me from doing exactly that. She must be sore after all that rough fucking. The women at the club often told me I was too big, and they didn’t just say that because I paid them double their rates. They uttered it in strained voices with their faces pulled into masks of discomfort as I pounded into them. No hooker acts that well, not even the ones who know how to fake an orgasm that’ll make a bloke with a pencil dick believe he’s the hottest thing under the sun.
Now that I finally rediscovered spontaneous hard-ons and my lust returned with a vengeance, it’s twice as difficult to ignore the need firing through my veins. I’ve never been this turned on for anyone, certainly not constantly and with an urgency that drives me wild. Even doubling up on pumping iron at the gym isn’t enough to alleviate the frustration. The hand jobs I have in ice cold showers only aggravate matters. But I persist, determined to wait until next week, and since the prenatal class, Anya walks circles around me.
Fuck. Richard was right. That video still haunts my thoughts day and night. The bastard laughed his ass off when he sawmy face. My skin must’ve turned gray. Thinking about a woman having a baby is one thing. Up to now, it’s been an abstract concept in my head. Seeing how a natural birth takes place on screen is quite a different matter. I hated myself for ever wanting those four to six kids because it made me a fucking sadistic son of a bitch. How could I want to submit any woman to that? The idea still turns me inside out.
I’m surprised how calmly Anya took everything after knowing what’s in store for her. My treasure is a lot braver than what she gives herself credit for. I knew it the night I chased after her to kill her. No, not to kill her. To shut her up. To make sure she didn’t spill anything from those pretty lips. I knew it when, despite her disadvantage in size, she fought me like a hellcat. I knew it without a doubt when Livy told me about her traumatic past. She’s a survivor, and that’s something I admire.
Nicole will have to do a Caesarian. There’s no other way, no way I’m letting Anya go through that hell that may very well kill her. I won’t be able to stand by her side and see her suffer that kind of pain. No fucking way. Not to mention the million and one things that can go wrong.
“Where the fuck are you?” Dante asks, snapping his fingers in my face. “Because you’re not in this room.”
Forcing those tormenting images from my mind, I grab two clean mugs. “Anything new on Raphael?”
Dante rests a shoe on the foot bar of the stool and props a hand on his hip, brushing his jacket aside. “That’s why I’m here. He’s replacing Luigi’s men with his own at Obsidian.”