Is not a person at all.
Chapter 15
Curse
I stare into the flames of my office fireplace. I shouldn’t have had that fucking drink.
Alcohol always messes with my sleep. Makes my dreams even more vivid.
I was dreaming of her. Again. But not the child or teenage Aurora. I was dreaming of her as she is now. Exquisite. Grown-up. Naked.
She practically was naked in reality. I had her bare pussy right there beneath my hand. I became aware of it a split-second before the pain of my bleeding nose brought me fully awake. Aware of the silken heat of her. The crinkle of hair. The slippery wetness.
I could drive myself crazy imagining what that wetness tastes like.
Something tells me she would taste like fucking heaven.
Something tells me that I’ll never actually find out. Aurora hates my fucking guts now. I saw it in the shower. I saw the way I made the last little flame of hope and affection die out in her eyes.
Usually watching the light go out in someone’s eyes fills me with a golden sense of calm. It makes me feel like I can fit inside my own skin again, at least for a little while. At least until the next time.
But not so with Aurora. It leaves me angry, bitter, ill at ease, feeling like my bones are too big for my body. Like the pieces of me don’t quite fit together correctly anymore. I get up and pace the room, unable to just sit in the chair any longer. Dark restlessness spins in my limbs, claws at my spine, echoes in my dick. Usually when I feel this way I go find somebody on my brother’s list to take care of.
There are always names on that list.
But I can’t leave her to do it.
And I can’t go to her, either, to work out this frustration on her body, even if some twisted part of me wants to. Because I do. I want to get right back in that bed with her. Pin her down and fuck savagely into her until she’s screaming and I’m coming and everything starts to make sense again.
She deserves so much better than that.
She deserves so much better than me.
I needed her to see that tonight. I needed her not to keep looking at me like I’m some kind of broken hero risen from the ashes of her past to save her. Needed her not to touch my face with that tenderness like she did before, a tenderness that fucking sliced right through me and nearly brought me to my knees.
I need her to hate me.
If letting her believe I’m only with her for her papà’s money does the job, then so be it. Her hate is cleaner. So much easier.
So much easier than the agonized shitstorm of longing that rises inside me every time she bestows a bit of her holy gentleness upon me. Every time she looks at me hoping I’m still the boy that she once knew. She says she never makes wishes anymore, but I’ve seen that wish in her eyes every fucking moment I’ve been with her. The wish that everything could go back to how it was before.
That I could go back to who I was before.
It’s better to disappoint her now. Remind her as early and as often as possible about what a soulless piece of shit I am.
Especially if I’m going to be her husband.
There doesn’t seem to be any way around it now. Marrying Aurora is the best way to keep her safe, even if it makes her goddamn miserable in the process. Without a husband, Alessandro and the others will never stop looking for her.
And she believes that was my goal all along. Might as well confirm her suspicions, even if they’re false. There’s a chance she won’t agree to it, of course. At least at first. But as angry as Aurora is right now, as much as I’ve hurt her, as much as she hates me, I don’t think she wants to go back to New York. I don’t think she wants to marry someone like Alessandro Messina, or one of the other New York bosses, either.
When she stood there in her wedding lingerie, watching her husband’s body bleed out, I could tell she was already saying goodbye to her entire fucking life. She’s smart. She might need a little bit of time, but she’ll come to see that marrying me is likely her best option.
Pretty sad that that’s the case. That someone like me could be the best-case scenario to someone like her.
But I am. As fucked-up as it is, I am. I can protect her. I can keep her alive. I would kill for her. I would die for her. Without a moment’s hesitation.
None of those pieces of shit in New York could say the same.
