His anger dies almost as quickly as it arose, and after only a moment’s hesitation, he pulls his finger back and his eyes drop. I step forward and tip his face up, making him look at me. “You don’t shout at me. You don’t demand things from me. You take what you’re given and you say, ‘Thank you, Luca.’ Understand?”
His mouth firms in a thin, pale line. “Fuck you.”
My fingers tighten on his chin. “Only if you behave yourself, angel,” I say lightly, and finally he gives, pulls his face from my hand. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your vows already? You promised to love, honor andobey.”
Part of me wants to tell him to wait. To just hold on to that avalanche of feeling inside him and just wait until we get back to New York, until we get back to a place where I feel secure, where IknowI can protect him. But I don’t believe he can hold back his emotions, not like I can. And besides that, I can’t have him questioning every decision I make. If I need to stop and explain every move I make, I’ll never fucking move at all. No, he just needs to do as he’s told for now.
“You need to learn to trust me. To do what I tell you, and trust that it’s for your own good. Understand?”
He gives me a contemptuous glance, but he won’t meet my eyes. “There are some moments I actually hate you,” he says, almost too quietly for me to hear.
But I do hear it, and it feels like a knife slicing into me, into my heart. It’s a good thing if he hates me a little, I tell myself. Agoodthing.
“That’s fine. You can hate me all you like, so long as you do what I say. And what I’m saying now is, stay on the damn boat,” I tell him.
I brush past him on my way to the bathroom. When I come back out, he’s gone.
This is what you want, I remind myself.Keep him off balance. At least until we’re back in New York and you can control the environment.
We waited five years, we can wait another few weeks.
The thing is, I seem to be off-balance as well, an unfamiliar feeling gurgling in my belly. It takes a moment to place it. I’ve only felt it once before, five years ago when I walked out of Finch’s suite without a backwards glance.
Regret.
Chapter Eighteen
FINCH
FuckLuciano D’Amato.
I hope he gets fucking leprosy and his dick falls off and all his fingers and his stupid perfect nose, too.
I wash myself thoroughly, thinking vicious thoughts, wondering if I really amwrongabout those glimpses of real feeling I’ve seen from him. I mean, guy’s kind of sociopathic, I know that. He’s a killer, and he lives his life storing things in little boxes in his mind like that’ll help keep his psyche in order.
Therapy would be a fucking disaster for him. He’d have a complete mental break if he ever had to look at what’s inside some of those boxes.
But I really did think he was coming around. We were finding a balance between ourselves over dinner.Don’t treat hired help like scumversusdon’t challenge me in front of other people. And he really did seem interested in learning from me about social graces and all that shit.
And the way we made love last night—because that’s what it was, even in the cold light of day.Notjust a fuck, no matter what crass shit he said afterwards.
It cuts deep when he turns around and says all that cold bullshit to me, but I don’t believe it. The way he kisses me, the way he lets out a long breath when he slides his cock into me, like he’s finally come home…
Not to mention that finch tattoo right there on his arm.
Surely he can see what a great team we’d make?
He’ll come around eventually. This marriage is going to work, and I’m going to show that dumbass just how great he can be. Lady Macbeth ain’t got nothing on me.
So now I’ve decided to be cheerful, I just need to find something todo. I wander down to have breakfast in the dining room, where Nunzio’s wife has baked fresh croissants and biscotti, and made cute little individual tropical fruit salads topped with tart yogurt.Yum. I eat three of everything. Hey, it’s my honeymoon, I’ll pack on a pooch over my washboard abs if I want to. Besides, my awful wedded husband hasn’t had the balls to show his face at the breakfast table, and I don’t see why all this amazing food should go to waste.
After breakfast I dress in my hot-pink Speedos and head to the pool. I bake myself in the warm morning sunshine for a while, but my attention is distracted by the island coming closer and closer. It looks busy and bustling, and I’ve traveled most of the world in my tender years, but I’ve never been inthispart of it, and it looks like fun. I’m itching to get off the yacht and go exploring.
It’s not just stretching my legs, either. I misspeople. I’m a social animal. Luca’s not. That’d be fine if he’d actually spend time with me, his long-suffering husband.
But he won’t.
By eleven theMaddalenahas dropped anchor at the dock, and I stare longingly over the rails at the bright colors and cheerful people going about their business on shore. I even wave at some, and they wave back.
