This is undoubtedly a tantrum about Genevieve, but I need to hear her say it because I’m a sick fuck. There’s a twisted kind of pleasure in the idea of provoking this hot little green monster in her.
“Of all the people in the world you could have hired, did it have to be her?” she bites out.
“Why does it matter to you?” I throw the words back flippantly. “Last I checked, you didn’t care who I fucked.”
Her body goes rigid. “Are you?”
“Am I fucking her?” I parrot the question without answering.
I hope she’s imagining it right now—the same way I imagined her and Matteo together for six fucking years.
The door to the bridge opens, and the first mate pops his head out, his eyes widening when he sees us there.
“Pardon my interruption, Mr. Vitale.” He averts his gaze. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
“No need,” I tell him. “My wife?—”
“Angelo…” Abella begs, the vulnerability in her voice tugging at something I thought I’d already killed.
This fucking woman.
Turning around, I head for the stairs, dismissing the first mate. “As you were.”
I carry Abella back to the owner’s deck and into our suite, releasing my grip on her slowly. She slides down my body, her bare breasts skimming over my linen shirt. Even through that barrier, I can feel her nipples dragging along my chest, and it distracts me far more than it should.
I turn her in my arms, pressing her back against me as I tug her scrap of a thong over her hips, letting it fall to the floor. When I slip my fingers between her thighs and find her wet, it irritates the fuck out of me.
“Does their attention get you off?” I growl. “Are you so desperate for cock you think you’ll take any you can get?”
“No,” she breathes. “Nobody else has touched me. You saw the evidence of that.”
My dick swells another inch just thinking about her virgin blood on me. The relief I felt when I saw that was immeasurable. But now I have a point to make, and I intend it to be a permanent one.
“Nobody else will ever touch you again.” I haul her to the bed and shove her facedown across the mattress.
She doesn’t move as I rummage through the nightstand drawers, collecting the items I ordered for her. I toss them onto the bed, and she tries to glance over her shoulder, at which point I shove a pillow over her face.
“Angelo?” Uncertainty hitches her voice, and I let her linger in that moment. She can twist herself into knots and wallow in the fear she craves.
I grab the tattoo kit and the battery pack and toss them beside the other items. Then I mount her, caging her legs between mine as I lean back on my haunches. Compared to me, she’s pint-sized—compact and easily portable. She can’t bear much of my weight, but the littlediavolettaisn’t going anywhere in this position.
When I open the kit, the snap fills the silence, and a tremor runs along her spine. That soft expanse of golden skin laid out beneath me makes me want to sink my teeth into it. It doesn’t help that she smells like coconut and vanilla from whatever she smeared all over herself.
She seems to be handling Matteo’s death suspiciously well, but I’m not going to question it. I’ve spent the entirety of her mourning period sorting and categorizing all the ways I want to defile her. Today, she’s given me good reason to fuck her senseless.
I clean her upper thighs and apply the stencils I’ve been waiting to use before I prep the machine. It takes me a few minutes, and when I turn it on, she starts to squirm. I plant my palm in the center of her back and press her down into the mattress.
“What are you—” The words die in her throat as I touch the needles to her skin, the machine buzzing as I begin my work.
She falls quiet beneath me, her face still buried under the pillow as I execute my claim on her. Moving from one thigh to the next, the entire process takes less than twenty minutes. When I’m done, I sit back and admire the view—my first and last name inked onto the back of her thighs.
“In case I didn’t make it clear already, nobody else will ever fuck you,” I tell her. “Any man who tries will stare down his own death sentence.”
“But you can fuck who you want?” she bites back.
“Is that jealousy I hear in your voice,cara?”
I want her to admit it, but she’s too fucking stubborn for that. So I clean and wrap her with a medical-grade film that’s durable enough to handle what I’m about to do to her next.
