“Am I irritating you, Salvatore? Because you know what’s irritating me? Your…stuff…drying on my skin,” I said through clenched teeth. I stood so fast, I knocked the chair over behind me. “You’ve told me your rules. Well, fine. I have just one of my own. Leave. Me. Alone!” I turned on my heel to march off.
“Sit back down,” he hissed. “Now.”
“Fuck.You.I’m going to take a shower.”
I heard his chair scrape back, and I started to run for the stairs, all the while wondering what the hell I was doing. Where I was going. He had the key to the lock. It’s not like I could hide. What was I doing?
Salvatore caught up with me. I didn’t even really fight him when he took my arm and dragged me up the stairs with him.
“You want a shower? Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ll take you to have that fucking shower if mystuffis soirritating.”
“Let me go.”
He hauled me to my bedroom and into the bathroom. There he released me. I backed into a corner, his fury suddenly frightening.
“Get in the shower,” he said, reaching for the collar of my blouse and tearing it down the middle.
I screamed, trying to push him back, knowing it was impossible.
“You wanted a shower.”
“I’ll do it,” I said as he popped the buttons off my shorts and yanked the zipper down. “Please. Just—”
“In the shower!”
He shoved me into the shower, even though I still wore my bra and panties.
“Let me go. I’ll do it, I promise.” He stopped and brought his face within an inch from mine.
“You don’t have to promise. I know you’ll do it.”
He switched on the water, and I recoiled from the cool spray that hit one side of my arm.
Tears burned my eyes, and I cursed the drops that fell.
“Take off your bra and panties,” he said, pushing his hand through his hair as he stepped back.
“I will. Just go, okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
His breath was audible, his lips tight, the look on his face telling me he was trying hard to get himself under control.
“I have to pee. Let me pee.” I tried, hoping that would convince him to leave. Using that moment to reason with him. “I’m sorry, okay?”
Some battle raged behind his eyes, and next thing I knew, he had me shoved against the shower wall, one hand wrapped around my throat. I grabbed his forearm, trying to pull him off. He reached over and switched off the water, drenching one side of his T-shirt in the process.
“Piss.”
“Wh…what?”
With his wet hand, he pushed my panties down to midthigh. “Piss.”
“Salvatore…”
“Fucking. Piss. You want me to leave you alone? I will. But first, you piss.”
We stood staring at each other, his eyes dark with anger, mine, maybe the look of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck? I didn’t know what to do, whether or not to try to reason with him. I didn’t know him. That fact well and truly hit me for the first time, right here, right now. He was the son of a mafia boss next in line to succeed him. I’d seen he was armed at my father’s funeral. This man knew violence, it was his world. What horrors had his eyes seen? What atrocities had his hands committed?
In this moment, he was truly and utterly terrifying.
