“Shh, be fucking quiet.” He pumps harder, and I gasp as I feel my eyes roll behind my lids, and the heat rises through my body. I feel his touch, his eyes on me, the slight quirk of a smile that’s reserved for me and me alone, that dimple, and the glint of his lip ring. I come hard.
Alfredo is taken aback and stutters his rhythm before grunting and coming inside me, clearly catching him off guard, too. My walls contract around him, and I groan at the sting of the zip against me.
I sag and sigh as I come down, feeling lightheaded. I don’t want to open my eyes; I don’t want to break back into reality. I know when I do, it won’t be Vittorio leaning over me—it will be Alfredo, and although we need to talk, I don’t want the moment to end, imaginary or not. I want him. I long for him. But I’ll never be able to have him, and maybe that’s all this is, because I know I can’t have him.
Alfredo rolls off and grunts as he flops back on the bed. I risk opening my eyes but stare at the ceiling. “We need to talk.”
“Huh?” he grunts. “And what would we need to talk about?”
“The wedding.”
He groans. “I was really happy then until you ruinedit with the incessant need to talk about this fucking wedding.”
I huff out a laugh. “Not our wedding, my wedding. You were right. It seems Father is selling me to the highest bidder. I just thought you should know that while you were gone, there have been… developments.”
He rolls over and grips my face. “What the fuck do you mean, developments?” He squeezes my face tighter until I wince.
“The Riccis,” I force out.
“The fucking Riccis?” he grits out. “What the fuck? Has he told you that himself? What did he say? What did they say?” He snarls in my face, gripping even tighter before pushing me back away from him.
I force a tear out. I’m getting good at this now. I can cry on cue when I need to, and I seem to do a lot of it around him. It seems to fuel him, to make him feel like a man, like he’s in charge. It gives him a smug satisfaction to have me whimper in his presence like he owns me and rules me. Whatever I need to get what I want, right? I internally roll my eyes while I give him the performance of my life.
“They didn’t say. They never tell me anything. I’ve just heard them talking about dates and arrangements. They’ve been here a lot, Alfredo. I’m scared.”
I tug my dress back down, and I shudder as his cum starts to leak out of me. But I don’t make eye contact. He tugs my face back towards his.
“Did they say dates?”
I shrug. “A few months is all I heard. What are we going to do?”
“You keep quiet. We will stick to our plan.”
“Plan?” He never confirmed a plan other than killing Father and getting married the day after, but nothing official, nothing set in stone. Better the devil you know, right?
“Next week at the meeting, I’ll kill him and take over. We marry the next day, in front of the families, and I rule and take all of Alessandro’s kingdom. I will destroy his name and become the leader I was promised to be. I will move in, and this house will be mine, the business will be mine, and you will be mine.”
I nod. There’s a lot of “I this” and “I that” followed by “mine, mine, mine,” so I know once we’re married, I’m going to have to get rid of him and assert my dominance. I can kill him in his sleep—that won’t be a problem. I just need him to take out my father; that way, he steps up, takes me as his wife, and I play the dutiful role—well, for a few days at least—and then I’ll take him out and rule myself, this is my birthright, and I’m happy to use him to remove my father from the equation while I play dumb and pretty. For now.
I whimper a little for effect, and he grunts, tucks his dick away and slides off the bed. “Keep your mouth shut, and if you hear anything else, let me know. Do you understand?”
I nod, and he unlocks the door. He doesn’t even spare a glance backwards and clicks the door closed behind him. I curl my lip at the feeling of him between my thighs, sliding around my skin. It’s bad enough when he normally cums over me, but this feeling, his cum inside me, seeping out of me, makes my stomach turn.
He never normally finishes inside me. He sees it as birth control. What he doesn’t know is that I would neverlet myself have his child. But he’s being careless now, which means he may become unpredictable as he sees what he thinks is his being taken away from him; I need to watch my back now even more than before.
I take a shower because I feel gross. I scrub every inch of my skin and the parts that he touched. I scrub again until my skin is angry and red, inflamed, bordering on sore, but at least it’s clean. At least I’m clean.
I head to the kitchen to see Marianne. She wraps me in her arms and whispers against my ear.
“Are you okay?” I smile at her and nod. She’s more of a mother to me than my own ever was.
“We have a week.” She nods against me, and I slide the bank card and ID into her pocket.
She sighs. “So it’s really happening?”
I nod. “If it goes wrong, you leave, take the money, and run. There’s enough for a new life, a good life. You deserve it. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me.”
She squeezes me harder and stutters a breath as she tries to fight back the tears, but we need to be strong. I will not fall apart, so I pull back from her. I wipe the tears from her eyes. I kiss her cheek, and I turn and walk away.Game faces on.
