I meant it when I told her he’d wasted an opportunity to make her his heir. She would have been the perfect head of any family, with her courage and spirit and steely determination. Her empathy too.
She was made to be a queen. She could beyourqueen.
The thought springs into my head fully formed and once it’s there, it’s impossible to get rid of. It’s so easy to imagine her at my side, helping me to restore the Argenti family honour and to build a new empire that must come out of all this death. It feels like fate, I can’t deny it, and I’m not a man who believes in fate.
The same determination I feel pursuing my cause, I see in her eyes when she’s challenging me, and I can’t help thinking about what we could achieve together. I’ve yet to meet a woman as stubborn and determined as she is.
She wants freedom, though.
Yes, but there’s freedom to be had with me, as my wife. Not the freedom she’s possibly imagining, but it’s still freedom. And not only that, but power for the taking.
She could be your wife in every way…
That too. In fact, I can see her right now in my bed, all that raging fury turned to passion and all unleashed on me. I would take it and give her back the same, and now all I can see is her on her back, in my bed, her black hair spread out over the pillows, all that delicious golden skin laid bare, and her green eyes glittering with fire as she looks up at me. She’s a woman made for physical pleasure, for screaming my name when she comes.
Fuck. I should not be thinking of her like that, because if it’s sex I need, I can get that whenever I want. Yes, I made a promise to Caterina tonight, but I could bring Annika here tomorrow. Perhaps a night with her would be just what I need…
Except I don’t need the wolf in me to tell me that Annika is not what I want. Any other woman is not what I want, at least not now. Not tonight.
Tonight, I want her.
I grit my teeth, staring at the darkening horizon. She was always going to be my wife in every way at some point, so why not start the seduction now? We have chemistry and I know she wants me. Yes, I didn’t have the patience for a seduction earlier, but I can be patient when I want to be. After all, it took me five long years of convincing my father I was his minion completely, before I ended him with a single bullet.
It wouldn’t take that long to seduce my littlegattina.She’s too passionate to hold out forever and if she needs more convincing, I can sweeten the deal. If she surrenders to me, I’ll give her all the freedom and power she desires.
I think on this as the evening lengthens and I have my wedding dinner alone on the terrace. I tell Maria to take a tray up to Caterina’s room, because I can’t have my new wife going hungry. After that’s done, I retire to my study to consider my next move. There will have to be a response to Salvatore’s silence and it needs to be swift. An example will need to be made, because if there’s one thing my demon of a father did get right, it’s that you can’t afford to be weak in this world. Not if you want to survive.
For a moment I debate the manner of Salvatore’s death. I keep seeing the pain in Caterina’s eyes and the faint gleam of tears when she realised her father wasn’t going to save her, and the idea of putting a bullet between his eyes is a pleasurable one. He didn’t deserve the daughter he ignored, but his loss will be my gain. He threw away a diamond and I will pick it up and make it the jewel in my crown.
Perhaps though, I won’t kill him immediately. Perhaps I’ll ask her if she has a preference. It seems right that she should choose since he took all her choices from her.
It takes me some time to put my plans in place, and it’s late by the time I finish up.
I resolve to mention the question of Giovanni Salvatore’s continued survival tomorrow, since my new bride will be sleeping right now, so I take a glass of brandy out onto the terrace to enjoy the night. It’s a rare moment of peace, standing out in the darkness, watching the stars and listening to the waves crash on the beach below.
It reminds me of those walks on the beach with my mother, looking for sea glass and shells, and sand-smoothed stones. She loved the beach. It was the place she’d go to be free of my father, or at least to have the illusion of freedom. We’d sit together on the sand and I’d pretend to be a pirate coming to rescue her in my pirate ship, and then we’d talk about all the places we’d sail to.
I loved those moments with her. But after her third miscarriage, my father moved on to another woman, and Elena took to her bedroom in the afternoons instead of walking by the sea with me. Another thing he took from me.
The darkness is scented with sea and rosemary, and I finish my brandy. I’m about to go inside when a movement catches my eye. It’s coming from the pool area, a few steps down onto another terrace from here, so I move over to the stone parapet to see what’s going on.
The pool area is floodlit and a woman in a sequinned green dress is standing down one end of the pool. She has her back to me, her long black hair falling almost to her waist.
It appears that my littlegattinais not sleeping after all.
As I watch, she reaches around to tug down the zip of her dress, before wriggling out of it. Underneath she’s wearing a pair of purple silk knickers and a black sports bra, and the mismatch makes me smile. Our wedding night and she’s wearing a sports bra. That seems very…her.
She discards the dress on one of the sun loungers, then, moving to the pool’s edge, she dives straight in, clean and precise as a knife.
I should tell her I’m here, not stand in the darkness watching like a voyeur, but I say nothing nor do I move away. I want to watch what she’ll do when she thinks she’s alone, because whatever it is, I think I’ll like it.
She surfaces, her hair flowing out behind her like kelp, her body pale beneath the water. There’s an elegance to her, precise lines with the most luscious curves, and in my head I’m already stripping away the bra and the knickers, so she’s swimming for me naked.
Beautiful. Sheer fucking perfection.
I lean against the parapet, watching her as she begins to swim lazily to the other end of the pool before rolling onto her back and floating like a starfish. She closes her eyes, her hair moving lazily around her head. The purple silk knickers are lacy, giving me tantalising glimpses of the dark curls between her thighs, and all the blood in my veins rushes below my belt and straight to my cock.
I’ve seen plenty of women swimming and some more naked than she is, and never once have I had an inappropriate hard-on for any of them. But she’s different. She’s my wife, my littlegattina,my queen. And right now I want her more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my entire life.
