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“And now?” he returned, reaching out to grip my wrist, not to stop me but to keep my touch against his jaw.

In response, I curled my free hand into the front of his shirt and pulled him down so I could taste the blood with my tongue.

It was bright, metallic, and it burned like fire as our mouths sealed shut and I started to drown in this man who was my husband, my protector, and a little less a stranger than I thought.

Dario seemed infected by the same heat, because without hesitation, he carted me into his arms and carried me to one of the bathrooms down the hall. It had an enormous walk-in shower with multiple spouts that I vaguely realized might have been installed for moments exactly like this when Dario was covered in the gore of his tortured informants. The idea should have revolted me, but instead I shuddered with lust as he pressed me to the cold tile wall and turned on the water to near scalding.

He didn’t even bother to take off our clothes, only tearing open the placket of his trousers so I could pull out his throbbing shaft, and ripping off the panties beneath my silk nightgown so he could sink that thick cock straight to the hilt in my greedy pussy. He fucked me then with a ferocity that bordered on viciousness, his teeth ravaging my neck so he left behind a necklace of bruises, his hand so tight in my hair I was forced to nearly drown in his kisses even as I struggled to breathe around the build of a climax clenching every muscle in my core.

We came together, a tandem climax that tangled our coarse shouts of pleasure into a symphony of sound that echoed off the shower walls and back down the hall to the room where a man sat bloodied and beaten for disrespecting me. I felt drugged by the interaction, so deeply satisfied in heart, body, and mind that it took me a long moment to realize what was happening when Dario slid out of my body, set me aside directly under the hot spray, did up his pants without hesitation, and then informed me he was leaving for Italy that morning and I wouldn’t see him again for a week.

Turning to leave with his usual perfunctory cruelness, he shocked me even further by whipping back around to stamp a hard, almost violent kiss to my lips. As if he couldn’t leave without pressing one last claim to my savaged body.

Hours later, loitering at the curb of my college, I touched my lips at the memory of that kiss, lost in the phantom heat while I waited for Franky to pick me up from my classes. In fact, I was preoccupied thinking about my abnormal psychology course, where we had spent the lecture focusing on bipolar and split personality disorder.

It resonated with me, especially in regard to my often-absent husband. Characterized by extreme shifts in mood, energy, and activity levels, the chronic mental health condition could have explained a lot about the dichotomous way Dario behaved sometimes. Like how he could ignore me for weeks on end and then surprise me by caring enough to rough up the professor who’d threatened me.

I startled from my reverie when the sleek black Range Rover I was expecting slid to a stop in the rain-filled streets in front of me.

When I peered into the front seat, Frank lifted a hand in greeting but didn’t get out as he usually did to open the back door for me. I figured he didn’t want to brave the deluge of rain, so I scurried out from under the stone awning of the building to get into the car myself.

“Buongiorno, Franky,” I greeted warmly as I hopped into the middle row of seats and closed the door. “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

I was proud of my English colloquialisms, and Frank, who was first-generation Italian American, liked to teach me all the strange ones.

When I turned my smile to peer at him in the rearview mirror, I noticed Frank’s pale face before I saw the man crouched in the passenger seat footwell, holding a gun to my bodyguard’s gut.

“Hello,” a distinctly Russian voice greeted me. “It does rain the cats and the dogs. It is good thing you are out of cold with me.”

I dove for the door to open it again when I felt the cool press of a gun to the back of my neck.

“No, no, little one,” another Russian voice spoke from the back seat. “I think not.”

“You must be mad,” I declared, tipping my chin high because I was my father’s daughter and Cavallaros did not quake in the face of danger. “Do you know who my husband is?”

The man behind me laughed, his face so close I could smell the sourness of his breath and feel its heat on my cheek.

“Oh dah, we do.”

Do you know who I am? I wanted to add but did not because it wouldn’t do any good to show my hand when they assumed I was just some meek little capo’s wife.

“He’ll come for me,” I said instead.

And I had never been so sure of anything, especially after that morning, watching Dario take the fingers of a man who had only brushed my backside and suggested I give him a blowjob to pass his class.

He would turn these Russians to red mist for kidnapping me.

“Too bad he is out of town, hmm?” he retorted.

And I hesitated, because he was right.

After Dario had fucked me in the shower, he’d informed me he was going to Europe for at least a week.

A week.

I swallowed thickly as my abductors laughed.

“Do not worry, girl,” he murmured before something hot and wet slicked up the side of my face. A tongue. “We will take good care of you.”