“Why? So you could cheat in peace and quiet behind my back?”
He sighed, and began unbuttoning his shirt. “Let me take a shower. You were right. I shouldn’t disrespect you further by touching you like this.”
I shrugged. Right now I didn’t think I’d ever want him to touch me again, no matter how many showers he took. He disappeared in the bathroom. The shower ran for a long time. I sat against the headboard, sheets pulled up to my hip when Luca finally emerged. I averted my eyes when he dropped his towel and put on boxer shorts, then he slipped into bed beside me with his back against the headboard. He didn’t try to touch me. “Did you cry?” he asked in a puzzled voice.
“Did you think I wouldn’t care?”
“Many women in our world are glad when their husbands use whores or take on a mistress. As you said, there are few love marriages. If a woman can’t stand her husband’s touch, she won’t mind him having affairs to satisfy his needs.”
I scoffed. “His needs.”
“I’m not a good man, Aria. I never pretended otherwise. There are no good men in the mafia.”
My eyes rested on the tattoo over his heart. “I know.” I swallowed. “But you made me think that I could trust you and that you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“I never hurt you.”
Did he really not get it? “It hurt seeing you with her.”
His expression softened. “Aria, I didn’t get the feeling that you wanted to sleep with me. I thought you’d be glad if I didn’t touch you.”
“When did I say that?”
“When I told you I wanted you, you pulled back. You looked disgusted.”
“We were kissing and you said you wanted to fuck me more than any other women. Of course, I pulled back. I’m not some whore you can use when you feel like it. You are never home. How am I supposed to get to know you?” He looked frustrated. Mafia men seemed even more clueless than normal men. “What did you think? I’ve never done anything. You are the only man I kissed. You knew that when we married. You and my father even made sure it was the case, and despite that you expect me to go from never even having kissed a guy to spreading my legs for you. I wanted to take it slow. I wanted to get to know you so I could relax, I wanted to kiss you and do other things first before we slept together.”
Realization finally settled on his features, then he smirked. “Other things? What kind of other things?”
I glared. I wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “This is useless.”
“No, don’t.” He turned my face back to him, then dropped his hand. He’d learned his lesson. “I get it. For men the first time isn’t a big deal, or at least it wasn’t for the men I know.”
“When was your first time?”
“I was thirteen and my father thought it was time for me to become a real man since I’d already been initiated. ‘You can’t be a virgin and a killer’. That’s what he said.” Luca smiled coldly. “He paid two noble prostitutes to spend a weekend with me and teach me everything they knew.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Luca said quietly. “But I was a thirteen year old teenage boy who wanted to prove himself. I was the youngest member in the New York Familia. I didn’t want the older men to think of me as a boy. And I felt like a big deal when the weekend was over. I doubt the prostitutes were overly impressed with my performance but they pretended that I was the best lover they’d ever had. My father probably paid them extra for it. It took me a bit to figure out that not all women like it if you come all over their face when they give you a blowjob.”
I wrinkled my nose and Luca let out a laugh. “Yeah,” he murmured, then reached for a strand of my hair, and let it glide over his finger. I wasn’t sure why he always did that. “I was really worried tonight.”
“Worried that I’d let someone have what’s yours.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I knew, I know you are loyal. Things with the Bratva are escalating. If they got their hands on you…” He shook his head.
“They didn’t.”
“They won’t.”
I shifted away from his hand that had moved on from my hair to my throat. I didn’t want his touch. He sighed. “You’re going to make this really difficult, aren’t you?”
I stared.
“I’m sorry for what you saw today.”
“But not sorry for what you did.”
He looked exasperated. “I rarely say I’m sorry. When I say it, I mean it.”
“Maybe you should say it more often.”
He took a deep breath. “There’s no way out of this marriage for you, neither for me. Do you really want to be miserable?”
He was right. There was no way out. And even if there was, what for? My father would marry me off to the next man. Maybe a man like Bibiana’s husband. And no matter how much I wanted to deny it, I could imagine developing feelings for the Luca I saw in the restaurant. It wouldn’t have hurt so much seeing him with that woman, if I didn’t. When he’d touched my hair or kissed me or wrapped his arms around me during the night, I’d felt myself wanting to fall in love with him. I wished I could hate him with all my heart. If Gianna had been in my stead, she would rather have gone through life hating her husband and being miserable than ever giving him and our father the satisfaction of coming to care for him. “No,” I said. “But I can’t pretend I never saw you with her.”
“I don’t expect you to, but let’s just pretend our marriage begins today. A clean start.”
“It’s not that easy. What about her? Tonight wasn’t the first time you were with her. Do you love her?” My voice trembled as I said it.
Luca noticed of course. He looked at me as if I was a puzzle he couldn’t figure out. “Love? No. I don’t have feelings for Grace.”
“Then why do you keep seeing her? The truth.”
“Because she knows how to suck a cock and because she’s a good fuck. Truthful enough?”
I flushed. Luca brushed a finger over my cheek. “I love it when you blush whenever I say something dirty. I can’t wait to see your blush when I do something dirty to you.”
Why couldn’t he stop to touch me? “If you really want to make this marriage work, if you ever want the chance to do something dirty to me, then you’ll have to stop seeing other women. Maybe other wives don’t care, but I won’t have you touch me as long as there is anyone else.”