She was right. It was a matter of survival instinct that she’d try to gain my trust, even if it was a futile endeavor. She was at my mercy and needed to stay in my good graces. Aria was a clever woman, but she didn’t know my treacherous uncles and cousins like I did.
“The men waiting in that living room are predators. They prey on the weak and they’ve been waiting for more than a decade for a sign of weakness from me. The moment they see one, they’ll pounce.”
My Uncle Gottardo had never forgiven me for crushing his son’s throat. He was waiting for a chance to get rid of me.
Aria’s brows puckered. “But your father—”
“If my father thinks I’m too weak to control the Famiglia, he’ll gladly let them tear me apart.” My father didn’t care about me. I was his guarantee to uphold the bloodline. As long as he considered me his strongest, most brutal option, he’d keep me alive. If he thought I was getting weak, if he thought I wasn’t fit to become Capo, he’d put me down like a fucking dog.
“What about Matteo?”
Father still believed Matteo would taste blood the second he saw his chance to become Capo instead of me. He would never understand that Matteo and I weren’t enemies, that we weren’t only bound by necessity and pragmatism. My brother and I would die for each other. Father hated his brothers as much as they hated him. He kept them alive because honor dictated it and because it gave him a fucking thrill to give them orders as their Capo, to have them grovel at his feet and try to stay in his good graces.
“I trust Matteo, but he’s hot-headed. He’d get himself killed trying to defend me.”
Aria nodded as if she understood. Maybe she did. She was a woman, shielded from most of the violence of our world, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hear about it.
“Nobody will doubt me,” she said. “I’ll give them what they want to see.”
I didn’t know Aria well enough to gauge her lying skills. Slowly, I pushed into a sitting position, which allowed me a better view of my wife. She lay on her back, her hair fanning out around her head, and the outline of her breasts teased me through the flimsy material of her nightgown. Aria’s eyes trailed over my upper body curiously, and my groin tightened at her unpracticed appraisal. When her eyes finally met mine, her cheeks were flushed.
“You should be wearing more than this excuse for a nightgown when the harpies arrive. I don’t want them to see your body, especially your hips and upper thighs. It’s better they wonder if I left marks on you,” I said, my eyes lingering on those pink lips. “But we can’t hide your face from them.”
I moved lower, reaching for Aria’s cheek to kiss her when she closed her eyes and flinched as if she thought I’d hit her. Revulsion filled me at the mere idea of raising my hand against my wife.
“This is the second time you thought I was going to hit you,” I said in a low voice.
She looked at me in confusion. “I thought you said…”
“What? That everyone expects you to have bruises on your face after a night with me? I don’t hit women.”
Even Grace, who had a talent to drive me to the brink, had never been on the receiving end of my violence. I’d spent my childhood and youth listening to my mother’s broken crying, and, once she was dead, to Nina’s. That wasn’t what I wanted in a marriage. If I felt the need to break people, I had enough enemies to choose from. “How am I supposed to believe that you can convince everyone we’ve consummated our marriage when you keep flinching from my touch?”
“Believe me, the flinching will make everyone believe the lie even more because I definitely wouldn’t have stopped flinching away from your touch if you’d taken what’s yours. The more I flinch, the more they’ll take you for the monster you want them to think you are.”
I chuckled. “I think you might know more about playing the game of power than I expected.”
“My father is Consigliere,” she said. Aria wasn’t only beautiful, she was also clever.
I pressed my palm against her cheek. This time, she managed not to flinch, but she still became tense. Before annoyance could claim me, I reminded myself that she wasn’t used to a man’s touch. That I was her husband wouldn’t magically make her comfortable with the unfamiliar closeness. “What I meant earlier was that your face doesn’t look like you’ve been kissed.”
Aria’s eyes grew wide. “I’ve never…”
Never been kissed. All mine. Always only mine.
I crashed my lips down on hers, and Aria’s hand flew up to my chest as if she was going to push me away, but she didn’t. Her palms shook against my skin. I tried to soften my kiss, not wanting to scare her, but it was a fucking struggle to be gentle and slow when all I wanted was to lay my claim on the woman beside me.