LUCA
“No,” she said again. Louder this time.
My fingers paused on the fastening of my pants. She was fucking serious as hell, lifted slightly onto the balls of her feet like she was about to sprint out of this room.
Oh, please run, I begged her silently. Adrenaline rushed through my system, making my heart pound and my focus on Veda razor sharp. My cock swelled to bursting. “Take them OFF. Now.” I needed to be inside of her ten fucking minutes ago. It had taken everything in me not to flip the goddamn bed into the wall as she told me what Mario had done to her. He may not have straight up raped her, but that didn’t mean what she’d gone through didn’t haunt her, just as it would now haunt me.
But right now, the only thing I needed was to feel her sweet cunt squeezing my cock. It was almost bestial, this overwhelming urgency to claim her. Possess her. Mark her as mine. To remove every fucking trace of another man’s touch from her skin. I wanted her to wear my scent, to only know my touch, my voice, my body. I wanted to mark her like an animal.
Her grey eyes skittered around the room before landing on her shirt I’d dropped onto the floor. With one arm still concealing her perfect tits, she lunged for it. I didn’t even try to stop her as she pulled it back over her head. The bemused expression on her face when she realized I was going to give her this temporary piece of power was almost amusing.
Tomorrow, I would burn all of her nightclothes. If I didn’t have a house full of people, I’d burn her entire closet and force her to walk around naked. But if anyone here laid their eyes on her luscious curves other than me, I’d have to rip their eyes from their head. Lifelong friend or not.
I watched her, waiting to see what she would do next. She wasn’t leaving this room. Fuck no. But her antics were enough to distract me from the desire to cause pain and watch blood run across my bedroom floor. My anger wasn’t directed at her. Yet the urge was there. And if I didn’t want to hurt her, which I didn’t, I needed to blow off steam another way.
Veda was mine. And it was time she remembered that. Time she remembered who she was. The woman who shook my world wasn’t this timid little creature in front of me. She was someone who didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. Someone who may be afraid, but who fought back anyway. She was the perfect match for me, and I wanted her back.
“Where are you gonna go, Veda? Huh?”
“Luca, please. I just don’t want to do this right now.”
Dropping her eyes to the floor, she tried to hide from me.
Fine. She wanted to play it like this? Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out the small switchblade I kept there at all times. Just in case. The same one I’d threatened her with the first night she arrived.
She jumped when the blade shot out with a click, her eyes flying to the knife in my hand. “What are you doing?”
With one step, I closed the distance between us. Grabbing the neckline of her shirt, I sliced through the material until there was a good-sized cut. Then I grabbed it with both hands and tore it down the middle, ignoring her cry of alarm, exposing her luscious breasts and the half-healed “M” my brother had left there. A red haze dropped over my vision at the sight of it.
Attempting to hold the edges of her shirt together, she retreated until the backs of her legs were up against the mattress. “What the hell are you doing?”
I followed her, standing so close she either had to hold her ground or get on the bed.
She stayed where she was, looking up at me with wide, gray eyes. I saw a spark of anger. Just an ember. But it was enough. I just needed to blow on it a little to bring out the flames.
Laying the flat edge of the knife just beneath her collarbone with the tip of the blade touching a peak of the letter, I asked her, “Should I fix this for you, Veda? It won’t take much. With a few small adjustments, I can make it so my fratello’s mark is unrecognizable.” I pressed the tip of the blade into her skin just hard enough that a drop of blood appeared, then slid it down the center of her breastbone between the ragged edges of her shirt, smearing her blood across her smooth skin. “I can make it into a heart. It wouldn’t be very pretty. But it would remind you that you are MINE.”
“No,” she whispered. “Luca, please.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’ll hurt!” She tried to lean back, but I caught her with an arm around her back.
“Don’t you want my mark on you?”
“What?”
She looked up at me like I’d lost my ever-loving mind. And hell, maybe I had, because the sight of that drop of blood excited me. I wanted to see more. I wanted her to have something of me carved forever into her skin. Not my fucking brother. I dragged the tip of the knife over the inside curve of her breast, just hard enough to slightly indent her pliant skin. So young. So fresh.
“Luca! Stop!” Her hands gripped the edges of her shirt so hard her knuckles were white, unsure how to stop me without risking a slip of the knife.
“Why?” I asked her. “Does it make you feel weak? Like you have no control?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Tears filled her eyes. But behind them, I saw that spark again. “Why are you doing this?”
“Does it make you angry, Veda? What he did to you? What I’m doing to you?”
“Yes,” she gritted out between her teeth.