I carried her upstairs to her room, but when I got ready to lower her onto her own bed, she stirred and swung her legs to the floor. She straightened up, and her bleary eyes opened in front of me.
Just for a second, she looked the way she did while Dominic was fucking her. She looked passionate and warm, and her lips pouted open just perfect for kissing. Did she know who she was looking at with that sexy, irresistible stare?
She let out a deep, sultry sigh and draped her arms around my neck. “Oh, Luca!” she breathed in my ear, and she tucked her face against my neck. She leaned against me and nuzzled into my skin.
I put my arms around her, and my face descended into the beautiful softness of her neck and shoulder. She sighed even more deliciously, and her fingers crawled up the back of my neck to my hair.
How easy it would be to kiss her, to lower her onto the bed and pull that satin dress off her majestic body. How easy it would be to crawl into bed with her and feel her moving against me all night.
She wouldn’t resist me, but she would wake up tomorrow morning regretting it. It was bad enough that she already thought I was a monster, but that would be taking it too far.
I leaned her over the mattress. She sank back on it with her eyes still closed.
I arranged her on the bed and pulled the bedspread over her. She settled on the pillow, and her hair cascaded over the white cotton. My God, she was so beautiful!
I caressed her hair once and started to pull away when she shot out a hand, circled it behind my neck, and drew me down toward her upturned mouth.
I saw myself moving in to kiss her. I almost caved to this heart-wrenching desire consuming me, but at the last moment before our lips met, I jerked to one side. I couldn’t do it like this, not when she didn’t know what she was doing.
I wanted to. God, I wanted to, but I wanted it to mean something. I wanted her to really want to kiss me.
I hugged her and inhaled another deep lungful of her scent. She swiveled her mouth to my ear and whispered, “Luca—I love you!”
My heart twisted, and I pulled myself away with a stab of regret, but I already knew this was the right thing to do. She didn’t really love me. She was thinking of the boy she used to love when she was little.
She would wake up tomorrow morning and remember that I wasn’t that boy anymore. She would remember that I was her jailer and that I was using her as a pawn in a deadly game of kill or be killed.
As soon as I withdrew from her embrace, she fell back against the pillow and fell asleep. She probably wouldn’t even remember hugging me or telling me she loved me.
I paused in the doorway to make sure she was still asleep. I couldn’t start thinking of her like this. She was a tool, a means to an end.
When this whole scheme came to its logical conclusion, she would be dead the way she should have been when her father first betrayed our family. That was the only outcome that made sense. No man could rule this family without using an iron fist against his enemies, and she was one of them.
Chapter13
Dante
“So… what was it like?”
Dominic took a bite of his cannoli and tossed the rest back in the box. “What was what like?”
“Come on, man!” I chided. “Don’t give me that shit. You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking abouther. What was it like?”
He indulged in the smallest of smiles and immediately wiped it off his face. “It was incredible. What do you think it was like?”
I nodded and scanned the warehouse through my binoculars. “I thought so.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he went on. “It won’t happen again. It was a mistake.”
“How can you say that? Shit, you don’t even believe that,” I told him. “I saw the way you were acting around the Padrino. You don’t regret it for a minute.”
He shrugged. “Maybe not, but it isn’t like I can start dating her. She’s off limits.”
I didn’t answer. He was right. We could all dream about Ariana as much as we wanted. In the end, she was never anything more than Matteo La Rosa’s daughter, and as such, her life meant shit.
Honor meant everything in this family—honor and revenge. Dominic, Luca, and I swore revenge when Matteo La Rosa escaped. That vow meant a hell of a lot more than any woman ever could, even a woman as exceptional as Ariana.
Still, I couldn’t get her smell out of my head. That smell drifted into my nose from her hair when she put her arms around me. Her body imprinted on me through my suit. My hand still burned where I touched her bare shoulders and bit into her neck.