Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 92702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Before long, his breathing slows down. So do my tears. Why bother crying? I’ve known who he is from the beginning. And I still want him. How pathetic is that? If he had taken it a little easier on me and been less brutal, I might even have come.
But I understand a fundamental truth now: degradation turns me on, but brutal hatred isn’t such a thrill. We’ll never get back what we had before. What we almost had, what we came so close to sharing.
He sighs and pushes himself up on his palms. “Stay that way. Keep your legs closed tight.” He finally separates his body from mine, and now I can breathe easier. From the corner of my eye, I watch him leave the room. How long is he going to leave me this way? Is it a test? I’m not about to find out the hard way, which I would if I defied him.
I’m exhausted, body and soul. Hurting in a way more profound than anything physical. I can’t understand why I’d want somebody like him, capable of hurting me in so many different ways. Why do I want him to care for me again? I never saw myself as a broken person, but I must be. Broken beyond repair.
My heart skips a beat when his footsteps ring out in the hallway. He appears a moment later, looking like the past fifteen minutes never happened. Like he didn’t leave me with my ass throbbing, and his cum trickling out of me.
He’s holding something I realize is a washcloth, crossing the room without saying a word. A sudden shock startles me once he touches the cloth to my ass cheek. “Relax,” he murmurs, running the cloth over my tingling flesh. “I thought this might help.”
Now I want to cry all over again. Not because he’s hurting me, but because I know he has kindness in him. I’ve seen it before, and here it is again. It might hurt less, come to think of it, if I didn’t know about this other side. If he was a flat-out monster without a soul or a conscience, I could write him off. Sort of like the way I wrote off his grandfather after that first conversation.
Enzo isn’t like him. No matter how he tries to be.
“For what it’s worth,” I venture as he tries to undo what he’s done, “I think there are other positions that help. When you’re trying to conceive, I mean.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Like if I’m on my back with my knees drawn up. I think I’m supposed to stay that way for a while afterward.”
“Hmm.” He’s so gentle it’s like he’s another person now, going back and forth with the cloth, stroking and soothing. Why can’t he be like this always? “We’ll have to try that next time. For now, relax. Let’s hope nature takes its course.”
All I can do is close my eyes and wonder whether or not that will be a good thing. Whether our child will see this side of him or the side forged by the world, he grew up in.
10
ENZO
As far as I can tell, things with Alicia are going according to plan. She’s waiting for the perfect opportunity to reconnect with Elena. According to Paolo, her new shadow, there hasn’t been much progress in that today. Well, Rome wasn’t built in a single day, either. I can bide my time, so long as I don’t have to bide it forever.
I’m sure she hates being escorted around school by Paolo, but that’s not my problem. There’s no way I would get a single thing done in the course of a day if all I did was wonder if I could trust her and if she was more intent on slipping a message to a professor asking for help than she was on finding Elena and putting the plan in motion. She even had the nerve to act surprised when Paolo was waiting for her in the car this morning, and her surprise made me laugh. It’s as if she forgets who she’s dealing with.
No matter. I have other affairs to put in order this afternoon. The house is full of tight, tense energy, my men—those I still trust—patrolling the grounds while I wait for my two o’clock appointment to arrive.
Out of all the operations I contacted, the Martinez family was the only one to request a face-to-face meeting. While I don’t much love the notion of inviting the head of a rival cartel to my home, concessions must be made at times like this. I can’t afford to stand on ceremony, not with so much hanging in the balance. I’m sure my wife would roll her eyes and think me a sexist prick—which I might very well be—but the fact that the Martinez family is headed by a woman leaves me better inclined to open the door and invite her in. I have no doubt she’ll be guarded, as will I, but I’m not as worried about her coming in with guns blazing.