Siena had never suffered from nightmares, but that meeting had triggered them in her. Those silver eyes had haunted her dreams. The chiselled, handsome face with the black designer stubble. The black hair that flopped over his forehead. The contained menace he exuded.
Still waters ran deep, and she felt in her bones that Elio’s depths ran deeper and were far more dangerous than anything her family had encountered before.
She couldn’t let Francesca, her sweet, quirky, dreamy cousin, marry this man. He would destroy her in one night.
Siena had the sensation in her veins that her whole world was on the cusp of being destroyed.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, the Espositos’ empire was falling. She could feel it. Her father’s iron grip had been total. If he’d known he was likely to suffer a fatal cardiac arrest at any time, he would no doubt have loosened his grip enough to put his succession plans into place, but he hadn’t. They’d been caught out, and the vultures had been circling ever since. It was like playing whack-a-mole. Hit one and contain them, and up popped another. This mole was the most dangerous of them all.
Siena’s father had murdered his closest friend and pointed the finger for it at Elio’s father, using it as the excuse he needed to slay the Ranieris in retribution, destroy the competition and take Naples for himself. Everything the Espositos had built, all the riches they’d accumulated, had come from that one act.
Siena and her brothers had only learned of the murder recently, but instinct told her Elio had always known it. He’d spent over two decades dreaming of vengeance, biding his time, building his army, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
What would he have done if her father hadn’t died? Had he been waiting for something, a trigger to make his move? Or hadhe just been planning to ambush them and take them out in one fell swoop?
All these thoughts were flooding her mind as she followed him through an open door on the second floor, and then she found her thoughts coming to a juddering halt when he casually said, “This, my beautiful wife, is our bedroom.”
Elio observed his bride’s reaction to his words and suppressed a smile. “You don’t like our bedroom?” he mocked.
The soft blue eyes that had shown unexpected fear when his dogs appeared now rang with the loathing she’d never bothered to disguise. “I’m not sharing a bedroom with you.”
Her voice suited her. At first look, Siena was so small and doll-like that you expected her to have a high-pitched, almost childish voice. Instead, it was soft and husky but pitched to be listened to. He imagined the pitch had come through all the years she’d spent forcing her family to take her seriously.
Now it was time for her to learn to take him seriously.
“You are my wife,” he told her evenly. “As such, we share a bedroom and a bed.”
“My parents haven’t shared a bed since I was born.”
“Hadn’t,” he corrected, and suppressed another smile at her flinch at his reminder that her father was dead. “We are not your parents. You agreed to marry me, Siena. If you don’t want our marriage to be a real one, then say it now, and I will have you driven home and our marriage annulled.”
Her gorgeous, voluptuous lips pulled into a tight line. “Let me make this very clear – being your wife does not make me your possession.”
He stepped over to her and gently gathered a thick lock of her hair. “I think you’ll find it does,” he murmured. “This is what you agreed to. Til death do us part.” Lowering his face, he did whathe’d spent years fantasising about doing and dipped his nose into Siena’s hair and inhaled.
She didn’t move. Didn’t react. Held herself with such stillness she could have taken lessons from a mannequin.
He breathed in again. Deeper.
Of all the Espositos, it was Siena that Elio had always felt an invisible yet intrinsic link to. While Siena had been safely tucked in her mother’s womb, her father had been busy slaughtering Elio’s family. The day her mother had given birth to her, Elio’s mother had been killed. His father had been killed days later.
While Elio, his two younger siblings and one solitary cousin had all been left orphaned, destitute and in the care of their grandmother, Siena was being born into a world of love and wealth. For years, he’d known his vengeance, whatever form it took, would feature Siena forward and centre, and now that day had come. She was his wife. The most beautiful woman in Italy belonged to him.
Her blonde hair smelled of marshmallows.
Dipping his face lower, he lightly traced his tongue down her neck and pinched the lapels of the hideous suit jacket she was wearing and tugged it down her arms.
She made no effort to help. Made no reaction at all, not when he covered her breast with the palm of his hand and gently felt the weight and softness hidden beneath the silk shirt she wore, nor when he idly rubbed his thumb over the peak and felt it harden at his touch. The mannequin made no reaction until Elio slid his fingers through her silky hair and brought his mouth to hers, and she turned her cheek before he could make contact with her lips.
Framing her face with his hands, he gently pulled her stare back to his. She’d closed her eyes.
“Look at me,” he ordered quietly.
Mutinous soft blue eyes locked on his. The plump lips he’d fantasised about too many to count had compressed into another tight line.
He brought his mouth to hers again, holding her cheeks so firmly she couldn’t turn away. It wasn’t just her hair that smelled of marshmallow. Her skin did too. It was softer than even his imaginings had conjured.
Siena closed her eyes again and held her breath. Grinding her toes into her heeled shoes, she worked to block her senses and return herself to the place in her head she’d found when she was fourteen and pinned to a wall. It was a moment in her life she rarely allowed herself to return to, a moment she’d relegated in her mind to experience, one she would never allow to happen again. But though she’d long ago shoved it far from the forefront of her mind, the fear and disgust she’d experienced were never far from rising back inside her, capable of being triggered by something as innocuous as a whiff of onion on someone’s breath.
