AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Say it.” He sucks in a breath, his fingers pressing hard against the small bones in my wrists. “Say it, Amalie.”
There’s something almost broken about the way he groans it that makes me give in. “I want you,” I whisper, my voice choked, the words spilling out on a cry as he gives me another inch of his cock. “I want your cock. Ineedyou to fill me up.Please, please—I want it—” The rest of it comes out almost without meaning to, every inch that he slips deeper prompting more begging, more whimpering pleas for him to give me all of it. He makes a sound in the back of his throat that’s nearly a growl as he slams the last inches of his cock into me, filling me completely. He holds me there, impaled on his throbbing length, as he stares down into my face with an unreadable expression.
When he slams into me again, it’s ruthless. I can feel the table shaking beneath me as he fucks me hard, hear the sound of a wineglass breaking as it tips over, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the wine running over the wood and dripping down to the floor, red as blood as David keeps me pinned there beneath him. He thrusts into me again and again, sending waves of pleasure rippling through me with every hard meeting of his hips against mine, and I realize that I’m going to come again. The sound of his name on my lips comes out half-strangled as he surges inside of me, buried to the hilt as he shudders above me, his jaw clenched as he comes. His gaze is fixed on mine, nearly black with lust, and I know my wrists will be bruised tomorrow—but I can’t bring myself to care. I feel him flood me with heat, his hips rocking against me as I clench and tremble with my own climax, and his head drops forward, his chest heaving as he stays very still inside of me.
“Now,” he murmurs, looking up at me after a long moment with my body still trapped beneath his, “now tell me you hate me, Amalie.”
I stare up at him, shocked. His face is taut, strained with emotions that I can’t begin to unravel or understand, that confuse me even more given all the pieces of information that I know but haven’t yet put together completely. I don’t know what to say, but I feel his hands convulse around my wrists, his cock still twitching inside of me as he softens, and I know I have to say something.
“I hate that I want you so much,” I whisper, and I realize as I say it that it’s one of the most honest things I’ve ever said to him. “I hate that you make me feel this way.” To my horror, I can feel tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, even as I can still feel myself fluttering around his half-hard cock. “What did I do to make you like this?”
David’s head jerks up, his entire body tensing, and then he pulls free of me. He turns away, tucking himself back into his suit trousers, utterly silent.
“David.” I push myself up, trying to reach for him, but he pulls away. “David—”
He refuses to look at me. I see his shoulders hunch, his muscles tightening, but he doesn’t speak again. I hear the sound of his zipper as he fixes his clothing, and then he strides out of the room, leaving me there—half-dressed on the dining room table, his cum pooling between my thighs as I watch him go in utter shock.
I don’t understand what just happened. And in this moment, as I stare after him, I wonder if I’ll ever truly understand anything about him at all.
28
AMALIE
David doesn’t come up to bed later. I have no idea where he sleeps in the cavernous house—in his office, maybe—and I don’t relish the idea of wandering through it to find out. I lie in bed awake for a long time, wondering if Ishould—if going and seeking him out might help repair something between us, but I don’t know if it would. For all I know, he’d be angry with me for disturbing him. His moods are impossible for me to read or predict, and as I lie there alone in bed, I wonder if he was always this way. If he was this way withher. I think of him asking me—almostbeggingme to tell him that I want him—and then I think of his bruising grip on my wrists at the end, telling me to say that I hate him.
There’s something else there. There’s areasonfor his behavior, but I’m terrified to find out what it is. I’m terrified to discover that it’s something even worse than what I’ve suspected so far. In the dark of the bedroom, it’s easy for my thoughts to unspool out into the darkest possibilities. I press my hand to my stomach, wondering if I’m bringing a child into the world that has a monster for a father. A murderer. Someone capable of killing those closest to him.
In the morning, David is nowhere to be found in the house, and I’m glad. I slept restlessly, my dreams awful when I did finally fall asleep, and I don’t want to hear anything about how tired I look or the bags under my eyes. I eat a leftover pastry and have a cup of decaf coffee for breakfast, trying to think of anything to occupy my time that might distract me from the thoughts still rattling around in my head, but there’s nothing. I keep thinking of the attic and what I found there, and wondering if there’s anything else in the house that I missed.
Going through the numerous rooms, at least, is something to kill time. The first floor of the house I’ve already mostly explored—there are the two dining and living rooms, one of each for formal occasions and one of each for more informal, the huge and mostly unrenovated kitchen that goes largely ignored without any cook on staff, a massive room for entertaining, a downstairs bathroom and powder room, and the mudroom at the back. There’s also David’s office, which is always locked now, andthatkey I know he also keeps on his person.
The second floor is entirely guest rooms and the adjoining baths, and I wander through each room, finding nothing interesting. A little more than half are unfurnished, empty rooms with faded wallpaper, feeling forgotten and hollow. The furnished ones are dusty and still unrenovated, all of them having a haunted, chilly quality that leaves me feeling unnerved. The house is so huge, and so largely forgotten about in so many places, that it leaves me with a feeling of loneliness as I walk through it. I think of David’s efforts to renovate, and I wonder if, deep down, the house makes him feel the same way, too—if renewing this place that he grew up in is a way of exorcising the ghosts of the people who died here.
Or, alternatively, a way to erase what he did.
I feel insane every time I think it—paranoid. Every mafia wife knows her husband is capable of murder, but to murderfamily, a wife, a child—it’s not unheard of, but it’s also something so dark and vicious that it would be covered up immediately, pushed as far under the proverbial rug as it could go. Those are the kinds of sins that haunt someone, that make him an object of whispers, of suspicion, of fear.
I think of the mysteries shrouding David, of the reticence to talk about his history that I’ve seen in everyone, and I wonder if Iamcrazy—or if I have a right to be afraid.
The third floor feels almost as pointless. I wander through the library, through a study, through more abandoned guest rooms—until I find a locked room at the end of the third floor hallway, the knob refusing to turn. I reach up and slide my hand over the top of the door, hoping I’ll be lucky enough to find another key left behind, but there’s nothing there.
I stand there fiddling with the knob, knowing I should leave it well enough alone. But Ican’t. There are so few locked doors in this house, and the last time I snooped beyond one of them, it set me on a path to discover things about my husband’s past that no one else would have told me. I know the wondering will drive me insane, if I don’t find a way in.
I have no idea how to pick a lock. I’ve heard of ways, and I spend the next hour searching for some sort of plastic card that might help, or something else I can slide between the lock and the doorjamb. Eventually, I find two old hotel keycards in one of David’s pockets in the laundry hamper, and I grab a few bobby pins off of my vanity, just in case. I don’t have much hope that it’ll work—but at this point, I’m bored enough and curious enough to spend time trying.
One keycard breaks, trying to slide it in and wiggle it along the doorjamb. I huff out a breath, frustrated, and turn to trying the bobby pins. It’s clear that I have no idea what I’m doing—I twist and turn them in the lock, but nothing happens. The door stays resolutely shut, and as time ticks on, I listen carefully for the sound of the front door opening downstairs. The last thing I need is for David to come home and find me doing this.
I try again with the second keycard, to no avail. It occurs to me how ridiculous this looks—that I should, truly, probably just give up—but I keep going. I slide the keycard up again, this time wiggling one of the bobby pins in the lock at the same time—and I feel something give.
Shit.I suck in a breath, trying to focus as I manipulate the lock. I press my arm against the knob, awkwardly trying to turn it while I have both of my hands occupied—and suddenly, it moves, the door swinging open into the room.
For a moment, I’m disappointed. It looks like just another guest room—furniture covered in a fine layer of dust, the bedding stiff with it, the wooden floor dull. Heavy curtains cover the window, blocking out the light, but when I breathe in, I almost think I can smell a hint of a woman’s perfume. I turn, looking around the room—and I see the source of it, sitting on a vanity table on the other side of the room.
The room, I realize, is still full of someone’s things. There’s a half-full bottle of Chanel perfume sitting on the vanity, a pair of diamond earrings next to it. As I walk closer, I see a nearly-used tube of expensive hand cream and a jaw of moisturizer, a dish containing two rings sitting near the mirror. My breath catches as I look down at them. It’s unmistakably a wedding set. One ring is a diamond solitaire, the large round stone dull with dust, and next to it is a diamond-encrusted wedding band. They’re both thin and delicate, as delicate as that ruby necklace that I found upstairs in the attic, and I can picture that woman in the photo wearing them. I can see the diamond glittering on her long, slender fingers, the elegance with which she’d wear such a simple set.
My heart is pounding as I walk to the closet, flinging it open. It’s still full of clothes, hung neatly, boxes stacked beneath them. I feel faintly ill as I sink to the floor, reaching for one of the boxes—and when I open it, I press one hand to my mouth.
It’s more children’s things—these for a baby. Onesies, smaller clothes than even what I found upstairs, teething rings, a bottle. The hard cardboard books that you would give to a very small child. Stuffed animals, a soft fleece blanket—I reach in, touching the blanket gingerly, and I feel tears fill my eyes. I have a name to put to the child now.Marcus. Bria’s son, and I suspect, David’s nephew.
