Page 106 of Bitter Poetry

I catch up with her at a big oak tree, snagging her around the waist. She’s in full fight mode, wriggles out of my slippery grip, and pummels me… not with the slaps I usually get, but her fists and everything she’s got.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Fuck me, Christian, right now. Take this away. I can’t stand it. I can’t take anymore!”

I manage to catch her wrists and pin her against the tree with my body. She bucks and strains. I let her have at it until she wears herself out. We’re both fucking soaking, shaking, and breathing heavily by the time she finally calms.

“Fuck me, Christian,” she whispers, her big deep blue eyes staring up at me with hurt. “Please.”

“No.”

“Why not? Because Dante is back? Because he says not to? Do you always do what he says?”

She kicks off her thrashing again, but I’ve got a good grip this time, and she growls in frustration.

Only her pain is palpable. It manifests like a hammer pounding at the back of my skull. “I’m not going to fuck you in a cemetery in sight of your mother’s grave,” I say softly. “And you don’t really want me to.”

Eventually, her sobbing peters out. By this time, we’re both fucking soaked, and she is shivering against me.

She lifts her head and pins me with a tear-ravaged look. “Does Dante know about us?”

I swallow. “No…” Yeah, I can’t lie to her. “He might have suspicions.”

“Is that why he’s doing this? Marrying Helena? To get back at me for not waiting? To punish me?”

“Huh?” I frown. “No. No way. He fucking hates Helena. He wouldn’t get his dick anywhere near her skanky ass.”

“Then why is he marrying her?”

I asked him the same question. I didn’t buy into his answer at the time, but now I think I do. “Because it gives him a pathway back into the family and a reason to visit the city. Because it gives him a reason to see you.”

“And where does that leave us, Christian? What am I to you? Just a fuck-buddy with a slice of danger on the side because I’m the don’s wife?”

“I don’t know what we are,” I say honestly. “I only know I don’t want it to stop.”

She starts shivering in earnest.

“Please don’t take me back to him, Christian.”

I draw a sharp breath. I want so badly to do what she wants, but I’d be dead before nightfall, and she’d be wishing she was, so I do the right thing, the only thing, and take her back to her home.

Ettore is waiting when we step through the front door… I guess someone tipped him off. Both Carmela and I are soaked, and our shoes are covered in mud. Ettore’s face says I won’t make it past the next hour.

She throws herself at him, sobbing.

My eyes feel wide and wild as I take this in.

“I’m sorry,” she says between sobs. “I went to my mother’s grave. I don’t know why it upset me today. It started to rain. Christian asked me to get into the car. I refused. I wouldn’t even let him put the umbrella over me. I was acting spiteful andcruel because I knew he couldn’t touch me…. After… After what happened last time.”

Ettore’s eyes sear me where I stand. Two of his men move to flank me. I don’t fucking blink. His arms surround her, comforting her—I want to snap them off.

He nods to his men. “Leave us.” Then he looks me in the eyes. “Get yourself cleaned up. I don’t want to see you in this house again until you take her to her father’s.”

I leave. But the look of satisfaction that blazed in his face lingers.

I know why she did what she just did. She was saving my ass. Only I’d rather take a fucking beating than see her in his arms. For the first time since Dante left, I get an insight into what it must have cost him when he walked away. If I were sensible, I’d go to Ettore’s strip club and get one of the dancers I haven’t been near in forever to give me head. Maybe that would take my mind off the woman I can’t have.

I do go to the club, but I brush off the dancers and sit at the bar with a drink. I’m underage, but everyone here knows me, and Joey, who is on bar duty, doesn’t hesitate to slide the bottle across.