Page 15

14

MONTE

T his fucking room. Walking in here again is like Groundhog Day. At this point I’m not convinced we’ll ever escape it.

At least the cramped hotel room is a step up from the last place we just were, which is our wedding. Sabrina, still swimming in my tux jacket, watches as I latch the door and pull the window curtains completely closed.

“Are they really just going to stand out there all night?” she says.

I take a look through the peephole and sure enough, Vittorio’s boys remain posted just outside the room. “Looks like it.”

What I don’t tell her is that I’m sure this is not just for our protection. They’ve probably been ordered to make sure we remain in the room like blissful newlyweds would. Let’s hope they don’t ask to see the wedding sheets or some similar medieval shit.

Sabrina nods and chews a corner of her lip. She stands all the way over by the bathroom door with her posture tense and her face worried. Her eyes shift to me for a second, then she swallows hard and looks away.

It dawns on me that she might be wondering if I plan to make demands tonight. As if I’m going to jump on her with Vittorio’s minions listening right outside. On the day she was ordered to marry me, no less.

Sabrina stays where she is while I double check the door and window and then kick off my shoes. I switch on the television because the vibe in here is awkward as hell. The most harmless thing I can find is the home shopping channel so I leave that on and turn the volume to a low hum.

The sight of the gold wedding band on my left hand is a sobering reminder of this new reality. An even bigger reminder is the nervous girl who huddles on the other side of the room, awaiting my next move.

Dropping down to sit on the nearest bed, I face the bride and take a blunt look at her. The first glimpse of her walking down the aisle took my breath away. Sabrina is always an extremely pretty girl no matter what she’s doing or wearing. But I wasn’t prepared for the sexy effect of her bridal makeover.

And the dress she’s wearing. Holy shit. The damn thing clings to every gorgeous curve of her body. I couldn’t pay attention to the ceremony because I was too preoccupied with thoughts of ripping that dress off while trying to tame my raging boner.

It was the look on her face that jerked me back to the present.

Sabrina was visibly uncomfortable as she fidgeted and fussed, trying to cover her breasts with her bridal bouquet. She hated being on display in a sexy dress in front of a room full of men. I wanted to roar at them all to get the fuck out before I carved their damn eyeballs out of their heads.

Instead, I covered her with my jacket. As I pulled the thing around her shoulders, her expression shifted from anxiety to appreciation and her grateful eyes nearly ended me.

Women have endless reasons to fear men. And thanks to her upbringing, Sabrina has seen some of the worst things men inflict on the world. But she never ever needs to be afraid of me. I thought she understood that. Maybe not.

“Brina?” I say as gently as possible.

She stays rooted in place, watching me with somber wariness.

I run a hand through my hair and try to pick through the right words. The fact that we’re in the same room where I made a drunken jackass out of myself the other night and reduced her to tears isn’t helping.

“I’ve ruined your life,” she blurts. “Haven’t I?”

“What?” I blink at her in shock. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

She sniffs and pulls my jacket more tightly around her body. “First, I started a mafia war in New York that sent you running for your life and now I’ve corralled you into matrimony to save your family from my uncle.” She looks at the floor and sniffs again. “I’m a human wrecking ball.”

“You’re not a wrecking ball.”

“A stick of dynamite then.”

Despite the serious topic, I snort out a laugh. The humor fades in a hurry.

It’s not lost on me that Sabrina seems to believe this wedding happened so she could save me and my family from Vittorio’s vengeance. Telling her the truth, that her uncle was planning to bargain her away to the next convenient bidder, will make her feel far worse about the situation.

My brother was wrong about something. Nico once joked that I want to be the only one Sabrina is indebted to.

Not true. I don’t want her to feel obligated to any man, not even me.

I just want her.

This thought is nothing new and trying to bury it in the bowels of my brain hasn’t been effective. Sometimes I feel like I’ll go off the fucking deep end if I can’t have her.

Yet I have no plans to act on this tonight, not while she’s miserably sniffling in her sexy bridal gown with her uncle’s men listening right outside.

The sight of Sabrina in pain hurts like nothing else. With no vulgar intentions in mind at all, I rise from the bed, walk over and put my arms around her.

She melts against me with eagerness. She rests her cheek against my chest and allows me to hold her for a moment. I can’t help the fact that my dick thinks it’s party time and tries to bust through the zipper. All I can do is try to keep her from feeling it. I’ll probably need to go jerk off a few times to get my head right.

“You’re not a wrecking ball,” I say and prop my chin atop her soft hair. “We’ll figure this out, okay?”

She nods and sniffs again. “How’s your face?”

“I think getting clocked in the cheek with the butt of a gun is an improvement.”

Sabrina tips her head back to peer up at me. She wrinkles her nose. “It isn’t.”

“In that case, do you have any more ibuprofen? This shit hurts.”

She brightens and releases me. “It’s a point of pride that I never run out of ibuprofen.”

As she kneels beside her suitcase and starts digging through the contents, mounds of brightly colored articles of clothing get tossed aside. She pushes a bottle into my hands, then goes to the door and flings it open before I can object.

Vittorio’s men turn around, gaping into the room with surprise.

“We need some ice,” Sabrina declares. “Go and fetch it.”

They’re still staring when she slams the door in their faces again. Tending to my facial wounds has given her new purpose. Once the ice is delivered, she uses a bathroom hand towel to make an ice pack.

“Lie down,” she says and tries to press the thing to my face.

“No thanks. I can sit.” I take the towel from her and hold it up to my cheek.

Her mouth twists with irritation that I’m failing to be a good patient. Then she sighs. “I need to change. You would not believe how uncomfortable this dress is.”

Every profane comment that blazes through my mind is stifled while Sabrina sheds the tux blazer, collects some pajamas, and disappears into the bathroom.

Thirty seconds later, she reappears. She’s still wearing her dress. And there’s a really weird look on her face.

She heaves a sigh. “My mother made me suck in my breath to get the zipper closed and even then it was quite the squeeze.”

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this information.

“Now I can’t get it open,” she says and throws up her hands.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

“Are you asking me to help you take your clothes off?”

She makes a face. “Look, I’d call my mother for help but then she’ll have questions like, ‘Why can’t your husband undress you?’ and then I’ll have some explaining to do.”

“Keep your voice down,” I grumble and plod in her direction to perform my duty.

Sabrina turns around and faces a large rectangular wall mirror above the dresser. Her blushing reflection watches me. Thank god that I capped my alcohol intake at one glass of wine. Otherwise I’d probably be falling on my knees and begging to worship her all night.

She clears her throat and sweeps her long, glorious hair aside. “You can rip it if you have to. It’s not like I’ll be wearing it again.”

Fuck. Is this hell? The way my cock threatens to erupt in my pants while my untouchable dream girl asks me to tear her clothes off indicates it might be. All my gallant Boy Scout efforts are one flick of the zipper away from going up in smoke.

I’m surprised my hands don’t shake when I pull the laces free and pinch the underlying zipper between my fingers. She wasn’t lying about the thing being stuck. Nothing happens when I try to tug lightly. And nothing still happens when I try to pull harder.

My knuckles brush her spine. Her eyes squeeze shut and her breath releases in a shaky exhale. She’s so aroused she can hardly stand. That makes two of us.

This zipper is going nowhere without a serious struggle. Might as well take her suggestion. This fabric won’t be easy to rip and I don’t want to risk bruising her.

My duffel bag is only a few feet away. Sabrina’s brow creases with confusion as she watches me dig through the bag. When I extract a switchblade, she flinches and her eyes go wide. I’m enjoying her shock as I unfold the blade.

“Don’t move,” I tell her and wait for her silent nod of agreement.

Then I swiftly but carefully slice open the back of her dress.

The fabric splits and I drop the knife. Our eyes meet in the mirror. Hers are heavy with desire and she sucks in her lower lip. The skin of her exquisite back is inches way. My hands land on her shoulders. She’s motionless, waiting.

Because she trusts me.

She can always trust me.

After all, she’s my wife….

OH FUUUUUUCK.

What a bad time to invoke that word.

Wife. Wife. Wife. Wife.

Each echo is a pulse that charges my cock with raw animal instinct. Common sense be damned. The need to fuck my wife must be part of the evolutionary code. Bet there’s some science going on. Can’t be helped.

My hands move from her shoulders and slide down her arms, displacing the lacy sleeves that are barely holding the ruined dress up.

Then the dress begins to fall and Sabrina stiffens. Her expression changes, becoming pained and shy. She lowers her eyes and clutches her wreck of a dress, trying to cover her body. I take my hands off her immediately.

“I can’t,” she gasps, refusing to look at me.

She means it. She’s not kidding or being difficult. There’s a reason for this sudden severe anxiety. Someone did this to her, fucked her up big time and made her feel deeply uncomfortable with her own sexuality. She basically admitted as much the other night.

“Brina.” I lower my head and plant a tender kiss on her bare shoulder. I’ll never push her to do anything. I just need to tell her how amazing she is in the hopes she’ll believe me. Instead of believing him .

“I’m sorry, Monte,” she barely chokes out before running into the bathroom and slamming the door shut.

She stays in there for a long time, more than long enough for me to discard the remains of this tux and change into a pair of sweats. Tonight’s also a good night to wear a shirt to bed, if only to make her feel a little more at ease.

Vittorio’s men break into obnoxious laughter on the other side of the door. The sound grates on my nerves and I bang on the wall as a message that they better shut the hell up.

Sabrina finally emerges and her makeup has been scrubbed off. Her long hair is pulled into a ponytail and she’s adorably outfitted in a hoodie covered with cartoon dragons and a pair of plaid pajama shorts.

There’s no sign of tears but an aura of sadness clings to her and I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with our phony wedding.

She scuttles to her bed after glancing quickly in my direction. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“I doubt it.”

With a sigh, she plops down on the bed and sits cross-legged, facing me. “Monte, I’m very aware that I flirt with you and I always have. I’ve sent you a ton of mixed messages. No wonder why you called me out for it the other night.”

“Knock it off,” I growl. “I already apologized for my drunken tantrum. And I’m not in the habit of apologizing for things that aren’t my fault.”

She looks down and picks at the elastic on her slouchy socks. “You were right,” she says, barely audible.

“About what?”

“I tease you and I push your buttons because I’m very attracted to you but I know that you won’t make me pay a price. I take advantage of the fact that I’m safe with you, which is really screwed up and unfair.” She sniffs and her voice becomes little more than a whisper. “I want to do more. I really do. I think about it a lot and I know it would be different with you. But I’m just…stuck. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“Sabrina.” I swallow the hard lump in my throat. “Can we keep talking for real?”

She nods and lifts her eyes. “Yes, I think we can.”

Maybe I have no right to extract some deeply personal information from her but I’m not in the mood to be rational. And I can’t help her if I don’t know the whole story.

Now I feel my jaw hardening as I grit out the words. “Tell me about him.”

“Who? Vittorio?”

“No, Sabrina. Tell me about him .”

She goes pale. “Why? What are you going to do?”

“That depends on what he did.”

She rubs her hands on her legs and grimaces at a memory. “He didn’t physically hurt me. I told you that already.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear. He didn’t rape me or drug me or hit me. Happy now?”

“No, I’m not fucking happy now.”

She exhales loudly. “It’s really not fun to look you in the face and blurt out my most humiliating secrets.”

Easy fix. I jump off the bed, walk over to the wall and switch the main light off. Then I turn the television off. Now there’s only us and the darkness.

“There,” I say, returning to my seat on the bed. “Now you don’t need to look me in the face.”

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath. “Just warning you, this is a long story.”

“Good thing I’ve got no other plans tonight.”

She sniffs out a laugh and after a few deep breaths, she begins.

“For starters, while I was growing up I didn’t have much freedom. I didn’t even kiss a guy until my first year of college and kissing was as far as it went. I didn’t date often because my father’s rules were so strict. Daisy and Anni found ways around the rules but I hesitated to disobey. I lived at home during college and hardly went out. My social life was really centered around the gaming world and that’s the only place where I felt like I fit in.

“Three years ago, I happened to attend a gaming convention at the Javits Center. That’s where I met Jeffrey. He was already a big name in the gaming world and I felt a little starstruck to be meeting him in person. He was ten years older, good looking and brilliant and I’d never had a real boyfriend before so I was really flattered and fell hard. About a month after we met we had sex for the first time. I mean, he’d been with other people but I hadn’t. The first time didn’t really go well. I guess I was too nervous. I didn’t enjoy it at all. The second time wasn’t any better, or the time after that. Jeffrey had a lot of complaints. He said sex wasn’t really an issue with any of his other girlfriends so he didn’t know what my problem was. He urged me to watch porn so I would get some ideas but then he’d ridicule me when I tried them. He said that I had to be the most frigid girl on the planet and suggested that I needed to see a doctor for some medication because I clearly wasn’t normal. Whenever I broke up with him he’d come crawling back, pleading for another chance. As you can guess, it never took long for him to revert back to the same patterns. He'd tell me about all the women he’d slept with while we were apart and suggest that if I just tried a little harder, then I could stop disappointing him.”

She pauses to take a deep breath and when she continues, she can hardly talk through her tears.

“I’m very embarrassed to admit how long it took for me to realize that what got Jeffrey off was tearing me down, humiliating me. Sometimes he’d stand me in front of the mirror just to catalogue my many flaws. He would only stop when I began to cry. I’m sure I wasn’t the first girl he ever treated like that but I was probably the most clueless. It wasn’t just about sex either. He said my game designs were a joke and I’d never succeed in this industry. He also said he should be the one to take care of me since I was obviously a loser in life and would never get anywhere on my own.”

She stops talking and the only noise in the room is the rhythmic ticking of the wall clock.

I have no idea what Jeffry looks like but I can very clearly picture murdering him with my bare hands.

It’s diabolical what he did, fucking with her head in such a calculated manner. He took her trust and her innocence and then deliberately shredded her self-esteem. Instead of being patient and making her feel good, he tried to ruin sex for her in a very sick and cruel way while scheming to keep her dependent on him. Worst of all, the seeds of doubt that motherfucker planted are still haunting her.

I’ve seen this pain in her face and didn’t fully understand what it was. Now I do. I saw it earlier in the mirror when she shrank away from me and covered herself when we were on the verge of erasing the last boundary between us.

“Say something,” she pleads. “I can’t stand the silence.”

My throat feels raw and I clear it before asking, “How long did this go on for?”

“After eight months of back and forth, I finally broke things off for good. He kept calling me and trying to wear me down and take him back. I was far too embarrassed to tell anyone the truth. Then one night Anni found me crying and I spilled my guts. Let me tell you, hell hath no fury like my big sister. The next day she marched into a seminar where Jeffrey was speaking and announced that if he ever came near me again she’d make him eat his own dick after she shredded his testicles with a cheese grater.”

Anni has just earned a fan for life. I’d like to do far worse to Jeffrey .

“Where is he now?” I ask. My right hand curls into an involuntary fist.

“Prison,” she says, sounding more cheerful.

That was not the answer I expected. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, he got busted for embezzling money from one of his companies. He’ll be there for a while. Some tragedies do have happy endings.” She laughs but it’s definitely forced. I know the sound of her real laugh and this isn’t it.

My heart aches for her. “Sabrina, what that man did to you was fucking evil.”

“I know that. I was stupid.”

“You’re far from stupid. He’s just a vile, psychotic prick. You haven’t really dated anyone since him, have you?”

“No, but technically I’m married now so I guess I have an excuse.” Another forced laugh.

“Brina, honey, listen to me-”

“What time are we leaving in the morning?” She cuts me off, changing the subject on purpose. There’s a rustling noise as she climbs into bed.

“Early,” I say. “We’ve got about nine hours of driving before we reach Sleepy Rock. We should be there before dinner.”

“I’m so excited to see Anni and Jane,” she says amid the sound of burrowing underneath the covers.

She’s given a clear signal that she has no wish to discuss the Jeffrey matter anymore. But I can’t let the night end without telling her something crucial.

“You don’t need to say anything,” I tell her. “But you should know that I meant it when I said you’re beautiful. You are beautiful, Brina, inside and out. It’s no longer a secret that I want you. I want you so much and I have trouble thinking about anything else when we’re together. I’ll tell you right now, the list of girls with the power to leave me rattled and flustered is short. Very short. You’re the only one on it. And just so we’re clear on something, you could never disappoint me, Sabrina. Never.”

She sniffles again in her nest of blankets. I would gladly crawl in there and hold her all night if she asked me to.

Instead, I stretch out on the other mattress and watch the ceiling for a while. I’m far from tired but I don’t want to keep her awake with the light from my phone.

This whole day has felt fucking surreal. At one point I touch the ring on my finger to prove to myself that this whole insane roller coaster really happened.

Just as my eyelids are starting to grow heavy, a sweet voice says, “Good night, Monte.”

“Good night, baby,” I whisper back and shut my eyes.