Page 41 of Isle of Beauty

I might have not actively participated in Eduardo’s sick games but I was complacent long enough. Eduardo had lulled me into a fake sense of safety to hide his most devious ways. I even hoped he could come to love me and I him.

Until I hated him.

“You’re not eating, zitella? Are you sick?” Mammona’s soft voice brings me back to the present and my gaze collides with Pierce’s. His brow is furrowed with something that makes no sense.

When I don’t answer, she stands up to make me chicken soup, saying it’s the ultimate recipe for a sick body. Can she heal my soul too?

Deflecting, I excuse myself out of the table and find my way to the bathroom at the back of the house. Assured footsteps follow me and I don’t have to turn around to know it’s him. His intoxicating citrus cologne precedes him. He still smells the same and I have to hold my breath to avoid sniffing him like a junkie.

“Go back to dinner, Lisandru, I’m not in the mood to entertain you.”

Disdain leaks from my voice, but it’s at myself. I can’t allow another man to have power over me.

My hand is on the golden doorknob of the bathroom but he moves faster than I’d anticipate from such a sweet man - or at least he used to be. He pushes us into the bathroom, closes the door and latches the lock, pinning me to the door with a hand around my throat, the other grabbing both my wrists and locking them in front of me. I’m immobilised in seconds.

I’m intimately aware of how close his body is to mine, how his mouth dips to my lips and his eyes turn dark and full of something I'm not quite sure how to interpret.

“What just happened to you at the table? Where did you go?” he doesn’t ask but demands.

Men and their fucking audacity, demanding answers when we don’t even know each other. Of all the things he could have said to me, my heart somersaults at the fact that he asked about my wellbeing, running wild with fairytale ideas. My brain has to fucking take back over because if I let my heart get involved, we’re all gonna get hurt.

“Fuck you, Lisandru. Go back to your pretty penthouse in London before it’s too late,” I snap, infusing as much venom as I can into my voice.

I’m aware of every place his fingers touch the skin around my neck, how he could press on my pulse point and squeeze until I get dizzy, or worse. I’m incapacitated and doing nothing to get out of his hold. I actually relish his domineering touch. Moisture pools between my thighs.

“It’s already too late, Lana. It was too late three years ago when we met. Now you won’t leave me in the dark ever again.”

He squeezes the sides of my neck as if to accentuate his point before his unyielding lips crash to mine. Any fabricated hate, any thought of pain and guilt vanishes with the sweep of his tongue, forcing me to open for him.

My knees go weak and I sag against the harsh wood of the door but he holds me up by the neck in a hold that should feel painful but is what I need. My head grows dizzy at the pressure. Anything that isn’t him disappears.

His cologne invades my bloodstream and I groan. If only I could pull him closer to me, if only I could burrow under his skin and reside there.

He controls our rhythm and pries my mouth open, holding me captive with his hands and tongue. He tangles it with mine like it’s a punishment, lashes after lashes.

My pulse flutters erratically against his thumb and I feel it all the way down to my clit.

I never want this to stop. But he does.

“Better fucking get used to it, mo cara.” The use of the nickname he gave me all those years ago does something to my stomach, butterflies erupting in a flurry of beating wings.

His hands leave my body but his lips come down to caress my cheek in a whisper of a caress. He looks like he’s stunned.

And then he’s gone.

It’s seven am the next day when I pull up in front of the training facility we own in the city. I just had my morning coffee, black with no milk, no sugar, just how I like it and I’m ready to kick ass and especially Pierce’s.

The asshole thinks he can just show up here and claim his “birthright” without any effort.

And that fucking kiss…

I hope Julian shows up and wipes the floor with his ass as well just for good measure.

I didn’t realise when I met Pierce that he was a prideful man but I saw him in Alessio’s office three days ago. He glared at us as if we were below him. I could see his eyes glint with what looked like triumph. Even when he kissed me, it was tinged with contempt.

Inside the gym, our martial teacher Marcel greets me. Julian and I have been training here three times a week since we were sixteen and I’ve been back at full speed ever since my return to Kalliste a couple of weeks ago.

Even Giulia’s here today and she’s definitely not an early bird.

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