Page 53 of To Hell

“What a mess,” I hear a masculine voice say from behind him.

I am a mess.

How did I ever think I could act the part and blend in? It’s impossible. No matter how hard I try, I am a mess. I will always be reminded of this simple truth and I can never escape it.

What was a work of art, a masterpiece, now looks like something impaired by the drunkenness of the artist. Like an artist completing their work and spilling paint on it out of clumsiness.

If there is anything socialites like, it is good gossip, especially one that makes them feel like the new wannabe will never measure up to their grace.

“Please,” my word is breathy. I sniff, failing at reining in the tears swelling in my throat. “Get me out of here, please.” I close my eyes to keep my tears locked in until I have a safe space to unleash them but one slips.

“You can ask for her head, and you will have it,” he is teasing, I guess. But his tone and cryptic expression are anything but.

“I just want to go home,” I inhale sharply, my body now shuddering, my hands sweaty, my heart heavy, and he nods.

“You were joking, right?” I sniff, coming around after being allowed to cry out some of my frustration and shame. Ettore shrugs.

We are back in the limousine on our way home.

Another scar to add to the many I have been marked with.

“You weren’t going to give me her head on a pike like some Neanderthal, were you?” My voice is small and I’m still hiccupping from sobbing hard.

“You would rather I chop her into tiny pieces?” He slings his brow. “Brutal.”

“I never said such a thing,” I scrunch my nose, “It was just wine.” My eyes water, blurring his handsome face out.

“Was it?” He stares down at the spot and my mood dips. “It’s still a beautiful dress. Like a fairytale princess stepped into a cave to wrestle dragons and came out with their blood on her dress and no single scratch on her skin.”

I chew on that for a minute. “If you put it that way.”

“I know a beautiful thing when I see it,” he clips, and I nod. He pats his lap, and as if it were all I had been waiting for, I spring up and go to him.

“Thank you for making this possible for me,” I gulp, my stomach weaving into tangled threads as he spreads his legs for me to sit on one of them.

“It’s nothing I wouldn’t do again.”

“Normal people would say ‘you are welcome.”

“Hmm,” it’s a vibration that I somehow feel deep in my pussy amidst the heavy layering of my dress.

“I don’t mean there is something wrong with you or anything like that…” I clamber with words to explain myself because I don’t want to join the host of people who have ever made him feel out of place. I know the feeling all too well and it’s a bullet through the heart.

“You think my sense of humor is as low as my tolerance for humans?” He holds my gaze, and I see a glint before his lips curve in a smirk. No, not a smirk. A smile. The side of his face that isn’t marred by the scar.

“That would mean it existed at some point,” I bite, and he chuckles, dropping his eyes.

“Zoe,” he lifts his eyes back up, and they smolder like hot stones. “Kiss me,” he drawls the command, and my body falls in line before my brain processes his words.

I needed an escape. I needed to go home. And I’m finding out with each moment I spend around him that home is not a place, it’s a person.

I drop my face and seal my lips to his. His response is a throaty sound, edging me on. I press, trying to deepen the kiss, tasting the saltiness of my tears. But in a switch, his hands cusp my face, and his tongue is diving into my mouth, stretching down my throat as he takes control of the kiss.

He kisses me with force, groaning into my mouth, his hands now moving to gather up my dress and get the fabric out of the way so I’m sitting bare on his lap.

He pulls away from the kiss, and we are both breathless, our chests swelling and leveling like roaring waves on the Pacific.

“Don’t look away,” he croons, his hands working on his pants. With our eyes locked in searing gaze, and my heartbeat roaring, he lifts me with one arm around my waist, “Open up for me, Zoe,”

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