Page 99 of Captured Fantasy

I looked down at my lap, my throat dry.

He exhaled. “I really need a cigarette.”

“Just smoke. I’ll open the windows when you leave.”

He sighed, lighting up with obvious relief. “Until I married my wife, I never thought about the women of the outfit. I don’t know how I overlooked it because I saw it right there. In front of my face. My mother endured horrific abuse from my father,” he said, his cold eyes wreathed in smoke. “Perhaps because that’s how I was raised. At a certain point, can I rework the fibers of my brain? I’m trying, goddamn it.”

I raised my eyes to his, but there was nothing. A wall of stone.

“How do you see us?”

His lids flickered. “As useful. But then I see everyone as useful, not just the women.”

“Why?”

“Because I was taught to operate in a certain way. To play chess with the pieces I have available to me regardless of the harm.”

“Does your wife know this side of you?” I blurted out.

He was quiet for a while and then he nodded. And then shook his head. “She’s a good person. I’m a fucking bastard. But there’s been moments when those two parts of ourselves mingle together. She craves it, I can tell, she wants the dark parts, but I’ve resolved never to show them to her. Not fully.”

So there were still parts of him that wanted to remain in denial. I fell silent and he rose with a heavy sigh. I walked him to the door and handed him his coat.

“Can I be uncomfortably honest with you, Enza?”

I wanted to say no, but instead I nodded.

“This is the last time I’ll ever speak of what we did together. After today, I’ll never acknowledge it or bring it up again. When you were with me, you’d go dead in the eyes. You were like a fucking robot,” he murmured. “When you’re with Cosimo, does it feel like that?”

My cheeks were warm and there was a catch in my throat. “No, I never feel like that with him. I don’t have to perform. It feels right.”

Something in his ice cold eyes flickered. “Good, because if I’m going to risk the lives of my men, I need to know it’s worth it.”

He left me standing in the cold doorway to watch him vanish into the snow.

Cosimo came over that evening, profusely apologizing for accidentally uploading the sex tape. I’d spent all afternoon thinking about what Lucien had said, about how he’d promised me a future with Cosimo, and I was practically giddy. Even the embarrassment of the tape couldn’t dampen what I felt.

I accepted his flowers and his apologies, setting them all aside. I took him into the living room, pressed him down on the couch, and opened the front of his pants. His big hands supported my head and warmth blossomed in my chest as I took him into my mouth. This didn’t feel like a service and I didn’t feel the need to push his length down my throat. No, he cradled me gently in his hands, stroking my hair, whispering words of praise as I pleasured him. It was so perfectly intimate it made my chest ache.

I was safe and protected. And for the first time in over a decade, I was loved.

That night, Cosimo left around midnight to go to the shipping yards. I’d begged him to stay, but he was taking the break-in personally. I understood his need to prove himself, to make it clear to Lucien that he could handle whatever was thrown his way.

Before he left, we both had a drink in the kitchen. The air was thick with tension, thick with emotion.

I’d taken off my shoes and stood barefoot on the cold floor. He was warm, his skin scorching through my clothes as his insistent fingers unbuckled my jeans. He tore them down and pulled my shirt off, unfastening my bra. I gasped as he picked me up, crushing me against the fridge, and thrust into me.

All the way to the bottom of my soul.

“You’re so ready for me, baby,” he groaned.

“God, yes,” I breathed. “I needed you inside me.”

He braced the heel of his boot, still fully clothed, and began fucking up into me. “Look at your tits, look at how perfect you take me, Mrs. Russo.”

My breasts bounced as he thrust and the look on his face was pure heroin in my veins.

We fucked in the space between the cabinet and the refrigerator. We fucked over the island countertop. We fucked on the floor in a frenzy. Like animals, unable to control themselves. That night, I fell asleep with his bruising kiss still stinging on my mouth and his cum stained down my thighs.

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