I love him.
This should be insane. My rational brain is pointing out all the reasons this ought to be wrong, but it’s not. It’s so right. Every part of me has known rejection and hurt and heartbreak. I’ve spent years being unwanted. It’s been an itchy, too tight, bobbled dress I’ve worn so long I didn’t realise how it made me feel.
But that does mean I recognise how different being with Marco is.
Being with Marco isn’t just having taken off that ill-fitting dress. It’s like the clothes he bought me: perfectly fitted, soft and luxurious.
And it was that feeling which made me want to pleasure him, not the gifts.
I’ve heard about blow jobs, and been the subject of crude gestures and jokes. But being on my knees for him was a thrill of power. He broke apart for me, a girl who nobody thought was special.
And I saw the savage look in his eyes as he covered my breasts with his come. It was claiming, yes, but it was vulnerable too. At that moment I knew I could ask for anything and he’d do it, not just to have the moment of sexual bliss again, but to please me.
Afterwards he kept saying yes. Never impatient, never annoyed that I wanted something. We came away with bags of clothes and underwear that whenever they touch my skin, I’ll remember the heat of his attention.
We have hours in the limo driving north to chat. I lean against him and answer his questions about cupcake recipes and decoration. He tells me about his work, pausing at the more unsavoury aspects, but continuing when I nod, unfazed. You don’t live in a mafia compound all your life without seeing some darkness, and god knows it wasn’t like there was anyone to protect me.
Until now. Marco seems intent on looking after me. He feels free to touch my body now, curling a strand of my hair around his finger or tucking it behind my ear. His hands are on me constantly. A stroke of my cheek, holding my waist.
We stop for an excessive lunch at a country hotel, with so many courses I lose track. I’m wearing the cut-off denim shorts and cami from earlier, along with cute canvas-top sneakers, and I’d probably have felt underdressed. Except I was with Marco, and he has this presence that says, Do not fuck with me, you’d regret it. And no one even looks askance at me.
Back in the car, it’s like he can’t decide what he wants to look at more as I speak. His gaze flits between my face, my legs, the place where the delicate top meets my breasts. And if that sounds carnal and greedy, well. I’m worse. I’m trying to cram a lifetime of memories into this journey. I catalogue his every feature, from his excessively long eyelashes to the silver in his curly hair.
“You can ask,” he says eventually when I’m running my finger down his cheek again, skirting the scar.
“About…?”
He huffs.
Right. The scar. I’m curious, naturally, about how it happened. But that turns out not to be the question I care about most. “Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore, though it’s a bit sensitive.”
I press a kiss to his cheek, right over the scar, then check if he’s okay with that. He’s watching me, wary and still as a predator showing its underbelly.
“Who did it?”
“My father,” he says calmly, a hint of amusement in his eyes. “He’s already dead. By my hand.”
Good. I don’t reply because my jaw clenches so hard I may have to have it surgically re-opened. How dare that… I struggle to think of the right word. Bastard. Fucker. Cock-twat-douchbag. How dare anyone have harmed my man. Marco.
“You look positively murderous,” he teases. “Do I need to dig him up so you can kill him again?”
I slap Marco’s chest lightly, pouting. “Yes. We’ll do it annually.”
His chin tips up and he gives a growling purr. It’s only then I realise what I’ve said. I’ve implied we’ll be together. For years.
A sign for Carlisle flashes past.
That’s close to Scotland, isn’t it?
Oh no. No no no no no.
My tummy goes heavy, like I’ve eaten too much uncooked cake mixture. This is worse than getting salmonella poisoning. I cling to Marco.
“It won’t be like that for our kids,” he murmurs as he strokes my hair. “They’ll have a good dad, I promise.”
My eyes are hot and dry. I should just accept whatever happens. But I can’t. I’m done with letting anyone determine my fate. I dig my nails into my palm as I look into his face.
“What’s going on? What’s the plan when we get to Scotland?” See, I can be brave.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He quirks one eyebrow up, those blue eyes like the reflection of a blue-sky white water.
“No!” I’m brittle, caramelised sugar breaking into pieces as it cools. Stretched and changed by being with this man, I can’t return to my original state of boring white granules of sweetness after being sinuously bent and heated.
These conflicted signals from him. First he says I’m his and makes me come so hard I nearly cracked a tooth, then he’s taking me to Scotland. “What is all this for?”
He smooths his thumb over my lips. “We’re going to Gretna Green.”
I have definitely misheard. I’m losing my mind, because I could swear he just said we’re going to Gretna Green.
“Why?” I croak.
“You want to be married, correct?”
How does he know that? I look away, out of the window. I can’t bear for him to see how much I need this, because this is a cruel joke. I must be. The entirety of what I want does not just appear. That happens to… I dunno. No one. Girls in Regency romances, maybe. Or dogs, because all they want is a squeaky toy and a bowl of dog biscuits.
People like me don’t get handsome men who adore and want to marry them. Green fields blur past and dappled light shines through the trees in their summer finery.
Marco grasps my chin uncompromisingly, hard enough to hurt, and forces it up so I have to meet his eyes.
“I know about what happened between your parents. How she fell for him and he abused that love. How he used her, and never married her, didn’t give her the respect she deserved.”
“How—”
“It’s my business to make you happy, cara. That means I had to know about you. My entire team worked on Operation Wife. Paulo nearly gave the game away,” he adds wryly. “Whisky, indeed. I know you didn’t get the recognition a mafia princess should, or the love. And all that ends today. As my wife, you’ll have everything.”
The shock is biting into a plain cupcake and finding delicious lemon curd filling. He knows all this—that I was unwanted and unnamed—and his answer is to give me his surname. Marriage. As clear a commitment as I could ask for.
“I can’t bring back your mother.” He shakes his head regretfully, not saying what we both know. She’s dead. If she wasn’t, she’d have come for me. “Your father was a petty, insecure, cruel man who couldn’t cope with a woman who challenged him as your mother did. I could have stopped Westminster from murdering him, but I think he deserved it.”
“I do too,” I whisper.
My heart throbs. There’s just one question I have to know the answer to before I say anything about marriage. “Was it you?”
