Imarched through the house, my feet carrying me to the open-concept living room. Rafael sat at the kitchen island, typing away at something on his laptop with that grim look on his face. He knew what was coming.
He’d always known, since the moment my father had left my broken body on Miguel Ibarra’s doorstep.
I’d fought like hell to stay with Thalia, to protect her from the fate I known would come in my absence. I knew she’d be punished for the fact that I’d dared to defy Origen Karras, and she’d suffer for getting close to me.
‘Who?’ he asked, not bothering to look up from his laptop.
My ally in Philadelphia had called me as soon as the victor was declared, but it had been a long, painful wait before I knew the name of the man I would slaughter. The man who would try to take what was mine.
‘Damianos Hasapis,’ I growled. The son of the man who had sentenced me to banishment alongside my father. The son of the man who had taken everything from me.
Rafael nodded, finally glancing up. ‘That’s good. His father needs to die regardless of the son’s involvement in this. Perhaps the other families will be cooperative.”
‘Each family put forward a champion,’ I growled. ‘Would you feel so sanguine if you discovered a group of men who fought for the right to fuck Isa?’ I asked, referring to the girl who had captivated him.
He watched her, much like I’d taken to watching Thalia after arriving back in the States a few months prior. The only difference was that he had the ability to manipulate and control her life.
I could not.
He glared at me with a snarl twisting his mouth, his eyes filled with loathing that promised to strangle me in my sleep. I still needed to get used to that protectiveness coming from the man who cared about no one.
‘We’ll take the city immediately,’ I said.
‘The wedding is not for two months. We need time to recoup our losses before we launch a full attack on Philadelphia. The wise move is to wait and to plan. The grander the statement we make with our first assault, the more we can minimize the consequences later on. I understand your anger, Calix, but Damianos will not touch her until their wedding night,’ Rafe said, standing from the stool at the island and turning to face me. ‘You have waited twelve years for this moment. Do not fuck it up by acting impulsively now.’
‘Fine,’ I said abruptly, turning and heading for the bedroom I’d called home since we’d come to Chicago to help Matteo Bellandi win his war. I drew in a deep breath, trying to quell my rising dread. The Thalia I knew would not go quietly into a marriage she didn’t want. The Thalia I knew fought and maneuvered, even as a young girl. She’d been far too smart for her own good, with a quiet rebelliousness hidden from all those who wanted to contain her.
As a child, she’d been obsessed with mythology and folklore. She’d been drawn to the beautiful creatures that hid monsters within, waiting for the right moment to devour their prey. From the ashes of those interests, she’d grown into a woman who belonged in the stories she loved so much. A beauty who smiled, giving the illusion of the perfect doll they expected her to be. But when the doors closed and the prying eyes disappeared, she morphed into the brutal woman who would cut down her enemies at the first opportunity.
The woman who held her hate within her heart, who embraced loneliness as her companion and readied herself to slaughter all who wronged her. Only the love for her sister kept her from acting on her violence, from utilizing the skills she learned in the quiet of the night alongside the man I’d planted in her security.
The ally I’d given her when I couldn’t be there, who would protect her if things ever escalated past what Thalia was strong enough to handle on her own.
She’d been a girl who needed my protection. As a woman, she needed my acceptance and my love, and with it the ability to be the woman she was born to be. If I survived our wedding night, she would thrive at my side, a goddess born in the light who I would drag down to the pits of hell to make mine.
I pushed open the door, stepping inside my bedroom and glancing to the wall of monitors where I watched Thalia move around her father’s house. She stepped out of his office, her face twisted into a grimace as she withheld the grief of whatever her father had said to her. In the months since I’d started watching her, I’d come to realize there was only one topic that could penetrate that shield she kept locked tightly around herself.
Her mother.
While Thalia and her mother hadn’t been particularly close, as dictated by her father, Neri’d been the only one she’d had who even remotely resembled family. The closest thing she’d known to love.
She made it to her room safely, leaning her back against the door as her lungs heaved with deep gasps of breath. Her fists clenched with the need to kill, to hurt and maim as they’d done to her. As she stepped away from the surface, she stretched her hands up to reach for the zipper at her back. Shoving the dress down her body frantically, she stripped away the layers of who they wanted her to be.
Her face transformed from that pleasant expression, hatred filling it as her amber eyes hardened into a glare she thought no one could see. My eyes moved over her body as she stepped through her room in pink undergarments. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on her frame, her ribs protruding slightly from her form beyond what could be considered natural or healthy.
The strict diet her stepmother kept her on showed in every sharp edge, on the exposed hip bones that drew attention down to her panty line. She stripped off her bra and underwear, grabbing a nightgown from her dresser and frantically tugging it over her head before she moved to the bathroom to wash the makeup from her face and brush her teeth.
Watching her go through her nighttime routine, I stripped off my clothes and settled into my bed with the laptop off my desk, resting it on one of the pillows as I got comfortable. I grabbed the e-reader off my nightstand, opening the fantasy romance Thalia had been reading earlier in the day.
She did exactly as I knew she would when she returned to her bedroom, grabbing her own device and opening the protective case she kept it in. She got comfortable on top of the covers, her eyes moving as she lost herself in the world of fantasy. I alternated between reading the pages of the book and watching her, studying her face and her body as she read.
I loved every twitch of her face. I lived for every intake of breath.
I lusted for the moments when her legs rubbed together to stall the ache building in her when she approached a sex scene; watched her cheeks tinge with hesitant desire that she didn’t fully understand when she thought about a man taking her body.
I’d been shocked to discover that Thalia’s choice of reading—as a woman who knew what it was to be treated like property, to be owned and have no free will of her own—involved dominant men.
But they were dominant men who loved hard, who worshiped their women even as they controlled them.
As it always happened, her hand drifted down to the space between her legs as she read while biting her lip shyly as if someone could see her being naughty.
She didn’t know how right she was.
I slid my hand down to grip my cock, pumping slowly as her long, delicate fingers slid down to touch her clit. Her hips rocked as if overcome with the need that one caress filled her with, the desperation for the freedom to touch and be touched written in every line of her body.
A light moan came through the computer speakers as I pumped, watching as she bit her lip to keep silent.
There had been a time when I hadn’t been able to imagine wanting Thalia, when we’d been children too far apart in age for our relationship to be anything but platonic. That had changed the moment I’d seen her as an adult after sending Christian to keep an eye on her and give me video access to the house. The moment I’d seen her, the pieces had clicked into place.
She’d become mine in the way a wife became her husband’s, and that was what I would be to her. Not solely a protector, but a husband in truth.
Her fingers danced over her flesh as she turned to her back, giving me an unobstructed view of the space between her thighs and the way she touched herself. I’d show her true passion soon enough, but until then I’d tolerate reading books and touching myself while I watched her.
The sight of her back arching off the bed and the soft swell of her breasts thrusting into the air sent me over the edge, pumping my cock furiously until I covered my stomach in my release.
As my heart raced and I watched Thalia come down from her high, impatience rose in me. She rolled to her stomach, revealing a fresh welt across her shoulders from her stepmother’s favorite cane.
I didn’t usually believe in killing women, but that bitch would die alongside her husband soon enough, for what they’d done to my woman.
