Bones (Bonetti Brothers #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

ATHENA

Luca watches me as I move through the store, like at any moment he’s expecting a bullet to come barreling through the air toward me, and he’ll be the one to stop it before it kills me. It might be a little much, but also, it’s nice to think he cares at all. He holds up a gorgeous black dress. “Do you like this?”

I take the price tag in my hand, and my eyes widen in sticker shock. “Three thousand dollars for a dress, Luca?”

He smirks at me. “I didn’t ask if you approved of the cost, Butterfly. I asked if you liked it.”

Shaking my head with disapproval, I say, “Obviously. It’s beautiful, but too much.”

He hands it to the cashier. “Add this to the others.”

Coming up behind me, he wraps his arms around me and kisses my neck softly.

“Money is not an object for you, Butterfly. I will tell you if it’s too much, but I guarantee you, it never will be.”

He turns me in his arms so I’m facing him, and lifts my chin with his thumb and forefinger.

“I want you to understand. I am a billionaire several times over. Everything I have is yours, so you are a billionaire as well. We will have problems like anybody else, but money will not be an issue. Butterfly, you are stunning, and you should have beautiful clothes.”

This probably shouldn’t be an issue, but I worry about the future. When I was really little, my parents would argue about my mother shopping too much. And I don’t want to end up like they did. He doesn’t know that, and I can’t tell him, because I don’t want to have a conversation about my parents with him .

“Understood?” He asks and I roll my eyes at him. Immediately, he arches an eyebrow as he hands me a purple dress. “Go try this on. Now.”

His voice comes out stern, and almost threatening, so I go to the changing room. When I move to close the door behind me, he stops it from closing and smirks at me. “Put your hands on the wall, Butterfly.”

“Luca,” I breathe and he glares at me. “Now, Athena. Don’t make me tell you again.”

I walk to the other side of the large dressing room and place my hands on the light blue wall, as he comes up behind me and runs his hand down my back to my ass. Leaning his head over my shoulder, he whispers in my ear, “My wife would never roll her eyes at me, would she?”

“I’m sorry.”

He chuckles. “Are you?”

Hooking his thumbs into my shorts, he pulls them down to the floor and I complain, “Luca, there are people in the store.”

There aren’t many. A few of his security guys, and two people working in the store, but still, we aren’t alone.

Running two fingers along my slit, he groans, “They won’t complain. Do you know how much money they’re making from this sale? You were rude to me, wife. Now you get the opportunity to make it up to me.”

“How?”

He growls in my ear, “By coming all over my cock.”

The sound of his belt is loud in the changing room as he undoes his pants. I place my hands on the mirror, and he says, “Good girl,” proving that is what he wanted.

I look in the mirror as he nudges my thighs further apart with his leg. He pushes into me with one hard thrust, causing me to gasp from the intrusion .

He wraps his hand around my throat as he fucks me from behind. This is not new for him, he’s done this many times, but it’s the first time I can see it with my own eyes. I stare at the skull tattoo on his hand, and realize how beautiful it is. A black skull with a dark purple rose in one of the eye sockets. Mesmerizing.

“Butterfly,” he groans, as he pulls out most of the way and slams back inside me.

I bite my lip as an orgasm threatens to make me scream, and immediately he scolds me, “I don’t think so, wife. I want to hear you.”

Releasing my lip, I cry out, hoping nobody else hears me as I tremble against the mirror. “Good girl.”

He picks up his speed, and when I spot his clenched jaw in the mirror, I know he’s close. As much as I enjoy how he makes me feel physically, this is my favorite part. The pleasure in his gaze, the slight parting of his lips, and the sexy grunt that escapes. That and when he spasms inside me.

“Fuck, wife. Every goddamn time you feel better than the time before.”

Pulling out of me, he spins me around and grabs my face, aggressively pressing his lips to mine. His kiss is desperate, like he didn’t just fuck me.

He pulls my shorts up before putting himself back into his pants. Ignoring his smug grin, I ask, “Do you want me to try on the dress?”

Luca shrugs his shoulders. “If you need to. I don’t care, I just wanted to fuck my beautiful wife.”

“You’re an animal.”

He chuckles softly. “I know I am, baby. Are we pretending you don’t like it?”

“No.”

The truth is, even the first time, when I told him no and fought him, I wanted him even then. My husband is hot as hell, and I can’t imagine any woman turning him down. Of course I did because I was trying to get away from him, and that goddamn cage.

Luca steps closer to me and leans his head down. “That’s unfortunate. I thought I was going to need to remind you how much you love it.”

He stares at me with a heated expression, the kind that makes me forget to breathe.

“If you forget, I’m happy to remind you, Butterfly.”

When I don’t respond, because I can barely even breathe, he grins. “Come on. Let’s go get lunch.”

Luca grabs the dress off the hook he put it on, and I follow him out of the dressing room and glance at the four other people in the store, and wonder if they heard us. I blush as we stand at the counter and he hands the lady his Amex Black Card. The blonde woman glances at him and bats her eyelashes, and when she gives him the total and it’s almost thirty thousand dollars, I almost vomit. I grab his arm. “Luca, no.”

He glares at me. “Not now, Athena.”

His security guys grab the bags, as we walk out of the store and head back to the waiting car. Luca opens the back of the Range Rover and I slide in. He pulls out his wallet and gets in beside me. Taking out another credit card, he hands it to me. “This is yours. If you want to shop online, or one day when you’re shopping by yourself, use it. You never need to worry about reaching a limit. I don’t want to ever hear a complaint about how much money I spend on my wife. If I didn’t want to do it, or couldn’t afford it, I wouldn’t spend it. The fact is, I have more money than I can possibly spend in my lifetime, or in our children’s lifetime.”

I take the card, and put it in my purse without further conversation about it, because this seems to be something that pisses him off. At some point, I’m sure I’ll fight with him about things. When they matter. I’ll choose my battles, but I’m sure bigger things than money will come up. I realize a lot of women would kill to trade places with me financially. Most people struggle with money, and they don’t have a husband spending a down payment on a house on clothing. It’s ridiculous to get upset about.

“Thank you.”

He closes his eyes, like those two words are pleasurable.

“You’re my wife, and I want to take care of you without argument. I know you haven’t always had a man to do that, and I want to be that for you.”

I snort laugh. “I’ve never had that, Luca.”

“How did you end up with Manny?” He asks as the driver pulls away from the curb.

I avert my eyes, not really wanting to have this conversation, because there’s something about him that makes me feel safe and I know better. You can say too much, and I need to be careful not to.

“Talk to me, Butterfly.”

I take in a deep breath and release it. “Boy meets girl. He promises her the world, and then destroys her. It started with verbal attacks, but over time it became physical. At first it was once every couple of months, but it wasn’t long before it became daily. He wanted me to start stealing things so he could sell them. I agreed at first, because I felt like I had to. Manny bought me food a few days a week, and paid for the hotel in exchange for the items.”

Luca stares at me with obvious irritation. “How much of a cut did you take?”

I shake my head. “None.”

He closes his eyes tight and clenches his fists.

“I wish he were still alive, so I could fucking kill him.”

With a long drawn out sigh, I say, “Well, you already did that. You broke his bones. Who does that?”

His eyes pop open and he grins. “Me. I do that, and I’d gladly do it again if I could.”

“How did you start that? ”

Taking my hand in his, he smiles softly. “It happened by accident. It’s hard to explain it without scaring the hell out of you.”

I move over and climb onto his lap. “Tell me. Please.”

Luca wraps his arms around me, pulling my body close to his. “It happened by accident. I was in a fight as a teenager with the son of a rival family. The sound of his arm breaking, I liked it, and knew I’d hurt someone again by doing the same thing. I learned how to break bones with ease. There are a million ways to physically hurt someone. Guns, knives, but breaking someone’s bones means more pain, because you can administer an awful lot of anguish before they die. A gun or a knife will kill much quicker. And I’m rarely looking to kill someone with speed.”

He notices the expression on my face and says, “I’ll never do that to you. Ever. I’ll never cause you physical pain you don’t want.”

I chew on my bottom lip nervously. “And the cage?”

Luca runs his fingers down my cheek, with a tenderness I didn’t know he was capable of. “Butterfly, never again. I swear to you, never. I will die before I ever do that to you again. The same goes for the chains.”

I kiss him softly. “Thank you, Luca. Thank you.”

He shakes his head when I pull away. “That’s not something you should be thanking me for. One day you’ll tell me why the cage is that terrible for you. Nobody likes being trapped in a cage, but your reaction tells me you had experience with it.”

I nod in agreement instead of denying it. “Far too much experience, Luca, and one day I will, but I’m not ready.”

It’s pure torture to finally have someone that makes it feel like you can lay all your baggage at their feet. There’s nothing I want more than to trust him with everything. My past is not for the faint of heart. And the only thing worse than the memories that haunt me, would be if I lost him now when he has made me realize I want him. Not just his body, all of him. And I wish I could give myself to him completely. It’s just too risky.