“It was a pleasure meeting you, Morina.” He backstepped, leaving me with a man who never got angry, and yet here he was seething.
“It’s time to go,” Bastian said through clenched teeth, without looking at me. His stare was on the water, where mine once had been. The wind pushed the waves higher.
Angry waves.
The tide picked up like it knew Bastian owned the ocean too.
Strands of my hair stuck to the sheen on my shoulder and across my breasts. I brushed them way, but my skin reacted to my own touch or maybe to Bastian’s gaze that was suddenly following my hand.
My nipples tightened as he licked his lips and his eyes narrowed. “Morina, I swear to fucking God, you are beautiful in your fury and you have a right to it.” His voice came out low like someone threw it through gravel. “But if you keep this up, I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here even if you are kicking and screaming.”
My hand slid down my stomach, inch by inch. I arched and bit my lip, stopping right above my bikini bottoms. Both of our stares paused there too, his was furious and mine was wanting suddenly.
I wanted him to possess me, wanted him to feel the jealousy and the desire I felt for him at the same time. “Why are we resisting others’ advances, Bastian? We could both be enjoying ourselves, working toward legal separation.”
He pulled my string bikini top from his pocket. He must have picked it up from the sand. He threw the balled up piece of fabric onto my chest. “Put your top back on.”
“It’s a topless beach, Bastian. Everyone is–”
His large hand shot out and was under my hair so fast, I didn’t see it coming. He gripped it hard at the base. When he knelt beside me, his other hand gripped my jaw and I was trapped. So easily, he had an advantage as he pulled my ear close. “I’m happy to make a public display of how you’re my wife right here right now if you want to. No separation of any sort. You want to enjoy someone else’s touch, ragazza? I’ll make you beg for mine on this beach right now.”
I stared at him, suddenly something a lot like fear slithered through me. Bastian was supposed to be the one who made allies with everyone, who was soft where his father had been hard.
Bastian was gone.
The head of the Armanelli family held me in his grasp.
The shake in his hand, the wild in his eyes was something like I’d never seen.
I opened my mouth, ready to agree. He didn’t let me though.
“Don’t say a word,” he whispered calmly. Yet, that grip, the grip in my hair bordered on painful. “Pick up your top and cover what’s mine.”
Why did my body want so badly to defy him, to push him past the point he could control. He must have seen my hesitation, because he jerked my head just a little and ground out, “Now.”
I cautiously brought the strings to my neck where he raised my hair enough for me to tie a knot right below his grip.
Before I could adjust the triangles of fabric, one of his hands trailed down the string on my neck. The other dragged over my breast, his thumb rubbing over my tattoo, his fingers curling around its curve. The thin fabric was no barrier.
He squeezed and rolled me in his hand forcing a gasp from me before my hand flew to my mouth.
No. He didn’t get to pull a reaction out of me. He didn’t deserve that and yet my body was already giving in.
“Why can’t you just work with me, huh?” His question came out like he was far away. “Why goad me with other men when you know you only have to be good for a few more months?”
His hand slid down my stomach, following the trail I’d made. The slick oil was warmer now, heated by the sun or by my body reacting to the beautiful man holding me hostage on that beach. It didn’t take any more from him to have me arching into this touch too.
I’d been without for so long. I’d dreamt of his touch, burned for it. I’d beg for it at this point. Even if I knew it wasn’t healthy, we’d end up crashing down in a destroyed city after.
The tsunami of us was growing and swelling, becoming a monstrosity.
Fingers at the edge of my bikini bottoms, he nipped my ear. “Should I make you plead with me in front of them all? Is that what you really want? To get what you’re dying for in front of all these people?”
“Bastian,” I whispered and shook my head. “It’s a public event.”
“Where you took your top off, right?”
This was my punishment. This was him showing his power. He might have had a hold on the whole world in one way or another but his hold on me was sexual, was a bond of possession and possessor. He wanted me to understand respect, to understand that right now I was his.
I squirmed when his pinky dipped under the fabric.
“You wouldn’t,” I hissed.
The smile that spread across his face was vicious.
His hand dove into my bikini bottoms. I don’t know who was watching. Most everyone was behind him a little ways off where the gold women posed and the alcohol was being served.
Still, anyone could have walked over.
Formal Bastian had gone though. And the woman who would have thought better of riding a man’s hand in public, well, she wasn’t here either.
I bit my lip and arched as his finger slid in.
A tsunami always started small. The shift in water, quick. This was his earthquake and he intended to make me feel it. He was on top of the tsunami and I was below, staring up in awe at the man inside the business suit. He ruled all of us, and he ruled me too.
“Willing to take it anywhere, piccola ragazza. I should tie you up and keep you locked away.”
“If only you could, right?” I moaned and gripped his wrist as I gasped and took what I wanted fast.
He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Say your husband’s name when you moan, piccola ragazza. Tell them all who gives you pleasure you can’t bear to wait for.”
I stared at him as he slid another finger in and curled them as his thumb rubbed over my clit. I gasped out, “Sebastian Armanelli.”
“Til death do us part.” He murmured and I didn’t correct him.
32
Bastian
Elizabeth shouldn’t have been on my arm but Morina took it too far.
Fuck.
I still wanted to drag her across that party and scream she was mine to each and every person who looked her way.
Now, we sat in my car on the way home as she grumbled about wanting to go to the humane society.
That place was one that calmed her and she probably used it a lot of the time to distance herself from me.
I didn’t want distance anymore. I wanted Morina with her crystals and bikinis and baggy t-shirts to be only mine. I’d seen her out there on the beach with Quinton and I knew she might not belong to anyone but I was going to belong beside her at the very least.
Fucking mine.
That was the difference between her and others I’d been with. I hadn’t realized before. She was an ocean that moved and rocked with the wind. She couldn’t be owned by anyone but me. I’d be Poseidon if she was that. I wasn’t letting her go so easily.
The company shares would be worked out.
We could work things out together.