Like Father, Like Son

Chapter 7

The mattress dips beside me, and through the haze of sleep, I feel warmth that shouldn't be there.

Marco left hours ago—I heard the door, felt the bed grow cold. But now there's heat against my back, a solid presence that makes my skin prickle with awareness.

"You're awake." The voice is velvet and command, deeper than Marco's, and my eyes fly open in the dark.

Salvatore.

My body freezes even as fire races through my veins.

This can't be real. He can't be in my bed, in the bed I share with his son. But his hand is already on my hip, fingers pressing through the thin silk of my nightgown.

"Don't move." His breath warms my neck, and I obey because my muscles have forgotten how to function. "I've been watching you sleep, Lucia. You whispered my name."

"I didn't…" But the denial dies as his hand slides lower, finding the hem of my nightgown and pushing it up with maddening slowness.

"Pretty little liar." His fingers trace the inside of my thigh now, and my treacherous body arches toward his touch.

His fingers find me already wet, and the sound he makes, satisfaction mixed with hunger, vibrates through my spine. He circles that sensitive bundle of nerves, not quite touching, just teasing until my hips roll involuntarily, seeking friction.

"Is this what you think about when my son touches you?" His other arm slides under me, pulling me back against his chest while his fingers continue their torment. "Do you close your eyes and pretend it's me?"

The truth burns in my throat, but his fingers finally, finally make contact, and all I can do is gasp. He works me with the patience of someone who has all the time in the world, building pressure that makes my thighs tremble.

"Answer me."

His teeth graze my ear, and I'm drowning in sensation—his cologne mixing with the scent of my arousal, his chest solid against my back, his fingers drawing patterns that make coherent thought impossible.

"Yes…" The confession tears free as he increases the pressure, circles becoming more focused, more intentional. "God, yes."

His chuckle is dark honey against my throat. "My son has no idea what he has, does he? This perfect responsiveness, this heat. He'll never make you feel what I could make you feel."

His fingers slip lower, teasing my entrance while his thumb maintains that perfect rhythm against my clit, and I'm climbing toward something that feels too intense to survive.

My body coils tighter with each stroke, pleasure building to an impossible edge.

"You're close." His voice drops to barely a whisper, his fingers moving with devastating skill. "I can feel it in how you pulse against my hand. Come for me, Lucia. Show me what my son will never see."

The command in his voice breaks something loose in me.

Pleasure crests, white-hot and consuming, my body arching as waves of sensation crash through me—

I wake gasping, alone in the bed, my nightgown twisted around my waist and my own fingers pressed between my legs.

The dream shatters, leaving me flushed and aching, my body balanced on the knife's edge of a climax that won't come because it's my inexpert touch instead of his.

This is so wrong.

He's Marco's father. Your husband's father.

But my body doesn't care about family trees or marriage vows. It throbs with frustrated need, silk sheets sticking to skin damp with sweat and arousal.

The dream felt so real I can still smell his cologne, still feel the ghost of his fingers where mine rest now, inadequate and trembling. The bed beside me is empty, sheets cold enough to tell me Marco never came back last night.

Our first night as husband and wife, and he couldn't even pretend to care past his own satisfaction. I should feel relieved but instead, I feel pathetic for believing his promises for even those few desperate minutes.

I pull on the silk robe hanging on the bathroom door—another piece of this costume I'm supposed to wear as Marco Caruso's wife.

The mansion hallways stretch before me, all marble and shadow at five in the morning. My bare feet make no sound on the cold floor as I search for my husband, though what I'll say when I find him remains a mystery.

The first two bedrooms are empty.

The third door is cracked open, and through it drifts the distinct sound of feminine laughter mixed with male groaning. I push the door wider, and the scene arranges itself like a Renaissance painting of debauchery.

Marco sprawls across a king-sized bed, three women draped over him like expensive accessories. A blonde straddles his hips, her back arched in ecstasy. A brunette kisses his neck while a redhead from our reception runs her nails down his chest.

"That's it, baby," Marco groans, his hands gripping the blonde's waist. "Just like that. God, you're so much tighter than my wife."

The blonde laughs, grinding down harder. "Already comparing me to her? That didn't take long."

"Nothing to compare." His voice carries that particular cruelty of truth spoken in assumed privacy. "Lucia just lies there like a dead fish. No passion, no skill. I might as well have married a corpse."

The redhead traces circles on his chest. "Poor baby. Stuck with a frigid wife."

"The things I do for family legacy." He pulls the brunette down for a kiss that's all tongue and performance. "At least I have you three to keep me satisfied. My wife can play house while I have actual fun."

I step back from the door, my stomach churning with humiliation and rage in equal measure.

Every word he said last night was calculated manipulation.

And I fell for it because I was tired and scared and stupid enough to hope.

I can't go back to that empty bed, can't lie in sheets that smell like his cologne and my naïveté. Instead, I wander the mansion's corridors, learning the geography of my cage.

Third floor, east wing—a hallway lined with oil paintings of stern-faced men who probably ordered deaths between dinner courses. Second floor, west wing—guest suites that could house entire families. Ground floor, north side—and there it is.

A door different from the others, dark wood with complicated carved panels that whisper of significance. Gold lettering on a brass plaque reads "Private Study—S. Caruso."

Salvatore's cabinet. His inner sanctum where the real business happens.

The door is solid, meant to keep secrets in and curious wives out. But the wood is old, and old wood develops character—specifically, a gap where the door meets the frame.

Just wide enough to glimpse inside if you press close enough.

I shouldn't look. Salvatore Caruso doesn't forgive violations of privacy. But my dream still clings to my skin, and I need to see him. Maybe reality will cure this sick fascination my body has developed.

I press my eye to the gap and the study unfolds in fragments—dark leather, crystal decanters, walls lined with books. And there, behind a massive oak desk, sits Salvatore Caruso.

His shoulders curve forward, the perfect posture abandoned. One hand holds a silver frame, the other covers his eyes. His fingers tremble as he traces the outline of whatever image the frame holds.

Then I hear a sound so unexpected my breath catches.

He's crying.

These are the broken sounds of real loss, raw and ugly and utterly private. His shoulders shake with the effort of containing sobs that escape anyway.

He clutches a silver frame to his chest like it holds his entire world, and maybe it does. The way he holds it—reverent, desperate—makes my stomach twist with jealousy so sharp it cuts.

Someone was loved like that.

Someone who wasn't me. Someone who will never be me.

The shame follows immediately, hot and suffocating. Here I am, watching a man grieve, and all I can think about is how I want him to hold my picture like that someday.

How sick is that?

How completely fucked am I that I'm jealous of a photograph?

He sets the frame on his desk with infinite care, and though I can't make out the image clearly through the gap, I can see how his fingers trace the glass like he's touching something sacred.

The tenderness in that gesture makes me want to scream. I've been married less than twenty-four hours and I'm already fantasizing about a man who can love someone so completely it breaks him.

Another sob breaks free, and he doesn't try to stop it this time. The sound is so desperately human it makes my eyes burn, but not only with sympathy.

I step back from the door, my whole body trembling with the weight of my own wretchedness.

This is worse than the dream, worse than the wedding night humiliation. Because now I know what Salvatore looks like when he loves someone, and I know I'll spend the rest of my life wanting him to look at my picture that way.

The jealousy burns through me like fever, mixed with shame so thick I can taste it.

I'm jealous of someone who might be dead.

I'm fantasizing about my father-in-law while my husband screws three women down the hall.

I'm everything wrong with this situation, and still, all I want is to be the photograph in that silver frame.