Chapter 18: The Price of Daylight
The city’s morning light was a pale, intrusive thing. It crept around the edges of the heavy velvet drapes, finding the bed, turning the room from a secret cavern into a space that felt too exposed. It traced the lines of Enzo’s hand where it rested on the crumpled sheet, illuminating the split knuckles, the purple-yellow bloom of a fresh bruise on his wrist.
He’d been awake for an hour. Watching her.
Sofia slept the deep, drugged sleep of emotional and physical exhaustion. One arm was thrown above her head, the other tucked under her cheek. Her fiery hair was a wild splash across his pillow. The sheet had slipped to her waist, baring the sharp angle of a shoulder, the curve of a breast, the dark lovebite he’d sucked into the delicate skin just above her nipple. Her lips, the same lips that had shaped the three words that had detonated in his chest, were slightly parted. Each soft breath was a quiet promise in the silent room.
He felt scraped raw. The confession, her claiming of his guilt, the frantic, wordless fucking that had followed—it had left him hollowed out and strangely, terrifyingly light. The ghost of the foreman’s daughter was still there, in the corners of the room, but her screams were muffled now, wrapped in Sofia’s defiant, foolish love.
He couldn’t name the thing tightening in his throat. It felt like a fist.
He moved silently, turning onto his side to face her. The mattress dipped. He let his gaze travel the landscape of her sleeping form—the faint freckles across her nose, the dark sweep of her lashes, the vulnerable line of her throat. His hand, of its own volition, began to move. It slid over the rumpled sheet, across the plane of her stomach, and down, beneath the fabric, to the warm skin of her inner thigh.
She was still sticky with him. The evidence of their night had dried in a tacky smear on her skin, mingling with her own wetness. His fingers slid through it, a crude reacquaintance. He pressed his palm against the soft thatch of red curls, cupping her entire sex in his hand, claiming the heat of her even in sleep.
Her breathing hitched. A soft, unconscious sigh escaped her. Her hips pressed minutely into his touch.
He leaned in, his mouth a breath from her ear. “Wake up.”
Her eyes fluttered open. Sleepy, unfocused green pools that cleared rapidly as she registered his presence, his hand between her legs, the intensity of his gaze. A faint blush colored her cheeks. “Enzo?”
His thumb found her clit through the slickness, applying a slow, grinding pressure. “Say it again, barista,” he growled, his voice sleep-roughened and dangerous. “Before I fuck it out of you.”
She blinked, the last vestiges of sleep burning away. She swallowed, her throat working. The air between them crackled, thick with memory and need. She didn’t shy away from the crude touch. Instead, she rolled onto her back, letting her legs fall open, granting him better access. “Say what?” she breathed, a challenge glinting in her eyes despite her position.
He pushed a thick finger inside her without preamble. She was still loose and swollen from the night, but tight nonetheless, her inner muscles clenching instinctively around the intrusion. He watched her face as he worked his finger in and out, the wet, obscene sound loud in the quiet room. “You know what. The words you used to dismantle me last night. Say them while I’m fucking you with my fingers. I want to hear them in the daylight.”
He added a second finger, stretching her. She gasped, her back arching off the mattress. He scissored them, opening her up, his palm grinding against her clit with each movement. Her breath came in sharp pants. She was already wet anew, her body betraying her, welcoming the rough possession.
“I…” she started, but he crooked his fingers, pressing hard against a spot inside that made her cry out. Her hands fisted in the sheets.
“Say it,” he commanded, his own cock hardening painfully against his thigh. He needed to hear it. Needed the daylight proof.
“I love you,” she choked out, the words riding a wave of physical sensation. “God, I love you, you bastard.”
A low sound ripped from his chest. He withdrew his soaking fingers and moved over her in one fluid, predatory motion. He didn’t bother with preliminaries. He hooked his arms under her knees, pushing her legs back and wide, exposing her completely to the harsh morning light. Her pussy was glistening, pink and used and beautiful. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
Her eyes, hazy with need, locked onto his. He pushed forward, a slow, relentless invasion that burned with a delicious, familiar stretch. He filled her inch by torturous inch, watching her eyes dilate, watching her lips form a perfect ‘O’ of overwhelming sensation. When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt in her slick, tight heat, he stopped. They were joined, utterly. He could feel her heart hammering around him.
“Now,” he said, his voice a taut wire. “Say it to my face while I’m buried inside you. While you’re full of me.”
Tears, born of overwhelm and something far deeper, welled in her eyes. They didn’t fall. She held his gaze, her hands coming up to frame his stubbled jaw. Her thumbs brushed over the cut on his cheekbone.
“I love you, Lorenzo,” she said, each word clear, deliberate, an anchor in the storm of his doubt. “I love this. I love you.”
It broke him. He began to move, a deep, punishing rhythm that stole the breath from her lungs. Each thrust was a brutal affirmation, a physical echo of her words. The bedframe slammed against the wall in a steady, percussive beat. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, his eyes never leaving hers, as if he could drill the truth of her declaration directly into his soul.
“Mine,” he grunted, sweat beading on his brow as he drove into her. “Your love is mine. This cunt is mine. You don’t get to change your mind.”
“I won’t,” she gasped, meeting his thrusts with a desperate upward surge of her hips. “It’s yours. Fuck, yes, just like that. Give it to me.”
He shifted his angle, hammering into a spot that made her vision blur. Her pleas dissolved into a string of filth. “Oh god, right there, you feel so fucking deep, you’re splitting me open, yes, please, I love your cock, I love it—”
Her orgasm tore through her with a silent scream, her body clamping around him in violent, rhythmic pulses that milked his length. The sight of her coming undone beneath him, the feel of her convulsing around him, the echo of her love confession ringing in his ears—it was too much.
With a final, ragged shout, he plunged deep and came. His release was a hot, endless flood, pumping into her depths, a primal marking that felt like the only answer he had to give. He collapsed on top of her, his weight driving her into the mattress, his face buried in the sweat-damp crook of her neck. They lay there, joined, panting, sticky, as the morning sun climbed higher, exposing them completely.
A long time later, he rolled off her. The silence returned, but it was different now. Softer.
Her hand found his on the sheet, threading her fingers through his. She examined their joined hands—her small, pale ones, his large, scarred, and currently stained ones.
“I have to go to the café today,” she said quietly. “I’ve missed three shifts. Maria will fire me.”
The mundane concern was so absurdly normal it was jarring. He stared at the ceiling. “Call her. Tell her you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“You will be if you try to walk out that door.” The words were flat, devoid of their usual threatening heat. It was a simple statement of fact.
She turned her head to look at him. “You can’t keep me locked in this penthouse forever, Enzo.”
“Watch me.” He said it without looking at her, but his grip on her hand tightened. “It’s not safe.”
“Because of the leak? You said it was handled.”
“One leak gets plugged, another spring opens.” He finally looked at her. The vulnerability from the night was gone, replaced by the cold, calculating don. “Until I know the landscape, you stay here. Where I can control the environment.”
She sat up, the sheet pooling at her waist. “I need to work. I need… air. I need to be a person, not just a possession in your bed.”
He sat up too, moving with a lethal grace. He caught her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “You are the most important possession I have ever had. And you will stay where I can protect you. That’s not a negotiation, Sofia. The world outside these walls wants to use you to get to me. Or worse, hurt you to hurt me. I won’t allow it.”
Frustration warred with a dark, unwelcome thrill at his words. “So what? I just… live here? Wait for you to come home? That’s not a life.”
“It’s the only life you have now.” He released her chin and swung his legs out of bed. He stood, naked and unselfconscious in the sunlight, a king in his gilded cage. “Get dressed. I have meetings. Marco will be outside the door. Anything you need, you tell him. He’ll get it for you.”
He walked toward the bathroom, leaving her sitting in the rumpled, sex-scented sheets. The love confession still hung in the air, but now it was tangled with the stark reality of barbed wire wrapped in velvet.
“Enzo,” she called out.
He paused at the bathroom door, not turning.
“I meant what I said.”
He was silent for a long moment. Then, just a faint nod. “I know.”
The bathroom door clicked shut. A moment later, the shower turned on. Sofia stared at the closed door, then down at her own body, marked by his mouth, his hands, his cock. She could still feel him inside her. She was his possession. His loved, treasured, desperately needed possession.
And as she heard the shower run, she realized, with a cold clarity that settled in her stomach, that her first real task in this new life was to figure out how to turn that possession into power. She slipped out of bed, her bare feet silent on the polished floor. She walked to the massive window, pulling the drape aside just enough to peer down at the street forty stories below.
A black SUV was parked at the curb. Two large men in dark suits stood beside it, their postures alert, their heads constantly scanning. Marco and another one. Her guards. Her wardens.
She let the drape fall back. The door to the ensuite opened, and Enzo emerged, a towel slung low on his hips, steam curling around him. He looked at her by the window, her nude body silhouetted against the heavy fabric.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, his voice soft. It wasn’t a command.