Born in Blood Collection Volume 1 - Cora Reilly Page 0,34

them about our wedding night? Nobody can know what happened. It would make me look weak.” His lips tightened with regret. Regret for having spared me and gotten himself in the position of depending on my lying skills.

“Weak because you didn’t want to rape your wife?” I whispered.

Luca’s fingers on my hip tightened. I hadn’t even realized they were still there. Make him want to be good to you. Bibiana’s words flitted through my mind. Luca was a monster, there was no doubt about it. He couldn’t be anything else in order to survive as a leader in our world, but maybe I could make him keep the monster in chains when he was with me. It was more than I’d hoped for when he’d led me toward the bedroom last night.

Luca smiled coldly. “Weak for not taking what was mine for the taking. The tradition of bloody sheets in the Sicilian mafia is as much a proof of the bride’s purity as of the husband’s relentlessness. So what do you think it will say about me that I had you lying half-naked in my bed, vulnerable and mine, and yet here you are untouched as you were before our wedding?”

“Nobody will know. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Why should I trust you? I don’t make a habit of trusting people, especially people who hate me.”

I rested my palm against the cut on his arm, feeling his muscles flex beneath my touch. It felt as if I were touching stone. How was it possible that muscles could be unyielding like bone? Make him be good to you, make him love you. “I don’t hate you.” He narrowed his eyes, but it was mostly the truth. I would have hated him if he had forced himself on me. I certainly hated what marriage to him meant for me, but I didn’t know him well enough for real hate. Maybe it would come with time. “And you can trust me because I am your wife. I didn’t choose this marriage, but I can at least choose to make the best out of our bond. I have nothing to gain from betraying your trust, but everything to gain by showing you that I’m loyal.”

There was a flicker of something, maybe respect, in his expression. “The men waiting in that dining room are predators. They prey on the weak, and they’ve been waiting more than a decade for a sign of weakness from me. The moment they see one, they’ll pounce.”

“But your father—”

“If my father thinks I’m too weak to control the Famiglia, he’ll gladly let them tear me apart.”

What kind of life was it to have to be strong all the time, even around your closest family? At least I had my sisters and my brother, and even to some extent my mother and people like Valentina. Women were forgiven weakness in our world.

Luca’s eyes were hard. Maybe this would be the moment he’d decide it really wasn’t worth the risk and take me, but when his gaze finally settled back on my face, the darkness was at bay.

“What about Matteo?”

“I trust Matteo. But Matteo is hotheaded. He’d get himself killed trying to defend me.”

It was strange talking to Luca—to my husband—like this, almost like we knew each other. “Nobody will doubt me,” I said. “I’ll give them what they want to see.”

Luca sat up and my eyes were drawn to the tattoo over his heart, then took in the muscles of his chest and stomach. My cheeks heated when I met his gaze.

“You should be wearing more than this pitiful excuse for a nightgown when the harpies arrive. I don’t want them to see your body, especially your hips and upper thighs. It’s better when they wonder if I left marks on you,” he said. Then he smirked. “But we can’t hide your face from them.”

He bent over me and his hand came toward my face. I squeezed my eyes shut, flinching.

“This is the second time you thought I was going to hit you,” he said in a low voice.

My eyes flew open. “I thought you said…” I trailed off.

“What? That everyone expects you to have bruises on your face after a night with me? I don’t hit women.”

I remembered when he’d stopped my father from slapping me. He’d never raised his hand against me. I knew many men in the Chicago Outfit had a strange code of rules they followed. You couldn’t stab a man in the back, but you could cut his