reply. I can’t. Everything has escaped me but this hollow feeling sinking within my belly. I can’t stand it anymore.
“Care to share?” Frank says, his voice thick with yearning.
Alek releases the woman’s breast but doesn’t stop playing with the other woman as he addresses Frank. “I’ll only share if you do.”
Gasping, I narrow my eyes at him. There’s no way I’ll be treated like nothing but a whore. But then I realize I need to get off my pedestal. I’m exactly like these women, consenting to be used by two men.
Tears fill my eyes.
It seems I’m nothing but a plaything to everyone in this room.
Alek looks at me, confusion flickering across his hard features as he notices my eyes are wet with tears. But I won’t give him the satisfaction of letting him see me cry.
“No, Ella isn’t to be shared with anyone.” It’s Santo who speaks in place of Frank.
Alek’s lips twist into a sinister grin. “She looks like an acquired taste anyway.”
Unable to hold back my tears, one tumbles down my cheek, betraying my hurt. I don’t wipe it away. I want him to know he wounded me, but that’s okay because I hurt him too.
What was once pure and good has now turned into…this.
Santo kisses my cheek. “Go wait in the car, bambina.”
In this situation, I hate that Santo is the one who cares most about my feelings. Alek snickers cruelly, and as he pushes the women away, only to toss the blonde onto the couch, I know the Alek who once cared for me is long gone.
Frank and Santo are like ravenous beasts, charging for the remaining women. As pants hit the floor and women’s bodies are bended to please, I stagger for the door, turning over my shoulder one final time to see the man I love breaking what’s left of my heart as he claims a body that isn’t mine.
Alek
POPPING ANOTHER ANTACID tablet, I rub my chest, hoping this heartburn will go away. But it doesn’t look promising. Last night still lingers on my tongue, and I want it gone. Reaching for my glass of scotch, I toss it back, eager for the strong liquor to drown out the memories of me consorting with three women, but it doesn’t. It only highlights their moans of pleasure.
“What do you think?” Pavel asks sharply.
I have no idea what he’s talking about, and he knows it. I need to focus, but all I can see are Santo’s fucking hands and lips all over Ella. She didn’t shy away. She looked me straight in the eye, daring me to react.
But I don’t understand how she expected me to behave.
She told me she didn’t want me anymore. That even though I pushed her away for her own safety, it didn’t make a difference. She couldn’t forgive. She’d moved on.
Undoing another button on my shirt, I look at Saint, Willow, and Pavel. “Is it hot in here?”
Saint shakes his head, smirking. “That’s your guilty conscience.” He’s right.
Although I never slept with anyone last night—having chickened out at the last minute—tasting another woman, well, three women, has left me with this utter guilt. It doesn’t matter that Ella isn’t interested in me anymore because that doesn’t change my feelings for her. Even though she willingly shared with me that she wants both Santo and Frank, I still want her.
“She isn’t there because she wants to be,” Willow says, forever the optimist.
“I appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but she blatantly told me otherwise. I hurt her, and now she’s dealing with that pain by living with two men.” I clench my jaw so hard, my teeth rattle under the force.
“We’ve all said things we don’t mean,” Willow reasons. “I saw it, Alek. Something’s going on.”
Leaning back in my seat, I rock gently. “What’s going on is that Ella can’t forgive me. She now knows the truth, so if what you say is true, then why didn’t she tell me? She looked quite comfortable to me.”
Willow works over her bottom lip in thought. “She’s doing it for a reason. I refuse to believe otherwise.”
I wish I had Willow’s optimism, but she wasn’t there when Ella told me she didn’t want me. I hurt her horribly, and this isn’t fixable. I wish it was, but I’m a realist…which is why I’m really going to kill Santo and Frank Macrillo.
The deal I made with Santo may have seemed like I bended to his demands, but the truth is, I need him to