????MAFIA POSSESSION ????????
( HIS ADDICTION ????)
BY, ROYAL DIADEM ❣️
CHAPTER 18
Copy and have your life shortened ????
( TAKE ME TO BED)
CAROLINE SNUCK glances at Luca out of the corner of her eye. He drovecarefully even when he was clearly on edge. Tension threatened to snap the
visible veins in his hands on the wheel and his eyes never stilled. Thefli-cked quickly between the mirrors the windows and the dashboard. Maybehe was just as frightened as she was. She’d never considered it, because healways seemed so in control, but when she looked closely, maybe it was allan act.
He lied to his father. That had to be nerve-wracking at best. If she werein his place, even if she believed what she was doing was right she’d bescared out of her mind to lie to Don Moretti. So maybe she’d misjudged
Luca. She still didn’t understand him, couldn’t pretend to, but that phonecall changed something in her perception of him. The way theophthalmologist fli-ps lenses in front of your eyes and asks you, which isclearer, one or two? Except both lenses are blurred out of focus and neitheris really better,
but they’re different in some indescribable way.
Caroline stole another glance at her kidnapper, the hardened mafia thugwho drugged her and locked her in a cabin for a week. And then promised
he wouldn’t lie to her, offered to help her, protected her from his father, andkis-sed her. The slant of his jaw could cut the hand that slapped it, but hismouth looked soft and slightly pouted in concentration. He cut a
strikingprofile with a strong nose, but it turned up slightly at the tip, almost
delicate. Even his features were contradictory. Graceful even in theirtension. Perpetually composed whatever came his way.
Though when hekis-sed her, she realized that composure concealed a great deal of pa-ssion
and… possession. And it scared her a little to think how much she wanted it in that moment. His soft li-ps concealed sharp teeth, and she had wantedthem to rip her to shreds.
The sunlight shifted behind buildings as they pa-ssed and fell on his facefor a beautiful, brief moment. His skin glowed gold, his eyes reflected
mahogany, he was angelic, divine in that instant. And then shadow fellagain and he was a flawed human just like Caroline. She turned away to
look out her window. Perception could be tricky. She had an idea in herhead of what Luca Moretti was like before she met him, and she’d been
looking for behaviors that backed up her prejudice. She hadn’t reallywanted to see him as a multi-dimensional person. But she couldn’t get overthe fact that he lied for her. She couldn’t rationalize that fact with her earlya-ssessment of him and it was vaguely upsetting that she had to admit hishumanity.
“Are you hungry?” He broke the silence and her head jerked over tolook at him.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said. She hadn’t been thinking about food, butshe could eat.
He didn’t look away from the road. “Is fast food okay?”
She paused to size him up. Completely composed. Less visible tensionnow that he was putting on a performance. “You know how I usually eat.”
She didn’t mean for it to come out as biting as it did. His jaw tensed, thenrelaxed again. That was his only reaction.
He pulled into a drive throu-ghand didn’t ask her what she wanted. “I’lltake a bacon cheddar burger with a large onion ring and a cherry Coke.” He
glanced at Caroline. “And a double cheeseburger, hold the pickles, and amedium fry and a large Sprite.”
It hit her again how easy it would be for him to make her life miserable.
With everything he knew about her, he could torture her in the smallestways that would drive her insane. It also hit her how despite how much she
knew about the Moretti name,
she really knew next to nothing about Luca.
Luca liked his coffee with sugar and his eggs fried, and his toast withhoney. He didn’t want to kill her for some reason and lied to his father forher sake. That was all she knew about him. But he knew that she hatedpickles and needed creamer in her coffee and hated scary movies butwatched them, anyway. He knew what she did for work, how she spent her
free time, her interests and hobbies,
and so many little, tiny details that she wouldn’t have even expressed out loud to people. And while that was alittle creepy, there was some odd intimacy to being known so completely.
He pulled up to the next window and handed her the brown paper bag.
She pa-ssed him his onion rings and his burger. He thanked her and drove insilence.
At first, it felt like a disadvantage to know so little about her kidnapper,
but it seemed like every new thing she found out only made him more of apuzzle and only intrigued her more.
Who was he under that perfect, pretty
mask of composure? She’d seen just a glimpse, a flutter in the curtain, toofast to really register. But that glimpse had been thrilling. He kept firebehind his cool facade and as much as she hated to admit it, she liked theway it burned.
And if he were the sort of person who would lie for her, who would give
her a towel and tell her to cover herself instead of raping her and then kis-s
her like that, she wanted to trust him. And wanting to trust him turned herstomach a little bit because he did kidnap her, but he hadn’t killed her yet
and it didn’t seem like he was going to. And trusting him would meanaccepting that her father’s death was an accident. But couldn’t it be? He
could be right. He seemed so convinced. But that would undo years andyears of vendetta she built up against the Morettis, and she wasn’t sure she
could accept that. He would help her
find the truth, and like he said, one ofthem would be wrong, but at least they would know.
Luca pulled off on the dirt road to the cabin and Caroline bumped along,
craning her neck to look up and see the moon out of the window. Lucaparked the car and Caroline got out before he could open her door for her.
She took the box to the living room and set it down.
Luca walked slowly and sat heavily on the far side of the couch. Hiseyes were trained on the ceiling above them, brow slightly furrowed.
Caroline wondered why and then she heard it too. High pitched mo-ans and
low grunts filtering throu-ghthe floorboards with the occasional scra-pe ofsomething over the floor. Not loud enough to be obtrusive, only there if you
listened for it.
She looked at Luca, feeling heat high on her cheeks. His brother andLorna were going at it. Luca dropped his head into his hand. “Let’s look atthis stuff, Caroline.”
She sat on the other side of the couch, more space between them thanwas necessary. They would ignore the fact of what was happening above them. What else could they do? Caroline opened the box and began sortingdocu-ments and photos and newspaper cli-ppings into piles on the coffee
table. “I guess we should start chronologically?” she suggested, trying veryha-rd to not think about the se-x happening upstairs.
“Yeah, that would make sense.” He sat forward to show his interest inthe subject at hand. “I guess for context I should know what a typical daylooked like for your dad, so we can see if there’s something out of the
ordinary.”
She picked up a folded piece of notebook paper with her own neat
handwriting. “Right after it happened, I wrote down what a usual day was
for him and all the deviations I saw within that last week.”
He accepted the paper and started reading. A louder noise from upstairshad Caroline blus-hing and Luca blinking rapidly at the paper in his hands.
He closed his eyes, then opened them, trying to focus. Another loud sound,higher and breathier. Luca inhaled sharply, then exhaled long and slow. Heshook his head, pointedly did not look at Caroline and read out loud, “Afterwork, returned home, fixed dinner or ordered in, watched tv until around11, and went to bed.” He looked up at Caroline. “What time of day did hedie?”
Caroline shuffled throu-ghsome papers. “That’s just it. The coroner’sreport put the time of death right around his lunch break at work.”
“From anaphylaxis,” Luca remembered and took the coroner’s reportthat she offered him.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s what it says, but I think it’s a load ofbullshit.” A long, low m-oan from upstairs. Caroline shut her eyes in an
extended wince. When she opened them, Luca was staring into the emptyspace in front of the couch. “I’ve done some of my own research, but why
don’t I take the time to look throu-ghall your notes and stuff here? That waywe’re on the same page with the same information.”
She nodded. “Yeah, sounds good.” Not talking right now soundedwonderful. Except that then there would be little to distract from the
distraction. A bump upstairs. Caroline pulled a paper from the top of a pileon the table and held it in front of her face to pretend to read. She wanted to
focus. Luca was going to help her find out what happened to her father,something that had been plaguing her for years. She really wanted to
concentrate on figuring everything out and putting all the pieces together and proving with absolute certainty once and for all that the Moretti Mafia
killed her father.
She couldn’t read the paper in her hands. The letters swam together in a
blurred sea of illegible gobbledygook. The more she tried not to listen to the
noise upstairs, the louder it got. Even Luca’s unbothered persona seemedoff. He su-cked the inside of his cheek between his teeth and frowned at thepapers in his hands.
Upstairs, a low, possessive growl that had Caroline coughing on hermissed breath. Unbidden, part of her brain wondered if Luca would sound
like that, since they were brothers. She tried to silence that voice by readingthe phone record in her hand, but suddenly her brain was listeningintentionally and trying to pick apart every sound and put together a rou-ghsketch of what might be happening. Her heart beat in her throat.
WouldLuca sound like that? Or would he be more collected? Less growly and
more lyrical? Or more growly and possessive?
He cleared his throat. “I think I agree that anaphylaxis is bullshit. Washe allergic to anything?”
“Bees and poison ivy,”
she said. “I don’t think he had drug allergies, butI was still in high school and I didn’t think I’d need to know that abouthim.”
Luca nodded, staring a hole into the paper he was holding. “Yeah. Areyou hungry? I could go get us some se-x.”
Caroline barely had time to blink
before he violently corrected himself, “Snacks.” He stood up. “Snacks.” Hedisappeared into the kitchen.
Caroline wanted to laugh at him, wanted to tease him for it, push herluck, roll her eyes. But it wasn’t funny. She knew it should be, but for some
reason the fact that he was as fixated on the extracurricular activities going
on above them as she was,
was kinda hot.
He returned with a bag of salt and vinegar chips, which he dropped
unceremoniously on the couch between them and did not touch. Carolinedidn’t touch them either. The silence, or rather the sound of Luca’s brother
giving an apparently very good fu-ck, was oppressive so Caroline took itupon herself to break it.
“I think it’s really hard.” She looked over and for
once, Luca’s face was completely unguarded. Unmasked horror wide-ned hiseyes parted his li-ps. Caroline floundered.
“I mean, it’s ha-rd to know what
happened. After so long and not being able to talk to him and me not havingpaid as close attention as I should have.”
Luca shook himself and regained his composure. “Yeah, for sure.You’ve got a lot here to get off—to go off of.” He cleared his throat.
“There’s a lot to work with.”
Again, Caroline wanted to laugh, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t funny. It
sent a tingly electricity throu-ghher bones and made her chest constrictaround her lungs. Above them, the unmistakable ban-ging of a headboardinto a wall and a loud mo-an.
Luca shot to his feet.
“I’m sorry, I just need some air.” He power walkedto the door, but not before Caroline registered the bulge in his pan-ts.
He was hard. Caroline’s mouth went dry. She sat there, unmoving, thebump of the headboard above her
pounding into her skull. She couldn’t
follow him out, not like that. But she couldn’t stay in here and listen to this
with her brain projecting images of Luca instead of his brother. She found
herself at the door before she realized she stood up. It wasn’t locked. Shecould run. But that was the last thing on her mind.
Luca leaned on the porch railing facing out toward the woods. He didn’tlook back when she stepped onto the porch. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
Moonlight silhouetted his hair and cast a silver glow on his shoulders.
Caroline reached out to touch his arm. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe to gethis attention, or to show him he wasn’t alone in feeling unbearablyawkward, or to drag him back inside because if she had to sit there and
listen to it then so did he. He turned around and something in Carolinebroke. His face split warm from the porch light and cool from the
moonlight in an outward expression of the duality that she so rarely saw,orange and blue, complementary colors. His mouth hung ajar, his dark eyes
somehow held all the stars, and somehow he looked fragile. Like he mightburst into a million pieces at any moment.
She stepped forward and rose to her tiptoes to kis-s him. He froze. Hedidn’t even breathe, and she wondered if he might actually shatter. But hisli-ps were just as warm and soft as they’d been before, and maybe if she
kis-sed him he would stop being breakable and start breaking her.
As she started to sink back down to her heels, his one hand wrappedaround her hip ha-rd enough to bruise and his other griped the back of her
neck to keep her from going anywhere. He kis-sed her back, even harderthan he had earlier and backed her up until the door knocked the air fromher lungs. He bit her li-p and li-cked into her mouth and it tasted likelightning.
His fingers curled into her hair, pulling it unintentionally, and sheshivered against him.
She could feel his hard-on pressed against her hip and
she wanted… she wanted. His li-ps slid away from hers and down her jaw toa sensitive spot below her ear. Teeth scra-ped the skin, and she clung to his
shirt for dear life. Her hands roamed down to slide under his shirt, but nosooner did her fingertips touch his warm skin, then he was grabbing herwrists and stepping back.
“What?” Caroline blinked at him. Why stop now?
He released her wrists and took another step back. Red li-ps partedaround heavy breaths and his dark eyes shone like a steel blade. “Weshouldn’t do this.” His voice was a sharp knife wrapped in velvet and she
knew it could hurt her in all the sweetest ways.
“Why not?” she asked. He clearly wanted her. There was no hiding thatin his tight jeans.
He gave her a look like she should know better. “In case you forgot, I’mmafia, we’re currently debating whether my family murdered your father,and I was supposed to kill you.”
Bitterness in that admission. It twisted a knife that Caroline didn’trealize she had in her chest. He didn’t want to be mafia or have killed her
father or kidnapped her. He didn’t like those facts. Caroline didn’t knowwhat she felt for Luca, but it wasn’t just lust and curiosity. There was
something more she couldn’t name.
She should have asked him if she was really still his captive
because shedidn’t feel like it. She should have reminded him that he was currently
working against the mafia and just lied to his father for her. She should haveexpressed her newfound uncertainty about the likelihood of the Morettis
actually murdering her father. But she didn’t. She stepped forward andkis-sed him again. The moment her li-ps touched his, she felt him crumble.
All of his collected nonchalance gave way to lethal, possessive grace. Heforced her back against the door and lifted her leg up to his hip. His kis-s
was bruising, and her skin burned everywhere he touched her.
He waslightning, and a tropical storm, and the swift, inky darkness of a de-ep cave.
She could lose herself too easily, had already lost herself, but that was allshe wanted.
This time, he didn’t startle away when her hands crept under his shirtover smooth skin and ha-rd muscles. He gripped her as-swith one hand and
high on her wa-istwith the
other. Just looking at a picture of Luca, you wouldn’t expect him to have this sort of power. Sitting in a room with him,
you might have an inkling. Caroline had been intimidated when he firstkidnapped her, but the absolute control he had was breathtaking. She
needed that kind of control in her life.
“Luca,” she breathed. He lifted his head from the curve of her neck andthe look in his eyes could only be described as predatory. “Take me to bedand make me forget.”
He stared at her, but she didn’t back down. It seemed like a smalleternity with the porch light casting sharp shadows on his face. Eventually,he nodded, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her inside.
TBc