Page 81 of The Beast Who Bought Me
“Okay,” Caligula sighs in a way that just pisses me off more.
But I can’t get hold of him and shake the hell out of him like I want to, because he’s fucking sick. So I stand instead and start pacing.
“What happened to your mother?” he asks after I’ve marched back and forth a few times.
“She’s dead. Years before my father. Yours?”
“She went back to Italy after I was born. Honestly, most of my life I assumed it was some kind of bloodline arrangement, you know? I can’t remember the last time I spoke to her.”
I don’t really care about his mother. So I ask the question that’s been on my mind. “How come you’re still a virgin?”
He’s lost the red blotchiness of anger that he had before, but my question makes him pink up a little. “I’m not sure how to answer that.”
“You were savvy enough to turn a room full of kingpins rabid to get a chance at you during the auction. So how come you never got laid before? There something wrong with you?”
“There is nothingwrongwith me,” he snaps, nose lifting in the air as though I’ve offended him. “I just…”
“Just what?”
He puts down the bowl. “I’m tired, Dami. I need to sleep.”
“You finish that sentence and I’ll let you sleep.”
It takes a lot of hard eye contact for him to see that I’m serious. “You know why,” he says at last, clipped. “Because of my grandfather.”
I snort. “You had a thing for him? You Clemenzasaresick.”
“And you Giulianos live with your minds in the gutter,” he says, real anger in his voice. “You said it yourself—about Sammy. What you saved him from. You know my Family would have done it to me, too, if they’d known.”
I stop pacing, turn to him, fix him with a stare. “Yeah. I sure do know it. That’s another reason I hate them so much. And you fucking should, too.”
He smooths his hand over the quilt again, which Rosa made for me a few Christmases ago, the one she shook out and put over the unconscious Clemenza in my bed, just before I sent her off to call the nurse. “I told you before,” he says quietly. “Love and hate have nothing to do with Family.”
“You loved your father,” I point out.
“Yes,” he replies. The nose goes up in the air again. “I loved him because he protected me from my grandfather. So did NonnaMellie. My grandfather sensed that I wasn’t the hot-blooded hetero fucking-machine that his other grandsons were. AndIknew there was something different about me, too. So that’s why I stayed away from—from experimenting. I wanted to survive, Dami.” He looks me straight in the eye. “I still want to survive. And I’ll do whatever it takes.”
“Down to sucking my dick?”
“Down to sucking your dick,” he confirms.
I laugh. “At least you’re being honest about it now. Whoring yourself out for your granddaddy’s townhouse.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Dami. I can’t be both virginandwhore.” He gives a silky smile.
“Somehow,” I mutter, “you find a fucking way.”
His smile gets wider. “Have I hurt your feelings, Dami? Did you think Ienjoyedsucking that barbaric club between your legs?”
I take a few quick steps toward the bed before I catch myself. He doesn’t even shrink back, just watches me approach with that joyless smile that turns into a laugh when I pull up abruptly.
“For someone who wants to survive,” I say, “you’re sure doing your best to make me kill you.”
“But you can’t. Can you, Dami?”
“You think I care about some Bratva contract? If I want to spill your brains?—”
“Oh, I think you’d like nothing better. But still…you can’t. You won’t.”
