Page 69 of Mafia Bride
“He’s the king,” Loretta says as she hands me a wet, gold-rimmed tray. “If the king wants to remove your resistance, the king takes it away. If he doesn’t want to remove it himself, he’ll wait until you can’t resist any longer.”
“What’s the point?”
“The point is his satisfaction.”
“Of course.”
“Now, little girl,” she scolds. “He’s not some pathetic college boy who wants a warm place for his seed. He doesn’t just want to stick it in. He wants surrender. He wants you to renunciate your will to him. And not from fear, or exhaustion, but trust, so that when he dominates you and hurts you, you’re both stronger. And for that, he needs total consent.”
Placing the tray on the counter, I barely hear the part about being stronger, because I’m stuck on the phrase before.
“Hurts me?”
“He’s Vesuvius. When he explodes he leaves destruction behind.”
“But I don’t want to be Pompeii,” I whine.
She takes the tray and opens a cabinet.
“Maybe that was a bad analogy.”
“I hope so.”
On tiptoes, she puts the tray on a high shelf.
“It’s more like Rome. Sacked and empty. But it comes back stronger.”
“None of those places agreed to be sacked or covered in ash or any of it.” I dry the last wineglass as if I’m being graded on my skill for it. “They were just minding their own business when they were hit.”
Of course, that’s not entirely true. Pompeii was built at the base of a live volcano by blithe men with illusions of invincibility, and Rome had been pissing people off for centuries. Loretta doesn’t point any of this out. She just puts her tableware away.
“What did he call you?” she finally says. “Forzetta?”
“Is that his name for you, too?”
She smiles then tightens her mouth in a good-humored denial.
“No, but it tells you something. He trusts you can take it. That you’re Rome, not Pompeii. When you finally give him what you know you have to, and you do it the way you must, he’ll treat you like a toy he wants to break and throw away. But he doesn’t throw his toys away.”
She spreads her arms, as if not only indicating the house and the space around it, but his presence in her life.
“I don’t want this.” I spread my arms the way she does, imitating and mocking her.
“Forzetta,” Loretta laughs throatily. “Re Santino uses his volunteers the way the roots use the dirt. As if his life depends on it. Your body is the dirt and his cock will root inside you and destroy you.”
“Just, stop!”
“You don’t like that I use the wordcock?” She opens her plump lips widely at that last word, enunciating it fully. “You are like a child?”
“I’ve dealt with plenty of...cock.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from blushing, because Loretta sizes me up as if she knows the back-seat fumbling I did with Will Gershon isn’t anything near plenty but, to me it’s quite enough. I barely got out of there with my virginity intact.
“You will worship his. You will worship his cock like the filthy volunteer slut you are. Because that is the power of him. He saves pleasure for when you deserve it. Intense pleasure you can only dream of. He eatsficalike a thirsty man in a desert.”
She can really serve up a hot metaphor, and I’m eating them like a hostage on a cookie. I am so turned on I can’t breathe. Never in my life have I wanted to meet a man’s expectations more than I do now.
“Both of us, we share this in common.” Loretta puts her hand on my arm. “Whether you realize it or not, you and I need to be under rule of a king who plays rough, and we both start out ashamed of how well this role suits us.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Flames tear through my core and it’s confusing, because the shame touches my most erotic places, and I need to feel it as much as I feel the fire. I shrug her off and want to tell her tostop just stop, but I’m suddenly achingly tired. Exhausted. My eyes burn and shoulders droop, my entire body begs for rest.
