CHAPTER EIGHT
Lena
I sit on the couch in the sparkling red dress and the matching heels, feeling the jeweled material against my skin and wondering for the hundredth time if it’s too tight, if I look silly, if Lorenzo is going to walk in here and start laughing when he sees me.
I close my eyes and try to hammer away the idea that this is a cruel trick out of my mind.
Just because something horrible happened to me before, it doesn’t mean it will again. My parents were crack addicts who died in a house fire, for God’s sake. Surely I deserve some small measure of happiness?
I open my eyes and let out a sigh, running my hands up and down my thighs. Nerves buzz around my body like they haven’t in all my eighteen years.
The stylist was a smiling lady named Jackie who really took her time with me and painted me in stylish yet subtle shades with her makeup brush.
But when I looked in the mirror, the idea reared its ugly head again.
This is a trick, a vicious voice whispered in my mind. This is all a twisted game. You don’t deserve this.
I startle to my feet when the door opens and Lorenzo walks in. His six foot six frame is coated in a tight fitting dark blue suit, his muscles bulging as a silver watch glints from his wrist. His salt and pepper hair is swept to the side and he must’ve shaved recently, because his square jaw cuts the air around his face.
His dark eyes widen when his gaze drinks me in.
“Jesus,” he whispers, walking into the living room in his freshly shined dress shoes. “You look like a gift, Lena.”
Relief floods through me as I sense the genuine desire in his voice and in his eyes.
“Just for you,” I whisper, still battling nerves every time I let sassy words like these loose. But I’m not going to live in fear. Lorenzo brings the fun out in me. “And who knows, maybe later you can unwrap me.”
Lorenzo stalks forward and brushes his thumb along my lip, and then lifts his hand to show me the rouge lipstick. He brings it to his mouth and sucks it clean, and we both know what he’s hinting at.
Later, he’s going to do the same with my hymen’s offering, as if we’re in pagan times and he’s going to take my blood as a sign that I’m his.
Oh, I want to give it to him so frickin’ badly.
“Do you know how crazy you drive me, Lorenzo?”
He smirks, and then offers me his arm. “I’m going to be the perfect gentleman,” he says with a heavy veil of irony. “No dark thoughts until after dinner. Come, m’lady.”
I giggle like crazy, slapping him on the arm. “You’re such a dork.”
He smirks wider, his eyes glinting. “Nobody’s ever called me that before. I love bantering with you, Lena.”
I feel like a balloon full of fuzzy warmth has been popped in my chest as we walk to the elevator together. We exchange a smile and everything in me relaxes, like just being close to Lorenzo has the effect of a drug.
It feels right and I battle away those dark, unfair thoughts that tell me this is a game, a trick, a cruel prank.
Not everything is twisted and evil, Lena, I try to tell myself. There are good people out there.
As we ride in the back of a sleek night black limo toward the restaurant, our bodies never stop trying to sink into each other.
One of his arms is wrapped around me, pulling me close to him, and I can feel the irrepressible solidity of his carved oak body. It sends thrills of longing and desire surging through me with the force of an electric hurricane, almost taking my breath away.
His other hand is laid on my knee, squeezing softly. I bite down to stop from letting out a shimmering cry. A part of me just wants to tell him to take us right to the hotel, my lust is beating the walls of my womb with oh so demanding hands, but I want tonight to be as perfect as he does.
We get to the restaurant, an elegant Italian place with a sign over the door reading La Duchessa in calligraphic script.
Lorenzo offers me his arm and I cling tightly as we walk to the front of the line.
I don’t let myself look into the expressions of those waiting in line, who we’re cutting in front of, because I just know they’re going to be oozing the sort of high school jealousy and hate that’ll just remind me of the past.
The last thing I need to be reminded of now is that hell.
Inside, warm fire like lights shine red orange from the walls, and several understated chandeliers hang from the ceilings. Their jewels are laid out in a staggered pattern, so that I can see the threaded silver chain connecting them, like miniature stars connected by glittering spider’s webs.
We take a booth in the corner, a prim and proper host with a neat jacket and a neater mustache pulling my chair out for me.
“Wow,” I whisper, when Lorenzo and I are alone. “This is amazing.”
“You deserve only the best,” he says, adjusting his cufflinks. When he sees me looking – they’re hard to miss, carved silver bullets – his eyes glint as he reads me. He’s so good at reading me. “They must seem quite savage to you.”
“I don’t know,” I say noncommittally, not wanting to ruin dinner.
“Honesty, my queen,” Lorenzo says, leaning forward and taking my hand in his, instantly sending waves of comforting safety through me. “We’re going to be together forever. We might as well get used to telling the truth, even if they’re hard truths, sometimes.”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “It’s nothing crazy. I get it. The cufflinks just remind me of …”
“My business?” he says, when I trail off. The lights flicker like flames in the threaded silver of his
