The Skull King: Skull #1 Read online

  “My husband is a very powerful man.”

  “As am I.” I scooted to the edge of the stool so I could get closer to her, so my knee touched hers. My right hand moved to her thigh, my fingertips slightly underneath the hem of her dress on her thigh. Her skin was so smooth, so soft. My hand ached to inch farther, to approach the apex of her thighs and channel my fingers into her wet cunt. I would get her nice and ready before I could sink deep inside her with ease.

  She didn’t push my fingers away. In fact, she took a deep breath like my touch brought her to life. It invigorated her, sent warmth to her cold extremities. Her husband probably couldn’t elicit this same response from her even if he tried. He was probably some authoritative asshole who bought her things instead of giving her love.

  “It’s a shame.” My fingers squeezed her thigh gently. “A gorgeous woman like you should be thoroughly satisfied every night before going to bed—and not by her own hand. Let me be of service to you.”

  She grabbed my wrist but didn’t push me away immediately. Instead, she squeezed me, felt the cords of my wrists and forearms before she gently pushed my hand off her leg.

  “Leave him.”

  “Not an option.”

  “Why?” He wouldn’t like it, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  “We don’t have a traditional marriage… I’ll just leave it at that.” She took a long sip like she was purposely trying to drink in an effort to dissociate herself from reality. “You should go. He’ll be here any minute, and I’ll have a difficult time explaining why your hand is on my thigh.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A business associate. Sometimes my husband has me do these deals for him. Says I can be persuasive…”

  I looked her up and down, from her perfect tits to her perfect legs. She could get anything she wanted, flaunting her sexiness like that. “I bet.” I pulled out my wallet and left the cash on the table. I also pulled out a business card, a single white card with a black skull on the back. “Call me if you change your mind. I’d be happy to be your next climax.” I scooted to the very edge of the stool, leaned forward, and then scooped my hand into those luscious black strands. I gripped the back of her hair tightly before I pressed my mouth lightly against hers. Plump and soft, her lips tasted like candy. So sweet and addictive, they made me wonder if she tasted that way everywhere, especially between her legs. My mouth treasured the initial contact, the surprise in her lips as they parted slightly.

  She kissed me back, invited me to take her mouth. Her kiss was still restrained, like she hadn’t gotten past the shock that I’d kissed her right in the middle of the bar, not giving a damn if the person she was meeting walked through the door and saw us.

  My fingers sank deeper into her hair until I cradled the back of her neck. My mouth moved with hers a little faster, with a little more passion. Spontaneously, I gave her my tongue, and she gave me hers. The chemistry between us was so volatile and natural, and I was pissed I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it for the rest of the night. All I would have was the memory of this kiss and my imagination.

  She was a great kisser. She kissed me like she hadn’t been kissed in years, like her sexual desires hadn’t been fulfilled in a decade. Her hand moved to my bicep, and she kissed me like she never wanted me to stop, as if she’d been sucked in a black hole and she couldn’t get out.

  I wanted to keep this going, but since it led nowhere, it was just torture. It was meant to be a sexy goodbye, but then it turned into a fortune-telling, a tale of what could be if she came home with me. I ended the kiss abruptly then stood up. “I’ll be thinking of you tonight—as I know you’ll be thinking of me.” I walked away from the bar and headed out the door into the warm summer air. The sun had been gone for hours, but the heat from the rays remained behind. I walked to the edge of the window but stopped to turn around, to see if she would save my card or toss it.

  She picked up the card and stared at it for a long time, her fingertips resting against her lips like she couldn’t believe that kiss had just happened. She stared at the skull for a long time and probably noticed there was no name written anywhere. It just had my phone number and “The Underground” on it. She opened her clutch and slipped it inside.

  I smiled to myself and kept walking.

  She would call—eventually.

  2

  Cassini

  I lay back on the lounge chair in the shade while looking over the pool. We were on the top of a hill, so the city of Florence could be seen past the property a few miles into the distance. I read a book on my lap while I relaxed in my swimsuit, enjoying the summer heat while my cold drink perspired.

  Every few pages, my mind would start to wander.

  Wander to the man I met a few nights ago.

  He didn’t have a name, and his business card was even more unusual. The only detail was the sketch of a black skull. It was fossilized bone with a snake protruding out of the eye socket. I googled anything related to skulls online but couldn’t find anything relevant.

  I had no idea who this guy was.

  But when I noticed him in the bar, I thought he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

  With fair skin that reminded me of snow and blue eyes like the Arctic Sea, he was a pretty man on a rugged frame. He was ripped and lean with muscle, all the striations in his forearms noticeable with the slight movements he made. His forearms and neck were corded, a man so tight that even his veins protruded through the skin.

  His jawline was his sexiest feature, with a light shadow of hair that hardly covered the strong bones of his features. His t-shirt fit him snugly, fighting the planes of his pecs and the individual grooves of muscle that pressed against his shirt. On top of that, he was tall. When he stood up to join me, I could see he had to be easily over six feet tall.

  It’d been ages since I’d had good sex, passionate sex with a handsome man after a night on the town. I even missed the mediocre sex I received from men I never called again. Sex with my husband was nothing but work, a duty I had to fulfill because of the promise I’d made.

  A promise I’d regret for the rest of my life.

  Seeing a man like that across the room only made me miss it more, made me want to sink my claws into his back and ask him to fuck me in the bathroom. When he touched my thigh, I wanted to go home with him right then and there.

  And that kiss…

  I’d touched myself to that kiss so many times.

  It always made me come good and hard.

  But I wanted the real thing. I wanted real passion, real lust. I wanted a man on top of me, a man whom I desired. When I’d agreed to the trade, I hadn’t realized exactly what I was giving up. I hadn’t realized that my selfless act would be the dumbest and most humiliating choice of my life.

  Now I was stuck here—until death do us part.

  I wanted to call that man the next time my husband was away, but it was so risky. If I ever got caught, I knew terrible things would happen. I would be fine, but my lover would be tortured and killed.

  I never had been specifically asked to be faithful to him, especially since he wasn’t faithful to me, but I assumed it was implied.

  Maria, the housemaid, came to my side. “Mrs. Salazar?”

  I lifted my sunglasses to look at her. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Salazar is asking for you.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No, Mrs. Salazar.” Maria returned to the house.

  I grabbed my cover-up and tied it around my body before I walked into the house. It was a big place, two stories and ten thousand square feet—and that wasn’t including the backyard, the pool, or the front yard. From an outside point of view, some people might think I was lucky to live such a luxurious life, but I’d take my tiny apartment over this any day.

  I walked into the house and found him in the living room. His jacket was thrown across the couch, and he stood in his slacks and his collared shirt. He was fifteen years older than me, and hi
s age showed in the corners of his eyes and his mouth. He wasn’t the ugliest man in the world, but I didn’t find him the least bit attractive. He had oily hair that seemed to be saturated with hair gel, and even his eyebrows seemed greasy without product. He had the hairiest chest I’d ever seen, and that was just one of his many turn-offs. “Hello, Lucian.” I wore heeled wedges as I crossed the hardwood floor toward him.

  He met my gaze, clearly in a bad mood after the day he’d had. “You’re gaining weight.” He looked me up and down, seeing the way the bikini fit underneath my loose cover-up.

  Considering how much that beautiful man wanted me the other night, I knew I didn’t have a weight problem.

  “I told you to stay the same weight. That was one of my only rules.”

  Another woman might be offended, but I certainly wasn’t. I didn’t care what Lucian’s opinion of me was. “You’ve gained weight.”

  His eyes narrowed at the offense. “But I own you. And you own nothing.” He turned back to the table and searched through his papers. “Did you give me the paperwork from Carl?”

  “Yes, but I have a copy if you lost it.”

  “I didn’t lose it. If you have a copy, then you didn’t give it to me.”

  “I gave you the original. Mine is a photocopy.” I came to his side and looked through his paperwork. On his left hand, he wore a gold ring with a black stone in the middle. That was the ring he put on the day of our wedding, and according to my observation, he hardly ever wore it. But he did screw whores and fanatics often. “Here.” I found the papers hidden between two folders.

  He took it with a growl, like it was still my fault it had been misplaced in the first place. “Alright. Then that’s settled.”

  I wanted to return to my lounger so I could get lost in my book and forget the horrible reality of my life. “If that’s all, I’d like to return to the pool.”

  “Yes. But I want you in my bed tonight after dinner.”

  Lucian and I had separate bedrooms. It’d been that way since the beginning, and I only joined him when he wanted sex. I treated his commands as a duty because I’d signed up for this and vowed not to fight. So when he asked for sex, I had to open my legs and obey. “Alright.” I walked out of the room and back to the pool.

  I never allowed the beautiful surroundings to fool me. This was a prison, a prison with no escape until Lucian died. He was much older than I was, but he was still only forty years old, so he had a lot of life left to live. If he lived to be ninety, then I would have to spend a lifetime in suffering. I would be seventy-five by the time he was gone, and I would have no interest in men or sex by that time. I would only have the children I made with him to keep me company in my last years of life.

  It was a depressing thought.

  I tried to remind myself that it could be worse. Lucian said insulting things to me from time to time, but he rarely ever hit me. He focused on work and lived his life and didn’t spend much time terrorizing me. He told me when he wanted sex, and when he was satisfied, he left me alone until he was horny again. Whenever he had special occasions, he expected me to look my best and be the star of the evening. He seemed to care more about making me his trophy wife than actually having a relationship with me.

  So it could definitely be worse.

  Lucian never lasted long when he fucked me. Sex took five minutes at the longest. Since this was the only sex I would ever get for the rest of my life, I tried to enjoy it as much as possible, but because I wasn’t attracted to his appearance or his spirit, that was nearly impossible.

  So I pictured the man from the bar instead.

  The mysterious stranger with the skull on his card.

  I closed my eyes as Lucian rocked into me, and I pretended that gorgeous man was the one thrusting inside me. I pictured his stunning blue eyes, his hard jawline, the masculine rasp of his voice.

  I felt myself grow wet.

  “You like this, sweetheart?” Lucian pressed his face into my neck and kept thrusting, the hair on his chest scratching the soft skin of my breasts.

  My hands clung to his back, and I imagined that muscular man on top of me. I visualized my nails slicing his skin. I pictured how big his dick must be, how tight his body was. That made me wetter. My imagination was so powerful, it also made me come.

  Lucian came at the same time. “Fuck…” He filled me with his come and stayed on top of me, so lazy that he left all of his weight on me until I could barely breathe.

  I never orgasmed during sex, and that climax was particularly weak, probably because I knew this man wasn’t the one from the bar. My imagination wasn’t strong enough to truly convince my body that it was experiencing that fantasy.

  Lucian finally rolled off me and onto his side of the bed. He lay still, closed his eyes, and was asleep just minutes later.

  I lay there, filled with such emptiness that the sorrow nearly swallowed me whole. I’d sold my soul to this man to save someone I loved, but that ended up being a mistake. My life had no meaning, and every day felt worse than the last. There was no point to any of this. I spent my time trying to find something to do because I wasn’t allowed to work or go to school. I just lay by the pool all day in the summer, and in the winter, I took long baths and drank as much liquor as I could.

  That wasn’t really living.

  I’d contemplated suicide before. There was no way out of this unless he died...or I did. But I had two brothers who loved me deeply, and they would never get over my suicide. It would haunt them every single day, even when they reached their seventies. I had to stay for them, no matter how hard things got.

  No matter how much sorrow I felt.

  3

  Cassini

  Lucian bought me a car and granted me a generous amount of freedom—after I fought for those things. I told him our marriage would be much happier if I had the ability to go shopping, to meet friends for drinks, or just to get a cup of coffee while reading a book in a café. There was nowhere for me to hide, so I wasn’t a flight risk.

  As the time passed, he stopped being concerned about me.

  I think he actually trusted me.

  I drove into Florence and entered the large pasta factory my brothers owned. Our grandparents opened it in the early 1900s, and it’d been passed down through the generations until my brothers inherited it. I was part of that inheritance too, but then I married Lucian, and my involvement in the business was eliminated.

  I stepped inside the pasta room and saw the different types of pasta dangling from the drying rack in the center of the table. There were also various cheeses on the wooden table, like they’d been pairing them with the sauces. My brothers oversaw the manufacturing, but they also invented new recipes to accompany the pastas my family had been producing for generations.

  Case pushed through the double doors wearing black jeans and a black t-shirt. He had drops of alfredo on his clothing and skin because he must have forgotten to put on his apron. A slight look of surprise entered his gaze when he saw me. “Didn’t know you were stopping by.”

  “Do I need to ask my older brother if I can visit him?”

  “No. Because if you did, I would always say no.”

  I swatted his arm playfully. “How’s it going over here?”

  “Same as usual. Business is good. But do you really care? Or do you just want free food?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, I don’t just want free food. But…if you just made some pasta, I’ll eat it.”

  Case rolled his eyes. “And the truth comes out. Let’s go.” He led me out of the pasta room and into the back area where they had a dining table near the fireplace. The rest of the factory was exactly as someone would imagine it, lots of machines with people working to prepare, package, and label the pasta.

  Case prepared a plate of fettuccini alfredo for me and placed it on the dining table. “Red or white?”

  It was only noon, but it was never too early to drink for our family. “Red.”

  He poured me a glas
s and left the bottle behind, knowing I would want more.

  I took a seat and started to eat. “Lucian said I’m gaining weight, but I really don’t care.” I stabbed the pasta, twirled it around in my spoon, and then placed it into my mouth.

  Case sat beside me with his papers gathered around. He handled all the bookkeeping for the business, doing the overhead expenses and the payroll. My younger brother, Dirk, was responsible for shipments and factory maintenance. Case had never had a typical office like most people did. He liked to work at the table out in the open—just the way my father had. He didn’t respond to my comment about Lucian. He never talked about my husband, asked about him, or even said his name. He had been strongly against my decision to marry Lucian, and to this day, he was still pissed about it—although I couldn’t blame him.

  “How are you guys?” I asked, talking in between bites.

  “Nothing new.” He kept working, the strong and silent type. He was just like Father, saying very little, even when asked a direct question. He looked a lot like my father did when he was young. He had that dark, thick hair, green eyes similar to mine, and classically handsome Italian looks. Growing up, all my friends liked him. They liked Dirk too, but since Case was the older one, the girls went crazy for him.

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  He didn’t bother answering the question at all.

  “Case, you’re always such pleasant company,” I said sarcastically.

  “I don’t want to talk about my personal life. I’ve already told you that.”

  “Alright, then what do you want to talk about?”

  “Nothing, honestly.” He continued with his paperwork.

  I didn’t take his standoffish attitude personally because I knew he loved me, but ever since I’d gotten married a year ago, our relationship had changed. He was disappointed in me for the decision I’d made, and he’d never gotten over it. He couldn’t swallow his anger and leave it in the past. He continually wanted me to know he was angry. “You really need to let it go, Case. It’s done. We need to move on.”