I groan when he rubs his stubbled cheek along the damp inside of my thighs. He suckles the skin and releases it, over and over, leaving tiny pink circles on my inner thighs. My clit throbs. I want his tongue there. Right there.
One stroke of his tongue and I’m on the cusp of exploding.
“Will you obey me?”
I nod frantically, my fingers forming into fists with the frustration of not being able to touch him, to reach him, to stroke his hair between my fingers while he licks me. He grasps my breasts and strokes my nipples while he drags his tongue over my throbbing sex. His words are hot and insistent against my body.
“Will you take your punishment when you disobey?”
Again, a frantic nod. Yes, yes, I’ll take my punishment in whatever sick version of dom and sub he wants to play, because I need him. I need him so badly I could cry.
“Tell me.” He suckles my clit while he thrusts two fingers in me. “Tell me you’re mine.” He pumps. I close my eyes at the sensation. His voice becomes insistent, angry. “Tell me you’ll marry me. Tell me no other man will ever touch what’s mine, Vittoria.” He pumps so hard, he sends spasms through my body. I whimper.
He’s manipulating me, and I don’t care. I might feel differently in the morning, when I’m sober and sane, but tonight, I don’t care.
My mind races, trying to fuse logic to logic.
Romeo Rossi is the head of this family, and if I give him what he wants, he’ll solidify that role. He thrives as leader, the natural order of things aligning with the universe.
I don’t know him, and yet he wants me to marry him. Marriage in this family may be convenience, a box to check off. There’s no love lost between any of them, I know this already.
Marriage to him means putting myself in danger, but I’m already there. I’m already under his father’s watchful eye. I’m penniless because I was swindled, and it’s because of me a man’s dead.
I nod. “I’m yours.” I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what he’ll demand of me. But in my sex-addled mind, it’s the only choice. “Yes. I’m yours.”
“Good girl,” he breathes, and with another stroke of his fingers on my clit, a delicious shudder warms my body, and the first spasm of ecstasy ripples through me. His touch is electric, and my response is so swift it’s almost violent. I close my eyes against the power of my climax, swimming in euphoria.
I come so hard and so long I’m breathless, the muscles in my body tense. I fall to the bed as the aftershocks ripple through me. My breathing comes in gasps. I open my eyes, coming back to Earth.
Slowly, gently, he strokes his fingers through my hair, smoothing it off my forehead and neatly behind my back. I feel the weight of it as his finger traces my hairline.
“Tonight, we played. But your punishment was real.” He reaches for the silk tie and unfastens my wrists. “I don’t enjoy watching you come to the edge of pleasure like this and leaving you hanging.”
I swallow, as he rubs the cinched part of my wrists to get the blood flowing again. “Don’t you?”
He shakes his head. “I have almost everything I want, Vittoria. Almost. Wealth. Fame. Respect. Power.” He leans in close to me. He bends and kisses my cheek. “All I need is you.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.” Romeo and Juliet
Romeo
I’ve never slept with a woman in my bed. So that’s another first.
Letting a woman get to me… that is a first, too.
I climb in beside Vittoria. She’s already half asleep, her arm tossed over her head on the pillow. I never saw a woman come so hard. Fucking rewarding.
But I won’t fuck her. Not tonight.
I lay beside her for hours while she sleeps, staring at the canopy above my bed that hides the ceiling that’s so far up it fades into darkness. I have to think. Plan. Plot.
I’m used to not sleeping. My father’s been Don in name only for a while now. As acting Don, the weight of the Family comes on my shoulders, so it’s not unusual for me to be woken from sleep or to go to bed when the sun’s beginning to rise. Tonight’s no exception.
Narciso Rossi’s been pushed over the edge. I don’t trust him. And we still don’t know why Vittoria’s even here, why her name was in my grandfather’s will to begin with.
Why her?
I finally strip off my clothes and curl up next to her. Dead asleep, she nestles closer. I inhale and hold her to me. I breathe in and out. So this is why people share a bed. I never knew. There’s a comfort in having her here tucked in my arms, my breathing matching hers.