Considering how he might use me, might violate me in such a forbidden place—my breath came short. It was what he wanted, to inspire fear. Being at his mercy in the most vulnerable ways possible, surrendering to him, was like falling at the feet of a hungry beast.
My body answered the thought with a sharp but pleasurable pang somewhere deep in my depths. Oh, God. What was wrong with me?
“I suspect you’ll even like the feeling of surrender,” he’d said to me on the horse days earlier.
Could he have been right? Maybe I had the same dark nature inside me that he did, a craving to be bent to a man’s will. But I wasn’t an animal. I wouldn’t allow myself to enjoy it just because it satisfied some carnal desire.
His first touch came as a grip around my ankle. “Lift your foot,” he said.
I looked down between us and did as he said. Kneeling behind me, he held a black lace garment in his hands. “What is that?” I asked.
“Step into it,” he instructed, waiting until I did. “Now the other foot.”
He stood, sliding a long, floor-length dress up my body. The skirt fell to the floor with a small chapel train, almost like a wedding gown itself. “You’re dressing me?” I asked.
“Regretfully.”
“But . . .?”
He waited. I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. He’d sworn to defile me. Why wasn’t he?
“We’ll get to that,” he said, reading my mind. “I quite like the idea of your thoughts running wild with all the things I’ll do to you tonight—mine will be doing the same. By the time I put my hands on you, I’ll have violated your sweet body every which way in my fantasies.”
Another throb between my legs, harder this time. To cancel out my body’s traitorous reaction, I challenged him. “You told me once you have no need to force a woman,” I said, reminding him of our conversation in his nightclub.
“I don’t.” He zipped up the dress. “But, when I’m through with you, any shred of innocence, any scrap of the girl you were, will be gone—and that’s a pretty thorough violation if you ask me.”
“Why would you want that?”
“Because you’re no longer someone’s sweet, pure, naïve princesa. You don’t live in the ivory tower anymore. You own it. You’re going to learn to rule from it, because that’s what it means to be Calavera royalty. And this dress is far more suitable for a queen.”
Chills spread over my body with the threat and promise that I was one of them now. A Calavera. Like a crown, black lace turned me from eager bride to cartel ruler. The intricate bodice molded to my chest and waist, and the wide neckline stopped at the top of each shoulder, nearly baring them.
From behind, Cristiano skimmed his hands down the fabric clinging to my breasts and settled them at my waist. “The thought of nothing but lace between us all night is enough to drive me mad.” Grit hardened his words, and the rawness in his voice vibrated in places that shamed me. “But I don’t want any other men lusting after you. Perhaps I should warn them before we arrive that should their gazes linger, I will carve out their eyeballs.”
“What men?” My breath came faster with his suggestive touch and graphic threats. “Arrive where?”
“I suspect they already know.” Cristiano continued his thought, pressing his hips against my lower back and announcing his need. “After the trouble I’ve gone through to get you, and the sacrifices I’ve made, they won’t question that what’s mine is mine.”
I was helpless in his grip, his large hands tightening around my waist, his erection strong against my back. Could there exist a certain kind of contentment in giving myself over to the inevitable? In submitting to a man who was so strong and sure of himself and his plans for me? By the way his command made my heart race, I suspected there was some beauty to be found in resignation.
But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I couldn’t afford to remember that there was a time when I’d felt safe with him. Even eleven years earlier, as a scared little girl who’d walked in on Cristiano standing over my mother’s dead body, I’d found an odd and unexpected sense of comfort in his arms later, as he’d carried me down into a pitch-black tunnel.
“You say what’s yours is yours,” I echoed back to him. “But I’ve heard the rumors about your men. Will you let them touch me? Use me? Tell me now so I know what to expect—do I belong to you or to the Calavera cartel?”
He ran one palm up my chest, his skin warm on mine, and loosely wrapped it around my throat. “Whatever happens, mark my words—you will revel in it.”