Page 47

I felt alive fucking Dario, this big brutal man at the mercy of my churning hips, his eyes pinned to my swaying breasts, cheeks ruddy with a stark flush and still speckled in dried blood as he ground his hips up to meet my every downward thrust.

He couldn’t admit it, wouldn’t even, but there was something about me that got under Dario Ferretti’s skin, and I wanted to exploit it. Burrow deeper, infect him through the flesh down to muscle and bone.

I wanted him to want me even if he wouldn’t ever need me.

I fucked him harder.

“What did you do to them?” I panted as his caged arms stressed the material of his constraining shirt to the point the seams split with a rip, and one of his hands was suddenly at my cunt, pressing his thumb to my wet, pulsating clit and rolling.

“I took their eyes first,” he said conversationally, even though sweat was beading on his hairline and his eyes were hooded with passion. “For daring to look at you. Then their fingers. One by one. For daring to touch you.”

“Yes,” I hissed, and I wasn’t sure if it was the pleasure of hearing him tell me about their torture or the thick, wide press of him churning inside me that pulled my climax so much closer to the surface.

“I beat them, then, because I wanted my fists against their bodies to feel the bones as they broke and the skin as it split,” Dario grunted, thrusting into me so forcefully it made me see stars. He was fucking me more than I was fucking him now, pinning me in place with his huge hands on either hip, grinding me down on the root of his cock so his pubic hair rubbed against my clit and started a fire in my core. “They sang for me. All their stupid plans and secrets.”

“They want what’s yours,” I said, barely aware of responding, my head dropped back between my shoulders, my hands cupping my breasts, fingers pinching my sensitive nipples, and I was seconds away from an orgasm that was almost terrifying in its enormity.

“Everyone does,” Dario replied, one hand suddenly on my throat, his thumb at my pulse point pressing hard as if he needed evidence I was alive. The pressure made me tip my head back down, my gaze meeting his under heavy lids. Only then did he bare his teeth and grit out, “And I won’t give up any of it. Not my empire. Non la mia principessa. Not for a fucking second.”

“Never?” I dared, panting as I fought my orgasm, needing to know the answer to this question.

Needing to believe the answer I hoped he’d give me.

“Giammai,” he said in Italian and then in English, “Never.”

My eyes slammed shut involuntarily as his hand squeezed around my throat and the other pinched my clit, sensation bursting through every molecule of my body. Distantly, I felt him fuck me even harder and then his fierce shout as he emptied inside of me so strongly that I felt the kick of his cock and the hot flood of his cum. He fucked me through it, only stopping when I was planted firmly at the end of his shaft, plugged up by his still-throbbing, hard flesh.

“I don’t have to like you to want you safe,” he said in the aftermath, my body collapsed over his, face tucked into the side of his neck so all I could breathe was the scent of him. “To hurt you is to hurt me, do you understand, Fiammetta?”

“Yes,” I murmured in Italian, already passing out, the events of the day catching up to me like a speeding train. “And I don’t have to like you to want you.”

“You want me?” he said, and if I hadn’t been half asleep, I would have noticed his body stiffen and the shock that roughened his voice.

I sighed, burrowing my nose deeper. “I want you even when I hate you.”

Chapter Thirteen

Fiammetta

I woke up the next morning alone in bed and stared up at the canopied ceiling as I took stock of my aches and pains. My headache had reduced to something of a low simmer, the rope burn at my wrists was starting to scab over, so it wasn’t as raw, but it itched, and my cheek was so sore even the press of the silk, goose-down pillow was too much against it.

But what hurt worse was my pride.

I had succumbed to the toxic, fierce attraction I had to my husband instead of interrogating him properly about the Russians.

This was a situation I intended to rectify immediately.

The floor was cold under my feet as I slid from bed and dressed myself before putting on my face. I always wore smoky eyeshadow that highlighted my green-brown eyes and a ruddy-pink paint over my wide, full mouth, but today I added blush to my pallid cheeks and a curl to the ends of my long, layered hair. The makeup didn’t completely hide the bruised and swollen skin of my cheek, but if you didn’t look too closely, I passed muster.

I wanted to look like a woman in charge, not the victim I’d been less than twenty-four hours prior.

I was done with that.

Being the easygoing, oblivious mafioso’s society wife.

If Dario wouldn’t give me the information I needed, I had other means to exploit, and I would.

Who supports you? he’d asked last night as if paying for my lifestyle gave him the right to keep things from me, to treat me like his doll.