Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 125962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125962 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
But those thoughts were fleeting, especially since Cristian. Especially since he’d slipped the ring on my finger, murmuring about forever, about our future.
My blood had chilled at that.
Our future.
My father was not one to promise his only daughter to a stranger for more power, for peace. My father already had the power, and peace was a result of that power, everyone too scared to cross the Don.
But my father was still my father. Not just the head of one of the most influential and dangerous families in the country. And a normal father under normal circumstances would not be overjoyed that his teenage daughter, still in high school, was getting married to the boy she’d been dating since she was thirteen.
My father liked Cristian well enough. Very well, in fact. He liked Cristian because he had respect for him but did not blindly agree with everything he said because he was the Don. He liked him because Cristian treated me like a princess, and a mafia princess I was. My father was also serious about appearances. He spent an hour a day in the gym exercising, had weekly appointments with his barber and all of his suits were hand-tailored. I’d never seen my father in jeans or sweats.
It was important to him that I had someone who would take care of me, who looked the part, whose genes would give us beautiful babies.
The years had been kind to Cristian. When we first started dating, he had been lanky, uncertain, and didn’t quite fit into his skin. Even then he was something special. It was in his eyes. His smile. The way he was quiet when the rest of the boys were rowdy, immature.
He’d grown into his skin now. In a big way. He was tall. Well over six foot. The tallest boy at school. His dark hair was shiny, brushing the nape of his neck with a slight curl. He spent time in the gym here, at my father’s invitation—which was a big deal in our household—and his arms were muscled, sculpted and bursting out of every shirt he wore. He was by far the hottest boy in school. Except he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was a man.
And I was a woman.
One with a glittering diamond on my finger and a lifetime with the love of my life ahead of me.
“Are you afraid?” I whispered.
His fingers drew a circle around the swell of my breast.
I held my breath, my body tensing at the intimate touch, with my bare skin exposed to him and his will. Cristian and I had done plenty before this, but he had been very insistent that we not do that—the thing we’d been doing all night—until my eighteenth birthday.
It had annoyed me greatly, since I’d wanted him with a hunger unlike anything I’d ever known. All of my friends had long since lost their virginities to boys who didn’t know what they were doing and didn’t much care about learning. That’s what they told me anyway.
It was Cristian’s first time too. There had been no one before me. I loved that. Loved that we were only each other’s, we belonged to no one else. I wasn’t a jealous person, but then again, I never had to be. Everyone at school knew that Cristian and I were together, although I knew almost all of the girls—and some guys—wanted him. But no one was brave enough or stupid enough to try anything.
Beyond that, Cristian never even looked at other girls—or guys—and as cliché as it sounded, he only had eyes for me. Everything I was and everything I had was intertwined with him.
“Afraid?” he repeated, moving closer toward my nipple with his finger.
My breathing shallowed, and my toes curled with need despite how delightfully sore I was from last night.
“Afraid of marrying me,” I rasped, partly because I was getting turned on and partly because I was nervous about this conversation.
Cristian stopped tracing so he could cup my jaw with his hand. His eyes glittered like the ocean on a cloudless day.
“I’ve been afraid of many things in my life,” he said slowly, his voice rough and thick. Was it just me, or did he sound more like a man after last night? He looked like one. His jaw more chiseled, a slight shadow of stubble that had created a rash between my thighs.
“I thought life gave me a shitty hand,” he continued, searching my face. “Until you.” He rubbed the bottom of my lip gently with his thumb. “Now I’m gonna spend the rest of my life making sure I’m worthy of you, that I protect you, provide for you and eat your pussy daily.”
My stomach dipped at that last part. All the way. Cristian knew me more intimately than I even knew myself, and hearing him speak like that ... did things to me.