Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
I got myself in a predicament. Powerful people on both sides of the law want me dead. A killer needs me alive for his own selfish reasons, reasons I never could’ve imagined in my wildest dreams.
I’m not safe in the bed of a cold–blooded murderer, but I don’t have a choice. On the one hand, he offers me protection, and on the other, he tightens the noose.
I’m caught in his web of lies and deceit. Every truth that’s uncovered destroys me a little more. But he’s already injected me with his venomous seduction.
Before I know it, he’ll swallow me whole.
Coerced Wife is Book 2 of the New York Underworld trilogy. Coerced Kiss (Book 1) must be read first. Anya and Saverio's story concludes in Coerced Queen (Book 3).
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER
ONE
Anya
The dress Saverio chose for the wedding we’re attending fits snugly over my curves. He told me it was perfect when I tried it on in the boutique, but I find it too tight.
I turn from side to side, studying my reflection in the dressing room mirror. The red silk shows off the roundness of my stomach. The halter neck exposes my shoulders while leaving my back bare. It’s impossible to wear a bra, and my nipples are clearly visible.
I don’t know the dress code for family weddings, but the gown definitely shows too much skin.
Saverio walks into the room, wearing a modern three-piece suit with a crisp white shirt and a silver tie. The jacket and slacks are the latest fashion, accentuating the bulk of his muscles. As always, his only jewelry is the small gold hoop in his ear and the smartwatch on his wrist.
My mouth goes dry as I take him in, how powerful and fearless of both life and death he seems as he stalks toward me, but the hunger that sparks in his eyes when he cuts a path over me with his gaze makes my belly flip. He can reduce big men to shivering puddles with one, cutting glance. Those icy blue eyes that he trains like weapons on others never melt for anyone. I’ve never seen him look at another person with kindness, admiration, or affection. When he interacts with people, his expression is either neutral or threatening.
Yet with me, it’s different.
When he walks to me with the purposeful stride of a hunter, the frost melts and the magnificent blue of those pools warms to the color of a summer sky.
It’s been like this ever since I admitted I won’t shoot him. He proved the point by fucking me with a gun laying right next to me, within my grasp. I won’t kill him even if he puts the weapon in my hands himself.
Why?
Because without him, I’m dead. He’s both my jailor and my protector.
I don’t speak when he stops in front of me. My brain is incapable of forming words. I’m too busy processing this new development—that my captor gives me something he gives no one else. It shouldn’t make me feel special, but my heart has been at war with my mind since the day Saverio crashed into my life. The most shocking part is that I like this feeling of being favored. God knows, I’ve never been favored, not even by my mother. The only person who treated me as if I weren’t trash was Livy.
He cups my hips between his broad palms and stares down at me like a man possessed by the sight in front of him. “You look like a goddess, tesoro.”
Any reservations I had about the dress fly out the window. My heartbeat picks up, keeping time in my temples. Saverio makes me feel many things. Fear, for starters. Uncertainty. Chaos. But he also makes me feel desirable and cherished. Powerful. Strong.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I belong, and despite the many wrongs of belonging to him, deep in my heart, it feels right too, like this is exactly where I want to be. A part of me wants to submit to this uncontrollable frenzy, no matter the consequences. He makes me so drunk on him that I don’t care about the price I’ll pay when this folly crashes and burns to ashes around us. All I want at this moment is him.
That’s why I don’t protest when he brushes his knuckles over a nipple, turning the tip into a hard point that changes the way the fabric drapes over my body. It turns from elegant to erotic, the shape of my naked breasts a portrait painted in red.
“Anya,” he says with a growl as he fixes his attention on the points that extend almost painfully.
My breasts are so sensitive even the soft caress of the silk sends a sharp arrow of desire straight to my core.
When he says, “Turn around and kneel on the bench,” I don’t argue.
I don’t waste time in denying the inevitable any longer. I’m as invested in this game as he is. I can walk away from it now as little as he can. We’re trapped in this insanity, and our only choice is to see it through to the end.
He spins me around when I don’t move immediately, his impatience raw and palpable. I need another minute because the moment is huge. It’s a turning point for me. Instead of fighting a losing battle, I embrace the new craziness of my life. I haven’t realized how inhibited and trapped I felt until now, until I’m soaring with power and freedom as I lift the skirt of the dress and climb onto the bench.
“Eyes forward,” he says.