Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
“Cara,” he whispers.
He lowers his head and kisses my lips, bringing me slowly from the forgiving darkness to a cruel reality. He’s naked, spread out on top of me on the floor, cushioning my head with one hand while rubbing aftershocks from my clit with the other. I go slack, giving over to pleasure and disappointment. My body betrayed me, and so did my mind.
“Look at me,” he demands.
I try to focus my eyes.
“That’s better,” he croons. “You had me worried there for a moment.”
My throat hurts when I speak. “About what?”
“That I’ve gone too far.”
“Haven’t we?” I ask, biting my lip, and I don’t mean what just happened. I mean everything.
He stills. His touch vanishes. He pulls his hand from between our bodies and carries his weight on his arm. His dark hair falls over his forehead, the wavy curls messy. His chiseled jaw hardens even as insecurity shimmers in the harsh brown of his eyes. The black ink on his hard chest draws a stark picture of the man who holds my fate in his hands. The permanent art is an exact representation of the man who owns me.
Holding my gaze, he says, “I want to stop being on my guard around you. I don’t want to feel as if I’m walking onto a battlefield every time I enter this house.” He pauses. “I want to end the bloodshed between our families. We both suffered by the hands of our fathers and the bad decisions they made.”
Bad decisions. All those deaths. His mother and sister. My dad. How did we get here? Angelo’s words come back to me.
I had no choice.
I had to steal your father’s book.
It was the only way to ensure our wedding would continue as planned.
The only way to make you mine.
Our war didn’t start when he married me with a gun pushed against my head. It happened long before then. It began when he stole that book. And just like that, the implication of his words stares me in the face.
You were always the only objective that mattered.
Angelo didn’t steal the book because he wanted my dad to honor a business contract. He stole the book because he wanted me.
The words tumble from my lips in a shocked whisper. “You blackmailed my dad to let you marry me. The business you took from him was just a secondary advantage. By taking his source of money away, you made him powerless.”
He cups my cheek in a tender caress even as his eyes harden like gleaming onyx. “I took the book to ensure your father would honor the promise he made when he negotiated our betrothal. You see, bella, my war started a long time before I stole that book. It started the minute I learned you were mine.”
Something twists inside my chest. The statement should soothe me, but it doesn’t, because he just told me in not so many words that he didn’t want me because he fell in love with me. I was a commodity from the very start. A currency. It’s never been about me. His cock is not yet soft inside me when the bitter truth settles in my heart.
It’s always been about getting his due.
I clench my jaw and press on his chest. “It’s always been about money and business.”
Gripping my wrists, he pins them on the floor next to my face. “It’s always been about knowing you were destined to be mine.”
“You didn’t even know me,” I exclaim. “You didn’t do it for me. You did it for what you could gain from a marriage to Ben Edwards’s daughter.”
“You’re not listening to me. Everything I did was for you.”
“Why go to such lengths for a girl you haven’t even met? I could’ve repulsed you.” I swallow a breath. “For all I know, I did.”
“It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know you. I accepted you from the moment your father agreed to give me your hand in marriage. You didn’t repulse me. Not then and not now. Quite the contrary. And even if you were as ugly as a witch with a hunchback and a mole on her nose, you still would’ve been mine. I would’ve accepted you and cared for you no differently.”
I can’t wrap my mind around his reasoning. That kind of blind devotion doesn’t make sense. “Then why did you leave early that night of my party?”
“My dad was sick,” he says. “He had lung cancer.”
A gasp catches in my throat. “I didn’t know.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know. He saw it as a weakness.”
“I thought…”
“That I left because I didn’t find you likable or desirable? No, cara. Nothing can be further from the truth. Everyone was so pretentious in their fine attire and with their masks in place. Your sister was the perfect portrait of politeness in her prim and proper dress. Your mother was set on showing off your money, worried about everyone’s impression and judgement of the party. Then you arrived drenched in sea and salt with your see-through shirt plastered to your perfect body, and all you wanted for your birthday was that skinny little kitten.”