Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78811 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 394(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
I pull back, hands on either side of her, and look into her dark eyes, thin rings of blue around the blacks of her pupils. She pants, reaching up to wrap clawed hands around my biceps, dragging me toward her.
“Do it,” she says, one hand moving to unbuckle my belt.
I dip my head to kiss her again. She tastes sweet when she should taste bitter. And when she slides her hand into my briefs and fists my cock, squeezing it, I groan and draw back.
“Do it. Fuck me.”
I suck air into my lungs and look her over.
“I want you to do it.”
I drag the fingernails of one hand over her chest, pinching one nipple before slapping the breast only to hear her cry out, to watch her eyes, those fucking eyes, grow soft with tears. Pain I cause.
I turn away. I can’t look at her. Can’t kiss her. I should take what I need to take and fucking walk away, but she is kissing me again, and I can’t resist her when her fist tightens around my cock.
“Do it, Amadeo. Fuck me like you want to fuck me. Fuck me and show me how much you hate me.”
It’s too much, all of this. What should have happened. How it was meant to be. How I was supposed to feel. The nothingness that should be between us. We are both broken, and that damage has bound us in a way it shouldn’t. A way it was never meant to.
She kisses me deeply yet again, and here comes that inferno, a blaze of scorching flames that will leave only ash and smoke in its wake.
I break the kiss. I can’t look at her.
Knowing I should be gentle tonight of all nights for her first time, I flip her onto her stomach and draw her hips up, holding her, opening her, and thrusting into her hard enough to make her cry out.
This is what I want. Her cry. It’s all I should ever want.
But something isn’t right.
I draw out, look down, and thrust again. The resistance I expect isn’t there. She’s tight, so fucking tight, but there’s no blood. She’s not a virgin.
But when she arches her back and moans beneath me, all thought vanishes, and I’m focused on her, wholly on her.
After I slide the fingers of one hand to her clit, she begins to meet my thrusts, burying her face in the blankets as she takes her pleasure from me. When I feel her walls pulse around my cock and see her fist the sheets and hear her moan my name, I come undone. I look down at her. I watch her lay the side of her face on my bed, sweat beading her forehead and making her hair stick to her face. Those pale strands catch in thick, dark lashes, obscuring her eyes as she watches me. The look inside them makes me thrust once more and seat myself deep inside her as I come hard. Filling her as she pants for breath, giving herself to me. Does she do it to save herself? To make some sort of strange cease-fire. A faulty truce. I don’t know. All I know at this moment as my mind swims is that I cannot look away from those eyes that I should hate.
26
Bastian
The kid is strange. She hasn’t uttered a word or even made a sound. Not to me, not that I expected that, but not to her nanny either. Nothing. I guess it’s shock? She did stare at me for a long time. But if we were having a staring contest, then the kid won. I looked away first. Had to. I wonder if the scar on my cheek has captivated her. It matches hers in a way. She got that in the crash that killed her mom. Glass sliced through her face. I think about her brutal father and wonder if she was lucky. I’m pretty sure his intention wasn’t to scar her.
Once we reach the villa, before I’m even fully out of the SUV, the front doors fly open. I climb the stairs leading up to them. An anxious Vittoria comes rushing out, followed by my brother, who has his hands in his pockets. Vittoria stops dead when she sees me. Or maybe it’s when she sees her sister. Because the little girl is asleep in my arms, her head warm on my shoulder. Vittoria takes this in and is clearly surprised. I guess she thought her sister would run screaming from the ogre she believes me to be.
I let her take it in, my gaze moving to her left hand, the gleaming diamond and the shiny new wedding band. My brother comes toward us, reaching to brush the mass of curly blond hair from the girl’s face so he can see her. What I see when he does it is the matching platinum band on his finger.