Love the Way You Lie (Stripped 1)

Oh my God. I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling too. “So what did you want to talk about?”

“Lots of things,” he says, catching my hand. “Like who you’re afraid of.”

I flinch. I’m afraid of Byron. I’m afraid of my father. I’m afraid of everyone. “What makes you think I’m afraid?”

“I know a girl in trouble when I see one. And you’re it.”

“So you’re here to save the day?” More likely he’d get himself killed. Yeah, the man is obviously tough—but my father has a fucking army at his command. Kip should find some other girl to stalk and harass. A different one to use. He should find a different girl to protect. “I can’t be what you want.”

A grim smile flickers over his face. “You really don’t know what I want, sweetheart. You’d be a lot more scared if you did.”

* * *

Six months ago

I’m still facedown on the desk, being pounded, when I hear the door open. I tense. What if it’s a guest? But then I hear the cadence of my father’s gait—one light step, one heavy, one creak of his cane.

Oh God. I pray that he leaves.

Byron doesn’t stop fucking me. His thrusts don’t change at all, not faster or slower. He fucks me like he has forever—and he does. My father can’t stop him. My father won’t stop him.

One light, one heavy, one creak of his cane. My father’s coming closer.

He must see me by now, must know what’s happening. And yet he keeps walking nearer to us. He rounds the desk. Light, heavy, creak.

And stops.

“Sir?” Byron’s breathing is heavy, the word clipped short. It’s a parody of respect, the word sir, as he fucks the man’s daughter over his desk. As his cock invades me, splitting me open.

“Byron.” My father sounds tired and impossibly old. “Our documents. Look at them.”

The documents are crushed in my hands. They are smeared with my mascara that smears across my cheek. They are ruined.

“Almost done,” Byron says on a grunt.

I shiver from disgust, that my father is here watching this, that my fiancé doesn’t seem to mind. I am something worse than a future wife or a beloved daughter. I am a pet, forced to beg and roll over for my dinner. And it’s not even disgust at my father or at Byron that hollows out my stomach—it’s disgust for myself. I let them do this to me. I don’t fight. I can’t fight. It’s not on

ly me who’ll get hurt if I do.

A hand hovers over my head, shaking, trembling. Not Byron’s hand. It’s my father’s.

He always shakes now. The doctors say it will only get worse. It started in his hand, then moved to his legs. That’s when he started using the cane. He would have lost his life too. In his business any sign of weakness can be fatal. Competitors move in, take over. But no one came to kill my father because Byron stepped in.

With my father’s blessing, he’ll take control of the family’s businesses. His marriage to me will solidify the deal in the eyes of the more traditional mafiosos, smooth the way so less people fight it. And my father will get to live out his life in the empire he built, safe and sound and stroking the hair of his daughter as she gets fucked over his desk.

Every cell in my body revolts against his touch. But I remain still and outwardly calm. It’s a skill I learned early in life—facing a monster and showing no fear.

I’m surrounded by monsters.

Byron grunts and digs his fingers into my flesh. He pulses inside me, and I know he’s coming. Finally.

He pulls out with a wet sound. A warm swipe against my ass cheek quickly cools as he wipes his dick dry on me. The sound of a zipper fills the quiet room, then rustling as he puts himself to rights. My dress flips down.

As I lift my face, a piece of paper flutters back to the desk, unstuck from my cheek. My father strokes my hair one last time, and then his hand falls away. It feels like a strange ceremony has just taken place, the weight of it heavy in the air. The way a regular father would hand his daughter to her new husband at her wedding. But my father isn’t normal. He’s a Mafia don. The last in the line of the prestigious Moretti family. And he’s given his blessing to the union.

I stand and catch myself on the desk before I fall. My legs are weak, like a baby deer struggling to hold myself up. It’s Byron who pushes me up with a soft pat on my ass.

My father doesn’t meet my eyes. Instead he busies himself straightening the papers on the desk.