When he finally releases me from the spellbinding assault, he grates in my ear, “Don’t you fucking dare. I don’t care if you’re pregnant, don’t you fucking dare push me right now. I will tie you to the bed and use the flogger on you until your whole body sings and throbs, then I will take you to the edge of climax and leave you there for fucking days.”
A dry sob escapes me before I can stop it. He’s edged me and spanked me and restrained me, but nothing punishes me worse than his simmering anger that I can’t appease. I hate it. I hate it so much I want to claw at it and strangle it.
“And don’t you fucking cry,” he says, as his own voice breaks. “You took the only thing I’ve ever wanted and made a motherfucking mockery of it, a mockery of it!” I’m no longer constantly restrained, and he tangles my wrists in his fingers as he pins them above my head. “And I hate you, I fucking hate you for it.”
I’m sobbing freely now as he holds me with his left hand and undresses me with his right. His thick, hard length presses to my belly.
“I hate you, too,” I lie, knowing that his own words are lies of the highest order. A man like him would hate me by exiling me, not tying me to his bed and spoon-feeding me soup and holding my hair while I was sick, not by giving up every minute of his day to make sure I’m taken care of.
He kisses my tear-stained cheeks, and that’s when I see his own tears shining in his eyes. My heart throbs in pain at seeing his.
“I hate you,” he grates though his own misery and pain, as he pushes his cock to my entrance and thrusts, one perfect, agonizing burst of pleasure. And then his hands are on either side of my face while we move together, my hips rising to meet his thrusts, his cock filling me to perfection. He kisses me so fiercely I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating under his heat and wrath, even as my body spasms with the first ripple of bliss. He’s edged me for so long now, I’m about to combust.
I kiss him back. I lick his tongue and inhale his groan, I spread my legs and meet his strokes, I yield to his thrusts and kiss and utter domination.
“I hate you,” he whispers, but his words are hollow and weak, a fading clang of a bell that’s swallowed into the night. We roll over, me on top of him now as he tangles me in his limbs and continues his thrusting with perfect savagery. Tender lovemaking right now would slay me. I crave his fierceness to meet my pain.
My climax hits a crescendo as he screams his own rage and pleasure. We welcome the little death of self. I lay my hand on his cheek. He lets me.
“I love you,” he whispers. “I fucking love you.”
I lay my head on his chest and weep.
CHAPTER 16
“Alas, the frailty is to blame, not we, For such as we are made of, such we be.” ~ Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
Orlando
Once, before my latest imprisonment, before Romeo met Vittoria and my father died, I was taken prisoner by rival mafia. I was chained and beaten, tortured and abused. I was left in my own filth for days on end and only kept alive with the bare minimum of food and water. And that… that torture is nothing compared to what I’m going through with Angelina.
How could I think I’d survive nine months as her warden? I fucking won’t. She won’t either.
Goddamn it.
Marialena and Vittoria try to visit, but Romeo puts an emphatic end to that. No way will he allow them to interfere with what has to be done.
That’s on me. It’s all on me.
Angelina is lonely, though. She misses the girls, misses the rest of my family. In the short time she had with them, they all got along so well, it was as if she were designed for this family herself.
She sits with a book, but it’s fallen to the table, open.
“Book isn’t any good?”
I watch her shrug her slender shoulder listlessly. “It just doesn’t hold my interest.”
“I could get you something else,” I say but don’t look at her when I do. “More books. I don’t know. Knitting needles or whatever the fuck.”
She gives me a withering look that’s almost comical before turning away. “Not sure Romeo would approve of a hobby with a tool that could double as a weapon.”
Yeah, she isn’t the knitting type. Even in prison there are libraries and weight rooms, classes you can take. Chapel.
“Thanks anyway,” she says in a hollow voice. “That’s kind of you but I’m good.”
I shouldn’t feel the sympathy for her that I feel, I know I shouldn’t, but I’d have to have a heart made of stone not to. She isn’t like the prisoners who’ve had their punishment coming to them.