A Vow of Lust and Fury (Underworld Kings)

With no other option, I followed him down that hallway, defeat a heavy weight on my shoulders. As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice how tall he was, the broad expanse of his shoulders…how easily he could and had overpowered me. We passed a couple of doors before he opened one at the end of the hall and stepped inside. It was a large, windowless bedroom, and the screens casting an artificial view of the mountains were doing little to relieve the immediate sense of claustrophobia. My gaze fixed ominously on the bed, but before I could take a step back, the door clicked shut behind me. Behind us.

A whole new awareness reared its ugly head. I had been so fixated on escaping, on the possibility of my uncle or Matteo waiting for me, the thing I should have been worried about hadn’t occurred to me until right then. I had run from him, but he still wanted me, and he would undoubtedly think he was owed something. Something I knew all too well that men like him were happy to take.

Giovanni slipped his jacket from his shoulders and tossed it onto a chair in the corner. That one action had all my fears bubbling to the surface until they boiled over in a manic frenzy. This was my reckoning, here, locked in a room with him. I always knew this would probably be my fate—married off and bedded by a stranger, but I was no one’s whore, and I would never submit to this archaic bullshit. I took a shaky step away from him, moving across the room, though I really had nowhere to go.

A frown marred his face as he followed. “What did I say about running, princess?”

Adrenaline shot through my veins, and desperation had me scrambling to the bedside table. I picked up the lamp and yanked the cord free before throwing it at him. He batted it away easily, leaving it to smash against the floor.

“You are testing my patience.” He closed the distance between us, backing me into a corner between the wall and the nightstand.

At the last second, blind panic had me diving over the bed, trying to get to the door, but he grabbed my hips and pinned me to the mattress. It felt too familiar to what Stefano had done in that motel room right before he had put a gun to my head. As though I were nothing. A possession. An unruly horse in a stable to be put down. And now Giovanni wished to take from me, to strip me of choice and will. I raged against it, all of it. I managed to roll beneath his weight before my palm met his cheek. Nails raked down his throat, and my legs flailed in the meek attempt to bring a knee up between his thighs. I was wild, determined, driven by rage and pure survival instinct.

“Enough!” He grabbed my wrists and imprisoned them above my head as his other hand clamped around my throat.

I couldn’t move an inch, and tears of frustration welled as my chest heaved against his. It was pathetic how easily he’d subdued me, and it felt like a representation of my entire life. Weak. Powerless. Helpless.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” he whispered.

So, he wanted me to just lay there and take it? Revulsion rose in the form of bile up the back of my throat.

Just when I expected him to start tearing at my clothing, he shoved away from me. I scrambled to my feet and felt like I was standing in front of a wild animal, trying not to move, lest he take chase. Giovanni watched me for a beat longer as though trying to permanently brand his angry glare into my mind. Then he crossed the room, disappearing through a darkened doorway. The light inside blinked on, revealing a bathroom.

My panic receded bit by bit, and I felt the trickle of blood now running down my face more freely. When I reached up and touched it, I found a dressing that had soaked through. When had I cut my head? And when had someone treated it?

Giovanni placed a small box and a bowl of water on the nightstand. His cheek was red, scratches covering his neck in angry lines now dotted with blood. I’d hurt him, but he’d made no move to hurt me back…yet. Still, my uncle would have left me bleeding and beaten for that, and given Giovanni Guerra’s violent reputation…well, I didn’t know what to make of it.

“Sit down.” He towered over me, reminding me just how weak I’d been against him only moments ago.

“I’d rather not.” I rubbed at my neck where I could still feel the indentations of his fingers on my skin.

“It wasn’t a request.” His large hand landed on my shoulder, forcing me to sit on the edge of the mattress. “Stay.”