What is wrong with me?
He stole me away. Took me from a life I knew, one that I hated more than anything in the world, and I’m … happy.
Is it wrong for me to be happy?
My dad would have slapped me silly by now.
Valentino always asks me about my day. He wants to know if I had a good day. A bad one. What he could do to help improve my time with him.
How do I tell him that the only thing I want is a guarantee to never take me back? To never let my father get to me?
Even if he doesn’t love me or care for me. I would settle for him having the mildest of feelings because I think I feel enough for him for the two of us. Is that so wrong?
I hate this.
I don’t want to cry, but as I write this, I am.
Does he not know how I feel? How it feels to have his hands on me? After dinner, dessert, and a nightcap, he’d escort me back to my room, hand at the base of my spine. Some nights, he’d come into my room, where he’d give me demands. Nothing was ever inappropriate. If he needed me to change, he turned his back, or asked for me to change in the bathroom.
Does he want me?
Am I a fool for pushing this?
I… I … I think I’m in love with Valentino De Luca, and I know in the end, those feelings would get me killed.
****
It happened!
Oh, my God. I cannot believe I get to write this, but Valentino De Luca, I have to write his name, to remind myself over and over again, that it happened. He finally kissed me. Not a sloppy drunken kiss, but something so much more.
His fingers danced in my hair. His gaze was on mine.
My entire body was frozen in anticipation, hungry for every look, every single touch. I’ve been wanting this kiss for some time, and I don’t even know what led up to it. Maybe I do, a little.
Another dinner.
Another conversation that was going nowhere, and then I asked him why I was here. What did he hope to achieve? He told me. He told me that I was to be set free. I’m a rare and precious bird, and he saw me locked within the Russo cage, begging to get out. That he’d seen me so many times, broken. Each time he saw me, it was like another piece of my wings had been clipped, and he couldn’t allow that to happen.
A bird.
Clipped wings.
He had no idea.
I told him he was a fool and that he was to send me back immediately. Things got a little … heated.
I yelled at him. I screamed that he was a fool. That no one in their right mind would pretend to rape a girl to start some vicious rumors. That the lies he kept manipulating would hurt him and his people in the long run. Once my father found out the truth and that I was a virgin, and could be sold to whomever he chose, Valentino would be nothing more than a liar and a laughingstock.
Oh, my.
I don’t know what part of my rant set him off, but in the next second, his hand was in my hair, cradling my head, and his gaze was fierce. Like I had finally lit a fire inside him, and there had been no way to put it out.
He told me that no other man was ever going to know me. That I was his, and I needed to learn to accept it, and then, his lips were on mine.
I thought chocolate was supposed to send you to heaven, but I now know it’s Valentino’s kisses. Each and every single one of them.
My lips still feel tender.
His kiss was fire.
The heat, I never want to forget it.
I’ve never been kissed like that.
Under the mistletoe, I have. The drunken, sloppy kind of kisses where men forgot themselves, but never with full control.
Never like this.
This was a dream.
I loved every second of it, and what was more, I wanted to keep on kissing him.
I didn’t want it to stop, but his guard had alerted him to some trouble, and there was no way for me to stop it.
How can I make him kiss me again? Would I look desperate if I ask him? Do I … kiss him?
I don’t know these rules. I’ve never cared to know, but for Valentino, I’m anxious to find out more. So much more.
****