“You’re a goddamn Italian princess.”
“I… Please. What?”
“You’re the illegitimate daughter of Vitelli Russo. Royal blood. The red herring sent to destroy me. First in court and then in my bed.”
“What are you talking about?”
“No more lies.” I pulled away enough so I could bring my hand down across her bottom. I craved this woman like no other, but she’d betrayed me.
The sharp slap was met with a harsh cry from her sweet lips. Not from pain. She craved anguish. She thrived on it. She arched her back, her grip on the cool marble firm. Even as I continued the harsh spanking, bringing my hand down time after time, her eyes never left me.
Defying me.
Begging me.
I couldn’t stop, but I realized I was being controlled by her. By her beauty and by her innocence. By a look in those lovely eyes that wasn’t about betrayal. But about love. My fucking God. I’d captured her, held her against her will, punished her more than once, yet she cared about me.
Panting, she pushed her hips out, taking every sharp crack of my palm. I spanked her long and hard, but in doing so, I was also punishing myself. Because I cared about her. Because I needed her.
She’d awakened every feeling that I’d missed, that I’d locked away. She’d ripped off the padlock, exposing the haunted boy in the man who’d turned to violence and insistence on being alone.
“Alexander,” she moaned. Even among the craziness of what I was doing, her voice was soft.
She was a woman who’d likely been hired to bring down me and my family. She needed to suffer for putting me in a terrible position.
It was my duty to punish her for putting my family in danger, yet seeing the defiance on her face, the angry determination that I would never control her only fueled the already raging fire.
Not of hatred or anger.
But of desire.
My hand and fingers ached as I marked her bottom, enjoying her moans and the sweet rose color that I adored so much. Being lost in her was everything I’d always wanted.
My breathing was labored, every muscle tense and as a single tear slipped past her lashes, I lost sight of everything but my needs and wants.
With one last brutal smack, I couldn’t take it any longer. I threw my head back and slid my hand between her legs, crowding her space because that’s what I needed from her. To be close.
To own every inch of her.
“Is what you’re saying true?” she asked, the uncertainty in her lovely eyes proof she had no fucking clue. “Not possible. There’s no chance. My mother would have… told me. Wouldn’t she?”
Her confusion dragged at both the darkest part of me and what little of my soul I had left.
“I have the DNA test taken. You are Vitelli Russo’s daughter.”
As the news settled in, she blinked as if fighting tears, anger.
And hatred.
Our eyes locked and she slowly shook her head. Perhaps to try to prevent me from falling further in the madness.
“I didn’t know, Alexander. That’s why the three of us were all alone. A little nuclear family with no one to interfere. No one to know who we were, yet all under the watchful eye of a crime lord. How many times did I ask my father about other family?” She looked away, another tear falling, her strangled laugh hollow.
The pleasure would need to wait.
I spun her around, gently rubbing my thumb under one eye then the other. She watched in silence as I brought the thick digit to my mouth, sucking the tear from the tip.
“I would never betray you. Not like that. What would I have to gain?”
