I’d been furious that day with my father’s accountants. With a port authority delay. With a shipment that had vanished into bureaucratic purgatory.
I wasn’t even supposed to be in that car. Had meant to send a subordinate in my place, until Irealisedsome lessons are best taught in person.
And then she stepped into the crosswalk.
Small. Furious. Yelling into her phone like she owned the pavement and every idiot on it.
My driver braked too late and the world slowed down.
Because I saw her.
Really saw her.
Not just her mouthwatering, hourglass body, though Christ, that too was beyond spectacular, but her defiance. Her absolute refusal to fold herself smaller for anyone.
When she screamed at me, something ancient and predatory locked into place in my chest.
Desire and feral possessiveness, yes.
But most bewildering and alarming at once was…recognition.
Mine.
I remember stepping out of the car and thinking, with terrifying calm certainty,this woman is going to ruin me.
And that I would let her.
Despite her calling me weird. When she demanded coffee as compensation.
I let her walk away with me because I already knew I was not walking away from her ever again.
I didn’t know her name yet. But I already knew she was my wife.
She doesn’t know this.
She doesn’t know that I went home that night and had my men run her name.
That I sat awake until dawn reading everything there was to know about Lucia Dragoni-to-be.
That Icancelleda meeting with a Balkan arms broker the next morning just to “accidentally” walk past that café again.
She thinks I seduced her. She has no idea how carefully I claimed her.
And she certainly doesn’t know how badly she will pay for trying to leave me now that she’s reminded my body what it still knows about hers.
My mouth curves darkly as the jet begins its descent.
That kiss this morning.
The way she came apart for me in mere seconds, like it was primed and ready, like mine, to soar after being kept hungry and desperate for eighteen long months.
The way her body arched like it was built to break for my hands.
How she tried to hate me through it and failed. And, fuck, the taste of her silky pussy. Utter reassurance as if I needed it. Which I absolutely do not.
She’s still mine; she always was and she always will be.
And yes, she will be punished. With unvarnished ownership and with searing calculation. With the slow, relentless erasure of the fantasy that she can exist outside of me.
