“Does that disgust you?”
The stain on her cheeks darkens. “No.”
“Then why the look?”
“No reason.” She looks down at her lap, and I’m not having that.
“Valentina,” I growl. “Stop fucking lying. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Her nostrils flare as her gaze meets mine. “Right now, I’m thinking you need to lose that tone with me, Fiero, and your double standards piss me the hell off.”
I know what she’s doing, and this time, I’m not going to let her, so I count to ten in my head to calm down. “Sorry, kitten.” I nip at her ear. “I just need you to be honest with me. You can deny it all you like, but we’re at the start of something special here, and I want no secrets between us.”
“I can’t possibly satisfy you, sexually, if you’re used to frequenting sex clubs,” she blurts. “I’m not into voyeurism, public sex, or kinky sex, and I?—”
I kiss her lips to shut her up, continuing to kiss her until I feel her melting in my arms and her panic subsiding. Then I pull back, taking our near empty glasses and setting them down on the table. I haul her into my lap and snake my arms around her.
“First, you are perfectly capable of satisfying me sexually even if we spend the rest of our lives having vanilla sex. Sex has never been intimate for me, Valentina. It’s pleasure for pleasure’s sake alone. With you, sex is emotional and transcendental in a way I’ve never experienced.” I press my lips softly, fleetingly to hers. “You did that, so trust me when I say you are more than enough for me.”
“You say all the right things.” She nestles her head on my chest.
“It’s no lie. I’m telling the truth.” I boop her nose, and she glares at me, swatting my hand away. I chuckle, staring at her peering up at me with stars in my eyes. I truly am losing it, and Massimo is going to have a field day with this whenever I’m able to tell him about her. “Secondly, unless you’ve tried it, you don’t know if you have any particular kinks.”
Her cheeks pale, and her voice trembles when she says, “Or it’s forced, and you know it’s definitely not one.”
“What happened wasn’t consensual, was it?” I’d already reached that conclusion by her reaction and the fact whoever whipped her was either inexperienced or did it on purpose to leave those scars.
She nods.
“Then my point stands. I will never force you to do anything, but if you’re willing to play with me, we can explore different things in a safe, controlled manner in private. I won’t ever take you to a club, and I won’t ever share you. I see the way your body responds to me, kitten, and I think you’re kinkier than you know. You just need time to experiment, but if you don’t want to, or you do and you don’t like it, then I’m perfectly fine with vanilla sex for the rest of my life.”
I truly hope no camera has captured that statement because the people who know me would lose their shit if they heard what just came out of my mouth. But I meant it. I wouldn’t agree to that with anyone but her.
I want a future with Valentina.
A life I never imagined for myself is now painting itself in front of my eyes, and I want it all. My kitten as my wife. Her belly swollen with my babies. Our house filled with children and tons of laughter.
“You can’t be real,” she says with tears in her eyes. “This is just a dream, and I’m going to wake one morning and be back in hell.”
“No, baby.” I run my hand up and down her arm. “You’re not going back there. I know you don’t believe me, but you’ll see.”
“How, Fiero? How is it possible?”
I kiss the tip of her nose. “That’s for me to figure out. You don’t need to worry about it.”
“What are you going to do?” she whispers.
“It’s better you don’t know.” I’ve worked out what I have to do but not the how yet—though I have a few ideas.
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“No one is hurting me.” I thread my fingers through her long, wavy, black hair. “When I was overseas, I spent time with a training facility in Nepal. I’m an experienced sharpshooter, proficient with knives and guns and combat. I train regularly and keep myself fit. I take security precautions, and if anyone threatens me, I have the IT skills to ruin them before they come for me. No one has ever gotten near me, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Dominic is the one who should fear me. It’s not the other way around.”
“You need to watch out for Cesco. He’s the dangerous one.”
“In what way?”
She sits up straighter, resting her hands on my shoulders. “He’s power hungry and smart in a way his father isn’t. Cesco plays the game way better than Dom. Dom lets his emotions rule him too often, but Cesco is an emotionless bastard, so he doesn’t have to worry about that. I think he’s a psychopath and he wants complete control. When he succeeds Dom as underboss, I fully expect him to target Vitto. He’ll either kill him or marry any daughter of his to get his hands on Miami.”
