Good.
I want the reminder.
Three hours later,I’m sitting at my desk in the study.
I should be working. I have contracts needing review, messages from underbosses requiring response. Ferrantes havebeen pushing at our eastern territories again. I should do something about it.
Instead, I’m watching the security feed showing her room.
Have been watching for three hours, unable to look away.
She paced for the first hour. Back and forth, back and forth, her shadow moving across the floor like a pendulum. Expected. She’s a fighter. Her first instinct is always to move, to act, todo something.
She cried for the second hour. Curled on the bed with her face in the pillow, shoulders shaking.
That hurt more than it should.
Now she’s just lying there. Still in the dress I chose. Not sleeping. Just staring at nothing. Processing.
Every instinct screams to go to her.
Finish what you started. Fuck her properly. Make her come again, on your cock this time. Watch her shatter.
But I know my prey better than that. Push too hard now and she’ll break. Shatter in ways I can’t put back together.
I don’t want broken.
I want bent.
Her verbal “no” with her body’s “yes” proved something tonight. Her mind hasn’t caught up yet, but her body knows. Knows what it needs. Knows what I can give her.
But I want more than her body surrendering.
I want her mind to follow.
And that requires patience. Requires giving her space to process. Requires white-knuckled restraint when every cell in my body wants to go to her room and bury myself inside her until she can’t remember her own name.
My cock twitches. Half-hard again, just watching her on screen.
I can still taste her on my tongue. Still feel how tight she was around my fingers. Still hear the sounds she made. Those small helpless whimpers that went straight to my cock.
Control.
I force myself to look away. Stand. Walk to the window.
Palermo glitters in the distance, city lights like scattered diamonds against the black Mediterranean. My father’s territory. My future kingdom. Built on alliances, marriages, blood. Decades of careful cultivation. Everything I’m planning to destroy.
The Rossi engagement is one thread in that web.
And staring at those lights, I know I can no longer pretend I’m willing to marry Gabriella.
Not now.
Not after Violet.
The thought of touching another woman makes my skin crawl. Even politically advantageous touching. Gabriella is beautiful. Ruthless. Competent. I’ve fucked her before. It was fine. Bodies doing what bodies do.
It didn’t compare to what just happened in the hallway. Didn’t even come close to my cock in my hand while I tasted Violet on my tongue.
