Chapter 10 #3
My body goes limp, except for my arms that are holding her. We’re both panting and trembling, and I can feel my cum cooling on her skin, mixing with her wetness between us. The smell of sex fills the car, musky and raw and perfect.
She lays against me for several minutes, moving up and down on my chest with my breathing. Then she slowly sits up and pushes back, looking down at the mess we’ve made. There’s cum on her skirt and my T-shirt, and a thrill goes through me when I see her smile.
“That was…” she whispers.
“Fucking incredible,” I finish for her.
Tenderness for this beautiful, proud, and vulnerable woman washes through me. I reach up and take her face in my hands, making her look at me.
“I’ve never come that hard in my life,” I tell her, my voice raw with honesty. “Never felt anything close to what I just felt with you. You’re mine now. You understand? After that, after feeling you come on my cock, after marking you with my cum—you’re fucking mine.”
Her eyes are glazed with satisfaction, pupils blown wide, and she looks thoroughly debauched. “Say you’re mine too,” she whispers, and there’s a desperate edge to it. “Please, Vincenzo. Tell me you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I promise, stroking her flushed cheeks. “Every part of me. No one else is ever going to touch you like this, make you feel like this. And no one else is ever going to have me. Just you, Adora. Only you.”
She lets out a shaky breath, and I can see the emotion threatening to overwhelm her. I press my forehead to hers.
“I don’t expect you to save yourself for some arbitrary date, and I won’t demand anything from you on our wedding night. I want things to happen between us when we want them. As they did just now. Because, doe, that was the most wonderful experience of my life.”
Tears of disbelief and hope fill her eyes. “Really?”
“Really. Seeing you enjoy yourself, seeing you desire me, that’s so fucking precious. The only ones who matter in this marriage are you and me, okay?”
She nods, her eyes silvery bright with emotion. “Okay.”
“Marry me?” I whisper, caressing her cheeks with my thumbs.
We’re already technically engaged, an arrangement that happened because of her hateful father, but I want our story to be ours.
I want Adora to remember this moment. parked on a dark street after pulling off a heist together, both of us still riding the high of survival.
I’m asking her to be my wife because I want her, not because of duty or revenge.
A huge smile spreads over her face. “Yes, Vincenzo.”
Relief and joy crash through me in equal measure. I pull her closer, threading my fingers through her hair, tilting her face up to mine.
This kiss is different from the others. Slower.
Deeper. Like I’m sealing a promise. She melts against me, her lips soft and yielding and tasting like hope, which is something I’d lost until I met her.
I pour everything I can’t say yet into this kiss.
My gratitude, my need, and the terrifying realization that she’s become everything to me without my permission.
When I finally pull back, just enough to speak, my forehead rests against hers.
“I’m falling for you, doe,” I whisper. “My life is in your hands.”
Adora pulls back sharply, like I’ve burned her. She doesn’t need to say I love you. It’s not my intention to demand anything from her, but I wasn’t expecting the shock that floods her face. Or the fear that follows it.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not, doe?” I reach for her, but she pulls farther away.
She turns her face to the side, unable to meet my eyes.
Apprehension curls through my belly. Have I completely misread her? I thought there was affection and desire between us, a growing mutual respect. She just said yes to marrying me, but now she’s cringing away from me like I’ve trapped her.
Is being loved by a Vici so abhorrent to her?
“You don’t have to say it back,” I mutter through gritted teeth, already retreating behind the walls I never should have let down.
The silence between us is deafening. She can’t even look at me.
I just bared my soul to a woman who can’t stand the thought of loving me back.
She’ll marry me. She’ll fuck me, if what just happened between us is any indication. She’ll stand beside me.
But love me?
Apparently, that’s asking too much.
I release her, and she climbs back into her seat. The intimate warmth between us has evaporated, replaced by cold and brittle tension.
“I’ll get you home,” I say, my voice flat.
The drive to the Montoni mansion is silent.
Adora stares out the window, her hands twisted in her lap. I keep my eyes on the road, jaw clenched so tight my teeth ache. Every mile feels like a knife twisting deeper.
I shouldn’t have said it. Shouldn’t have opened my mouth and handed her the power to gut me.
But I thought—
Christ, what did I think? That she felt the same? That the way she came apart in my arms meant something beyond physical release? That choosing to marry me meant she actually wanted me, not just to escape from her father?
I’m such a fucking fool.
When I pull up to her mansion, she reaches for the door handle immediately. Desperate to get away from me.
“Adora—”
“Thank you for tonight.” Her voice is strained. She still won’t look at me. “I’ll…I’ll see you soon.”
She’s out of the car before I can respond, practically running up the steps to her front door.
I watch her disappear inside, and the emptiness that settles inside me is familiar. This is what I know. Isolation. Distance. Contempt.
I should go home and analyze the phone data Matteo’s received by now. I need to focus on getting my guns back and planning my next move against the Dervishis.
But all I can think about is the fear in her eyes when I told her I was falling for her.
I drive away from the Montoni mansion and end up at a dive bar three blocks from my house, and change into a fresh T-shirt from my trunk.
The bar is the kind of place where no one is eager to talk, and the cheap whisky burns going down. I claim a stool in the corner, order a double, and try not to think about honey-blonde hair and amber eyes that won’t meet mine.
The bartender is a grizzled man in his sixties who’s seen me plenty of times these past few months. He pours, I drink, and the world blurs at the edges.
My ribs ache where the massive Dervishi bastard landed his hits. My knuckles are split and swelling. There’s dried blood in my face that I should probably clean.
Physical pain I can handle. It’s clean. Straightforward. The bruises will fade in a few weeks.
This hollow ache where hope briefly lived is going to be harder to shake.
“Another,” I tell the bartender.
He pours without comment.
I’m halfway through my third drink when I finally admit the truth to myself. I love her.
Not falling in love. Already fallen.
Somewhere between the laundromat and the restaurant, between the photograph and tonight’s fight, I stopped wanting revenge and started wanting her. All of her. Not just her body or her partnership or her usefulness against Agnello.
Her.
But she shut down the moment I crossed that line.
I drain my glass and drop cash on the bar, enough to cover my tab and a generous tip for the bartender.
The night air hits me like a slap when I step outside. Cold, sharp, and clarifying. I’m not drunk, but I’m loose enough that the walk to my car is careless, and I’m not paying attention to my surroundings.
I glance at my phone and see that I have three messages from Matteo.
Got the warehouse location. Call me.
Seriously, call me.
Vin, where the fuck are you?
I should call him. I went through hell tonight to get this intel, and acting on it is what a Vici don should do.
Instead, I just stand there, staring at my phone and seeing that flicker of fear in Adora’s face.
A small sound makes me look up.
The tip of a cigarette glows in the darkness. A man steps forward, tall and lean, his pale skin luminous in the darkness. He exhales a plume of smoke over cruel lips.
“I knew I recognized your face, Vincenzo Vici,” Dashamir says in a cold, soft voice.
Rough hands grab me from behind. Multiple men, at least three. One of them forces a black bag over my head.
Something strikes me hard on the back of my head, and I see stars. I fall to my knees, my ears ringing.
I hear the click of zip ties around my wrists. Feel hands patting me down, removing my weapons, my keys.
Certainty pierces my dazed panic. They’re going to kill me.
But my thoughts in this moment aren’t for myself. They’re for Adora.
She’s going to think I abandoned her. I walked away because she couldn’t say she loved me back. She’ll believe I’m petty and cruel enough to leave her trapped with Agnello just because she hurt my pride.
She’ll never know I was taken. Never know I would have come back for her.
Never know that I love her.
I’ll never hold her in my arms again. Never hear her laugh. Never see her smile at me without fear in her eyes.
And that regret is worse than the fear of whatever the Dervishis are about to do to me.
Something hard smashes into the back of my skull a second time, and the world goes dark.
Pain drags me back to consciousness. Not just one pain, but a symphony of them. My ribs scream where the mountain landed hits. My face throbs, swollen and tender. Even the air hurts when I breathe in.
My wrists are zip-tied to a metal chair that’s bolted to the concrete floor.
The room is bare except for a drain in the corner and a table covered with tools.
Pliers. Knives. Metal instruments I don’t want to identify.
They glint under the harsh light, steel edges catching the glow from the single bare bulb swinging overhead.
My body casts shadows that writhe across the walls as though I’m already being tortured.
But I’m alive.
For now.
The door opens.