3. Chapter 3
C lara
I wake up slowly, groggy. My head aches, the dull pounding under my skull excruciating.
My mouth tastes horrid, and I don’t recognize the room.
The soft white bed cradling me in inches of memory foam is comforting but not my own.
My appreciation for the softness vanishes the minute I roll over.
I can’t turn over, not all the way. Partway onto my side, an unyielding tug on my leg stops me.
The metallic clink is unmistakable as I ease myself up to look down my body. My ankle is chained to the bedpost.
That should have snapped me straight to clarity, but it didn’t. I lay on my side, confused, drowsing in and out of wakefulness until I collapse back on the mattress.
Where am I?
The room is huge, palatial, at least twice the size of my bedroom.
There’s a counter—is that a bar?—a dresser, a walk-in closet, and an open door to a luxury bathroom I can’t reach because of the chain.
The bed is soft, a four-poster, with deep- blue velvet curtains.
The side table has a lamp I can’t reach, and every time I blink my eyes, the shadows on the walls get longer.
Sunlight pours in through the partially covered windows.
Every time I close my eyes, the shadows change position on the ceiling and walls, crawling across the room.
Sometimes I watch it, sometimes I sleep, but every time I open my eyes, something is different.
Like the chair that appears beside the bed.
Or the glass of water with partially melted ice, weeping condensation onto the coaster on the nightstand.
At one point, I swear a woman bends over me, trying to coax my head up, so I can drink without choking.
I wake again, and a man is sitting in the chair, regal as any businessman in a three-piece gray suit. His shoes shine, his hands look clean, and his big boxy fingers fold on his knee as he waits patiently for me to awaken.
“Miss Jamison said you were coming to,” he says friendly enough. “I thought perhaps it might be time for us to talk.”
I try to lick my lips, but moisture won’t come.
“Viktor?”
He inclines his head. “I’m glad you remember. I wasn’t sure I’d made that much of an impression at yesterday’s brunch.”
“Are the others dead?” I rasp, desperately needing a drink. My voice betrays how dry and scratchy my throat is.
Standing, he comes around the bed to collect the glass from the nightstand. Helping me sit up, he brings the water to my lips. I try to take it from him, but he refuses. In the end, I give up and let him hold both me and the glass. With my hands cradled around his, I sip the cold water.
“Everyone is alive and well,” he assures me. “Including your father.”
Startled, I ask, “Why? Why would you do that? You know he’s going to come after you.”
“Your concern is touching but completely unnecessary.” He smiles and sets the glass back on the nightstand.
I shake my foggy head. “You have no idea what he’s capable of.”
“Oh, I promise, of the two of us, he should be far more concerned about what I’ll do to him. You remember the brunch? I made him an offer, and we came to an agreement. You in exchange for my money. My restaurant, his casino. We shook hands on it. Was there any part of that you found ambiguous?”
I blink at him, my stomach sinking and tightening.
“I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t know they were coming until I was back in the banquet hall, and they walked in. I didn’t even know what our breakfast was about until I heard you talking.”
He held up his hand. “No, I know. A proper princess never knows what the king is plotting. Especially not where her well-being is concerned.”
My father hasn’t made my well-being a consideration in years, but I don’t bother telling him that. The scars I wear will.
He sits down on the edge of the bed, regarding me with a half-smile that makes my stomach blush. I don’t think I’ve ever been so aware of a man. It’s like James all over again but different. He’s sitting so close, I can feel his hard body against my thigh. My thigh is touching his butt !
“Unfortunately, Princess, there comes a time in every woman’s life when she has to grow up.”
“What does that mean?” I pry my attention off his butt and try to keep up with the conversation, but it’s hard. The rush of heat that was in my stomach is now burning in my face.
“You’re Italian. You know what fuitina means, don’t you?”
Fuitina ? I blinked.
“Yes. My mother told me that was how my grandmother and grandfather met. But that was in Italy. That’s not even a thing here.”
“It’s not really a thing in Italy anymore, either.” He shrugs. “Not since 1981 when they abolished Article 544, no longer allowing rapists to escape the consequences of their actions.”
“You’re going to rape me?” I can feel my eyes getting bigger.
His eyebrows arch, and for a moment, I glimpse honest amusement right before he laughs.
“No. Trust me, Princess. When I take you, it will be anything but rape.”
I look from him to the bedpost where I’m chained.
“Then let me go. You don’t need to keep me chained.”
“Not raping you and trusting you are two vastly different things.”
“Where can I go?” I demand.
“Back to your father. Or your friends. Or Miguel, his brother, his father, and their money. You have options.”
“I have no options! You want me to go back to my father?” I almost laugh in his face. “I’ve been praying for years to escape him. You want me to go back to Miguel? The man who said he was going to hurt me on our wedding night just so he could hear me scream? That’s who you think I want to run to?”
“You think I’m going to be any better?” he challenged.
That stops me. I honestly don’t know, but I also know I don’t want to live with a chain around my ankle. I need out, I need to cooperate, I need to get away.
“You’re the best of my three options,” I lie, but it works.
Considering me in silence, he finally says, “Do you remember your physics?”
My physics ? He wants to talk about high school now?
“Uh… y-yes, no… maybe. Why?”
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. At no point will that be more accurate than if you violate my trust.”
Circling the foot of the bed, he follows the chain to my ankle before fishing the key from his pocket and unlocking the padlock. He removes the manacle, dropping it on the end of the bed.
“There. Come on, stand up.”
I crawl off the bed, taking only a moment to rub the minor chaffing on my ankle.
When he beckons, I go to him. The pit of my stomach knots, reading what he’s doing as both frightening yet somehow erotic.
I’m so uncomfortable. I don’t want to see him as erotic, but I need to be obedient.
I need to show him I can be trusted because he really is the best of my three options, at least until I can get away.
“Give me your dress,” he says, holding out his hand.
He could not have dropped my jaw any faster.
“What?”
He had to be kidding, but no, his hand was steady, waiting for my compliance. The look on his face says if I fail this challenge, I’ll end up back on the bed with the chain around my ankle faster than I can blink.
Slipping my dress off over my head, I meekly drape it over his waiting hand.
“Slip, too.”
Gathering the silk at the waist, I pull that off as well and hand it over.
Standing before him in nothing but bra and panties, every inch of my skin prickles its awareness.
The air around me seems so much cooler. My nipples pucker, tightening into buds my bra isn’t capable of hiding, but his eyes stay on mine, not once wandering in even the shortest of lecherous ups and downs.
Is his self-control that good, or is he just not interested?
And why does the thought of either make my chest pinch in disappointment?
I don’t want to marry this man any more than I want to marry Miguel, but the thought he might not want me at all doesn’t make me feel better.
I’m being stupid. He doesn’t want to marry me.
All he wants is his restaurant in my father’s casino.
A casino I already knew I wouldn’t inherit. My father had said as much this morning when Viktor sat down for breakfast at our table.
“This isn’t necessary,” I suddenly realize.
“Oh, I disagree,” Viktor replies. “I want to make sure you understand there are rules, and what freedom I give you depends on how well you follow those rules. I won’t be happy if you suddenly run from my house in desperate search of a cellphone to call your father—”
I really laughed now.
“I would never call my father. That place is a prison. For years, I’ve wanted to be free of him and his guards. I won’t go back there.” I shook my head. “I never want to go back, not if I can help it.”
“To Miguel then.”
I couldn’t laugh at that.
“The man doesn’t want to marry me any more than I do him.
He resents me and says he’s going to,”—the rush of heat that floods my face at the thought of confessing to Viktor exactly what Miguel had said turns my blush scalding hot—“hurt me,” I finish, omitting the ‘how’ from the details I feel forced to share.
Not that Viktor asked. In fact, his expression could have been chiseled in stone for all the sympathy he shows.
“He wants to hear me scream. That’s what he was promising when your bouquet came. ”
I don’t like his stony look. He’s silent, his steel-blue eyes as cold ice.
“I can protect you from your father,” he finally says. “I can even protect you from the Morales family, should they bother to come looking, but if you’re looking to me to be your knight in shining armor, know one thing.”
My stomach sparks, that tiny, electrified jolt shooting from my nipples directly down between my legs as he takes my chin in his hand. His touch puts champagne in my veins, the fizzing, bubbly celebration racing just beneath my skin as he leans in.
To kiss me?
My shivery breath hitches in the back of my throat as I watch his warm lips come closer. At the last moment, he turns my face from his, and I feel the warm brush of his breath on my cheek and ear.
“I’m so very sorry, Princess, but you are going to scream for me too,” he murmurs.
He nips the lobe of my ear, and my right leg buckles right out from under me.
I’d like to say it was a fear reaction, that his words scare me so much, I all but drop right there at his feet, but what I feel is nothing like fear.
It was wanting, pure and hot, rushing through my veins, hot on the heels of all that fizzy champagne.
Wanting that made every erogenous zone in my body prickle at the nuzzle of his lips and teeth on my ear.
I shiver as it’s followed by the soothing caress of his tongue as he draws my lobe into his mouth and suckles.
That hot pull tugs at more than just my ear, it’s in both nipples, my pulsing pussy, my swelling clit, making me gasp and grab his shirt with both hands. There isn’t a bone left in my legs by the time he’s done.
“Not only am I going to make you scream,” he promises, “I’m going to make you like it.”