Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
Sofia
I ’m exhausted.
I don’t recall a time in my life I’ve ever felt this drained before, like a tennis ball being slammed back and forth across a court, with no chance to catch my breath. All I want is to soak in a long bath, crawl under my sheets, bury my face in a pillow, and pretend this isn’t my reality.
This has to be some kind of never-ending nightmare, because I never agreed to star in this soap opera, caught between my husband—the man I once vowed my life to—and a dark-eyed shadow from his past.
I do a bit of hopping as I drag my Manolo Blahnik stilettos off one leg and then the other, wiggling my toes to ease the constrictive abuse they had been in all night.
I thought that dinner would never end. The entire time, my stomach kept tumbling around like clothes in the washer and more than once, I had wanted to escape to the bathroom and stay there.
Especially when my husband had kissed me.
Pushing open the bedroom door, I step inside, only to be yanked into a hard, unyielding body and shoved against the wall. The room is cloaked in darkness, but despite my heart galloping in my chest, I know exactly who my nighttime intruder is.
“Nero,” I breathe.
I hear the door lock turn, and then he buries his face into my neck and growls, my body shuddering with pleasure and something more terrifying: contentment . All my earlier tension fizzles away till I’m left feeling boneless.
“He kissed you.” His voice is guttural and furious.
“I didn’t want him to.”
“You belong to him.”
I belong to you! , everything inside of me is screaming, but the words refuse to come out. Despite the fact that Nero and I know every inch of each other’s bodies, how to touch each other with just the right amount of pressure and hunger to make the other fall apart, every erogenous zone, we’ve still never defined what this is.
I’ve both dreaded and anticipated that conversation.
“Please,” I whisper, my eyes getting accustomed to the darkness enough for me to see him. Suddenly I’m sick and tired of always being in the dark.
The hurried touches and the stolen kisses and frenzied orgasms. Just once, I want to be taken apart by gentle hands and adored. Tears prick my eyes, and I clutch at him tighter.
“Nero, please,” I croak.
He raises his head to look at me, and we stand like that for what seems like forever, reality suspended around us.
“You’re mine,” he declares.
My stupid heart skips a beat at the words, and I wish more than anything in my life that they were true. I don’t belong to Nero Castello, and when he eventually sets my world on fire, he will be too focused on watching Sebastian burn to hear me scream in agony.
“Kiss me,” I plead.
“I’m going to do more than kiss you,” he informs me, then reaches beside my head for something.
A second later, the room floods with light from the chandelier hanging above my bed. My eyes trace the lines and angles of his face, marveling at how much I know that face. I know it like I know mine, and yet I don’t know it at all.
Earlier at dinner, I barely held my gasp of surprise when he had walked in wearing a button up shirt and pants. Now, I marvel at how the dark shirt molds over his chest, shoulders and arms, the first two buttons undone, revealing the strong column of his throat.
He looks amazing in his regular jeans, t-shirt and boots combination, but in a shirt and dress pants, Nero looks devastatingly handsome.
“I’m going to replace my touch with everywhere his hands were, and I’m going to make you forget his name.” His hand slides up my thigh, taking my dress up with it. “I’m going to put my marks on your skin so that whenever you look in the mirror, you’ll be able to see nothing but my name carved into your skin.”
My panties are already soaked, and he’s barely even touched me.
When he finally seals his mouth over mine in a brutal kiss, the only thing I’m capable of doing is surrendering to him. His fingers dig into my thighs, and I moan into his mouth, allowing his tongue to push into my mouth, giving him free rein to devour me. And devour he does .
Nero’s mouth is not just hot and hungry against mine, it’s demanding, angry, possessive. The combination goes straight to my head like cocaine, and my head spins.
I claw at him, wanting everything he can give, and he grabs back at me, lifting me into his arms and pressing me more firmly against the wall. My legs go around his hip and I clutch at him firmly, holding on for dear life.
“Want you,” I mumble. “Want you so bad.”
He trails his tongue down to my neck and I gasp, “Mine. This is mine.”
Nero tugs at my lower lip with his thumb. “This is mine too.”
“Yes, yours,” I agree breathlessly, rocking against the erection trapped under his pants.
He drags one thin strap of my dress down my shoulder and arms, mouth following the descent. The dress has an inbuilt bra and so when the strap finally falls off, my breast is exposed to him.
“God, Princess,” he moans. “You’re perfect everywhere.”
He squeezes the achy flesh in his large palm, rolling it under his expert hands before pinching at my nipple.
I throw my head back as something sharp flashes through me. “Harder.”
He tugs at the hard peak and then pinches it again. I’m so wet now that it’s soaked through my panties, and I’m sure I’m leaving wet trails all over his pants.
I cry. “Oh God, Nero. Please. I can’t wait.”
“Princess.”
I’m already reaching for his belt, undoing it, hungry and desperate. It’s not even about sexual desire anymore, it’s about wanting to be a part of him. I want to claw into his skin and live there and be safe and wanted.
I finally manage to get his belt off and free his pulsating member.
“Mine,” he grunts, hands sliding up my thighs, cupping my pussy possessively. “This pussy is mine.”
I grind my hips against his palm, my clit bumping against him. “Hmm.”
Nero slides my panties to the side and then pushes into me in one full thrust. I cry out at the immense fullness within me. It should frighten me how much I feel empty without him, how much I’ve come to crave him, but at the moment, I can’t think about anything but how good this feels.
I tug at the short hair at the back of his head, panting like I’ve run a marathon.
“Hold on, Princess,” he nips at my lower lip. “This is going to be hard, and rough, and?—”
I slam my mouth against his, tongue lashing against his. The kiss goes from messy to absolute chaos, and then Nero starts to move his hips. It’s everything he promised and more. A brutal claiming.
He pistons his hip into me harder and harder, till I can only see stars. He pinches at my breasts, mouths at my neck, bites, licks and sucks all while he continues to pound into me.
Suddenly, he slaps a hand over my mouth and shakes his head at me.
I groan into his palm, confused.
His eyes shift to the knob of the door that I see is being rattled from the outside. His hips still and I almost roar in frustration.
“Ma’am?” I hear Alba’s voice call out. “Are you alright?”
“Tell her you’re fine,” he nibbles at my ear, sparks of pleasure shooting down my body. I tremble, trying to catch my breath.
“I’m fine,” I croak.
His hips shift into me, and I bury my cry against his throat. “She didn’t hear you, Princess.”
“Holy God,” I whimper and then clear my throat. “Alba, I’m fi—” My words end with a drawn-out gasp as his mouth covers my breast and sucks hard. “F-fine!”
“Are you sure, ma’am? You don’t sound alright. Do you want some tea? Chamomile or maybe peppermint?”
It’s sweet that she cares, but at the moment, I just want her gone. The dark eyed man whose cock is twitching inside of me is callously licking circles around my nipple and wetness is pooling out of me.
“I said I’m fine!” I roar.
He chuckles against my skin, causing goosebumps to rise up on my arms, and then he’s carrying me to the bed and tossing me down on it, our bodies still joined. Both of us still almost fully dressed, too eager to sink into this thing that burns between us to even bother divesting of our clothes.
He grabs my wrists and pins them on the bed above my head. The position makes me feel completely helpless, laid bare before him and at his mercy, and it does things to me.
He pushes almost all the way out of me and then in again. I try to scream, but his mouth swallows the sound. Nero lays waste to my senses as he pistons into me, hips slamming down against me over and over again till I’m coming so hard, my eyes roll. Completely undone at this man’s mercy.
I break our kiss, my mouth open in a soundless scream, a full body shiver rocking through me at the force of my orgasm.
Nero’s fingers tangle into mine, notching into them till they’re interlocked completely. When our eyes meet, it’s fire against fire. I want to close my eyes, cut myself off from this jarring feeling, but I can’t. I’m afraid that if I close my eyes, he will disappear.
“Sofia,” he whispers. “You’re mine. This pussy is mine, these tits are mine. Every inch of you is mine.”
What about my heart? I clamp my mouth shut against those pathetic words.
“Fuck me harder!” I scream.
Jaw clenching, his other hand digs into my hip painfully, raising my hips higher till I’m completely bent in two, legs spread wide as he continues to move his hips, pounding me into the bed, dragging out animal sounds from my throat.
“You’re so tight, so wet, so hot, so perfect,” he bites out. “It feels so good with you. It’s never felt like this for me. I want to bury myself in you and live there. I could die inside this perfect pussy.”
I feel my walls clench and I spread my legs wider. More, more, more.
The hand on my hip moves down to grab at the string of my lacy G-string that we never got to taking off. He rips it clean off me and begins to thrum his fingers against the aching bud between my legs.
I grunt as another orgasm begins to build inside of me. “Yes, harder! Make me cum!”
Nero adjusts his hips, and the next thrust inside of me rearranges my entire worldview. My back arches off the bed as he hits something inside of me.
“Yes, there! Right there! Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
He hits it again and again with marked precision.
“Cum for me, princess.” His fingers pinch my clit and I explode.
“Nero, Nero. Oh God, Nero,” I chant as the orgasm moves from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes, tears leaking from my eyes.
That’s when I feel it—Nero’s hot cum inside of me. I immediately lock my legs around his hip, keeping him in place as he pumps inside me for the first time ever. I don’t want to think too much about the significance of it, but it feels pretty damn symbolic to me.
“God, baby, you make me so crazy. So damn careless and crazy,” he growls. “I want you to be leaking with my cum for days to come.”
I watch him watch me as he pulls out impossibly slowly from me, one inch at a time. His dark gaze is full of something wondrous and too intense that it makes me shiver.
He gathers his leaking cum and pushes it back into me. My cheeks burn red from the way he’s staring down there. I try to close my leg, but he shoots me a glare and holds them apart.
It’s so dirty, so wrong, but God, I love it. My nipples are like bullets standing on my chest, and even though I’m sore, I won’t object if he pushes into me again.
“I’m going to kill him on the day of the shipment.”
The cold words jolt me back to the present and reality, and I blink. The day of the shipment is Sunday, four days from now. It’s too soon, I’m not ready for this to be over, but even as the panicked thought crosses my mind, I know that this is long overdue.
“I-uh—okay,” I swallow.
“Look at me, Sofia,” he orders, and I raise my eyes to meet his. “Come with me. Sebastian is finished, and there’s nothing left for you here. Come with me.”
And then what? But I don’t have the guts to ask. What will I be to him? His lover? Bed warmer? A desperate thing inside of me tries to tell me that we may have created a child now. He will have no choice but to?—
The train of thought is interrupted by a scarier one. What if he fails?
My family and I will be destroyed, shot in our sleep perhaps, or I’ll be given to the brothels, used and abused. This isn’t a decision I can just make on the go; it affects more than just me.
“I—” I pause. “Nero, you don’t under?—”
His eyes frost over, and he begins to pull away from me. “On the contrary, Princess, I think I understand quite well.”
“Just listen—” I grab the sheets and wrap them around my body. “You don’t know what they will?—”
“I have to go now, Princess,” he cuts in, buckling his pants. “Try to get away from all of this by Sunday, because I’m going to raze everything that belongs to Lucchese to the ground. Every. Single. Thing .”
I flinch at his implication that I belong to Sebastian.
“Nero, please.”
He pauses at the door for a moment, his back to me. I hold my breath, waiting.
“Sleep tight, Princess.” Then he turns off the light and leaves, the door clicking close behind him.
A sob catches in my throat, and I turn, bury my face in the pillow and let loose.
Confusion, heartbreak, loss, and sorrow mix together inside me, wrecking through me. I clutch my chest where my aching heart is, and wish that everything could be different.