23. Julia
23
JULIA
I gulped and turned to face him, steeling myself for this inevitable face-off. “Roman, I?—”
“Shh,” he hissed, cutting me off. “I know.”
My jaw hung open, and I furrowed my brows. “You know?”
“Of course.” He raised an eyebrow and nodded. “You’re about to tell me how sorry you are, how much you regret running out on me. You’re about to get on your knees and plead for my forgiveness.”
Suddenly, the burning shame in my chest gave way to all-out gall. Get on my knees? Plead for forgiveness?
Who did he think he was?
I’d been trying to keep him safe. By ensuring we were emotionally detached from each other, he wouldn’t become a way for my family to control me, to humiliate me, or cause either of us pain. He didn’t know the extent of how terrible the Caputis were.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, crossing my arms in clear defiance.
“Good. Go on then. Beg.” Roman smirked, his eyes darkening as he dragged a finger up my arm to my shoulder and over the thin strap of my dress. “Beg for my attention. Beg me to forgive you for leaving me at the Beacon, for not answering my calls.”
His audacity and arrogance made me equally attracted to him and frustrated with him. I didn’t know whether I wanted to obey or stab him in the face.
“You said you wanted space.” His gaze flicked to mine. “You called the safeword and ran away from me.”
“After you said you loved me,” I snapped. “Don’t you remember this isn’t about love? This is pretend.”
“Hmm.” He nodded and crowded me against the table, running his hand over my clavicle to my throat, his cool metal rings biting into my skin as he flattened his palm over the divot at the base of my neck. “Pretend.”
“Yes,” I reiterated, but even then, my shaking voice betrayed me. It hadn’t been pretend in a long time, not for him, and certainly not for me. Still, I couldn’t back down. If I admitted it, if I let him in, this would end in heartache. I knew it. I felt it in my gut.
He moved even closer, forcing me to sit on the table to avoid getting caught in his trap. And once my legs were spread, he quickly positioned himself between them.
“When you wear your pretty lingerie and make me dinner wearing nothing else, that’s pretend?” Roman’s hold on me tightened as he coasted his palm up my windpipe to just under my jaw, holding my head right where he wanted it. I shivered under his control, seeing the speeding train going off the rails but knowing I couldn’t stop it. I was addicted to him, and since I’d deprived myself of him for two whole days, I now would do anything for a hit.
“Yes,” I murmured, ignoring the drop in my belly and the clench between my legs.
“And when you kneel and crawl to me, that’s just pretend?” He tilted his hips toward me, brushing the thick ridge behind his jeans up against my throbbing clit.
I moaned out another, “Yes,” tilting my head to the side as he leaned into my ear.
“And when you fall apart under me, gushing on my cock, I’m guessing that’s pretend as well?”
“None of it’s real.” It sounded like a lie, even to my own ears, though I’d been desperate to make it a reality.
“Uh-huh.” He shifted his hand around to the back of my neck and fisted my hair in a tight grip, yanking my head so I exposed my throat to him. It hurt, but how I loved it. A groan of pure arousal shot out of me. “Oh, my little wife. I adore how your lips form those pretty lies.”
“They’re not—” I tried to get out my rebuttal, but he pulled me off the table and flipped me around, slamming me down so hard, I nearly winced. My tender breasts ached on the wood, my cheek pulsing with a sharp smack as he held my face to the side.
“Don’t you dare lie to me again,” he said, leaning over me. The jeans on his thighs pressed up against the bare skin on mine, my dress having hiked up with the movement. Now, I lay exposed to him, my thin lacy underwear doing nothing to conceal just how much I wanted him—wanted this. “Let’s see just how much you’re pretending, huh?”
One hand held my head down while the other ducked under my hemline and dragged the satin up…up…up over my hips, completely baring me to him. He straightened and glanced down, letting out a laugh that sent the burn of embarrassment cascading through my body and into my cheeks. He dragged two fingers over my panties, from my ass to my clit and back up again, shaking his head.
“Oh, such a lying little wife,” he said, shoving my underwear down to my ankles, exposing me to him. “What am I going to do with you?”
I took a deep breath and sighed, knowing I’d been caught. Yes, I still wanted him. I’d always want him. This game, this magic, between us had enchanted me more than I’d ever thought it would. But still, I wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“Such a brute,” I snarled, trying to shove my way up. He pushed me back down harder.
“Stay still,” he growled. “You’ve denied me for two days, and now you’re lying to my face. I should punish you. I should pull you over my knee and edge you until you can’t walk. In fact—” The sound of jingling metal and the soft whoosh of leather made me look over my shoulder. He took off his belt and bent it in half, holding it with one hand while he admired the sight of my wet cunt and exposed skin. “I will give you two chances to tell me the truth. You can call your safeword and I’ll let you up, but if you do that and run away again without an explanation, I can assure you any restitution after that will be much… much …worse.”
He paused, waiting to see what I would say. Mercutio hovered on the tip of my tongue, and perhaps I should have said it. Perhaps I should have slowed this down so we could talk about it like reasonable adults, but I deserved the pain.
I deserved to be belted for having run away. I deserved the hurt for going along with this ridiculous marriage. And worst of all, I deserved the agony because I’d had the idiotic idea to fall in love with him in the first place.
“No? Nothing to say?” Roman tightened his hold on my hair.
“Well, go on then,” I snarled. “I don’t have all fucking night.”
The whip of leather through the air preceded a hard, fleshy smack. I heard it before I felt it, and when the bite sizzled up my back and into my legs, I collapsed against the table, all of the fight draining out of me. The belt came down again, this time on the other cheek, and I arched into it, perking my ass toward him, desperate for more. It hurt. He certainly wasn’t being gentle, but the sting on the outside had started to evaporate the fire on the inside.
“Such a fucking stubborn woman,” Roman sneered through clenched teeth. “I’m your husband. I’m the one you lean on, the one who shares this with you.”
Another hit caused another burn, and a huge chunk of my emotional armor split off, landing somewhere near my heart.
“I love you”—another lash, another sting, another moan—“no matter what you do, no matter what happens. I love you. And you don’t have to love me, but goddamn it, I won’t tolerate dishonesty.”
I dug my nails into the wood under me, struggling for purchase, anything to hold on to to keep me grounded, but my fingertips only grasped the burned outline of the SRMC logo. There was nothing, only him and me and the one thing I didn’t want to say.
“Tell me, Julia,” Roman growled. This time, the belt hit my cunt and I hissed in a gasp, the torture shooting into my gut and down to my toes. It decimated my defenses, cracking them like shattered glass. Any minute now, I’d lose. I could call the safeword, but deep down inside, perhaps I wanted to lose. Like he said, he was supposed to be the one that helped me share this burden.
Would he still love me if he knew what my returned adoration would mean for him? Would he make fun of me for my fears? Would he accept them, welcome them, soothe them?
Sometime around the tenth or eleventh strike, my gasps finally became sobs. The dam inside me broke, and a flood of torment rose inside me.
“I can’t lose you,” I finally said through heaving cries. “I love you, and I can’t lose you.”
“There we go,” Roman said, dropping the belt before grabbing my shoulders to ease me up. “There we go.”
“Fate abhors me.” I sucked in air as tears rolled down my cheeks, blurring my vision. “Anyone I’ve ever loved has died. I’m not meant to be happy. And if you…if fate takes you from me… I can’t do that again, Roman. I can’t.”
“Shh,” he said, scooping an arm under my knees so he could pick me up. When he sat in the president’s chair, he put me in his lap and hugged me close while I let it all out—all of the weight I’d been carrying for months. It wasn’t just the threat of loving and losing him. It was this whole situation. There was no one else who could go up against Gabriella, no one else who knew the family the way I did. If Leo were going to take over the helm, the burden to keep him in line had always and would always rest on my shoulders.
If he went down, I went down. And now, I shared a similar relationship with Roman. Trapped and surrounded by people that didn’t trust me, that barely knew me, I’d been playing a high-stakes game of Jenga, praying I didn’t accidentally pull out a piece that would topple the whole thing.
The pressure had become unbearable, and I let that all out on Roman’s shoulder while he pet my hair and rubbed circles in my back and dried my tears.
“Oh, my love,” he said. “ Mia cara, amore mia.” He whispered other endearments in Italian, muttering something about never leaving me, no matter what happened. “I’m yours, and you’re mine, and I will fucking run to the end of the earth to have you. Do you know that? Nothing will separate us. Not Gabriella, not the Caputi family, nothing.”
“Everyone I’ve ever loved has died, Roman,” I said. “And you—” The words came out of me now, the whole truth. “No one has ever meant as much to me as you.”
He brushed the hair out of my face and wiped my eyes with his thumbs, leaning in to kiss me so tenderly, it almost broke my heart all over again. “We are meant to be, my wife. My love.”
I snorted and shook my head. “We’re star-crossed.”
“Well, fuck the stars,” he said, giving me another tender kiss. “And fuck fate. If it wants to take me from you, it’ll have to fight like hell. You understand me?”
I nodded and kissed him, wrapping my arm around his neck, delighting in the safety of his hard body and his strong, capable arms.
“You wear my ring,” he said. “You have my last name and my entire family. You have everything I am, and I’ll be fucking damned if anything, fate or Caputi, is going to stop that.”
“I love you, Roman,” I said, leaning back to look him in the eye as I said it.
“I love you, Julia.” He kissed me again, this time deeper and slower than before. I pushed my hands up his chest to his neck, intertwining my fingers with the hair on the back of his head. At first, we reconnected with gentle pecks and slow licks, but soon we grew more passionate. He picked me up and twisted me around in his lap so I straddled him, my knees on either side of his hips.
He explored my body, grabbing my hips and sliding his palms up to my breasts to cup and knead like he’d never touched me before. I arched into it, opening my lips when his tongue demanded entrance. I wrestled mine against his, and I loved the spark that went through my center, straight to my nipples and cunt. Rolling my pelvis against him, I ground down to find that perfect cock, which had gotten harder since I’d stopped crying.
Roman kissed down my jaw and lapped at my neck, tugging the strap of my dress and bra down to free my breasts. When his greedy mouth found its way there, I leaned back so he had more room to explore.
“Please,” I murmured, gripping at his hair, rocking against him in a humiliating frenzy.
“Please, what, my darling wife?” He grinned while he sucked one nipple into his mouth, and lust shot through my veins, mixing with the heady look in his eyes to amp me up.
“Please, fuck me,” I said. “Make me yours again. Show me you love me.”
“ Mia cara, I’ve been showing you that for months now,” he said with that devilish smirk. “I’d do anything for you.”
He reached between us to unzip his jeans and free his cock, and when he lined himself up at my entrance, I lowered myself down on him all the way. I clenched against the intrusion, at once painful and euphoric, and I stayed there for a moment to adjust. I met his dark eyes, now almost black with his excitement, and I could swear I saw right down to his soul.
It was bright and powerful, just like him, and more importantly, it matched mine.
We truly were made for each other, and even if our story didn’t start the way either of us would have wished, I couldn’t imagine anyone else completing me so perfectly.
“Tell me again,” he said, rocking into me, gripping my hips to guide me.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Again.” He leaned in to kiss me while I fucked myself on top of him.
“I love you.” I had to say it through fumbled moans as he hit spots inside of me that set my molecules alight.
“Goddamn right, you do.” He broke away to kiss down my neck again, pausing at the spot where my neck met my shoulder while he found my clit, rubbing in that expert way only he knew how to do. “Don’t ever forget it.”
“I won’t.” My toes dug into the sides of the chair, my knees aching against the hard wooden seat. I’d surely have bruises later, not to mention the swollen parts on my backside, but who cared about that when my husband’s beautiful dick made me feel so amazing and fulfilled?
“Good.” He lapped over a particularly sensitive spot, and I melted, my muscles tightening, the euphoria inside escalating, amplifying, nearing a breaking point. “Just to make sure you don’t forget it…” He sank his teeth into my skin, sucking and biting the flesh on my trapezius muscle.
The pain combined with the pleasure between my legs and I broke apart, submitting to him and my orgasm and this untenable thing between us. I screamed, my entire body tensing, something pouring out of me that I couldn’t control. He covered my mouth with his free hand but kept going, kept fucking me while he claimed me with his teeth. It was so primal and territorial that I almost couldn’t stand it.
I loved that about him—how much he owned me, how much he protected me and possessed me. Even though I was fucking him, he had complete control over us both.
When I came back into my body, the explosion having ebbed enough for me to refocus on him, he grinned like a demon and wrapped his arms around me to stand. He carried me to the table and laid me down on top of it, my legs wrapped around his waist, his cock still buried deep inside me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, pressing tender kisses to the ache on my neck.
“That was amazing.” I could barely think, let alone operate my mouth.
“I think they heard you in Guam.” He laughed and leaned over me, holding my shoulders so he could lazily thrust into me in slow pushes that teased me and eased me down from my climax.
My loudness suddenly made me self-conscious, and I bit my bottom lip. “Is that a problem?”
“Fuck no,” he said. “Let them hear how much you love me.”
I grinned as my skin burned for him.
“Now, hold on. I’m gonna fuck your brains out.” My sexy husband smiled, gripped my hips, and did just that.
It was only afterward, once he’d come deep inside me with his head thrown back on his shoulders and that look of rapture on his gorgeous features, that I realized he’d left a hickey on my neck four days before my wedding. A version of me from six months ago would have been appalled. But now, well, I was grateful for a good concealer.