Valentina
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The words hang in the air between us.
I want you to fuck me.
I said it. Out loud. In his bedroom. To Salvatore Vitale.
And now the room has gone completely, impossibly still.
He doesn't move right away. He just looks at me with that dark, unreadable expression he's perfected.
Then he moves.
Not fast, that would be too easy, and Salvatore doesn't do easy.
He closes the distance between us with that same measured, unhurried certainty he brings to everything. Like he already knows how this ends. Like he's already won and just hasn't told me yet.
His hand finds my face first. His thumb traces my jaw, tilting my chin up until I have no choice but to look at him.
"I want you to understand something," he says. His voice is low. Quiet. The kind of quiet that precedes a storm. "This isn't something I'm going to let you walk back from."
My heart does something unsteady in my chest.
"I know.”
I reach out and press my palm flat against his chest.
His heartbeat gives him away. Fast. Just slightly. Just enough to know I'm not alone in this.
Something loosens in me.
"Valentina."
"Don't." I look up at him. "Don't talk. Not yet."
He obeys. Salvatore Vitale, who obeys no one, goes quiet for me. And somehow that undoes me more than anything else he could have done.
His hands go to my zipper.
Slow. Patient. The scrape of it down my spine is the loudest sound in the room, and I feel it everywhere, every nerve ending standing at attention as cool air meets my skin and the dress pools at my feet.
I'm standing before him in nothing but black lace I didn't think twice about this morning, and the way he looks at me makes me glad for every single choice I made today.
"You're beautiful," he says, and it doesn't sound like a compliment. It sounds like a verdict. Like something that was true before he said it and will remain true long after. "Valentina, you are so fucking beautiful."
I gesture to the rest of his clothing.
"Your turn.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. He reaches for the waistband of his briefs, and I watch, I let myself watch, unashamed, as he pushes them down. And then there is nothing between us but air and weeks of wanting and the particular silence that comes right before something irreversible.
He kisses me. His tongue strokes against mine, demanding and consuming, and my nails rake down his back without thought.
He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist automatically as he lays me back on the bed. He pulls back just enough to look at me. This is the part I should be afraid of. The stillness before. The way his eyes move over me like he's memorizing every detail, keeping it.
I am not afraid.
I realize that with a quiet shock. Salvatore Vitale is standing over me like a man who has never wanted anything as badly as he wants this, and I am not afraid.
I am ready.
"Valentina."
"Shhh… Stop talking," I breathe. "Just take me."
He lines himself up at my center and my core tightens, anticipating the pressure. He's so large, my breath hitches, and my body tenses, waiting, wanting.
But he doesn't enter. Instead, his mouth finds my inner thigh, his hands sliding beneath me, tilting me up until I am completely open to him and his particular, devastating patience. Then his lips are on me and his tongue is deep inside me.
He is methodical. Relentless. He treats this like something he intends to do correctly. His tongue traces me slowly, and every time I get close, every time I feel the orgasm building, he pulls back. Waits. Lets me breathe. Then starts again.
"Salvatore, I want to come. Please."
The dark, satisfied sound he makes against me is going to ruin me.
His fingers find me. His thumb presses and holds without moving, and his voice comes low against my inner thigh.
"You don't come until I tell you."
I gasp. My nails dig into his shoulders.
"Beg me."
I am going to kill him.
I am going to beg him.
Both of those things are true simultaneously, and I have made peace with them.
"Please." The word tears out of me. "Salvatore, please.
"Again." Dark. Satisfied.
"Let me come," I sob, and the word sob is accurate, and I have abandoned pride entirely. "Please, I can't."
His thumb moves.
The orgasm crashes through me, sudden and total, snapping from my core outward, my back lifting clean off the mattress, his name breaking apart in my mouth into something unrecognizable.
He doesn't stop. He works me through every aftershock, fingers still moving, mouth still there, until I cup his face and guide him up toward my lips.
He presses one last kiss against me. Open-mouthed.
Unhurried. Then his teeth sink into the soft flesh of my inner thigh.
Not a playful nip. A brand. I gasp, half pain, half shock, and his hand comes up to cup my face, thumb stroking my cheek while his teeth hold.
When he releases me, I can already feel the bruise forming.
"So you remember," he says quietly. "So you feel me tomorrow when I'm not there.
" I should be horrified. I reach down and press my fingers against the mark.
Then he drags himself up my body, chest pressed to mine, his weight settling over me as he looks down at my face. His eyes are black. He presses his lips to mine and kisses me. Hard and wanting.
Then he reaches between us, still kissing me.
One hand captures both my wrists, pinning them above my head.
The blunt press of him finds me, and my breath stops.
He pushes in, slow, just the tip, just enough to make every nerve ending I have scream for more.
My mouth falls open. My fingers flex uselessly against his grip.
"Look at me."
My eyes find his.
He sinks in another inch. Devastating. Giving me every inch of him one agonizing moment at a time, watching my face absorb each one. Then he thrusts into me all at once, filling me until I can't breathe.
"Fuck, you're tight," he groans, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks as he pulls out slowly, then snaps his hips forward again. "Like a fucking vice."
"Salvatore," I moan, adjusting to take all of him inside me.
"More," I start to say, but he doesn't let me finish.
He drives into me again so hard a scream tears from my throat, loud enough that I'm embarrassed his staff might hear.
He pulls back and slams forward again. Deep, punishing, all of him, like something snapped loose inside him the moment he bottomed out and there's no getting it back.
Both palms slam flat against the headboard for leverage.
Then he moves.
Hard. Fast. Every thrust shoves me up the mattress, his hips snapping with a relentless rhythm that knocks the air from my lungs in short, helpless bursts. The headboard cracks against the wall. Once. Again. Again.
His forehead drops to mine, breath hot against my lips. "Call me daddy," he growls, voice rough and demanding. "Say it."
"Okay… daddy." The word barely escapes before he drives deeper, and my breath breaks completely.
"Every night." The confession rips from him between thrusts, jaw clenched tight, like the words have been caged behind his teeth for months.
"Every fucking night I've wanted to ruin you.
" His fingers dig into my hips as he drives even deeper.
"Now that I finally have this tight little pussy wrapped around my cock, your perfect body beneath me—" His voice breaks on a groan.
"I don't know how the fuck I'm ever going to stop. "
“Salvatore,”
"What did I tell you to call me?" He slows his pace to a torturous crawl.
My breath hitches. Waiting. Anticipating. Every nerve ending screaming for the drag of his cock, ready to feel him in places I didn't know existed.
His hand slides beneath my lower back, tilting my hips up as he buries himself to the hilt. A scream tears from my throat at the impact.
"Oh… fuck, I can't—"
Then he pulls out almost completely and slams into me so hard my body collapses.
"Daddy!" I scream, fingers clawing at the sheets as my vision whites out. He's huge—the burn of him almost too much—and I'm trembling, caught between pain and pleasure.
I'm gritting my teeth and biting my lips, trying and failing to keep the noise down.
"You said you wanted me to fuck you, right, baby?" He doesn't slow down, doesn't give me a second to recover. "Do you want me to stop?"
"No, please don't stop," I beg foolishly. My body has never felt so ravaged, so taken, so ruined.
"Then tell me to fuck you harder. Beg me."
My breath catches. "Fuck me harder, daddy… please."
He obliges immediately, the impact making me see stars. "Valentina, I want to ruin you. I want to make you mine. All of you."
"You already have," is all I manage, but he laughs—dark and possessive.
"No I haven't, baby. Not even close."
He slows his pace so I can feel every inch as it slides in and out of me, but I want more. I want the stretch. I want the pain.
His mouth finds my throat. Teeth and tongue and the hot press of his lips against my pulse point while he takes me like he's trying to erase every wall I ever built between us. Like he's been starving for this. Like weeks of wanting with nowhere to put it has finally been unleashed.
My nails rake down his back.
"Fuck me harder, daddy."
I don't know why I say it, he's already moving so hard I can't tell where the pleasure ends, and the pain begins. But I want him. All of him. I don't want him to hold back. I want him to ruin me beyond repair.
He hisses through his teeth, buries himself to the hilt, and grinds in deep, slow circles that make my toes curl before pulling back and slamming forward again. Then he drives into me with one brutal thrust, and I bury my face in the pillow to muffle the scream.
"Salvatore," I whimper. I can feel the tears.
He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. He flips me onto my stomach, his hand in my hair pulling me up onto my knees, and I barely have time to brace before he's pressing against my entrance.
I'm still sensitive, still throbbing, and taking him again is almost too much, but I want it.
I want the ache and the burn and the way he makes everything else disappear.
He doesn't go slow. Each thrust fills me, and the cry that escapes is muffled against the pillow, my fingers clawing at velvet. He's enormous. The stretch, the drag of him against my walls, and it blurs everything. He withdraws and thrusts deep again, and I stop thinking entirely.
"You take me so well, baby," he growls against my neck. "Like you were made for this. For me."
I can't answer. My body is rocking back against his, my hips meeting each thrust, and his hand finds my clit again, relentless, demanding, and I am climbing faster than I should.
Every wall I built to survive this house, this arrangement, this man, he takes them apart, thrust by thrust, until there's nothing left of them, and I'm not even sure I mourn their passing.
I meet him. Match him. Ask for more with my body and my voice and every sound I make that I'll be embarrassed about tomorrow and don't care about right now.
"Say you're mine," he demands against my throat like a brand.
"I belong to you," I tell him.
And then, between one breath and the next, his voice wrecked and low and completely unguarded: "I love you, Valentina," he says before pressing a kiss to my back.
The pressure intensifies, and I know he's close.
"Come on my cock," he orders. "Now."
And I do, my body responds to him right away, my walls clenching around him in rhythmic pulses, pleasure crashing through me harder than the first time. I hear him follow, the way his rhythm breaks, his grip on my hip tightening, his voice rough with my name and that single, possessive word.
Mine.
He stays like that for a moment, his chest against my back, both of us breathing hard. Then his hands soften. He turns me over, brushes my hair from my face with a gentleness I'm not prepared for, and kisses me, deep and slow, like this part matters to him too.
He shifts beside me, pulling me closer, and I feel him still hard against my thigh.
"Insatiable," I murmur against his chest.
"Only for you." He tilts my face up, kisses me slowly. "Only ever for you."
When it's done, we lie tangled in the white sheets, his heart pounding under my ear, his arms around me.
"Stay," he says quietly. "Sleep in my bed tonight."
"Okay."
He smiles, his lips pressed to my hair.
I wait for the voice in my head, the one that sounds like survival instinct, like every reason this is a terrible idea. It doesn't come. Or maybe it comes and I'm past caring.
"Sempre mia," he murmurs when he thinks I'm already asleep. "Per sempre."
Always mine. Forever.
I think about what he said. I love you, Valentina. Three words from a man who doesn't say unnecessary things. A man who has spent weeks choosing every word like it might be used against him in court.
Sleep pulls me under slowly, warmly, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
And in the last moment before I go under, I let myself feel something I've been refusing to feel since I walked into this mansion.
Safe. Happy. Wanted.
I think I'm falling in love with my monster.
Sleep pulls me under slowly, warmly, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
And in the last moment before I go under, I let myself feel something I've been refusing to feel since I walked into this mansion.
Safe.
That's when I hear it. So faint I almost miss it.
The soft click of his bedroom door closing.
My eyes fly open, but the room is dark, and Salvatore is still asleep beneath me, his breathing deep and even.
I tell myself I imagined it.
But I know this house well enough now to know the difference between imagination and reality.
Someone was just in this room.
And they saw everything.