Chapter 18
SOFIYA
If Rafaelle clocks that I haven’t asked the geographical location of where he’s brought me, he doesn’t point it out.
Valle di Luce, so-named for the way the late-afternoon sun spills golden over the hills, igniting the vines in a blaze of copper and emerald.
Nestled between olive groves and the rugged cliffs of northern Sicily, the vineyard stretches like a secret whispered between the sea and sky.
In spring, wildflowers bloom at the borders – crimson poppies, violet irises, and sun-bright calendula – scenting the air with soft sweetness.
At dusk, fireflies blink among the leaves like stars come down to rest, and the wind carries the mingled perfume of ripe grapes and sugar-kissed breeze. It’s a place built on blood and legacy, but also beauty – aching, untamed, and breathtaking.
I know this because I’d spent uncomfortably long days scoping the place out years ago as part of my ‘training’, as Bonafacio put it.
And lately, I’d returned, inexplicably drawn to the rarely used Salvatore estate while I searched for my sister, Giada.
The sister my grandfather had hidden so surprisingly well after that harrowing incident Rafaelle Salvatore was determined to decimate my family for that I hadn’t been able to locate even the smallest lead.
The Venetian blinds cast slatted shadows across the suite’s king-size bed, lacing us in muted stripes of late afternoon light.
I stand in the centre of the room I snuck into and spent a single night in a year ago. Dreaming dreams that should never come true, yet yearn to be born.
Clad only in a thin silk robe that tumbles to my knees, I wait, my heart lodged in my throat.
The sea breeze drifts through the open balcony doors, tugging at my damp hair and carrying the faint scent of salt and earth.
Everything about this room – its opulence, its stillness – hangs heavy with the weight of what Rafaelle Salvatore and I are about to do.
What that kiss outside had started. What the deranged push-pull-attack-betray had wrought.
A lick of my lower lip from his clever tongue.
A stuttered roll of my hips.
The feral power of his hardened cock. Branding me. Owning me.
Then the untamed, unvarnished words he’d uttered.
‘I’m going to fuck you, bedda tigra. Tonight. I’m going to pluck that cherry, taste it on my tongue and my cock. Claim one victory tonight.’
His voice, low and dangerous, echoed in me like a summons. Truce, we chose. But truce, in our world, means a different war: the one that plays out between skin and need, power and surrender.
‘And you’re going to let me, aren’t you?’ he crooned, infusing mesmeric power behind words that shouldn’t command my complete surrender.
But they do.
I close my eyes and remember the raw electricity of our last kiss, standing in the vineyard under the cracked sky. The rain had soaked us, but our hunger had burned hotter than any storm. I had allowed him to taste me in a way I never would have imagined.
A Salvatore man’s mouth had drawn me so completely into his world. And now, here I am, near-naked at the edge of everything I didn’t know I craved until a mere three days ago.
A soft click on the bathroom door makes me inhale sharply.
Rafa steps out, black Henley clinging to his torso, his pants pressed taut across his thighs. His hair is damp despite using the towel on it, on both of us when we came inside.
The faintest flame of candlelight picks out the angles of his cheekbones.
He watches me, slow and deliberate, his gaze sizing me up. I shiver despite the warmth in the room.
‘Come here,’ he says, voice low, rough with the promise of violence and rhapsody all at once.
I take a step forward, and then another, until only a breath divides us. He tilts my chin up with a fingertip, and I feel every nerve roaring to life.
‘Do you trust me?’ His eyes glint with sincerity, but also that feral hunger I can’t forget.
‘No. I shouldn’t. Maybe,’ I whisper, though a tremor runs through me.
‘I’ll take all three. For now.’ He lifts a small black box from the bedside table – two leather cuffs lined with soft suede and a blindfold of matching black silk. My pulse reverberates in my ears.
An assassin with a go-bag that contains sex toys?
I would laugh if I wasn’t insanely turned on.
He shows me both items, watching my reaction.
I swallow hard. ‘You’re tying me up for the second time tonight?’
He presses a finger to my lips, savouring unsaid things. ‘The first was for punishment. The second could be punishment too. If you ask nicely.’
My breath catches. I hadn’t thought of asking. The notion feels dangerous, thrilling, and utterly intoxicating.
He slinks behind me, eases the robe off and lightly loops one cuff around my right wrist. I inhale a stuttered breath. His scent, musky and faintly copper, drifts against my neck.
‘Relax.’ The voice at my ear, velvet-dark, commands an involuntary shiver. He secures the cuff with gentle but unyielding pressure.
The snap of the closure echoes in the hush. He repeats it with my left wrist, and I close my eyes, tasting the metallic punch of my heartbeat.
The sensation is strangely liberating. My arms are mine in the usual sense, and yet entirely not mine.
‘Blindfold next. You ready?’
My pulse hammers. It’s a question repeated in my mind. ‘Yes.’
He stretches it across my eyes and smooth silk dissolves the room into shade.
Then he ties it behind my head, a soft knot I could slip free from – but I don’t.
The world dims. I breathe in darkness. A darkness we were both born into.
A darkness we, from opposite sides of a cursed coin, have embraced.
‘Now.’ His fingers graze my jaw, trailing down my chest and collarbone like a caress and a charge. ‘You can’t see me… but I can see you.’
I nod.
My throat is tight, but I want this, even as terror curves my spine. Beneath the blindfold, I peer into my own uncertainty. Tears I cannot stem, butterflies tearing at my stomach.
I’m suddenly aware of every inch of bare skin, exposed and trembling.
A draw of breath behind me, then the hum of him stepping closer. A hand clasps my hip, guiding me forward until my belly grazes the plush mattress. I drop to my knees on the cool carpet, obedient and braced.
He runs his fingertips across the hollow of my back, over the curve of my hips and the swell of my bottom and I catch my breath.
‘Don’t move.’ His voice drips need and command. ‘Let me worship you, duci tigra.’
I’m riveted by the sound of him removing his belt – leather sliding against leather – and snapping the buckle. The silent click of it falling to the floor makes me quiver.
My womb tingles. I imagine the weight of him behind me, unyielding, all-consuming.
I’m vulnerable, and utterly alive.
Firmer touches drift along the valley between my shoulder blades, sending a shiver through my bones. Then, a light brush of a fingertip along my spine, teasing warmth.
His mouth grazes the shell of my ear. ‘Stay with me.’
I nod, breath choked. ‘Rafaelle—’
He kneels behind me, the rasp of clothing being discarded echoing all around me. I press forward, opening my thighs ever so slightly, an invitation in the darkness. A mute gasp travels up my neck. I’m caught between the need to pull away and the need to back sink into his naked body.
A single thick finger traces the seam of my pussy, light, exploratory, mapping every quiver. I bite back a cry. My slickness drips on his fingertip. He smiles against my skin – an echo of blades between my thighs.
Then, just as suddenly, he changes our positions and his breath flares around my navel.
He’s everywhere. Trailing soft kisses, stubble brushing my skin as he lowers himself, tongue grazing the crease of my hip.
Every nerve ignites. The blindfolded world is all sensation – the press of his warm breath, the wet pull of his tongue, the steady thrum of his massive cock against my thigh.
‘Fuck, you smell incredible. It’s driven me insane for over a year. You know that?’
‘You mean since you started tailing me, thinking I didn’t know you were there?’ I rasp.
Another smile against my skin. A kiss. ‘I wanted you to know, baby. Where’s the fun in hiding in shadows when I could play?’
His tongue delves deeper, flicking up to my swelling clit, my mounting need. I whimper, a stupidly feminine sound that would… should shame me, but I don’t care in this moment. My body is trembling so hard my toes curl. He’s relentless, patient, each stroke of his mouth forging me towards surrender.
‘Rafa,’ I moan into the black. My voice sounds distant, yet too loud – like I’m leaking every drop of control.
He hums, soft and possessive. ‘Good girl. Cream for me. I’m thirsty as fuck.’
Heat pools under my ribcage at the utter filth from his beautiful mouth. My back arches, pressing my hips backward. He groans, lips parting, and I feel him gather me to the brink.
‘Closer.’ His voice is a promise and a claiming.
Heat intensifies, tongue darting, teeth grazing and breath warm and flickering. My breaths come jagged – each inhale an invitation, each exhale a confession of how much I want this. Want him, the most forbidden thing in my existence.
God, the way my body floods is shameful and exhilarating and I don’t care that I’m blushing even as my muscles clench, my mind abandoning everything but—
He latches onto my clit, sucks it like his favourite candy. I scream as the world collapses into waves of sensation.
‘Fuck, you’re breathtaking when you come,’ Rafa rasps.
He holds me there, riding the end of my need out slowly until my limbs tremble into stillness. Then his mouth lifts to press a slow kiss to the nape of my neck.
‘I’m not done.’
I’m so startled when he kisses me my heart flutters. I taste myself on his lips and moan as I nod.
His hands trail from my shoulders down to my ass. He shifts behind me and I catch the weight of his cock, hard and stark and hot against my skin.