CHAPTER SIXTEEN #2
“You were never meant to get pregnant in the first place,” he finally said when he stopped laughing. “I thought you hated him. And yet here you are, mourning for his baby. A thing that is part of him. Part of the man you hate? I did you a favor. You’re welcome.”
“That thing…” I said, and my voice breaking on the word he so carelessly used to refer to my unborn baby. “...was part of me.”
“Why would you want his baby?” he asked, and the question was sincere in the worst possible way. “Why would you want a reminder of the man you loathe for the rest of your life?”
He didn’t understand. He could never.
The concept of wanting something simply because it was yours—because it had grown inside you, because it was made from your blood and your body and your breath—was beyond his understanding.
To Matteo, children were assets or liabilities. Continuations of bloodlines or complications to be managed. Children were political, plain and simple.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.” My voice steadied. “You had no right to make that choice for me. To take that choice from me.”
I pressed my finger against the trigger, not pulling, not yet, but letting him feel the proximity of it. Of what I could do, what I was capable of.
“What do you think you’re going to do? Kill me and my brother both? Do you think you would ever get away with that?”
No, he was right. I would never get away with killing the Salvatore brothers. Not both of them, at least.
“We made a deal. I will facilitate your vengeance and you will give me what I want,” he said, his eyes hardening. “I kept my end of the bargain. Now, give me the information that I need.”
“See, there is a problem with that…”
“Don’t fucking test me,” he cut me off, growling. “Tell me where—
“You can’t sleep.” Adrian’s voice slithered through the memory, dragging me out of it.
I turned my face to look at him. He was awake, his eyes roving over my face as he took in my expression. I hated how he did that, how he looked so closely, as if he was cataloguing every piece of me, every inch of my skin, every fragile twitch in his memory.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I responded and then inwardly winced. That response was too fast, too weak.
“You’re a pretty liar, wife.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Being so flirtatious. It doesn’t work on me, Adrian.”
My husband’s lips curled. “You speak such sweet lies but they are getting less convincing,” he said, and I could hear the amusement in his voice, the quiet satisfaction that he could read me so easily.
“You’ve been lying here in this bed for hours,” Adrian continued. “Your breathing hasn’t changed once. You haven’t moved. You can’t sleep.”
“Maybe I’m just not tired.”
“Maybe you’re full of shit.”
The corner of my mouth twitched against my will. I pressed it flat, but the damage was done. He’d seen it, that involuntary crack in the carefully composed armor I had built around me.
“There it is,” he murmured. “I knew she was still in there somewhere.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
I made a frustrated sound in the back of my throat. “Don’t act like you know me.”
“I know enough.” His voice dropped lower, losing the teasing edge, replaced with a more serious cadence. “I know you’re drowning in your own head, and I know you won’t ask for help because asking for help means admitting you need it, and you’d rather chew glass than admit you need anyone.”
My throat tightened.
The accuracy of his deduction was offensive.
“I don’t need help,” I said.
“You need to feel something that isn’t fear.” He paused. “Or anger.”
God, I needed him to stop talking. “Shut up.”
Adrian shifted on the bed, the leather belt creaking softly as he adjusted his bound wrists. “Make me.”
I turned my head and found him watching me with an expression I couldn’t fully understand.
“You don’t have to keep doing this to yourself,” he said. “Torturing yourself. Replaying whatever memory you can’t seem to escape in your mind. You’re letting it eat you alive.”
I opened my mouth to deny his words but he cut me off.
“I can see it.” His gaze traveled over my face, lingering around my eyes and then my tightened jaw. “You’re wound so tight you’re going to snap, and when you do, it won’t be pretty.”
“I’m fine,” I said, scoffing a little.
I really was a liar…
He clocked me so well.
“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine since the night you pulled that trigger.” He said the words without any accusation, without any true anger. He was just simply stating a fact. “You need to feel something else, Serafina. Something that isn’t the wound festering inside you.”
“How about you stop psychoanalyzing me?” I rolled my eyes. “You seem to be interested in a change of career. Is ‘therapist’ your new job description,”
“I’m not psychoanalyzing. I’m offering.” The faintest smile touched his lips. “Let me help you forget. Just for tonight. Let me give you something to feel that isn’t the memories that haunt you.”
My jaw loosened and I blinked.
Did he mean what I thought he meant?
Was he… offering…sex? Pleasure?
God, he really was maddening.
How could he so easily offer sex in the middle of what would have been a normal conversation until now…
Well, nothing was normal about Adrian.
About our circumstances.
But now that he offered, my mind started to dwell on the idea.
And it happened to… like it very much.
No.
I couldn’t…
We could not.
“I don’t want that,” I said, but the words came out breathless and unconvincing even to my own ears.
“Liar.”
I hissed in response. “Stop calling me a liar.”
“Your pupils are dilated. Your breathing changed thirty seconds ago. And you’ve been staring at my mouth for the last ten seconds.” That infuriating half-smile again. “You want it. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.”
“Even if I did…” I said carefully, eyes roving over his body, lingering on his wide chest for a little too long. “It wouldn’t change anything between us.”
“I don’t expect it to.” His wrists shifted against the leather. “I’ll remain bound. You have all the control. Everything happens at your pace, on your terms.”
Control.
It was the one thing I had been denied, the one thing I had fought for and lost and clawed back in fragments.
Adrian was offering it to me freely, wrapped in leather and the weight of his own restraint, at the cost of his control.
My body made the decision before my mind could intervene.
I sat up.
The comforter pooled around my waist, the nightgown slipping off one shoulder, and I didn’t bother adjusting it.
Adrian watched me move closer to his side as I closed the distance between us.
His eyes darkened, the dark blue going nearly black in the dim light, and I watched his throat work as he swallowed.
Even bound, even deliberately vulnerable, he radiated with a contained energy that made the air between us crackled with his authority.
I slowly climbed onto him. He tensed as I straddled his waist, my knees pressing into the mattress on either side of his hips.
My spine tingled when I felt the hard line of him through the thin fabric of his sweatpants, the evidence of his need pressed against me.
The timid desire low in my belly tightened in response.
I brought my hand between us and I wrapped my fingers around the length of him through the cotton.
Adrian’s entire body went rigid beneath me.
A sound escaped him, low, guttural, tearing from deep inside his chest. His head dropped back against the pillow, the tendons in his neck standing in sharp relief or pain, I wasn't sure.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
Fuck indeed.
The power of it—the raw, unmistakable effect I had on him—sent a surge of something primal through my veins.
I squeezed him through his sweatpants, just slightly, and watched his jaw clench, watched the muscles in his abdomen contract beneath the taut fabric of his shirt.
His wrists strained against the belt, not pulling free but flexing, and I could see the effort it cost him to remain still, to let me set the pace. The leather creaked. The bed frame groaned softly.
“Serafina.” My name in his mouth sounded ruined. “Wait.”
I stilled and looked down at him, brow arched. “Changed your mind already?”
“Not even close.” His eyes burned up at me with a dark fevered need. “I want a taste of you first.”
My breath caught.
“Sit on my face, Princess.”
The words were crude and commanding, and they should have offended me.
My thighs clenched involuntarily around his hips, and I felt the wet heat of my own desire bloom between my legs, sudden and overwhelming, proof of how long it had been since I’d allowed myself to want anything at all.
I should have said no.
I should have maintained the upper hand, should have made him wait, should have done any of the thousand things a woman with sense would do in this situation.
But instead, I reached beneath my nightgown and hooked my fingers into the waistband of my underwear, sliding them down my thighs with deliberate slowness. I let them drop to the floor beside the bed, and the cool air against my bare skin made me shiver.
Adrian watched every second of it, his jaw clenched tight, the muscles in his forearms flexing against his restraint.
I pushed the hem of my nightgown up, bunching the fabric around my waist, and shifted forward.
His breath was warm against my inner thighs as I positioned myself above his face, one hand braced on the headboard for balance.
“Like this?” I asked, and my voice was barely recognizable, breathy and uncertain.
“Just like that,” he answered, groaning pleasedly. “Good girl.”
The praise washed over me like a warm, silken blanket.
His lips brushed against my inner thigh and his teeth grazed the skin there, nipping at me teasingly.
I let out a soft whimper and Adrian chuckled at my response. The sound of his laughter travels all the way to my core, vibrating through my body.
Adrian slowly kissed up on my inner thigh, drawing closer to where I was hot and drenched. The first touch of his lips against my pussy had me gasping.