“Why didn’t you ever consider leaving?”
Valentino stared up at the ceiling. He told himself he would be honest with her. The simple and very real answer she would accept—blood in, blood out—but he knew the truth was much more complex and she would always know there was more. He slid his palm along her bare hip and down her thigh. Drew circles there.
“One can’t walk away from this business, Emmanuelle. Especially someone like me. Once in, you’re in for life, and I was born into it. Had I tried to leave, I would have been hunted down and killed.”
He wanted to leave it there, but her silence told him she knew there was more. That was his woman. Too damned intelligent. A Ferraro. Lethal as hell in more ways than one. He found her hip again, traced her hip bone, and then moved his exploring fingers up to her rib cage.
“I like control. Power. I was born into that as well. It’s stamped into my DNA. When I was with Giuseppi in meetings with the other bosses and I was a kid, I couldn’t help looking for each of their weaknesses. Ways to use those things against them. Ways to make our family stronger. I was always thinking that way.”
“Like you do with me.”
He turned on his side to face her, one arm wrapping around her narrow waist. Again, she was right. “Yes. I would do anything to keep you. I’m not going to lie to you, Emme. Not ever. You’re not easy, baby. You’re hard to read. You don’t give anything about your family away, and I respect that. I always have. I treat you carefully.”
“You use sex.”
Val let the smile show in his eyes as his gaze drifted over her body. Already, his cock was stirring again. It didn’t surprise him. He’d been without her far too long, and he’d never been able to be around her long without wanting her. Just thinking of her could make him as hard as a fucking diamond. He’d had to learn to discipline his mind when he went into meetings to keep her out.
“I do.” He admitted it readily. He saw no reason not to. “I use anything I can to keep you wanting me. You’re the most maddening woman in the world.” He bent his head and nuzzled her breast very gently, inwardly cursing that anyone could hit her so hard they would put such dark bruises on her body. “Sometimes I feel like trying to hold on to you is like trying to hold water in my hands.”
“I don’t mean to make you feel that way, Valentino.”
Her voice was soft, and he could hear her love surrounding him. Enfolding him. That’s what she did, and it only made him feel all the more desperate to hold on to her. That feeling of being blanketed in her. Wrapped in her love. He was so fucking obsessed with her. Consumed by his dark need of her.
“I don’t want to be with you because your shadow reacts to mine or somehow we have good sex because of it.”
Her blue eyes met his, and he could see her insecurity. As if he wouldn’t want her for herself. She was priceless. He couldn’t blame her. He was her only experience, and damn him to hell, it had better stay that way. He resisted the urge to bite her, although if she kept saying things like that, he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself for long.
“We don’t have good sex, Emme. Our sex is off the charts. Fucking insane. That’s what it is. I can feel that you love me. You wrap me up in your love. How is it you can’t feel mine for you? Because, believe me, Emmanuelle, I feel love for you. You bring me to my fucking knees every time.”
It pissed him off that she could make him so weak. So vulnerable. She had the strength to leave him. To walk away. To fill out papers arranging a marriage—a marriage—to another man while he was a robot barely able to sleep or eat. Anger pulsed through him, hot and vibrant.
He caught her hips, flipped her body over so she was on her belly and jerked her up onto her knees. She gave a little breathy moan, somewhere between his name and a sound of desire. He smacked her ass cheeks hard with the flat of his hand, over and over, spreading fire through her while she pushed back, wanting more. Her pussy was hot and glowing with her welcoming liquid. Slick with her need of him.
Her nerve endings, so connected to his, had reacted the moment his had flamed to life, burning with desire, with that hot, out-of-control storm of heightened anger, of his wrath that was raging lust, love and anger. His cock was a fucking steel rod, his girth stretching the skin to the very limits, pulsing with his fury at her for thinking she could be with another man.
He didn’t wait, he slammed home, and streaks of lightning shot up his spine. Fiery flames licked over his skin, threatening to burn him alive. He didn’t care. He caught her hair in his fist, forcing her head back, forcing her to arch her back, pushing her bottom higher in the air as he took her roughly. His thigh hurt like a mother, but then it went numb as the fire consumed him from the inside out.
Her pussy was an inferno, burning him alive. His cock felt like a monster, too big for that tight little tunnel. She was silk and flames surrounding him as he pistoned into her, hammering deep, the friction threatening to send them both to hell—or nirvana. Who the hell knew or cared? He only knew that he couldn’t stop. She used her strength, pushing back into him, almost as hostile or as lustful as he was, adding to the frenzied grasping over his cock—building the coiling need in her body.
“Don’t you dare, Emme. Not without me.” He gripped her hair tighter, snarling the command. He was hoarse he was so caught up in the inferno. Sinking into the flames. Refusing to give into the building pressure rising in him. It was too good. Too insane. Pain or pleasure? He didn’t know anymore, only that he couldn’t stop.
Her breath was so ragged, a musical symphony matching his own. That scorching-hot sheath clamped down like a vise. Surrounded his cock with a million sucking mouths. With a million flaming tongues lashing him as the mouths sucked greedily. He roared again as she sobbed his name.
Colors danced behind his eyes as blue and orange flames raced through his bloodstream and burned through his legs and belly. He’d never had such a hard, jerking release, over and over, the hot seed coating the walls of her sheath, triggering multiple hard orgasms in her, one rolling right into another so that she collapsed forward.
Valentino barely was cognizant enough to catch her before she could fall on her sore breasts. He had to roll both of them to one side so they could lie together on top of the bed, his cock still in her, feeling the aftershocks as they squeezed and gripped at him rhythmically.
It took a long time to get his breath back. “Are you okay, baby? I went a little crazy.”
“I think we had angry sex,” she ventured, her voice breathy.
“I think we did.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Did I hurt you?” He’d been rough. He’d always been rough, but they hadn’t had sex in a very long time—well, if you didn’t count the first two times—and she was still as tight as hell. He should have been more careful.
“Val, I was just as rough. Couldn’t you tell I loved it?”
“I think I was too busy being selfish.”
She laughed. That laugh of hers got to him every time. She was so damn perfect for him. She closed her eyes and rubbed the back of her head on his chest.
“Val, you were talking to me about sitting in on meetings with your father when you were young. Learning weaknesses and growing up wanting control and power. I need to know these things about you and what all that has to do with me and the shadows. It’s important for us as a couple.”