"Answer me."
"N-no," I gasp, and I hate myself for it. Hate that I want more.
His teeth graze my pulse point, hard enough to sting. "That's what I thought."
He sets a ruthless pace, his fingers pumping into me with rough, demanding strokes. His thumb finds my clit, working it in tight circles that make my vision blur. The wet sounds are obscene, filling the terrace, and I can't think, can't breathe, can only feel.
"Look at you," he growls, his free hand sliding up to grip my throat—not choking, but controlling, tilting my head back. "Taking my fingers like you were made for it. Like you were made forme."
I want to deny it. Want to fight. But my body betrays me completely, my hips rolling against his hand, my inner walls clenching around his fingers, pulling him deeper. Heat coils tighter and tighter in my core.
"Fuck you," I gasp, but it dissolves into a moan when he adds a third finger, stretching me wider, the burn mixing with pleasure until I can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
"Oh, tesoro," he rumbles, his hand tightening slightly on my throat. "We'll get there. But first, you're going to come on my fingers like the obedient little wife you're supposed to be."
A fresh wave of arousal floods through me at the word wife. Possessive, final, like a brand.
His fingers piston inside me harder, faster, his palm grinding against my clit with each brutal thrust. I'm climbing, spiraling, the pleasure building to something almost unbearable. My thighs tremble. My toes curl against the stone.
"Come for me," he demands, his voice a dark command against my ear. "Now."
And I shatter. My orgasm rips through me with violent force, stealing my breath, my vision going white. I cry out, loud, broken, helpless, my body convulsing as wave after wave of pleasure tears me apart. My pussy pulses around his fingers, clenching desperately as he works me through it, relentless, wringing every last tremor from my body.
My legs give out completely, but he holds me up with ease, his fingers still buried inside me, his breath hot and ragged against my neck.
"Good girl," he murmurs, and the praise sends another shudder through me, my inner walls fluttering weakly around him.
I hate him in that moment. Hate how easily he's unraveled me, how completely he's destroyed every defense I had.
He finally withdraws his fingers, and I feel the loss acutely. He brings them to his mouth, his tongue slow as he tastes me, his eyes never leaving mine.
"You taste as good as you smell."
I'm trembling, boneless, utterly wrecked. He releases me carefully, and I stumble, catching myself on the edge of the table. My legs won't hold me.
He picks up what's left of my robe from the ground, the torn silk, and drapes it over my shoulders. His touch is almost gentle now, a stark contrast to the roughness of moments before.
He ties it loosely, then turns to leave.
"Salvatore."
He stops but doesn't turn around.
"Why did you really come tonight?"
A pause. Then, without looking back: "Because I couldn't stay away."
"You think this is control?" he murmurs. "This is restraint."
He leaves without saying another word, and I'm left standing in the candlelight, trembling and utterly destroyed. Not because I'm afraid…but because part of me wants him to come back and do it all over again. Rougher. Harder.
I've spent my life safe and planned, but I never planned to become the center of a mafia king's world, and worse than that, I never planned to crave his brutality like oxygen.
CHAPTER TEN
Salvatore
I'm used to the violence. The threats. The blood that comes with the crown.