Page 31 of Sacred Vow

“Well, no, but it wasn’t listening to me either,” I pouted. “I told it to calm the hell down, but, well, it just got more demanding. Not my fault.”

Romeo, who hadn’t looked upset at all, broke out in laughter. I was so shocked by his response, my jaw dropped, which just seemed to rile him up even more.

“Why are you laughing at me?” I demanded.

He calmed down, although the merriment remained in the gold of his eyes. Note to self: when he’s angry, the amber goes dark, almost black. When he’s hungry, they do darken, but when he’s teasing or happy, they turn amber gold. But more gold than anything.

I liked it, almost as much as the darkness that swirled through him. Romeo was dangerous, a predator, but he was also a man, my man, and for the first time, I understood they weren’t the same man at all.

“I was just wondering if this was how you learned to get your own way growing up? You seem to think all you have to do is stomp your little princess foot, cross your arms and stick out your lip, and I’ll give you anything you want. Why, you’re not Donna Vittoria at all, you’re a child!”

Oh, no! That was as close to seeing my other part as I wanted him to see. The little girl inside me had survived by staying hidden. No one had ever entered the tower and I wasn’t about to fling the doors wide open and invite in a love that couldn’t exist between us. If he knew how submissive I truly was, how I craved his strength and guidance, I’d be sunk! Just like the fairy tale, I wanted a handsome prince on his noble steed to come and rescue me. If any man could have played the hero in my childhood fantasies, it was Romeo. If he knew what I truly desired, he would make a mockery of it and my dreams would die.

His cock was a magic wand that I couldn’t get enough of, and my moment of weakness when I uttered those three powerful words, I love you… that changed everything between us. Or it could have, except he didn’t say it back.

I slammed the door to my heart and gazed at him with my façade back in place. Men like Romeo didn’t cherish their possessions, they broke their toys, just like my father did to my mother. I couldn’t allow myself to become yet another mafia victim. I needed to stay strong and rely on myself and then one day, maybe, I would be free to pursue a man that could fully love me.

I don’t know why the struggle was so real. I’d known for years now that my father would eventually find a way to pawn me on a dangerous man, someone who wanted a woman to run his household and bear his children, not because he loved me, but because he could shore up my father’s flagging power.

The reality was not so far off from what I’d anticipated. I was taken from my home and brought to someone else’s and forced to marry a man I didn’t know. But nothing else was as I thought it would be. He didn’t demand I run his household; he had his mother for that. She didn’t push me either, just made herself available to me when I wanted to learn. I had been cuffed to the bed and denied any unsupervised access to the outside world, but I’d also been welcomed as one of the family. True, my welcome varied from person to person; Massimo and I steered clear of each other as much as we could, but his other brothers so far had been fun and kind to me, and his mother seemed to accept me with all the warmth she might have had for her own daughter. The staff might have been indifferent to my pleas for escape, but they were respectful and attentive toward me. Even my dreaded security guards…

Well, not all of them were dreadful.

“What happened to Carlo?” I asked. I watched his expression darken. I guess that question had been a mistake.

“Carlo isn’t your concern,” he said curtly.

I was about to reply that it was so when his lips crashed against mine. Romeo’s tongue pushed past my lips and tangled with mine.

“Mmm.” I moaned into his mouth. If this was his way of shutting me up, then I’d have to speak out of turn more often!

Leaning on one arm, Romeo undid his fly and pulled his engorged cock out of its confines. Pressing my knees to my ears, he entered me in one powerful thrust of his hips.

Opening my eyes, I found him watching me while he devoured me orally and pinned me with his demanding cock. His eyes had shifted again to show me the color of his desire—light again, rich not with gold but with reddish highlights. There was something almost inhuman in his stare, and I shivered in his embrace.

He placed my leg over his shoulder, deepening his thrusts when I whimpered.

“You are mine, Principessa, and you do not think about other men, ever!”

He brought up my other leg and drove himself inside me, so deep I felt certain he’d split me in half. Was he going to fuck me to death? His Devil’s eyes never left mine as he fucked me within an inch of my life.

“You!” Thrust “Belong!” Thrust “To me!”

His last word swept up to a roar, followed by the hot bloom of his cum filling me, setting off my own orgasm. As I cried out in the grip of my pleasure, my body seized on his, forcing me to fully experience even the smallest sensation as he pumped his heat inside me.

Sex with Romeo was always a primal thing, but now I felt it too, that animalistic pleasure that came not from fucking, but being fucked. Claimed completely. Marked with his seed. And suddenly, defying Romeo no longer felt simple. I was his. No matter how far I ran or where I hid, he would track me down, because I was his… and I wanted to be his. My body was too wrung from pleasure to move, but my heart raced with something like panic.

Suddenly, Romeo rolled onto the floor and took me with him, holding me atop him. Sunshine splashed over us from the open curtains, bathing us in warmth.

“It’s a beautiful day,” he said as if reading my mind. “Come out with me today.”

I craned my neck to look back at him. “With you? I thought you had to work?”

A little gold shone in the inky depths, warmth, like the sun warming me with his gaze. Surrounded by the sun as we were, he reminded me of a lion. “Yes, with me. I think my girl needs some attention, and I would rather it be positive, so you earn yourself a good girl spanking.”

His hand slid down my back and gripped one of my battered cheeks, kneading it until I yelped. “But first, you must be punished for taking that orgasm from me.”

“Will I like this punishment?”