Page 30 of Ruthless Grace

“You’re a coward, Valentino,” she says, her voice trembling slightly with unspent adrenaline, but held rigid by her surgical spine. “You’re so terrified of losing control that you can’t even finish what you started.”

I don’t answer her.

I stand up from the bed, smooth the front of my tailored suit jacket, and turn toward the heavy double doors leading to my private adjoining room.

“Get some sleep, wife,” I say without looking back. “Your shifts at the hospital start on Monday.”

I step into my adjoining room, gripping the dark brass handle of the connecting door. I mean to slam it shut. I mean to lock her out completely.

Instead, my hand hesitates on the latch.

I pull the heavy mahogany door almost to the frame, leaving it cracked open by a single, tiny inch—unlocked.

I turn into my dark, empty office, tearing off my tie with a brutal yank, my own heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped beast. My skin is burning. My pulse is out of control.

I denied her. I proved my point.

So why do I feel like the man who just lost the war?

11

GIA

My chest heaves, every breath scraping against my lungs like broken glass.

I lie on my back in the middle of the dark silk sheets, my knees still parted, my pussy throbbing with a violent, white-hot ache. The pulse between my thighs is hammering so hard I can feel it vibrating through my pelvis.

He pulled out.

Luca Valentino took me to the absolute edge of a cliff, watched my eyes go dark as I hovered on the brink of coming, and then snatched his hands away like a coward playing a game of parlor tricks.

In this house, you don’t get to come until I decide you’ve earned it.

A quiet, dangerous laugh bubbles up in the back of my throat. It isn’t a hysterical sound. It’s the cold laugh of a trauma surgeon who just realized her opponent brought a plastic butter knife to a gunfight.

I sit up, my spine locking back into surgical alignment. I sweep my hair over my shoulder and look across the master suite toward the heavy mahogany double doors leading to his private adjoining room.

The door isn’t closed.

He pulled it to the frame, but he didn’t latch it. There is a precise, one-inch gap of pitch-black space slicing vertically through the dark wood.

I stare at that crack for three slow seconds.

He left the door unlatched so I would lie awake in the dark, tossing and turning, my body screaming for the release he denied me. He thinks if he waits an hour, I’ll crack. He thinks I’ll crawl across the mahogany floorboards, knock softly on his door, and beg Valentino to finish what he started.

He thinks he bought a mafia brat who breaks when her toys are taken away.

He forgot one very important detail: I’m no naive debutante, I make a six-figure salary saving men’s lives, and I travel like a woman who doesn’t rely on anyone else for her satisfaction.

I swing my legs over the edge of the mattress. My feet hit the cool mahogany floorboards. I don’t hurry. I don’t rush. I walk calmly across the room to the velvet bench where my luggage sits.

I pull my dark silk robe closed. I unzip the front compartment of my silk weekend bag, reach past my spare underwear, and wrap my fingers around a sleek, heavy cylinder.

My medical-grade, dual-motor silicone wand. Soft-touch matte black, waterproof, and capable of ten thousand vibrations per minute.

I pick it up, turn around, and walk straight back to the bed.

I don’t keep the room dark. I reach out and snap on the heavy brass bedside lamps on both sides of the headboard, flooding the entire master suite in a bright, warm amber halo. Every inch of the dark iron bed frame, the black silk sheets, and the velvet headboard is illuminated in high-definition clarity.