Total pages in book: 37
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 36268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 181(@200wpm)___ 145(@250wpm)___ 121(@300wpm)
“I—oh—”
He pleasured her ruthlessly, using every trick he’d learned in two years of studying her responses. She tried to close her thighs but he held them open, determined to make her understand that no other man would ever know her like this.
“Say it,” he commanded.
“Yours!” The word broke on a sob as she felt him delve deeper. “Only yours, always yours—”
He rewarded her with two fingers, curling them to find that spot that made her see stars while his mouth continued its relentless assault. She was close—he could tell by the way her thighs trembled, the pitch of her cries, the desperate grip of her hands in his hair.
“Come for me, Sienah.”
She shattered with a scream, back bowing off the bed, but still his mouth remained on her even through the aftershocks, his lips nibbling the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.
When he finally rose over her, she looked destroyed in the best way, lips swollen, hair wild, eyes unfocused with pleasure. He positioned himself at her entrance, watching her face, needing to see her acknowledge what was between them.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, holding himself just outside where she needed him. “Tell me you understand.”
“I understand,” she whispered, then gasped as he thrust home in one smooth stroke.
He set a deep, devastating rhythm, each thrust designed to brand himself on her body and soul. She wrapped around him, legs at his waist, arms around his neck, internal muscles gripping him like she’d never let go.
“No other woman exists for me,” he gritted out, fighting for control as she clenched around him. “No reporter. No temptation. Nothing. Just you.”
“Aivan—” His name was broken music on her lips.
“Just you,” he repeated, shifting the angle to hit deeper, to touch that place inside her that belonged only to him. “Always you. Only you.”
She came again with a sob, her release triggering his own. He poured himself into her, marking her from the inside, making sure she’d feel him for days, remember who she belonged to.
After, as she lay boneless beneath him, he studied her face. The tears had dried but something fragile still lingered in her eyes. Pain from memories of a father who’d chosen another woman over his family? Or pain from believing her husband might do the same?
He found himself speaking without conscious thought, thumb tracing the curve of her cheek. “I gave you my word when we married. I’ll give it to you again.” He looked directly into her eyes, making sure she understood. “I will never cheat on you. There will be no other women. No affairs. No betrayals. You have my word as a Cannizzaro.”
Relief flashed across her features, followed by something that looked dangerously like hope.
He rolled away before she could respond, before she could ask for promises he didn’t know how to make. Physical fidelity he could manage. Had managed. Would continue to manage.
But the way she looked at him sometimes, like she was waiting for words he didn’t have, feelings he couldn’t name...
That he couldn’t give her.
Not when he didn’t even understand what it was she was asking for.
Not when the thought of her leaving made him want to lock every door and throw away the keys.
Not when she made him feel things that had no place in the carefully controlled life of a champion.
So he pulled her against him instead, her back to his chest where she couldn’t see his face, and held her while she drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow they’d return to their routine. Tomorrow she’d be his perfect wife again, and he’d be the champion who needed nothing beyond the next victory.
But tonight, with her body still trembling from his possession and the ghost of her father’s betrayal hanging between them, he allowed himself one moment of weakness.
He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in.
“Mine,” he whispered into the silk of her hair, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “Always mine.”
Even if he didn’t understand why that mattered more than any trophy.
Even if he couldn’t name the feeling that made his chest tight when she smiled.
Even if the word “love” remained as foreign to him as losing.
Even then.
Aivan
THE ELEVATOR DOORS are closing.
Silver steel sliding shut on the only thing that’s ever mattered, and I’ve been too fucking stupid to realize it until now.
Time moves wrong in dreams. One second the doors are open. The next they’re halfway closed. No in-between. No chance to run.
Sienah stands in the back corner, bracketed by Eusebio and two of my father’s men. Her face is pale porcelain, those brown eyes that used to look at me with stars now empty as abandoned rooms. She holds herself carefully, like movement might shatter her into pieces too small to put back together.
Our eyes meet for one suspended heartbeat.
The air goes solid.
Then the doors seal shut, and she’s gone.