Page 44 of Bound in Promise
“Circumstances change, princess. Feelings shift. Men like me go and hide in the woods somewhere when we retire. You still have a whole life to live.”
“One that I want to live with you.”
“One that I’m forcing you to seize,” I vow. “It’s not going to be easy, Victoria. But this is how it has to be. You have decades left to experience. I’ve lived the years I need to.”
Victoria scowls at me. “You’re not eighty years old.”
“I may as well be.” Against my better judgment, I reach for her face and cup one cheek in my palm. “At least I can say I got married.”
“You still are married, Dante.”
“Victoria, stop making this harder than it already is. Please. I’m really trying here. I don’t want to hurt you. It’s never been my intention?—”
“Well, you’re killing me right now.” I expect her to step out of my touch, but she doesn’t move an inch. My girl is tethered to me, and I to her. There isn’t anything I can think of right now that would sever our connection in this moment. “You may as well have allowed Liam to murder me so I wouldn’t have to suffer through your efforts to?—”
“That was never going to happen, princess.”
“A life without you isn’t a life I want.”
“This will pass,” I reply, attempting to convince us both. “You have spent so much time and energy working for your future. I’m not going to let that all go to waste.”
“How can you be so sure of yourself right now, Dante?” Her sharp eyes narrow. “Has it occurred to you that someone else could take your place? That when I’m done crying over you, when I’ve finally started to heal, another man will lie in my bed each night?”
A million times.
I know what she’s doing. Victoria is painting the same picture that I’ve been ignoring, even while it forms in my own mind. The reality of what life would be, not only for me, but for her. How she’ll eventually move on and forget about me.
“I’ve thought about it,” I confess evenly. “But we need to be reasonable, logical. You’re permitting your emotions to lead this conversation.”
“Maybe you should pay more attention to yours. Because I’m not sure how you’re going to survive the future you’re insisting on. The idea of me spread wide, taking some other man’s cock?—”
“Stop.”
“His tongue between my thighs, lapping at me until I come all over his tongue while he demands to hear his name from my lips. Does it not kill you when you think about how he’ll want to claim me? How his goal will be to wipe out every man before him—to erase you?”
“Victoria—”
“Don’t make me do it if you can’t handle imagining it, Dante,” she sneers, her lips twisted in a vicious snarl.
“You fucking need someone to make the hard decisions for you,” I snap back, my grip on her face tightening as I try to make her understand. “I’m trying to get you your life back.”
“No, you’re trying to give me a new one. But I don’t want it. I’ve told you?—”
“Quit arguing with me and stop being a brat,” I growl. “You know I don’t want you to go. You know it kills me to imagine… But this is the real world, princess, not a fairy tale. This is how it’s going to go. I’m not sticking around just to hold you back. A man like me will always be hunted. I have enemies and I’m always looking over my shoulder. I’ve killed important men and I’m known all over Europe for the wrong reasons. My life is incompatible with yours.”
“Then know that someday, I’ll be thinking of your name while another man takes my body and wrecks me. Don’t be surprised when your skin breaks out in goosebumps because I’m coming on his cock, pulsing around him, while he promises me his heart. When the hairs on your neck prickle as he gives me his last name to mark me as his and not yours?—”
My lips crash into hers, stopping the poisonous flow of her words. I want to wrap my fingers around her throat and squeeze until she can’t form a single fucking sound. Until she can’t possibly remind me of what’s to come.
Just the thought of another man inside her has me reeling. I can’t function, can’t breathe, when she’s giving voice to the nightmares that plague me each night. This is far worse than when Gabriella lied to me about her divorce, about her husband. Victoria is telling the truth, spinning an evil prophecy. I may have time to brace myself for the inevitable, but it’ll never be enough. The nightmares will come to life and butcher me. I’ll never find sleep again, not without her in my bed.
Even now, just knowing our time is limited has made me restless in my own skin.
Victoria gives as good as she gets, and our kiss becomes a battleground. Her teeth sink into my bottom lip, coaxing me to fight. To try and set us on a path that I swear is closed to us.
My tongue presses between her lips and Victoria cedes to my demand for entry. She tastes like tomatoes and herbs. I’m a fucking Italian. It’s like throwing a soup bone to a dog. I can’t be expected to resist.
Not only am I fucking gone for her taste, but the tug of Victoria’s fingers threaded through my hair has me coming undone.
