Page 181 of Sin & Sapphire

Angelo would work through my father’s accounts with me, filling in the blanks with more information as we quietly consolidated power. Valentin would cook. He’d ache to feed me, but he’d ignore it because he thought what I wanted was independence, not just for the men I loved to love me back.

I stomped down the stairs, and I was exactly right.

Luca handed me a coffee. Valentin dropped the goddamned omelet onto my plate. And Angelo slid onto the stool beside me after making sure that everything was within reach.

I wanted to scream!

Never had I been treated so goddamned carefully in my entire life, and never had I been so frustrated to be treated so well.

Deliberately, I sneered at the omelet. “I don’t want an omelet this morning.”

Valentin whipped around, his eyes brightening for a second before collecting himself. “What do you want, then, princess?”

“I’m not hungry.” My growling stomach revealed the lie.

Angelo grinned. “Feeling better, angel?”

I kept my eyes on Valentin. “Feeling bratty,” I admitted.

Hope shone in Valentin’s eyes before he swiftly banked it. “What do you want to eat, princess?”

I clenched my jaw.Stop catering to me! Treat me like an equal, not a princess on a pedestal! Fucking throw me over your knee and spank me like we’re both aching for!

“I want you to eat me,” I snapped.

“You’re in no condition for sex,” he snapped right back, as if I hadn’t fucked Angelo stupid the night before.

“You’re an asshole.”I love you. “I never should have come back.”I just want you to love me too.“I’m fucking tired of this shit.”I miss you.

The vein on his forehead ticked, and for a second, I thought I might have goaded him into the punishment I was aching for. I wanted normalcy more than anything else, and for me, normalcy was on my knees for this magnificent man who made me feel so fucking good when he hurt me.

I shoved my plate on the ground and watched it smash into pieces.

“Ça suffit!” Valentin raged. Enough! “I’m not going to punish you, no matter how hard you brat.”

My heart broke. Again. For the thousandth time since Nico Lombardi stormed into that restaurant and murdered my father. Valentin loved me so little, he wouldn’t even indulge my masochism, my desperate need for him to hurt me so badly that all my worries floated away.

He leaned over the kitchen island, his head in his hands so I couldn’t see his face. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t treat you like he treated you. I can’t let you think that all you are to me is a punching bag to satisfy my sadism.”

When he looked up, his eyes gleamed, holding back a deeper emotion. “Princess,” he trailed off. “I’m sorry. I can’t. After what he did—I don’t want to be the same.”

“Valentin, you lovely, kind, sweet idiot.”

His eyes widened.

“You’re not the same as Tchérnov,” I said firmly. “And I never thought you were, even when you were spanking me in the basement of a casino.”

Amusement flashed in his eyes, replaced by thoughtfulness. I summoned all my bravery. If he turned me down now, that would be the end. I could not spend the rest of my life loving a man who didn’t trust me enough to treat me as his equal and to know my own mind.

“Give me a safeword,” I said.

“Comment?” What?

“A safeword,” I repeated, grateful for the hours I’d spent alone in my room, researching BDSM when I couldn’t sleep through the pain as I healed. “Give me a way to tell you when it’s too much. And trust me to use it.”

Valentin walked around the island, and I allowed my gaze to rove over his trim waist, his thick thighs, and the way his shoulders filled out his button-down shirt. He turned me around on the stool and stepped between my legs.

“Are you sure?”

---