Page 41 of Sin & Sapphire

Ana’s stomach growled again, and my lips quirked up into a smile. She was so goddamned cute, and she thought she was fooling me.

“C’mon, pet, let’s get food,” I said.

Ana followed me out of the bathroom, her head lowered but her eyes flicking around the apartment, cataloging every weapon, every escape.

She turned to the window, but we were too high to make jumping out reasonable. The door was coded to our handprints, and even if she were to escape, we’d lock the building down before she made it down ten flights of stairs.

Knives in the kitchen, guns laying out on the coffee table, a duffle bag of designer drugs sitting by the door. We were fucking idiots—we’d cleaned up the bathroom but not the common areas. It’d been a long time since either of us had trained a submissive, let alone a reluctant one, and neither of us enjoyed brat training. Our instincts were off.

Valentin snatched Ana’s right arm and dragged her to the small table in the kitchen.

“À genoux, princess,” he snarled. On your knees. “Give me a set of handcuffs,” Valentin said over his shoulder, jerking his head toward the sitting area where we’d dropped our gear.

My lips twisted in amusement. “You think Ana’s a danger?”

His laugh was startled and short. “I know she is. This apartment isn’t brat proofed, not yet.”

Ana’s chest heaved. Fuck, she was beautiful, on her knees before him, her face red with fury, outrage sparkling in her emerald- green eyes. I searched for the cuffs and handed them to Valentin.

He snapped one around her wrist, and then the other to the leg of the table.

“Don’t move.”

She was a temptation, naked and angry, making quiet noises of fury, but too determined to fool us into thinking she was submitting to actually protest.

I dropped into the chair beside her and stretched my legs out beside her. “Valentin thinks you’re going to escape the moment you see an opportunity.”

Ana sniffled, and my gaze shot downward. Her shoulders shook briefly before she stilled again, and when I tilted her chin up to look into her eyes, they were hazy with tears.

She blinked once, twice, and her gaze cleared, that brilliant emerald hardening as we stared at one another. “This is insane. You’re insane.”

She wasn’t scared of us, not yet. And as bad as it was going to get for her, I admired her courage. We’d indulge her as long as she behaved, and then when she didn’t, we’d begin her training in earnest.

17

ANA

I knelt uncomfortablyon the floor between the two men, one hand tethered to the table, the other holding me up as I tried to find a comfortable position.

Valentin looked down at me, his brow furrowed, before rising abruptly. A moment later, he returned with a pillow. “Lève-toi.” Get up.

Awkwardly, I shuffled until I knelt on the pillow, furious at myself for not being more furious. I couldn’t let go of the fact that Valentin and Angelo hadn’t hurt me. I mean, Valentin hurt me, but he hadn’t damaged me—hadn’t injured me. And I didn’t think he would.

I let myself wonder what it would be like to allow myself to cede control, to do as they asked and let them play with me, let them take care of me, as Angelo promised. And for a moment, before I came to my senses and metaphorically slapped myself silly, it didn’t sound so bad.

While I mused, Valentin waited, one eyebrow cocked.

Fuck him.

“Slut,” he growled, and it was so fucking hot and demeaning at the same time, I didn’t know how to react. I was losing the control I’d fought my entire life to hold on to, the perfect facade of a mafia princess that my father had beat into me.

I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer though.

Valentin crouched down beside me, crowding me back against Angelo’s leg until I couldn’t move any further, my arm stretched to where it was chained to the leg of the table.

He pinched my chin hard and turned my face toward his. “Say, thank you,maître.”

I lifted my chin, but his grip was unrelenting. When I pressed my lips together in a grim line, he smiled with cruel amusement.

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