Page 61 of Twisted Vows

“I’m not my brother, Emma. The night you saw me at his house was the last time I saw him. When he told me he was joining the flesh trade, I cut all ties and left.”

She slaps a hand to my chest and pushes at me.

“This is something Katherine needs to hear,” she says.

I sigh and shift my hips, highlighting my predicament. Her turgid nipples dig into my chest as she gives a sharp inhale.

“Does Katherine need to hear this, too?” I ask.

She swallows and digs her nails into my biceps.

When she aims fiery orbs up at me, I’m a goner. Fully addicted. Wholly enamored.

Mia Rivera is my wife. Emma Lanza is my woman.

Her name doesn’t matter. This beautiful, resilient creature is mine.

I’ll do anything to protect and worship her.

Anything.

Chapter 17

Emma Lanza

Life settles into a surreal routine.I work as much overtime as regulations allow. At the end of every shift, Fiero waits in the shadows to escort me home. He never argues about my long hours. Never tells me to cut back. Never asks why I’m pushing myself so hard.

Hell, I don’t even know why. Maybe he senses my need to feel in control, even though there are no guarantees in my occupation.

I don’t know what he does while I work, and I’ll never ask. Some nights, the horrors lurking in his eyes visit me in my dreams, but I never remember them when I wake. He’s always in my bed to scare them away with his big, hard body, so they never linger.

He invades every part of my life. We eat, sleep, and spend every moment I’m not working together. Showering, brushing teeth, combing hair, trimming nails. Washing laundry, cooking, cleaning, all the moments I once spent alone now hold an intimacy I silently cherish.

Katherine goes to her classes and works her part-time job, but she seems to be at the apartment almost every time I return home. I see her more often than I ever have before, but the hazeof exhaustion, stress, and worry prevents me from enjoying it as much as I should.

When Fiero promised to protect her, I didn’t understand what he meant, but when Katherine asks him if he has three men tailing her during her commute and he nods, a weight lifts from my shoulders. When she demands names and photos of all the guys he plans to assign to her and he gives the information freely, I wonder what alternate reality I fell into.

What ruthless, powerful mafia man would do such a thing?

Another crack forms in my defenses, but I refuse to acknowledge it. I can’t help but feel we’re one misstep away from the entire world crumbling down around us. With Narciso an immediate threat and Seppi a looming, ominous figure barring us from happiness, I can’t let my guard down.

Almost four weeks after Fiero and Katherine’s first face-to-face encounter, I curl up on the couch with my sister to watch a TV show, only to wake as massive arms lift me against a hard chest. I complain and reach for Katherine, but a deep, comforting voice lulls me back into slumber. On a subconscious level, I trust this man in every way, but when my alarm shocks me awake, I don my wariness and untangle my legs from his.

Fiero’s muscular arm wraps around my stomach and tugs me back against him.

“Just a few more minutes,” he mumbles into my hair.

I tell myself to push him away, but I can’t. His thick cock presses against my ass. Need swirls low in my abdomen.

He doesn’t sneak his fingers into my panties or grab my breast.

Which is good, because soreness pulses between my legs from his vigorous claiming two nights ago. When I shift, the heaviness in my core and the familiar ache in my breasts signal the start of my period. Although I’ve distracted myself with work, tendrils of worry wormed their way into my mind. Mycycles have always been regular and blessedly mild, so I never worried about contraceptives, but I’ve had Fiero in my bed every night since he killed Seppi’s man.

Sex with him is never the same. Hard and fast. Slow and scorching. Rough. Loving. I never know what to expect from him.

His current snuggling both frustrates my libido and fulfills the yearning in my soul.

I sigh and slip into a doze before my phone buzzes with my second alarm.

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