Page 20 of Luciano

“I read this book once,” he continued. “It was about psychological submission—how the brain adapts under restriction. How if you bind someone long enough, limit their movements and their freedom, they start to attach to the only thing that doesn’t change.” His green eyes locked on mine.

“That would be me.”

I swallowed hard, my pulse hammering in my throat.

“But then,” he added, voice softening just a bit, “there was this other book. About sexual submission. Not the leather, spankings, and whips kind. This was deeper. Dirtier.”

His expression didn’t change, but his breathing had. It was faster and deeper.

“You tie her to your bed. And you tease and touch and edge her until her body only responds to your hands. Until she’s dripping from nothing but your presence. Until just the sound of your voice makes her thighs part, until she begs you to fuck her. Until you own her.”

My breath hitched.

He reached out like he might touch me, but didn’t. His fingers hovered an inch from my cheek.

“Yeah, I like the second option best.”

I wanted to want to scream at him, to spit in his face, claw at his skin until I drew blood. I should have.

Instead, I just lay there, my breath coming too fast, too shallow.

His words, and the weight of his body, had me feeling like a live wire was attached to my skin. I liked the second option too… If he was going to make me choose, I mentally added a caveat to excuse my shameful thoughts.

I opened my mouth to curse him, but nothing came out. My mind knew better than to give him an excuse. I tucked my lips, scared he might use anything I said as an excuse to actually tie me to his bed.

“Are you ready to get up and behave?” he asked when I didn’t reply.

I nodded.

He rose off of me to stand.

I scrambled to my feet, my body aching from the struggle. Nipples hard, between my thighs damp.

Luciano’s eyes dipped once—slowly—to the space between my thighs. Like he could see the wetness.

My face heated.

“Get on,” he ordered, gesturing to the four-wheeler.

He didn’t say a word as he drove us back. Inside the house, he pulled me along, his big hand wrapped around my wrist, past guards who didn’t react at all, steering me up the stairs and down a hallway headed back to his room. I was so embarrassed.

As we turned a corner, the blonde woman from earlier appeared. Tall. Slim. The perfect image of a mafia wife. Her eyes flicked over me, her thin lips curling with disgust, her manicured fingers tightening around the pearls at her throat.

“Why her?” she spat. “You could have had my daughter. And you choose her?”

Luciano paused, turning to her with an expression that was cold and devoid of any emotion.

There was a physical shift in the air.

The blonde woman must have felt it too because she took half a step back.

“Keep talking, Bianca, and I will make it so it seems like your precious daughter never existed. No body. No trace. Just a ghost in your memories,” he sneered.

The color drained from her face so fast I thought she might pass out. She hurried off down the hall like she really believed him. The way his voice had gone all menacing—I believed he might actually do it.

Luciano resumed pulling me along, his grip never loosening. When we reached his room, he let me go, opened the door, and shoved me in.

“I’ll return shortly,” he stated, his tone devoid of warmth. “Then we will discuss our impending marriage.”

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