Page 83 of Dangerous Vows

She smirked. “Are you always this full of yourself?”

Christ, she was fun.

A storm in heels. A mouth made to be challenged.

But those days are gone.

And if I want to keep her alive, they need to stay gone.

So, I lay there in the dark, wide awake beside the woman I can’t love… and the only one I’d burn the world down to protect.

But fuck I need to get off. My blue balls are killing me. I’ve taken more than an unhealthy number of cold showers. I grab my cock and stroke it envisioning the woman I want but can’t have.

I hover over Amara.I’ve never been so restless, but I take comfort in the fact that she’ll be okay. The slow rise and fall of her chest is reassuring. Sleep aids recovery, but she’s been out for hours.

I need answers. She has to know something. Something worth dying for.

Her eyes fluttered as if I willed them open.

“Where am I?” she asks.

“A safe house. How do you feel?”

“Terrible.”

“You should have come to me.”

“I was handling it.”

And there is my defiant Princess again.

Her voice breaks before the words even land.

“My father… he put a hit out on you.”

The room spins. The walls close in, the air thick with something I can’t breathe through.

I stare at her, heart pounding, fists curling at my sides.

“Say it again,” I growl.

Amara’s eyes shine with unshed tears, but she doesn’t back down. “He wants you dead. He must have put a contract out on your head, Pietro. He’s forcing me to marry Vukan Petrovic. But I won’t do it. I’m the reason you’re being hunted.”

Her betrayal slices through me like a goddamn blade.

“And you’re just telling me this now?” My voice is hoarse, but there’s steel beneath the fury.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” She whispers. “I was trying to protect you.”

“Protect me?” I laugh bitterly. “You kept secrets. Fromme. While my men are bleeding in the streets, while I’ve been planning how to protectyou, you stood there with a knife behind your back.”

Her lips part, and I see it—the hesitation. The guilt. The truth teetering on the edge.

“There’s more,” she says quietly.

Of course there is.

I stiffen, waiting.

---