Page 18 of The Fall of Sin (The Sins of Saint 2)

“Well, something has.” My pulse raced, and my thighs clenched. The way he looked at me, as if he was staring at his own undoing, made me want to push him even further. I wanted him to fall. I wanted him to lose control because I was about to, and I didn’t want to break alone. I needed to know if what was happening between us was real, or if I merely lived in some fucked-up fantasy where Stockholm Syndrome met desperation.

“I can assure you it’s not me,” he bit out, jaw ticking and nostrils flaring. Others would see anger in the lines of his face. But I saw wild, untamed desire. Something he tried to fight with his every breath.

I rested my palms on his chest, and I could feel his heart race against my palm. “You can try to deny it as much as you want, but I’m not the girl you kidnapped in New York anymore. At least not to you.”

He leveled me with his pointed stare—a mixture of a threatening glare and a heady gaze. He didn’t respond, his silence a deafening noise fueling the sexually laden air that crackled with anticipation. The pull between us tightened, the tension stretched so damn thin it was about to snap at any second. My body felt it. My bones were possessed by it. By him.

A whimper slipped through my parted lips when he leaned down, his mouth barely touching mine. Our heated breaths collided, and chills of anticipation spread down my spine and slammed against the apex of my thighs—my core tightening as my body desired to be consumed by him.

He reached out with his other hand and fisted the curls on the back of my head, tightening and pulling, causing me to crane my neck. Our lips touched, but it wasn’t nearly enough to be called a kiss. Yet it drew more whimpers from my mouth and demanded complete surrender from my body.

With a subtle sway, he brushed his bottom lip against mine—a single breath the only thing that kept him from kissing me. “Do not toy with me, Mila.” His voice was a low growl, a rush of heated air. “If you’re right, and I’m not sure which side of the line I’m on, I’d caution you not to provoke me.” His thumb dragged along my lip. “There is nothing more dangerous than a beast who finds itself on unfamiliar territory.”

I studied him as his threat hung in the air like thick smoke ready to suffocate. “You mean a vulnerable beast.” It wasn’t a question, and the way his eyes went from blue to black showed he didn’t take it as such.

The grip he had on my chin tightened some more, his lips pulled in a snarl as a war raged in the depths of his eyes. His jaw ticked, and the vein in his neck pulsed with rage. He was barely hanging on to his self-control, and warning prickled my scalp, yet I refused to cower away. It was time I challenged him, made him confront whatever the fuck this was between us.

Abruptly, he let go of my face, my skin burning from the bite of his grasp.

“I’m only going to say this once,” he started, his expression hard as if carved from granite. “I will never stop this war against my father until I’ve spilled every drop of his blood. And I sure as fuck won’t change for any goddamn woman.”

Saint turned his back on me and stomped out of the room. I wanted to chase after him. I wanted to yell and scream all the things I still wanted to say—issues that still needed to be addressed. But maybe I had pushed him far enough for now. The last time I went too far, I felt the wrath of his belt and the cruelty of his seduction that hurt far worse than the bite of leather.

He didn’t close the door behind him. I gently eased it shut and leaned against the door, my fingertips tapping against the dark wood. No matter how cruel he was to me, how much he intimidated and threatened me, for some inexplicable reason I felt safer here than I did with Raphael.

Why? Why would I rather be here with a man who had caused me nothing but pain and suffering above being with my own family? It didn’t make sense.

Nothingmade sense.

7

Saint

It was midday,and I was told Mila hadn’t left her room. She hadn’t eaten her breakfast, nor did she order lunch. The last goddamn thing I needed was for this woman to go on a fucking hunger strike. Not that I had an appetite. I was stuck in my office going through protection details with James.

“I still think taking her back to New York is the safer option here.” James tapped his finger on the armrest of his chair. “You know as well as I do that here in Roma your father has all the means he needs to get his hands on her.”

I brushed my fingers across the five o’clock shadow on my jaw. “I know. But in New York she’ll feel more confident to run from me.”

“She ran from you here in Rome, so I don’t think the location has anything to do with it.”

“True.” I tilted my head back and let out a sigh of frustration. “This was not the way it was supposed to go. I was supposed to marry her, get my hands on her shares, and screw my father over. But everything is so fucked up right now.”

“Because of her, or because of you?”

I looked at him with warning. “What the fuck do you mean?”

“Let’s be frank. She’s not at all the kind of woman you thought she’d be. Or rather, the woman you counted on she’d be.” James lifted his chin. “She’s fucking with your head. She complicated everything, didn’t she?”

Normally, I wouldn’t have taken kindly to James’s comment. But I was too fucking exhausted to pretend what he just said was a bucket of bullshit. James was right. Mila fucked with my head. Somewhere, somehow, she became more than the woman I had studied on paper from the reports James had gathered on her. She was more than the girl mentioned in an anonymous letter. Mila was the girl promised to me. My birthright. The girl who had been born to be mine. The blood in her veins made me her king, yet I never desired to have a queen. All I wanted was to right the wrongs my father had done. Expose his lies and ruin his life as he had destroyed mine. That was what I wanted. That was what I had craved for years. Just that. Nothing else.

I got up from my seat and walked to stand in front of the window. The ocean was beautiful today. Calm. Serene. Not even a ripple stirred on the leveled sea, the sunrays reflecting on its mirrored appearance. It was the exact opposite of whatever the fuck I was feeling that had my mind reeling and emotions torpedoing. It was utter chaos inside my head, a mayhem of thoughts that conflicted with everything I was trying to achieve.

I turned to face him. “You keeping an eye on Raphael?”

He nodded. “The dumb fuck is so bad at keeping a low profile, he’s probably the easiest person to keep track of.”

“You have no idea how close I came to planting lead in his skull. Just thinking about Mila driving off with him…fuck, I wanted to tear him apart.”

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