Page 114 of Velvet Cruelty

He drops onto his elbows, the hair on his chest brushing my nipples. “Too fucking bad. I know how to follow people without them seeing. I’ve done it to you for years.”

He strokes his cock through my folds and I whimper. His mouth has me so on edge that I can hardly think, and as scary as the rope is, I’m glad it’s there. It means I’m being forced to this. To feel this way.

“Maybe wherever you end up I’ll get an apartment nearby,” he mutters. “Maybe you’ll feel me watching you while you go to work. While you sleep at night.”

I imagine Adriano out there, looking through dark windows and standing just out of sight on the packed streets where I make my new home. A feeling I didn’t expect comes over me. Warmth.

“Maybe I’d feel safe,” I whisper. “Maybe I’d feel like you were protecting me.”

He shudders, big shoulders shaking, then he reaches up and releases the rope holding my hands. I let them fall to the bedhead, throbbing with blood.

“I can be your pet monster,” Adriano mutters. “Come out at night and fuck you while you’re unconscious. You’ll have no idea until all your kids come out looking like me.”

I should be terrified, but there’s a note in his voice that if it was sung would make me cry. I brush a hand over his back feeling the smooth furrows of scar tissue. “Adriano, I’m not afraid anymore. I’m giving myself to you.”

He throws his head back, avoiding my eyes. His fist is still pumping his tattooed cock and I can see a pearly droplet swelling at the head. “I don’t want what you have to give,” he says.

“But…”

“You’re already mine, January.”

Everything inside me goes still.

“I watched you dance and you were mine. Parker wants your last name. Your stepmother wants money. The others want your body, but I saw you. I watched you dance. And every night since I’ve dreamed about you.”

I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

“Your hair. Your mouth…”

Adriano’s free hand traces my lips. Then he screws his eyes shut, discomfort and embarrassment warring on his face.

The frenzied death I thought was gone, hovers close again. If I upset this man right now, if I offend him, he will kill me just to save his heart. I touch his scarred cheek. “Adriano, I need to go. I need to see my Zia.”

His green eyes bore into mine. “I saw you.”

My heart aches, because he did. He watched me dance when no one else would. Too tall and too busty to be a ballerina, he didn’t care.

His breathing is ragged now, his fist still working his cock and as scared as I am of him taking me, I’m more scared of what will happen if he doesn’t.

“You hunted me,” I whisper. “You caught me. Please take me.”

He closes his eyes, green lamplights dimming. It’s just the two of us alone in his bed. The last people in the world. The hand on his cock slows and he angles himself between my legs. My body aches, my clit is flushed, and I know I’ll come while he fucks me. I’ll come screaming and shaking and pleading for more, and my husband, whoever he ends up being, will not be the first man to make me feel these things. Adriano Rossi will be. I close my eyes, waiting for the moment my pussy stretches to let this brutal murderer inside me. “Please be my first,” I whisper, as a small tear drops from my eye.

The head of Adriano’s cock rubs against me but doesn’t penetrate.

I buck my hips, urging him inside me. “Take me. End this.”

“Pryntsesa…” Adriano rears back like a stallion, looking me right in the face. I don’t know what he’s trying to see but he doesn’t find it. He bares his teeth and then he’s above me, his fist juddering across his cock, one hand grasping my breast.

His cum is thick and warm as it rushes across my hips and stomach. He throws his head back in a snarl, a grizzly bear straining against a trap. It’s over. Adriano finished without penetrating my body. I am still, somehow, a virgin.

He turns away and I hear a zipper snarl. “Let’s go.”

“Adriano?”

He looks at me, his expression as hateful as the night I arrived in Velvet House. “We’re leaving.”

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