Page 61 of Lies like Rubies, Part Two (Savage Jewels)

The first tap barely even registered.

Nick chuckled lowly. “She didn’t even feel that.”

The next impact was considerably harder, and I yelped with surprise.

Hot hands rubbed over my burning skin, soothing me, the pressure reassuring and comforting. “Is that true, Sofia?” Lorenzo asked me. “Did you like that more than the first?”

I closed my eyes, certain that this night would ruin my last shot at love with Lorenzo. “Yes,” I confessed.

He grunted, then let me have it. “I am so angry with you, and so in love with you, and I hate it, Sofia,” he said, punctuating his words with spanks.

“I hate that the only way I can have you is to fucking share you. I hate that you didn’t trust me enough to come to me when Sergio bothered you the first time. I hate that you’d rather have these men humiliate and degrade you than let me treat you like the queen you are.”

I cried out at the hurt of his words, my heart breaking for him, for us, at the same time need ran down my thighs with the heat of the impacts.

As he rained pain down on my ass and the tops of my thighs, I sobbed, letting out the years of hurt and misery after his rejection, after all of the mistakes I made, after all of the hands that had passed over my hips and brushed at my chest while I was working my father’s events—I let them all out, sobbing into the couch as he punished me for both of our sins.

When the torment finally stopped, the room was silent except for my hiccuping sobs.

Lorenzo breathed heavily behind me, then swore angrily, moving away from me so quickly I felt the breeze from his movement.

Nick sat beside me on the couch. “How’re you doing, baby?”

I shook my head, refusing to meet his eyes. My heart layin shattered pieces at my feet. “I can’t do this,” I whispered. “It hurts too much.”

Dante sat on the other side of me, glaring over my shoulder, presumably at Lorenzo. Trailing his fingers down my arm to cover my hand on the back of the couch, he snarled, “He’s wrong, you know.”

Tears streaming down my face, I turned to look at my dark angel.

“Just because we treat you like the slut you love to be doesn’t make you any less our queen.”

Unaccustomed to such kindness from Dante, I burst into tears again. With a pained sigh, he twisted his lips. “Get on the floor, kitten.” He looked up, the lines of his face hard and furious. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Morelli?”

“She’s sobbing her heart out and you’re positioning her for a blow job,” Lorenzo bit back.

To my embarrassment and shame, I did exactly as Dante asked, sliding off the couch and sitting between his powerful thighs. I knew the truth. He wasn’t inviting me for a blow job. He was inviting me to kneel at his feet while he scratched my scalp and comforted me, giving me time to regain my equilibrium before we continued playing.

But Lorenzo wouldn’t know that.

“I’m out,” Lorenzo snapped. “I can’t watch this.”

“Strawberry,” I blurted.

Dante wrapped his hands in my hair and yanked my head back. “What did you just say?”

“Strawberry,” I repeated.

When his grip only tightened, I begged, “Please, Dante, sir. I can’t.”

He shoved me away from him with a curse and I fell tothe floor with a cry. I scrambled to my feet and dashed over to Lorenzo before he could leave.

“Sofia,” Lorenzo said, staring down into my eyes. “I can’t do this, not like this.”

I shoved the headband off my head and pulled off my nipple clamps with a strangled cry. “Then do it differently.”

His face was etched with lines of misery, his eyes downturned and his brow furrowed as he stared at me.

“Come with me.”

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