Page 20 of Cruel Heir

I grit my teeth, irritation welling up within me. He takes a bite of his salad as if nothing is wrong, and I poke at mine, wishing I couldsimply go back upstairs and hide away in my room. The fact that Andre wants separate bedrooms is one small mercy.

“You look as if something is bothering you,” he says finally, reaching for his wine. “You might as well tell me what it is.”

“Other than the obvious?” I glare at him, as the salad bowls are swept away and replaced with a plate of some sort of parmesan dish—veal maybe—along with roasted vegetables and risotto. “The fact that I’m here against my will?”

Andre cocks his head, taking a sip of the wine. “Is it more than that?”

I bite my lip, trying to hold back everything I want to say. I’m only partially successful. “I don’t understand,” I say quietly, and a flicker of confusion crosses Andre’s face.

“Don’t understand what?” He frowns. “I’ve explained all you need to know, Lucia. Anything else is unnecessary.”

I disagree with that, but I manage to hold my tongue on it for now. “Why are you treating me like this?” I mean to leave it at that, but once I start speaking, I can’t seem to help myself. “You bring me here and marry me against my will and force me into bed with you, but you make sure that you don’t hurt me too badly. You claim to want to force me to enjoy it as a part of your revenge, but then you kiss me while you fuck me. You give me my own room, fill it up with a fortune in clothing, give me the run of a house with every luxury and my own maid to do whatever I ask. You give me diamonds as a gift. I don’t understand,” I repeat, feeling tears prick at the corners of my eyes. “How is this revenge? I don’t know what you want.”

Andre looks at me quizzically. “I’ve told you what I want, Lucia. I’ve had half of it. You are my wife now. I’ve taken your virginity; the marriage is consummated, unbreakable. Now, I want a child—an heir. With both of those things accomplished, your father will have to recognize me as a legitimate don, as having reclaimed my family’s position and name. I don’t need to keep you locked in a room and starve you to accomplish that.”

“Wouldn’t it make you happier if you did?” I tilt my chin up,meeting his gaze as best as I can manage. “Don’t you want to hurt me?”

Andre regards me for a moment. “I thought I did, at first,” he admits finally. “I thought about killing you in the garden at your home.” The way he says it is chilling, as matter-of-fact as if he were telling me about the events of his day. “But I realized that hurting you serves no purpose. Your father won’t be angrier or more hurt or more humiliated if I keep you in rags and feed you bread and water. Hell, he kept me in luxury for two years while he had me under house arrest. No, Lucia, the better revenge is to try to make youhappyhere. To treat you well, so that you start to question if you really want to leave or not.”

“So you don’t reallywantto. It’s all a trick.” I bite my lip. “You’re insane, you know that?” I blurt out the words before I can stop myself, emotions churning within me that feel hard to control. I feel overwhelmed by all of it, by the machinations in his head, by what’s happening to and all around me. I’m not equipped for this. I never needed to be.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Lucia.” His voice is almost gentle, the look in his dark blue eyes so sincere that I almost want to believe him. “You’re the priceless treasure of your family. If your father hadn’t demeaned my family name, I could have been there with the rest of the men on your debut night, vying for your hand.”

“If your family fell so far, how did you get all of this?” I wave my hand around the gilded dining room, gesturing at my clothing and the jewelry he gave me. “You don’t exactly seem to be in poverty.”

Andre chuckles. “I’ve been planning this for a long time, Lucia. Including how to make sure I would be given access to my late father’s accounts—which are my inheritance, after all—and how to reclaim this estate, which is my family’s. I’ve stolen nothing,dolcezza, only taken back what was mine in the first place. And I haveeveryintention of treating you as the treasure you are, if you’ll only do your duty and accept that you are my wife now. That I have claimed you, married you, and intend for you to bear my child and continue my line. It’s nothing that any other man wouldn’t have done, only I chosenot to be bullied by your father’s feelings about things that I had nothing to do with.”

“Things you won’t explain to me.” I press my lips together. “You just want me to accept that you’re somehow entitled to not only all of this, butme.”

Andre lets out a long breath, draining his glass of wine. “This doesn’t have to be the terrible thing that you’re behaving as if it is, Lucia,” he says finally. “Our marriage could be pleasant for both of us, if you’d let it.”

He almost sounds as if he means it. I sit there as we eat, mulling it over, wondering how he can believe that he’s in the right. How a man whose servants are terrified of him and who forced me into an unwilling marriage can truly believe that he’s not a monster.

I try to relax and enjoy my surroundings, but it’s impossible. I’m enveloped in luxury, the food is beyond exquisite, and my husband at least doesn’t force me to make small talk for the rest of the meal, content to eat in silence. But it’s impossible. I can’t stop thinking about what’s ahead of me—about a future where I’m not rescued before Andre manages to get me pregnant with his child, about the more immediate concerns, like what happens tonight.

It doesn’t take long for me to find out. When dessert is finished—a raspberry mousse with a delicate macaron tucked into the corner of the glass—Andre takes the last sip of his wine and stands up. “I’ll be in my study, reading and having a drink,” he says calmly. “You’re welcome to spend your evening however you wish, wife. But I’ll come up to your room to fetch you when I’m ready to go to bed. I expect you to come to mine without complaint.”

I tell myself to think of it as a business arrangement, a necessary evil to keep myself safe until I can figure out a way to get out of this, until Celeste can send a message for me. I spend the rest of the evening in the smaller living room in front of a fire that I ask one of the maids to build for me, staring into the flickering flames and resolving not to enjoy it when Andre takes me to bed. I tell myself to lie down and pretend that he’s not there. That nothing is really happening.

It’s easier to think of than to do.

When Andre opens my door—not bothering to knock—I’ve already gotten ready for bed, as if I’m not planning to obey him. I chose the least sexy thing I could find in the drawers—a pair of soft floral-printed pajama pants and a loose t-shirt, but it doesn’t seem to help. Andre smirks as he looks at me, standing in the doorway, and then he shuts the door sharply behind him. He crosses the room to me in a few long strides, one hand on my waist and the other in my hair as he drags me up against him, kissing me with a ferocity that’s startling.

He doesn’t touch me as if his only purpose is to come inside of me and get me pregnant. He touches me like he wants to devour me. To possess me. To make sure that I’m his.

“You can ignore the lingerie I bought you and dress like this all you want,” Andre murmurs against my lips, his hand on my hip pulling me closer. I can feel how hard he is already, straining against his fly, eager to be inside of me. “I know what you look like underneath it,principessa. The lingerie would be a nice touch, but I’ll have you naked either way.”

His hand slides between us, slipping into the front of my pajama pants, his fingers brushing over the curls between my thighs. “I want this gone by tomorrow night,” he murmurs. “I want you soft and bare here for me.”

I grit my teeth, anger flaring up all over again at his arrogance. I pull back from the kiss as much as I can, trying to ignore his fingers brushing over my folds, so close to where I’ve already started to ache. “And if I don’t?” I whisper, my pulse fluttering in my throat with fear at the challenge, but I can’t stand continuing to be so cowed in front of him. He believes he owns me, and a part of me wants to test just how far I can push before he starts to shove back.

Andre smirks, kissing me again as his fingers dip between my folds, brushing over my clit lightly, enough to make me shiver. I’d resolved not to enjoy it, but Andre knows better than to simply strip me and lay me back, unceremoniously shoving himself inside of me.He knows how to make it impossible to ignore his seduction, so much more skilled at it than I could ever have imagined.

“Then I’ll shave you myself,” he murmurs, lightly circling my clit with his fingertip. “But if you obey me for once,principessa, I’ll make certain I eat that sweet pussy until you come for me, before I fuck you tomorrow night.”

He pulls his hand free, just as my hips start to arch forward into his touch. “Come with me,” he says, taking my hand and leading me towards the door. “I intend to fuck you in my own bed.”

Fear overwhelms me as he tugs me forward—both the fear of getting pregnant too soon, before help can come for me, and the fear of my body’s reaction to what he’s going to do. I hear Andre let out a sigh, and before I can say a word, he scoops me into his arms again, ignoring me as I start to writhe in his grasp.

---