Page 97 of His Deadly Lies

Sure. He helps me by continuing his perusal of my face and neck with his hands. Touching my neck, my earlobe, the curve of my jaw. Lingering at my lips before his attention darts down to my breasts.

“Of course I’ll help you, Mia,” he murmurs. “I’ve always been here to help you. And I would have been there for the rest of our lives if your father had chosen me to marry you.”

“He clearly made the wrong choice. I had no say in it,” I insist.

He flicks his eyes up to meet mine, a hint of surprise showing.

“It’s true,” I continue. Oops, too much excitement. Time to rein it back in, no matter how frantically my heart races. Hesitation…that’s what will make the difference. “I’ve…been watching you. Since you first started coming to the meetings with your father. You’ve always been so strong, so stoic. And driven. I love a man who goes after what he wants and takes it for his own. I respect it.”

Still holding my attention, Vincent shifts his hand down across my collarbone. Along the plane of my chest and stops just above the swell of my left breast. “Is that so?” he asks in a low tone.

“Absolutely.”

My breath catches when he dips his fingers beneath the fabric. He pauses only a moment before his finger travels south, underneath my bra, catching a nipple. This little piece of shit. He’s grinning like an ape as he circles my nipple with his index finger, dragging his fingernail across the bud and still holding eye contact.

My stomach takes a long fast dive.

“I wanted it to be you,” I tell him. “Not the Vittorios.” I bite down on my lip to keep from crying out when he palms my entire breast possessively. “Can we find a way to make it work? So that we can be together, Vincent?”

He’s touching me. He’s touching me as if he owns me, and inside I’m screaming.

Hector returns not a second too soon, and the disapproval on his face at finding his son with a hand down my shirt is clear. Vincent removes his revolting appendage and turns to face his father.

“What, old man?” he barks out. “Can't you see we’re busy?”

“Stop talking to her,” Hector warns. “You’re only going to make things worse for us. Don’t you realize we can’t let her leave? She’ll go right back to her father, and he will kill us.”

Vincent gets in his father’s face, practically standing on the tips of his toes to make himself larger than he actually is. “They’ll kill us faster if they find out we murdered her. Besides.” He turns to me with a leering grin. “She wants me.”

“Vincent, please. You’re sick. This is wrong, and you know it.”

“Says the man who took a girl off the streets and forced her to marry him,” Vincent snaps back.

Hector glowers. “Don’t you dare talk about your mother that way.”

But Vincent is done talking to his father entirely. “Get out of my way. We do it the way I want from now on. Go play with your fucking chess set. You’ve always had more time for it than for me, anyway.”

“Vincent…fuck.” Hector sighs, sagging. “I’m going to figure out a way to handle this. Stay away from the girl in the meantime.”

A plea for Hector to stay, begging him to save me, dies on my lips when Accardi leaves the room again. Alice has stopped sobbing, but I don’t dare look at her to see what’s going on. Don’t dare take my eyes off of Vincent.

“I’m hungry,” I finally say. “And thirsty.” I lick my lips slowly, making sure he’s following each minuscule movement. “Can you please get me something, Vin? Please?”

“Anything.”

He rushes out of the room and returns with a plate of pasta with olive oil and fresh parmesan. My stomach does rumble, but the hunger shrivels up and dies when Vincent picks up a penne noodle and presses it to my lips with his fingers rather than a fork. Insistent.

“Eat, love,” he whispers. “Eat.”

Oh god. My lips tremble as I force them to part for him, open-mouthed.

He slides the pasta inside as if he’s imagining how his cock will fit. Don’t bite. I’m forced to chew and screw up my face in a facsimile of delight.

“It’s so good,” I manage.

His chest hitches as he feeds me the next noodle, and I suck his finger into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the digit before releasing him. It’s a risk.

It pays off.

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