She scowled.
Well, they didn’t say it would be easy.
“Done crying?” I asked.
“Done being a monster?” she fired back sweetly.
“Not yet, actually, thanks for asking.” I approached. “Close your eyes.”
She squinted and then closed her eyes. She immediately tensed when I tied the black blindfold around her eyes. “Is this necessary?”
“I stole something,” I whispered from behind her. “I intend to give it back.”
“You can’t give someone back their virginity.”
“No, but I can give back her dignity, her trust. I can give back those tiny moments.”
“Nothing will erase that moment, Valerian.”
“No, but hopefully, I can do something to give you a new memory, a new story, a new ending…”
“What did you say?” she whispered, her lower lip trembling.
“Maybe…” I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see me. “Maybe instead of me, you met someone else at that club, maybe it was Breaker—did he take care of you that night?”
“He took care of me every night, every day, it’s what he did.” She held her head high.
“Would you still love him if he betrayed you?” I circled her trembling body as she fisted her hands at her sides. “If he slept with countless women while you pined for him from afar…”
She moved from one foot to another. “Breaker didn’t—we didn’t. It only happened once between us.”
“How fortunate then.” I sighed. “That all I have to do is outperform a distant memory, and that one time you and he were together…”
“I’m going to imagine it’s him,” she taunted.
I grinned, tossed my mask onto the bed, leaned in, and whispered in her ear, “Good.”
Goosebumps flared and ran down her arms.
She started rubbing them away.
I inched my fingers across her shoulders and down her arms, and then I pulled her back against me; she let out a gasp as my hands found her hips.
It felt like I’d been walking around hard as a rock, unable to touch, unable to bring myself to do something that would so completely alter what we could have if she would just accept it.
Because I had sworn my silence.
Not that it mattered because eventually… she would know.
Whose blood was on my hands.
And why.
“I’m going to kiss you.” I turned her toward me, and then my mouth was on hers, my tongue sliding past her lips despite her attempt not to kiss me back. “Open, Violet, let me taste you. You promised you’d try, you said four nights, this is the price…”
“You’re expensive.”
“I wondered if your sense of humor died with him—good to see it’s alive and well.” I kissed her again and again until finally, she kissed me back, I coaxed her with my tongue, I held her tenderly with my hands, and then I nipped at her lips and sucked them with mine.
She released a small whimper.
“There she is,” I encouraged. “Forget about everything, but this moment, this kiss. This… should have been our very first… this…” I grazed her nipples with my thumbs. Her body jerked in response. Her mouth parted even more as I deepened the kiss, ready to rip the blindfold completely off.
A promise is a promise.
Figure it out, Vi.
Figure it the fuck out.
“For us to be together…” I said against her lips. “He had to die.”
She stiffened, but I kept talking.
“The price I paid last year…” I sighed, resting my forehead against hers. “Was coming back from the grave to save the one girl who could put me in it with just one seething glare…”
“I didn’t know you then…” She tilted her head. “I mean, I just—I was drugged and blindfolded, remember? And they kept yelling ‘proof, proof, proof.’”
“Russians are ruthless like that, princess.” I lifted her into my arms and gently laid her down on the bed. She was like a feast.
I gripped her thighs and then slowly tugged down her silk shorts.
“You’re naked underneath.” I could barely speak.
“I figured the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can go back to plotting your death.” She grinned.
I burst out laughing. “See, this is why I like you… always so honest, unlike some people…” I threw off the silk shorts, letting them fall gracefully to the floor.
She let out a little sigh. “Are you calling yourself a liar?”
“I’m the worst of them, I’m afraid,” I admitted. “But lying to save someone you love—that will always be worth it, even if they hate you in the end.”
“If you lie to save someone…” She arched her back as I spread her legs wide, then started drawing small circles followed by light pinches. “…then how could they hate you?”
“Love and hate are cousins, didn’t you know?” I chuckled. “Best friends, brother and sister, however you look at it, they’re so closely blurred that sometimes extreme hate is truly fear that you’ll lose the love, and extreme love is obsession bordering on hate.”
She stiffened and sucked in a hard breath. I gave a harder pinch, followed by a sweep of my thumb.
“Valerian!” She yelled my name, not his. Pride swelled as I made her pant, as I made her body buck against my hand, and then my palm. “That feels… nice.”
If she could see my face. “Nice? It feels nice?”
I pulled my hand away immediately. “What? Where did you go?” She sat up on her elbows.
“Oh, I’m still here, but the hand was too insulted to stay, so it tapped in my mouth…”
“Wh—” She clutched the sheets with her fingertips and squeezed, pulling them up with each stroke of my tongue as I worked her into a feverish state.
She was mine.
Mine.
She had always been mine.
From the day I first saw her.
“Violet…” I wanted to worship between her thighs, lick my fill, and come back for seconds as she coated my tongue. “Let go.”
“No.” Her body shook.
“Of everything…” I whispered, gripping her ass with my hands. “Let it all go.”
“I can’t.” She heaved a sob.
I moved to stand, then slowly freed myself and slid my cock between her thighs.
Shit, she was so wet.
“Are you going to—” She squeezed me between her thighs, and it took every single restraint I had to keep from thrusting instead of teasing her, instead of rubbing my length against her.
“Let go,” I said it softer this time.
She reached up and clung to my arms, then came apart all over me, exactly how she should have the first time. Had things been different, I would have taken my time like this, I would have tortured her in the best and worst ways until she felt no pain.
She was silent and then. “I imagined it was him.”
I stilled and whispered back into the darkness, “Until tomorrow night, Violet, I’m sorry for breaking you first…”
“Let me go home.”
“Three more nights.” I sighed. “And at the end, you will see my face.”
“Will I hate you?”
“More than you will ever know.” I taunted her because I knew she wouldn’t commit to me, and I knew once this was done, once she knew.
She would be lost to me forever.
For how could the pure princess, white as snow—end up with the man who took everything from her and then took some more?
“Did you have anything to do with his death?” she asked just as I reached the door, my hand on the handle.
I sighed and looked back; she lay there like the queen she was, fully exposed, chest still rising and falling like she’d run a marathon when I was the one who was hard enough to roof an entire house with only the nails. “You know the answer to that. Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to. Until tomorrow, Violet.”
“Unt
il tomorrow,” she whispered back.
Chapter Eighteen
Torture wasn’t dying—torture was living. —Valerian Petrov
Ash
I paced the room, back and forth, back and forth. We’d all returned home the night of the accident—all of us but Violet.
I went to my dad first. He had to know what was going on. Only I was waylaid by Phoenix, who gave me a cruel smile and shook his head.
“How are you even still alive after all the shit you’ve pulled?” Not my finest moment, but I was hurting, and I was pissed, and I had nothing fucking left, so why not let the sick bastard kill me?
I was ready for it.
I welcomed it.
Breaker was fucking gone.
Junior and I didn’t talk about it.
Serena was a ghost of herself.
And Violet was somehow married.
This wouldn’t happen unless one of the bosses knew, and I suddenly realized with glaring clarity that Phoenix was most likely that boss.
“You know.” I crossed my arms.
“You should show more respect.” He shrugged and then put a bulky arm around me and led me away from my dad’s office and down the hall.
“How the hell did you even get in?” I said more to myself than anything.
“Oh, I’m the one that saved whatever the hell your mom calls dinner—it had Kale in it. Just call me a pizza delivery boy now.” He grinned.
“You’re not funny, and I hate you at least ninety percent of the time.”
He just nodded. “Honestly, I would be concerned if you didn’t.”
“Well, at least you know.”
“I always knew.” He led me outside, and when we were out of earshot of the house and the dozen suits that guarded it, he spoke. “Violet has a different life now.”
I was quiet and then. “Did she have a choice.”
“No,” he whispered into the darkness. “She didn’t. I guess she could have said no, but at the end of the day, she was owned by the Petrovs the minute she put her life on the line for her family, and there is no getting out of that sort of pact.”
Blood roared in my ears. “The Petrovs!”
“Valerian Petrov, to be exact.” Phoenix sighed. “She’s his now, and once we make it official, of course, he will be the new boss to the Petrov Family, leaving Andrei less stressed about getting killed all the time, and more focused on the Italians as it should be.”
I frowned. “What could she have possibly offered up to the Petrovs of all—” I stared at him, hard. “No, don’t tell me she sold herself to them. Don’t tell me she gave herself over to one of those bastards that are twice her age, ugly as hell, and reek of vodka.”
“He’s not ugly.”
“That’s what you focus on? That he’s not ugly but could be her dad’s age? This is Violet we’re talking about. When she was little, she told her teacher she wanted to be a ladybug when she grew up! The hell, Phoenix!”
He smirked. “Your dad really did sew a fantastic costume that Halloween.”
“Phoenix!” I clenched my fists, ready to punch him regardless of the fact that he would kick my ass later for touching him.
He was untouchable.
He was Nicolasi.
And me? I was only an heir.
So, punching him would mean minutes in the ring and possibly another missing tooth. Not that it mattered anymore, because nothing mattered, did it? I’d lost Claire, and I’d lost Violet without even realizing it.
I was used to losing.
Everything that mattered.
Even my sanity.
So why not a molar?
They could add it to the collection.
I definitely wanted to punch something, but there was nothing nearby, only him. Shit, I would kill for a tree to shoot.
“So, that’s it?” I threw my hands up in the air. “I just keep this secret from my entire family.”
“They’ll know soon,” he said. “But I think we need to focus on the funeral before we try to solve the problem that is Violet Petrov.”
My fingers curled into fists. The name alone had me seeing red.
She was married.
To a monster probably.
To someone who didn’t know what she needed and how she needed it.
“It should have been Breaker,” I said in a harsh whisper. “As much shit as I gave him for sleeping with her—”
Phoenix’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, keep going. I’m curious how he imagined they could get out of the whole, we will kill you for hooking up rule…”
I gulped. “She loved him.”
“Her love wasn’t enough,” Phoenix said gruffly. “Not so soon after Serena and Junior, not with Chase. No, their love, it would not have been enough, Ash, you need to know that.”
“My dad can be… complicated,” I admitted.
“Ash, your dad would have killed him in cold blood for touching her after being her personal guard for that long. Everything we do in this Family, the secrets we deal in, the lies, the end goal is always to protect you, and sometimes that means even from yourselves.” He patted me on the shoulder and looked up at the stars. “Make a wish, Ash, Violet will need you when she comes back. She’ll need all of us.”
“Because of the monster she married?”
He shot me an unreadable look. “Because of the person the monster had to become in order to keep her love, in order to be worthy of it.”
And with that cryptic message, he left.
I dragged my ass back to the pool house, grabbed a bottle of Jack, and did what I did every night.
I grabbed my favorite picture of Claire, and I talked to her until I passed out.
On some nights, she talked back.
Tonight.
She was silent.
And all I heard in my nightmares were the sounds of screeching tires, metal on metal. All I saw was Breaker’s face.
And all I felt was numb.
Chapter Nineteen
I would take the lies from her lips, would die for that final kiss, I would lose again so that the love of my life could finally win. —Valerian Petrov
Violet
I slept the day away—but I did eat.
And I stared down the clock like it was going to explode when it finally struck ten. When my villain would once again visit.
It was day two.
Day one had left me in a confused haze of aftershocks that had my body primed and ready even though my heart and head were one hundred percent against it.
He made me feel.
He took his time.
My brain told me that we should at least give him points for trying, for not just taking me, but trying to give something back.
My heart beat for Breaker, though.
My body, however, was starting to warm toward Valerian.
I still didn’t want to face him, to take off the mask, both of our masks. I was so thankful for the blindfold that I’d willingly put it on the minute the clock struck ten.
My door creaked open.
“Say something, so I don’t think I’m about to get murdered,” I blurted.
His laugh was deep, sexy. “Look at you, already sitting on the bed, ready for me to torture you in the best sort of way.”
“How are you going to win me over tonight, husband?” I taunted him and liked the tension that spiked in the room.
“Hmmmm…” He was walking toward me, and while my heart was bruised and broken, I found the darkness lifting a bit as his hands found my shoulders.
He leaned over and kissed each of my cheeks. “I brought you food.”
“I’ve been eating.”
“Not this, you haven’t…” He was close.
I could almost taste his lips, the familiar full lips that felt so much like Breaker’s, and to an insane person like myself, I could almost believe it was Breaker. And like someone who’d finally lost it—I did. I pretended it was him, I pretended he was back, he was holding the blindfold, giving me pleasure
.
“Open.”
I frowned but did as he said, parting my lips slightly as he put something inside my mouth.
It tasted like spiced chocolate and melted instantly on my tongue. “That’s good.”
“It really is,” was all he said before kissing the crap out of me and running his hands over my body like he wanted to worship me. “It tastes better from your lips, wife.”
He laid me back against the soft mattress nudging my legs apart with his knee and then sliding it up.
“Only two more nights after tonight.”
“You can count,” he teased, with a soft laugh. “I’m so proud, my wife, the genius.”
“My husband, the sarcastic cruel man who wears a mask to hide from the world…”
“Not the world,” he said. “Just you, and only that first day, so you’d understand what you’re getting into. I had other reasons…”
“Did you kill him?” I couldn’t believe I was asking what I already suspected, that in order for me to be loyal to Valerian—he had killed Breaker.
Because what sort of accident has a person going nose-first off of a bridge?
“I can hear your mind trying to figure out the pieces, just the wrong ones, not the ones I want you focusing on, not that it matters now, I guess…” He sighed like he was disappointed.
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because I’m out of time. I was out of time the day he died, wasn’t I?”
His tongue licked at the corner of my mouth.
I didn’t moan.
But my body trembled beneath his touch. “Tell me more about you.”
I was trying to put off the inevitable. Where I would fall apart in his arms and feel guilty later for giving in when I just wanted to leave.
“Well…” He drew small circles on my chest with his fingertip. “I went to university.”
“What did you study?”
“Sex,” he said in a teasing tone. “Or as my friends would have said, I was too focused on girls to really take a major and was extremely frustrated when I found out that wasn’t a thing.”
“It’s definitely not a thing.”
“Most disappointing day of my life. I nearly cried.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.” I found myself smiling.
“Yes, well… my heart and my head were in different places than my cock at the time.”
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