The Bastard's Betrayal: An O'Malley-Romanov Novel (Scandalous Scions Book 1)

by Katee Robert

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It wasn’t,” he insisted. “Do you really think my assignment was to date you for months? To cook for you? To watch hundreds of movies and bicker about the different characters and plot choices? To tag along to all those weird ass festivals and events you managed to find?”

  He had been overly invested in the morally gray characters, but so were millions of people. There was a reason those types did so well. And the festivals? It had become something of an inside joke between them, and she’d enjoyed searching out the weirdest ones within drivable distance to take him to, just to see the look of vague horror on his face and hear his low, snarky comments as they explored. It was like a secret just for the two of them.

  She couldn’t have known… No. I am not going down this rabbit hole again. She shook her head. “You were playing me.”

  “I lied about my identity. I edited some of my past. That’s it.”

  She couldn’t deal with that, couldn’t handle what he was saying. If it wasn’t entirely a lie—Rose shook her head again, harder this time. It didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter. No matter what her traitorous heart tried to interject, Dante Verducci was a monster and the enemy. She couldn’t afford to forget that. “If we’re done here?”

  “Rose.” Even though she very much didn’t want to look at him, she couldn’t resist the pull in his voice. Dante waited for her to meet his gaze to continue. “The faster you figure it out, the better for everyone. You and me? We’ll never be done.”

  Dante gave her space the rest of the day—after insisting that she eat something and cooking breakfast for her—but it wasn’t as if there was much space to be had in this cabin. Every time she turned around, he was there, finishing his workout in the gym, reading in the living room, showering in the bathroom. She wasn’t even certain he was doing it on purpose. The cabin just wasn’t big enough to avoid him completely.

  Rose finally gave up and changed into some workout clothing and ran a few miles on the treadmill in the gym in an attempt to keep herself from climbing the walls.

  She had to focus on getting free, but all she could do was go ’round and ’round again comparing Jackson and Dante. He might not have had to date her, but she shot him. Apparently that had only made her more interesting to him.

  The man was unhinged.

  She stopped at five miles, not wanting to overdo it. Even so, it had been weeks since she kept up a regular fitness schedule, and her legs were shaking as she stepped off the treadmill. “Damn it.” She really wouldn’t stand a chance if she somehow got free. She’d wager Dante’s stamina outdid hers, so he’d just run her into the ground if she somehow managed to get through the door.

  That didn’t stop her from checking the high windows in the gym to see if they opened.

  They didn’t.

  She walked back to the door and braced herself. Dante might have allowed her distance for the last few hours, but it wouldn’t last. He’d brought her here for a reason, and that reason did not involve her avoiding him for days on end.

  More than that, she couldn’t afford to avoid him for days on end. Not if she wanted to get home before the powder keg of a situation exploded and got someone killed.

  She stepped out of the gym and inhaled sharply at the delicious scent that assaulted her. Dante stood at the kitchen island, wearing only a pair of lounge pants, and chopping vegetables. Behind him, a pot of water boiled, and he had some kind of tomato-based sauce simmering next to it. She took in the other ingredients, so familiar from how many times he’d cooked the meal for her before.

  Spaghetti with rosa carbonara.

  Her favorite.

  “My mother taught me how to make this. Did I ever tell you that?”

  She froze, her feet seeming to grow roots on the spot. Dante had never talked much about his mother. She knew the woman had raised him alone, away from the family, and that she’d died when he was a teenager, which was when his uncle took him in. But though he’d been full of stories of his asshole uncle or his chaotic cousin, he rarely shared anything about the woman who birthed him. “Oh?” Rose finally managed.

  “Si.” He tossed the vegetables into a bowl of romaine lettuce and turned to lean against the counter. “She didn’t have many good days, but that was one of them. I think I was thirteen, or somewhere close to it.”

  She should walk away from this conversation. Nothing good could come of it. “I couldn’t find any information about your mother. It’s as if she never existed.” She’d looked, of course. After she realized Dante played her, she’d spent far too long following the perverse need to know everything she could find about him. The paper trail only started when he was fourteen. Other than his mother being Lorenzo Verducci’s little sister, nothing else was known about his life before that point. The mystery bothered her.

  “Lorenzo isn’t forgiving of those who step out of line.” He shrugged. “She got pregnant and wouldn’t name the father and wouldn’t let him marry her off to one of his men to cover it up. So, he threw her out.”

  It wasn’t an uncommon story, especially among some of the other families. Even the Romanovs weren’t above reproach when it came to that sort of thing, though Papa would cut off his own hand before he cut off one of his daughters from their family. “Why did you go back?”

  “She overdosed.” He said it without any inflection at all, almost as if reciting the weather. “In hindsight, I don’t think it was on purpose, but the drugs fucked her up, and she kept chasing that escape.”

  Oh, Dante.

  Rose’s throat threatened to close. She inhaled slowly, doing her best not to picture him at fourteen with a dead mother and nowhere to go. He didn’t have the market cornered on fucked-up childhoods, but she still couldn’t help the sympathy that flowed through her. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. Not hers either.” Another shrug, though a line of tension had appeared in his shoulders. “Lorenzo will pay for his sins before too long, even if it won’t be my hand that finally ends him.”

  “Dante…”

  “It’s fine.” He moved to the stove. “I didn’t tell you so you’d pity me.”

  She didn’t pity him. Not exactly. But Rose’s heart hurt at the thought of losing her mother so early. Mama was such a larger-than-life part of growing up, she couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have a gaping hole in place of all those warm memories. Even when they clashed when Rose was a teenager, her mother had always been a safe space for her.

  Rose cleared her throat. “So, she taught you to make this.”

  “Si. I think we made four batches that day before she was satisfied.” He finally looked back at her. “Don’t argue with me about the couch tonight, amata. We’ll share a bed.”

  She should say no. It was the right call to make. But Rose found herself nodding slowly. “Okay. I’ll share the bed with you.”

  She hoped like hell she hadn’t just made a huge mistake.

  Chapter 13

  Three days later, Rose hadn’t made any progress. She didn’t know the code to the exterior door. She hadn’t found a single window to open or a phone to call home.

  She had however, watched approximately twelve movies with Dante and eaten enough Italian food to put herself into a food coma. And they talked. Sometimes, it was her threatening him and him taking it as foreplay. Sometimes, he’d manage to coax little tidbits from her about her sisters. And sometimes, the times she craved more than she had a right to, he’d share tidbits about his life and history. About those years with his mother when she was alive. About some of the wild shit he’d gotten up to with his cousin Matteo when they were teenagers.

  Some of the stories she’d heard before. The new context of knowing the truth of him gave her a framework that made a lot more sense why Dante and Matteo had never ended up in jail for some of the shit they’d gotten into.

  And in between all that, they had sex. So much sex that her body felt permanently, deliciously sore.

/>   She’d started to lose touch with reality. It felt like they were in a different world, like nothing existed beyond these four walls. A dangerous thought, but Rose could feel it sinking in each time she came around Dante’s cock. Every time he put a plate in front her with a forbidding look on his face as if her forgetting to eat when she was stressed was a personal affront to him.

  She shifted between the sheets, feeling lazy and relaxed… At least until Dante moved behind her and his mouth trailed down her spine. He loved to wake her up like this, kissing and stroking until he coaxed her from sleep.

  “Dante,” she sighed.

  “I like it when you say my name like that.” He palmed her ass as he licked the small of her back. He set his teeth against the upper curve and chuckled when she jumped. “So fucking bitable.”

  She huffed out a laugh. “You keep doing that. I’m going to be wearing your teeth marks for days.”

  “Good.” Another careful bite. “Lift your hips.”

  “Wait.”

  He hesitated. “Si? You have something on your mind?”

  Didn’t she always? Right now, it was guilt that the only thing she wanted was for him to continue his path and eat her pussy from behind until she came all over his face. But this had to stop, and it had to stop now. “Dante, you have to let me go,” she whispered.

  “No.”

  Rose started to push herself up, but he planted a hand in the middle of her back and kept her facedown on the mattress. “No,” he repeated. “You know the condition on us leaving this cabin. Until you’re ready to say yes to me, I’m more than happy to stay here with you and see how many different ways I can make you come.”

  Until she was ready to say yes to him, to marry him.

  She cursed, her relaxed mood popping like a soap bubble. “I’m marrying Romeo. I don’t know how to get it through your head that it’s happening. Sex is sex, and no matter what I do with you, it changes nothing.”

  “Mmmm.” He plunged two fingers into her pussy, making her moan even as she fisted the sheets. Rose couldn’t decide if she wanted to fight him or arch her back to offer him better access. It was always like this with them now. Her instincts were all messed up over this man. Dante fucked her slowly with his fingers, spreading her growing wetness over her folds and clit in between each stroke. “It’s not Romeo’s fingers inside you right now.”

  “It could be if you hadn’t interfered.” She didn’t know why she kept baiting him like this. No, that was a lie. Damn it. She knew exactly why she did it. For his responses. Nothing snapped Dante’s control like her dangling Romeo in front of him, and she craved that breaking of control with a ferocity that worried her.

  Case in point.

  He gripped the spot where her ass met thighs and dug his fingers in, parting her pussy even as he lifted her hips higher. “If you’re going to insist on baiting me—”

  “You’ll do what exactly?”

  The broad head of his cock brushed her entrance, and her breath caught in her lungs. A threat and a promise, and she was pretty sure she was dripping at this point from how much she wanted him to follow through on it. He’d done this before, had teased them both with the one thing they should absolutely not do.

  This time, though… This time, he didn’t retreat. He spoke softly, almost as if to himself. “I have let you guide things. I haven’t put pressure on you.”

  She might laugh if she could draw breath. “You kidnapped me.”

  “Did I force you to take my cock, Rosa?” he snarled.

  No. She couldn’t even pretend he had. She was the one who’d made the first move that first time, but he checked in with her every time before things escalated. For consent, sure, but she suspected he loved hearing her beg him to make her come on his tongue, his fingers, his cock.

  “No,” he answered when it became clear she refused to. “No, I have only given you exactly what you ask for, and when you whimper and writhe and rub that wet pussy all over my cock, teasing me at your entrance even as you tell me we shouldn’t, I have been the one to hold the line.”

  He was right, but she didn’t care. She didn’t seem to care about anything when he had his hands on her. God, she was such a fucking mess, and she’d worry about it later. Right now, the insistent pressure of his cock against her entrance threatened to drive her mad. “Do you want a cookie for your restraint?”

  “No.” He released her ass with one hand, and then he was dragging the head of his cock through her folds. Slowly, so fucking slowly. He rubbed over her clit and then went back up to press against her entrance. “I am no saint, amata.”

  It was as if Rose’s brain skipped. One moment she was telling herself to say the words get a condom. The next, she shifted back. Dante could have stopped her. He still had a hold of her ass with one hand. He was stronger. He could have held her back. But, as he said, he was no saint.

  The head of his cock breached her entrance.

  They both froze.

  His hand trembled where his fingers dug into her flesh. Rationally, this shouldn’t feel that different than sex with a condom, but it wasn’t about rational. It was the fact they shouldn’t be doing this. They both knew they shouldn’t be doing this. And that knowledge only made her want it more.

  Just as suddenly as he entered her, he was gone. She didn’t mean to cry out in protest, but Rose didn’t mean to do a lot of stuff when it came to this man. He hooked her around the hips, and the room spun as he dropped back onto the bed with her straddling his hips.

  “Why—”

  He shook his head. “You do this, you don’t get to say I pushed you. You don’t get to press your face to the sheets and pretend you had no choice.” He grabbed her hips and rubbed her down the length of his cock where it was now trapped between their bodies. “You choose this, you own that decision.”

  This was the moment she should stop everything. Should get up and go take a cold shower. Should revisit all the exit strategies she’d come up with and discarded as impossible.

  Rose didn’t.

  She leaned down to kiss him, loving the way his bare skin felt against hers. This moment hardly felt real. It was simply another battle of wills between them. Who would break first? She kissed Dante’s strong jaw and kept working herself against his cock. “Do you like the way I feel, d’yavol?” She nipped his bottom lip. “All wet and needy for your cock.”

  “You’re provoking me.” His hands tightened on her hips before he seemed to make himself relax his grip. “It won’t work. Not this time.”

  “Da, it will.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrists and brought his hands up to cup her breasts. Rose liked the way his hands looked on her body. She liked it far too much. Even better, she liked how the width of his cock spread her pussy folds, how he got harder when she looked at him, how needy they both looked in this moment. “I’ve soaked your cock, d’yavol. I think I could come just from this.”

  His brows drew together. “What does that mean? D’yavol?” He repeated the word in almost perfect Russian. It sent a thrill through her she most certainly should not have felt.

  Rose tilted her hips so his cock notched at her entrance again. A threat and a promise. God, she wanted it. She didn’t care anymore. She’d deal with the consequences later. When she answered, she whispered the words against Dante’s lips. “It means devil.”

  “Am I the devil to you, amata?” He smoothed his hands down her sides and over her ass, urging her to tilt so he pressed more insistently against her. His eyes seared her as she swiveled her hips, teasing them both.

  “Da.”

  “Then the devil I’ll be.” He held her gaze as he exerted the smallest pressure on her ass. Not nearly enough to do more than hint at where he wanted her to go. She couldn’t blame that tiny contact on her sinking onto his bare cock.

  No, she only one she had to blame was herself.

  She wanted this, even if it damned her.

  At this point, being damned was all but a guarantee.
/>   Chapter 14

  This might be a mistake that came back to haunt him, but with Rose’s tight pussy clamping around his bare cock, Dante couldn’t bring himself to care. No matter what he said aloud, he knew the truth. Rose wasn’t his. Not yet. Not until she chose him the way he chose her. Fucking her bare when her birth control was fucked up would either drive a wedge between them or seal them together for good. The odds weren’t in his favor, though.

  He didn’t care.

  It felt too good to stop.

  This woman short-circuited something in his brain. The taste of her, the scent of her, the vision she created as she planted her hands on his chest and started riding his cock. There were faint marks on her body from the past three days. Bruises from his fingertips on her hips. A love bite on the curve of her left breast. Beard burn on her thighs and throat. All would fade with time. He hated that.

  “You feel so good, d’yavol.”

  D’yavol. Devil.

  An apt name, though he should probably argue it. No one married the devil. Or, rather, no one normal did. Rose wasn’t normal, though. She was playing on an entirely different field than most people. She wasn’t a civilian who’d wandered into the life on accident. She was born and raised in blood and violence, same as him. A woman like Rose? She understood the value of having the devil at her side.

  “Touch me, Dante.”

  He was touching her, but he knew exactly what she meant. Dante shifted one hand around her hip so he could give her clit the friction she needed to get off. She was wet and slippery against his thumb, and he stared at the spot where their bodies joined and… Fuck. Watching his cock disappear into her pussy gave him a better hit than any drug on this planet. Mine.

  He meant to stop when she came. He truly did. Dante would not see the path forward with Rose turn to scorched earth before he’d taken more than a few steps. Intentions didn’t mean shit when it came down to it, though.