Bet on Love

by A. F. Zoelle

  “You’ll have to take it by force,” I snarled. I wanted him to fuck me so hard I couldn’t move for hours afterward.

  “I can do that.”

  That was the only warning I received before he threw me over his shoulder, causing my breath to whoosh out of me from the suddenness of it. He didn’t give me any time to recover before he roughly tossed me onto the bed. When I sat up, he shoved me down and pinned me by the neck. His show of strength aroused me even further.

  He pressed the full weight of his body against me, letting me feel how hard he was. “Maybe I should teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”

  “What lesson?”

  “What happens when you defy me.” Before I responded, he crushed his lips against mine again.

  It was exhilarating, but I still pushed his buttons. The payoff would be worth it. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “You will give in to me.” The unspoken or else made me tremble at the promise. I wanted to, but I needed dominated in the process to get the satisfaction I was after.

  “Never!”

  I couldn’t believe how fast he flipped me onto my stomach with my ass up in the air. He ran his fingers down my crack to spread my cheeks, revealing my hole. I bit back a whimper as he toyed with me by hinting at penetration.

  His arrogant laugh as he teased me was so damn sexy. He made an exaggerated pop sound as he removed his finger from his mouth to press the wet tip of it into me. “This part of you seems eager to give me what I want.” He withdrew it when I said nothing.

  “I—”

  That was as far as I made it before I yelped at the unfamiliar sensation of his tongue running over my entrance.

  He chuckled at my reaction. “That seemed to shut you up.”

  “You wish,” I spat, despite being more turned on than I had ever been before.

  His hand came forward, stroking my erection. “It’s obvious you want to give in to me. Why continue this pointless resistance?”

  It spurred me to take a risk. “Fuck you!”

  “Actually, I’ll be the one fucking you tonight, sweetheart,” he purred, making me quiver with desire. He had never used a pet name for me before, but I really liked it.

  His tongue circled over my hole again, before he spread me open to dip it in further. He didn’t pause as he rimmed me like a pro. It was unlike anything I had experienced before. When he added his fingers into the mix, I dropped my head to rest on my forearms with a whimper, trembling from overwhelming desire.

  “Where’s your defiance now?”

  It took an effort to snarl, “Go fuck yourself!”

  I shouted in surprise when he nipped at my ass. “Wrong answer again, sweetheart.” It was beyond me why that was so sexy.

  Luci always carefully prepared me to receive him, so it was a total shock when the head of his slicked erection entered me already. “Will you be obedient, or do I need to show you who’s the one really in control here?”

  I grinned to myself as I shoved back hard, forcing him in to the hilt. The resulting fullness caused me to shout with satisfaction.

  He threaded his fingers through my hair, then used the grip to jerk my head up to murmur in my ear, “That was unwise.”

  “Don’t care. Fuck me!” I may have wanted dominated, but that wouldn’t stop me from being bossy to antagonize him.

  His hand moved to the front of my throat, caressing the side before tightening to where I had to gasp for air. His voice was dark and sexy as he reminded me, “You’re not the one in control right now. I am.”

  He forced me forward, pinning me facedown on the bed by the back of my neck. Instead of the slow lovemaking I had been enjoying our whole honeymoon, Luci fucked me hard and fast, pounding me into the mattress.

  It was everything I wanted and then some. I cried out with abandon, rubbing against the sheets for relief. At this rate, I wouldn’t last long.

  Once he realized what I was doing, Luci grasped my dick, squeezing it tight enough to make me gasp. “No, only I can give you pleasure.”

  I tried thrusting into his fist, but he released me, causing me to whine low in my throat over being denied.

  He taunted, “What was that? Did you say you’re ready to submit to me?”

  My shaky “no” wouldn’t convince anybody, let alone him.

  He laughed as he continued taking me aggressively. “What was that? I didn’t quite hear you.”

  I stayed silent, although it took a supreme effort. It was difficult to contain my excitement over Luci playing this game with me.

  Once again, he used my hair to yank me backward to his chest. “I won’t be satisfied until you’re screaming my name. Let me hear you, sweetheart.”

  I didn’t understand why the taunting nickname did it for me, but it was hot as fuck. It was a good thing we didn’t have neighbors near our private villa, because I shouted his name until my voice cracked. He mercilessly wrung every whimper and moan out of me with his harsh pleasure. I loved every second.

  It surprised both of us when he triggered my climax by tugging on the shell of my ear with his teeth. That was something we would have to explore later.

  “Did I give you permission to come?”

  “I’m sorry,” I gasped, my body still moving in time with his despite my release.

  Luci abruptly stopped. “Now, I really will have to punish you.”

  When he pulled out of me, I groaned from the loss. Before I could plead for respite, I was flat on my back in the wet spot. He looked down at me with smug superiority, before his expression softened.

  He lifted my hips and slid in slow. All trace of roughness disappeared as he began tenderly making love to me, taking his time demolishing what little composure I had. Even though I was spent, he encouraged me back to hardness with his gentle teasing.

  “Now do you believe me that your heart, body, mind, and soul all belong to me?”

  I almost sobbed when he took my renewed erection in hand and worked it. The overload of pleasure left me raw. It pressed me to my limits as he kept me on the cusp of climax. Whenever I got close, he backed off again. Desperate for relief, the word “Please” escaped me from me.

  “Please what?”

  If he thought I could form a complete sentence, he was sorely mistaken. I begged with more urgency, “Please!”

  In response, Luci withdrew until only the tip remained.

  I made an anguished noise, trying and failing to force him deeper.

  His tone was gentle but still commanding as he asked, “What do you want, sweetheart?” This time he said the pet name like a verbal caress that reduced me to a puddle.

  “You.” I wanted that more than anything else.

  He slid in with agonizing slowness until he was balls-deep in me again. “Do you give in to me?”

  There was no resistance left in me. “Yes!”

  He kissed me again, sucking on my bottom lip. After a few gentle rolls of his hips, he came inside me with a soft moan.

  A single touch from him induced my second climax. I almost passed out from the intensity of my release, leaving me trembling in the wake. As much as I wished I could thank him for giving me what I wanted and then some, I was beyond words. I slipped into sleep with a smile on my face as he cradled me against his strong chest.

  After a week of living in paradise with Rhys, I was ready to renounce my old life in California and permanently move to Greece with him. After so many years of being in denial, being allowed to love him openly was an incredible gift. It almost seemed too good to be true, but I ignored my inner pessimist who expected everything to fall apart like it always did. I would hold on to this happiness for as long as I could.

  As I dealt with my overflowing work emails, I resented reality for encroaching on our time together. Since I hadn’t planned for our impromptu elopement and honeymoon, I hadn’t prepared to take off two weeks without warning. My selfish actions had thrown my entire company into chaos, but they were doing an admirable job of scrambling
to cover my unexpected absence. The least I could do was stay on top of my inbox.

  I welcomed Rhys’s touch as he massaged my shoulders. He suggested, “Come on, let’s get lunch.”

  It was hard to not give in to what we both wanted, but I stoically said, “You can go ahead. I’ll catch up soon. I just need to finish a few more things first.”

  “Fine, I’ll order one of those delicious drinks I can’t pronounce while I wait.” Rhys gave me a sweet, lingering kiss which I savored. “Don’t keep me waiting too long. You know how I get when I’m hangry.”

  I chuckled, well aware of how he turned into a petulant brat whenever he got too hungry. It was as true now as when we were kids. “I’ll do my best.”

  “You always do.” He kissed the top of my head, then left for the outdoor cabana.

  Once I reached a stopping point, I hurried to meet Rhys at the restaurant. I caught sight of him at the bar talking with someone, but it wasn’t until I came closer that I recognized his ex-girlfriend, Miranda. Out of all of his past girlfriends, she was the only one I had ever approved of. Her laid-back attitude and complete disinterest in Rhys’s family had made her a great match for him, but their fierce stubbornness had led to their breakup. She was still gorgeous in her bikini that barely contained her ample breasts. With her elegant features and stunning figure, she looked like a goddess on vacation in paradise.

  I started to approach with an apology when Miranda scolded him, “Seriously, what the hell were you thinking, Rhys? Marriage? You?” Her words stopped me dead in my tracks, hidden behind a pillar where I could spy on them.

  “I know, I know.” He ran his fingers through his dark blond hair with a heavy sigh. “In my defense, it seemed like a good idea.”

  She asked with a scornful laugh, “Since when has marriage been the answer to anything?”

  “I didn’t have any other choice,” he insisted. “I went along with it, thinking it wouldn’t be that bad. But it was a disaster in the making.”

  “On the scale of all the dumbass decisions you’ve made, this definitely ranks high on your list.”

  Rhys took a sip of his drink before saying, “It’s safe to say it’s the worst decision I’ve made in my life. I regret ever letting things get that far.”

  His words were a punch in the stomach. It forced me to question whether anything this past week had been real. I had never been so happy, but apparently it was all built on a lie.

  “Your stubborn streak gets you into trouble every time.” Miranda laughed. “I know that better than anyone.”

  He smiled sadly. “If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would never agree to marriage. I don’t know why I thought it would be the answer to all of my problems. It’s not like it was about love.”

  Tears sprung to my eyes at hearing he regretted our marriage and wished he could undo it. But the worst pain was he didn’t love me. Why would he lie to me?

  I barely heard Miranda tell him, “I’m pretty sure you weren’t thinking. That’s the real problem.”

  “No, the bigger problem is the mess I have to clean up once I get back stateside.” He grimaced. “It’s easy to pretend everything is fine when I’m here. But it’s going to turn into an ugly shitshow once I’m home and have to deal with the consequences of all this.”

  “Well, that’s what happens when you make shitty impulse decisions,” she teased. “Good luck.”

  “I’ll definitely need it.”

  When they both laughed, I couldn’t take it anymore. I fled to our room and started packing my things. I refused to stay and act like everything was okay. Not when marrying me was Rhys’s biggest regret. He had ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it, shattering my beautiful illusion he was as happy as I was with our marriage. It destroyed me to discover the genuine love I thought we shared as we intimately connected on the deepest level was nothing but a lie. I didn’t want to accept the fact Rhys had stubbornly committed to enduring his bad decision until we returned to California and he could annul our union. But I’d heard him loud and clear.

  I cried as I booked my plane ticket home on the next flight. It was the coward’s way out, but hearing him tell someone else how much he regretted marrying me was more than I could endure. I wouldn’t survive him telling me the truth to my face—or even worse, lying to me that we were happy together.

  The pain of forcing my wedding band off my finger paled in comparison to my devastation over this discovery. I was the biggest idiot in the world to believe Rhys loved me. When had I ever been that lucky?

  I placed the diamond ring on top of the signed annulment paperwork I’d printed out in Vegas before he told me he wanted to make our marriage work. The foolish part of me wished I could rip it up and pretend I hadn’t overheard how miserable he was with our decision. If I did, we could continue pretending to be happy. But it was impossible when it was all a lie. I loved him enough to do the mature thing and let him go, even though it broke me into a million little pieces.

  As I left our honeymoon villa to head to the airport, it felt like nothing would ever be okay again. I had never lived without Rhys at my side, but I would have to learn. Maybe one day it wouldn’t hurt anymore. But that day wasn’t today.

  When Luci hadn’t come to meet me for lunch, it had worried me. When I got to the room and found his wedding ring and signed annulment papers on the bed, that worry turned to full-blown panic. I didn’t understand what had changed in that short time between when I’d kissed him goodbye and when I came back to find him gone. The concierge confirmed that Luci took the shuttle to the airport, so I started packing my things while my personal assistant, Xander, remotely booked my trip home. Unfortunately, luck was not on my side. The flight he was on had already sold out, so the earliest I could leave would be first thing the next morning.

  With Luci there, our honeymoon villa had felt like paradise. Without him, it was a purgatory of the worst kind. As I sat there miserable and alone, I wracked my brain trying to understand where everything went wrong. Eventually, it occurred to me that maybe he’d come to the cabana and saw me chatting with Miranda. Did he see me with her and think I wanted to be with her or another woman again?

  After twenty agonizing hours on my delayed flight to California, I was no closer to an answer about what had caused him to leave me. However, I would do anything to get him back. Even the one day we had spent apart was too much. I made a quick stop after landing to pick something up before I went straight to Luci’s house. I refused to spend a single second away from him if I didn’t have to.

  I rang his doorbell repeatedly, to no avail. It had a camera that alerted on his phone who was there, so I pleaded, “Please let me in, Luci. We need to talk.”

  There was a prolonged silence, making me think he wasn’t home. But his voice came through the speaker. “Leave, Rhys. There’s nothing to say.”

  “Maybe you don’t have anything to say, but I have plenty.”

  “There’s no point. You have what you need. Go.”

  “Either you let me in, or I’m using my key and coming in,” I warned. “One way or the other, we are having this conversation, even if I have to broadcast it to all of your neighbors by having it through your damn doorbell. I know you don’t want that.”

  Once again, the silence dragged out between us. I started fishing for my keys in my pocket when the front door opened, revealing Luci. He was wearing black sweats and an emerald-green T-shirt, which showed off his well-defined arm muscles. As delicious as that was, it concerned me because he looked like he hadn’t slept once since leaving Greece. I tried to hug him, but he stepped out of the way to avoid me. The rejection stung, but I would do whatever it took to make things better.

  I walked into Luci’s living room and sat on his couch. He kept his distance, but I rejected the brush-off. I moved closer to sit next to him.

  Luci shifted uncomfortably as he stared down at me with so much sadness I almost forgot how to breathe. “What are you doing here?”
r />   “Getting answers about why you disappeared without saying goodbye.”

  “It was better for you if I wasn’t there, so I left.”

  That hadn’t been the answer I expected. “Why would you think that?”

  He silently started down at his hands as his thumb rubbed over the spot where his wedding band had been. His skin showed a slight indent from the ring, and a faint tan line from our time in our villa’s infinity pool.

  I guessed, “Is this because you saw me with Miranda?”

  Once again, he said nothing as he continued avoiding my gaze. He was bigger than me, but he seemed almost impossibly small on the couch, as if he had deflated in his grief.

  “Please tell me you didn’t leave because you assumed I’d rather be with her instead of you.” I would kill him if that was why he left.

  That earned me a slight frown. “No, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

  “Then, why the hell would you leave me?” I asked, my voice cracking in my despair.

  Luci took a deep breath before saying, “You said you regretted our marriage as the worst decision of your life, so—”

  His words made me realize he had overheard my conversation with Miranda but misunderstood the most important part of it. I interrupted him, using his full name, so he knew how serious I was. “Lucien, I wasn’t talking about our marriage when I said it was the worst decision of my life that I regret. I was talking about my impending marriage with Olivia.”

  Luci’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “But you said you regretted letting things get that far. You told her if you had the chance to do it all over again, you would never agree to marriage because it wasn’t about love.”

  “Yes, I regretted staying in my relationship with Olivia and letting things get to the point of almost walking down the aisle. If I had the chance to change everything, I never would have dated her, let alone agreed to marry her. I never loved her. How could I when I love you?”

  He looked scared to believe me. “But what about dealing with the consequences when you came home?”

  “Olivia was trying to sell my house. Xander changed my locks to keep her out, but there’s stuff with the Realtor that only I can take care of. She has all of her shit at my place that she needs to pick up. I also have things at her apartment, but I’m sure she’s burned everything by now. At some point, I have to deal with my parents whenever they decide they want to talk to me again. Those were the consequences I meant, Luci.”