Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 148612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 743(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 743(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
He sank his teeth into her hip, that sweet curve that had always driven him insane. It spoke of pure femininity to him. Emmanuelle was all about curves. He loved her breasts, hips and ass. She had gorgeous legs, but those curves drove him up the wall. Right now, just the fact that she could contemplate needing to be free of him and moving on deserved a little punishment. He bit down hard enough to cause her to gasp before he lapped at the spot and then kissed and sucked it gently.
He looked up at her. “I guess I can’t get too upset with you.” That was a fucking lie. He was furious, but he’d learned a long time ago to lock that shit up tight. “I got to such a low point when I couldn’t get a line on where they were holding the kids, or who was grabbing them, that I considered having sex with Marge or one of her girls at Miceli’s Dungeon in his strip joint.”
Val said it deliberately, knowing it would hurt her. Knowing she would hate it and that she was responsible. Knowing it was the truth. He held her responsible for him even thinking about it. He’d lain awake night after night, detesting himself for not being enough, not being able to prove Miceli or his crew were involved in the trafficking of children. It was bad enough when he knew it was adults, but children? That got to him as nothing else could have and made him feel an absolute failure.
Emmanuelle had deserted him and wouldn’t answer him no matter how he’d tried to reach her. She’d blocked him. He’d tried seducing her body from a distance. He’d tried pleading. He’d tried ordering. Mostly he talked to her, shared with her. Talked out loud to bounce ideas off of her, hoping she would hear and respond, want to help him. She never did. She cut him off. Cut out his heart. Left him in the dark with screaming children and accusing eyes filled with horror.
“I didn’t have any way to get the information I needed. Becoming a man-whore was my last resort. You weren’t coming back to me. You made that clear. It felt like you ripped my heart out, Emme. My soul. There was nothing left and after I found a place where I didn’t feel, I thought I could do it.”
He nuzzled her belly again, let the dark shadow on his jaw slide over her soft skin and leave faint red marks behind. “I thought I didn’t feel anything. I thought there was a black void. I can take a man apart and go somewhere inside me where there is nothing at all, Emmanuelle. Nothing. Just a blank space. I face another woman putting her hands on my body, or her mouth on my cock, and there’s no blank space. I can assure you of that. There’s pure rage. It comes up so fast and so ugly it scares me. I don’t know how it is for you, but there is no chance that I will be cheating on you. If that happened, you can believe the woman wouldn’t survive it.”
He felt a shiver go through her body at the dark edge to his voice. At the honesty. She knew he was telling her the truth because he was. She hadn’t been with another man.
“I’m so sorry, Valentino. Your world feels so frightening. I don’t know why.”
Now her hands moved in his hair to comfort her, not him. Sometimes she curled her palm along his shoulder, feeling the muscles running beneath his skin.
“I had no idea or I never would have put you in that position. I hate that you even thought about going to another woman just to get information. I would have tried to get it for you. Maybe I am a coward, so out of my element, but just the thought of a man like Miceli being able to do what I do, which could eventually happen, is terrifying. Once you have someone like me in your family, what’s to stop another crime family from taking our daughter by force? Or you deciding that family is a good, decent family and telling them about the ropes binding shadows? Worse, we’re at war, and the price to stop it is giving our daughter as a bride to another family? Or another family is looking to merge territories and wants peace with you and again, that price is our daughter?”
She clearly had studied the ways of the families. What she was asking was entirely possible; the last two were huge possibilities. Daughters were raised to know that they could marry within the families for business purposes. Sons often did the same. Arranged marriages weren’t unheard of at all. The families were much more careful now. They conducted business out of the spotlight and had many legitimate businesses. But yes, their daughter easily could be the bride in an arranged marriage.