CHAPTER 4

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ELYSIA 

The word “yes” had barely left my lips when the world flipped upside down. One second I was standing in my childhood living room, shaking, surrounded by my terrified family and armed monsters.

The next, a hard shoulder dug into my stomach and the floor disappeared. I yelped, hands flying to push away, but Adrian Valente had already tossed me over his shoulder like I weighed nothing. My hair spilled down his back, my hoodie riding up, cold air hitting my bare skin.

“Put me down!” I screamed, kicking, pounding his spine with my fists.

Crack.

His palm landed on my ass, sharp and loud, the sting blooming instantly through the thin fabric of Lisa’s sweatpants. I gasped, heat flooding my face and, God help me, between my thighs.

“Behave,” he growled, voice vibrating through his chest into my body. “Or the next one is on bare skin.” I froze, mortified, furious, terrified. He strode out of the house like he was carrying a bag of groceries, not a twenty-year-old girl who had just sold her soul. My mother’s broken cry of my name followed us into the cold morning air. Valentina sobbed something I couldn’t make out.

Black SUVs idled like predators. The back door of the middle one was already open. Adrian ducked inside without putting me down, slid across the leather seat, and finally dropped me.

I scrambled upright, lunging for the opposite door.

His arm snaked around my waist, iron-tight, and he yanked me sideways onto his lap.

The door slammed shut. The car rolled forward before I could even scream.

“Let me go!” I twisted, clawing at his forearm.

Adrian’s grip only tightened, one hand splayed possessively over my stomach, the other sliding down to lock around my thigh. He pulled me flush against him, my back to his chest, my ass cradled perfectly against the hard ridge in his trousers.

“Such a wild little cat,” he murmured against my ear, lips brushing the shell. “Claws out already.” I hated how my body responded, hated the shiver that raced down my spine. I hated that I could feel him everywhere, his heat, his strength, his scent, smoke and cedar and something darker.

I went rigid, forcing myself still. “If you hurt them,” I said through clenched teeth, “if you touch one hair on my mother or sister—” “You’ll what?” His voice was velvet over steel. He let his thumb trace slow circles on the inside of my thigh, inching higher with every circle. “Scratch me again? Beg me to stop while you come on my fingers?”

My breath hitched. Shame and rage burned equally hot. He leaned in, lips grazing the bite mark he’d left on my neck last night. “Listen carefully, piccola. Your mother and sister are guests in my villa. Soft beds. Good food. Guards who answer to me alone. One phone call from me and that changes. One wrong move from you, and they learn what happens to people who disappoint Adrian Valente.”

His hand slid higher, fingers curling possessively just beneath the waistband of my borrowed sweatpants. I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the panic, the unwanted heat pooling low in my belly. I couldn’t let him see me break.

So I clenched my jaw, stared straight ahead at the tinted partition separating us from the driver, and said nothing. Silence stretched, thick and dangerous. Then his low chuckle vibrated against my spine. “There she is. Learning already.”

His palm kept moving, slow, proprietary strokes up and down my thigh, claiming every inch he touched. His other hand came up to tilt my chin, forcing me to turn my head toward him.

I met his eyes, and the air left my lungs.

He was staring at me like I was the only thing in the universe.

Black irises blown wide, pupils swallowing the color until almost nothing remained. A predator who had scented blood and decided he would never let it go.

His mouth curved in that slow, filthy smirk that promised ruin, but his gaze… his gaze was pure obsession. It stripped me bare, peeled back every layer until I felt naked, even fully clothed.

“You’re shaking,” he whispered, thumb brushing my lower lip. “Good. Fear keeps little cats honest.”

I hated him. I hated that he was beautiful in the most terrifying way. I hated that my traitor body remembered exactly how it felt when this man wrecked me apart and still wanted more.

His fingers slipped just beneath the hem of my hoodie, tracing the bruise he’d left on my hipbone last night.

“Mine,” he said simply, like it was already written in stone. I opened my mouth to tell him to go to hell. My phone buzzed in my pocket. The sudden vibration made me jump. Adrian’s eyes narrowed.

I fumbled it out with trembling fingers. The screen lit up: Matteo calling. My cheating ex-boyfriend. The one who had driven me into that club last night. The one whose betrayal had led me straight into the devil’s bed. I should have let it ring.

But some suicidal part of me swiped answer, desperate for one familiar thing, one shred of my old life. “Elysia?” Matteo’s voice panicked. “Baby, where are you? Valentina said some guys came to your house, your mom’s freaking out, please tell me you’re okay—”

Adrian’s entire body went rigid beneath me. Before I could say a word, his hand shot out, snatched the phone from my fingers, and crushed it against his ear. “Who the fuck is this?” he asked, voice so cold the temperature in the car seemed to drop ten degrees. Matteo started stammering. “Who are you? Put Elysia on—”

Adrian’s eyes locked on mine, black and merciless. He ended the call with one thumb.

Then he threw the phone. It hit the opposite window with a crack, screen shattering.

And then his mouth was on mine. There was no warning, no gentleness.

He kissed me like punishment. Like possession. Like he wanted to erase every trace of another man’s name from my lips forever. His hand fisted in my hair, yanking my head back so he could devour me at the angle he wanted. His tongue thrust past my lips, claiming, conquering. I tasted blood where his teeth caught my lower lip, tasted the fury rolling off him in waves.

I shoved at his chest, uselessly. He only growled into my mouth and kissed me harder.

His other hand slid under my hoodie, palm flattening over my bare stomach, fingers splayed wide like he wanted to hold my heartbeat hostage. The heat of his skin burned through me. My nipples tightened painfully against the fabric, traitors remembering exactly how his mouth had felt on them last night.

He bit my lip again, harder, and I whimpered. The sound seemed to snap something in him.

He dragged me fully astride his lap so I straddled him, knees sinking into the leather seat on either side of his hips. My hands flew to his shoulders for balance, and he used the moment to deepen the kiss, licking into my mouth like he was starving.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Could only feel. The rough drag of his stubble scraping my chin. The steel of his thighs beneath mine. The thick, hard length of him pressing insistently against the seam of my sweatpants, right where I still ached from last night.

He rocked up once, deliberate, grinding against my clit through the layers of fabric, and I broke the kiss with a strangled cry. “Adrian—” “Say it again,” he snarled against my swollen lips. “Say my name while you’re soaking through these pants for me.”

I shook my head, tears of rage and shame burning my eyes. He kissed them away, tongue licking the salt from my cheeks like it belonged to him. “No one else gets this mouth,” he whispered, voice raw now, almost feral. “No one else gets these sounds. You understand me? You’re mine, Elysia. You sold yourself to me the second you spread these pretty legs in that club.”

His hand slid into my sweatpants, under the waistband of my panties, cupping me possessively. Two fingers slid through slick heat and he groaned, long and filthy. “Feel that?” He pushed those fingers inside me without warning, curling, pumping once, twice. “This cunt already knows who it belongs to. Your body doesn’t lie, piccola. Stop fighting it.”

I sobbed into his neck, clinging to him even as I hated myself for it. He kept kissing me, swallowing every cry, every broken noise, until I was trembling on the edge again, shamefully close, shamefully fast.

Only then did he slow, withdrawing his fingers, bringing them to his mouth and licking them clean while watching me with that obsessive stare. “Good girl,” he murmured, pressing one last soft kiss to my swollen lips. “We’re going to have so much fun breaking you in.”

The car rolled to a stop. I hadn’t even noticed we were moving. Adrian smoothed my hoodie down, wiped my tears with his thumbs, and smiled like a wolf who had just devoured the sun.

“Welcome home, wife.”

And as the door opened to reveal a sprawling coastal mansion that looked more like a fortress than a house, I realized the nightmare had only just begun.