Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105679 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 528(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 352(@300wpm)
But no one heard it.
Adrian slammed his mouth over mine, swallowing my scream.
I gasped. Thud. My eyes widened. Thud. My heart stuttered. Thud.
My body went limp in his arms. His hand moved up to the back of my neck, his fingers threading into my hair and he anchored me against him, keeping our lips locked.
I didn’t move. He didn’t either.
One ruined moment.
Two furious heartbeats.
Three shattering seconds.
My balled fists came to his shoulders, as if to push him away, but I… didn’t.
My pulse throbbed. My stomach fluttered. My fingers dug into his hard muscles.
And then he moved, licking the seams of my lips. I gasped again, which opened my mouth to him. His eyes closed and his tongue slid inside, slow and deliberate, tasting me.
His chest rumbled with a low groan and my thighs quivered. His scent surrounded me; his taste engulfed me.
A whimper I couldn’t control escaped me.
“Fuck,” he groaned into the kiss.
And in that precise moment, my gaze landed on my left hand on his shoulder.
My engagement ring gleamed under the moonlight and it glared back at me.
My engagement ring…
I was engaged…
To his brother.
God—
My eyes widened in utter disbelief, and mortification slammed through me like a cold chill. Shock coursed through my body and with all my strength I pushed Adrian away.
The movement was enough to surprise him and I stumbled back from the kiss. My lips felt bruised and I could almost still feel him on them, I could still taste him. At the same time, my lips burned with absolute shame.
“H-h-how…” I stuttered. “How c-could you? W-why did y-you do that?”
His gaze, intense and burning with something dark—unrecognizable, landed on mine. Adrian licked his lips, deliberately slow, as if to taste the remnant of our kiss.
Guilt slashed through me, like a sharp blade cutting my flesh open. Everything I knew, everything I upheld, every moral, every part of me that I had carefully put together over the years, shattered. I bled and withered at Adrian Salvatore’s feet, but he didn’t even notice. Or he simply didn’t care.
Adrian smirked wickedly. “Did I just steal your first kiss, Princess?” His words were sardonic, mocking… careless. I couldn’t bear it.
My chest rattled with a shudder and tears filled my eyes.
Adrian stole something that didn’t belong to him.
How could I have allowed something so catastrophic to happen?
I couldn’t breathe.
“What did you do?” I whispered, both frightened and ashamed.
I can’t breathe.
I took a step back, away from me. I couldn’t bear to be this close to him, to be in his presence. “Why did you do that?”
I took another step back.
He took one forward.
“Stop,” I said, almost pleaded.
“Why did I do what?”
“Why did you kiss me?” I almost choked on my words.
He took another step forward, forcing me back.
I… can’t… breathe.
“Please, stop.” I was pleading this time, begging for some kind of reprieve from his recklessness, his destructiveness.
I was losing control… no—
Adrian made me lose control.
“You kissed me, knowing I’m your brother’s fiancée,” I blamed, my voice cracking. “How could you do that? You are more vile and immoral than I thought you to be!”
He chuckled. “Words far worse than those have been used to describe me, Princess.”
And it was then I noticed the real him, his truth. All this time, Adrian Salvatore wore his malevolence like a second skin beneath his tailored suit.
I should have never let him get this close. It was all my fault. I allowed him to pull me into this game of his, full of deception and sin.
He fooled me once before, the day of my mother’s funeral. And now he had fooled me again.
I thought I knew what I was doing, but I had been too gullible, too weak.
I placed a hand out, trying to stop him from advancing toward me. “I am to be married to your brother. You need to stay away from me.”
Adrian’s eyes darkened, piercing into mine. “You whimpered into my lips, into my kiss,” he said, his voice raspy and thick.
“Stop it!” I hissed, horrified by the weakness I had shown him. I took another hasty step back, blindly in my desperate attempt to escape this infuriating man.
This time, my heels got caught in the grass, and I tumbled back, something hard hitting the back of my knee. I yelped in surprise, flailing to catch something to stop my fall.
Adrian jerked forward, his hand wrapping around mine, interrupting my fall.
I stayed suspended in the air, my body bent back. He held my hand firmly.
“Serafina,” he tsked, my name rolling on his tongue. “It’s like you’re trying to find new ways to keep me close to you, despite you putting an act of running away.”
He was… delusional.
He had to be.
Outraged by his audacity, I snapped, “Let go!”
The words barely left my lips when his grip loosened. “My pleasure, Princess.”
His fingers released mine, and the world tilted. I felt the sudden absence of his support and there was a moment of weightlessness before my back collided with cold water. The shock of it stole my breath as I plunged beneath the surface, the fountain’s icy embrace swallowing me whole.