Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 234(@300wpm)
It was a declaration.
His mouth crashed down on mine.
The kiss was brutal and possessive. Devouring. Consuming. His lips moved against mine with a desperate, savage hunger that made my knees buckle.
I tried to turn my head, tried to break free, but his grip on my jaw held me in place mercilessly. He kissed me the way he did everything—completely, without reservation, as if he had every right to take what he wanted from me.
His tongue swept past my lips, claiming the inside of my mouth with the same ruthless invasion. He tasted like mint.
I did the only thing I could do at that moment.
I closed my eyes and bit him.
My teeth sank into his tongue with every ounce of fury I possessed, the taste of copper instantly flooding my mouth. I expected him to pull back with a curse.
But Adrian didn’t even flinch.
I waited for the fury instead, the retaliation or the violence I knew he was capable of.
Instead, he made a sound—low, guttural, almost pleased—and kept kissing me.
His hand tightened on my jaw, holding me in place as his blood mingled with my saliva, filling my mouth. He pressed closer, deeper, forcing me to taste it, to swallow it, to take him into me in the most intimate violation I could imagine.
My throat worked involuntarily as I swallowed, feeling the warmth of his blood and saliva marking me from inside.
The thought should have horrified me.
It did…
I hated it.
I hated him.
I hated the way my body responded, the traitorous heat pooling low in my belly. My hands, which should have been pushing him away, had somehow found their way to the front of his shirt, gripping the fabric, anchoring him to me.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
I felt the maddening rhythm of his heartbeat against my palm.
The room tilted and spun.
He kissed me until the blood in my mouth was indistinguishable from the blood in his, until I couldn’t remember which breath was mine and which was his.
My knees threatened to buckle beneath me, and Adrian felt it; he knew in the same way he somehow knew every damn thing about my body.
He walked us backward until my calves hit the edge of the bed.
He pushed.
And then, I was falling.
The mattress hit my back with a soft thud. Adrian followed me down, his mouth never leaving mine, his weight settling over me.
His hand released my jaw only to thread into my hair, fisting the dark strands and tilting my head to the angle he wanted. The kiss deepened, slower, almost tender… which was somehow worse than the violence before.
Tenderness from Adrian Salvatore was a weapon I had no defense against.
It left me with nothing but the raw, trembling truth that ever since he claimed me the night before our wedding… I have remained his.
The sense of defeat sliced through me.
When he finally pulled away, my breath came in ragged, broken gasps against his mouth.
I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t open them.
I didn’t want to see him and the satisfaction on his face. I’d see the blood that was probably still smeared across his lower lip, the possessive darkness in his gaze, and I’d lose whatever fragile composure I had left.
“I hate you,” I breathed. The words came out ragged and ruined, barely audible.
I felt his smile against my cheek. “I know, Princess.” His thumb traced the line of my jaw where I was sure his fingers had left red marks. “I like the way you hate me.”
His mouth moved to my shoulder. I felt the sharp edge of his teeth before the bite, a sharp, deliberate pressure. I gasped, my back arching off the mattress, and his tongue swept over the wound in a slow, sorry caress that felt anything but apologetic.
This was payback for my bite.
Except I made him bleed… while he was only branding me with his mark.
Then his lips found my ear, his breath hot and uneven. “I look forward to which country you take us next.” The words were a raspy whisper, a reckless promise, and a cruel threat all wrapped in one. “Good night, wife.”
The weight of him lifted from my body. I listened to his footsteps cross the room, measured and unhurried.
Then I heard the soft click of the door opening and closing.
Adrian was gone.
But he left me with more than I could bear.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ADRIAN
Two weeks later
The bright lights of the Pingo Doce hummed the same exhausted repetition as every supermarket in every city she’d fled to. The particular musty sweetness of overripe fruit lingered even as we walked farther away from the produce section.
Serafina filled her cart with the most mundane inventory. She wore a cream linen blouse and dark jeans. Her long hair was pinned loosely at the nape of her neck. She looked like a woman who had come to Portugal to find herself.