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“There is no end for us,” he says with certainty. “It would be like trying to stop the tides. Impossible. My reason for breathing is you.”
“No matter what happens, I will always find my way back to you.”
“I’ll find you. I promise. On your eighteenth birthday, I will find you. No matter where you are. We will be together again.”
I begin to cry harder. I want to be strong for him. But our world is crashing down around us.
“This isn’t the end for us.”
“What do you have to smile about?”
“I think I have a solution.”
“I’m going to make Bella Isle Ciccula my wife.”
I will marry Satan. I will be his wife. I will plaster a smile on my face in public but turn away from him the moment we’re out of view. I will live in London, and he can reside in hell, where he belongs.
I’ll be damned if he gets anything more than that.
I think about the boy I had loved with all my heart. How I thought I would die when we moved from Italy to America. Back then, I was so in love with him. But now I hate him. Just as my father wanted me to.
She’s soaking wet but still twirling. Though her eyes are open now and looking up at the rain falling through the ribbons of light from the streetlight.
She laughs, and even though I can’t hear it, I feel it all the way down to my dark soul. I can’t look away. I’m utterly mesmerized, and the sudden ache to taste the rain on her pink lips is crushing.
“Why me? If you need a wife so badly, why didn’t you pick from the legion of women clamoring for the attention of the Heartless King from the North?” I glare at him. “Why pick the girl whose heart you broke?”
The words tumble out, thoughtlessly, and I regret them immediately. The last thing I need is for him to think he has any kind of power over me. Or that him failing to show up on my eighteenth birthday actually meant something to me.
Yet there they are, out in the open. The admission that he did in...
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Why pick the girl whose heart you broke? Anger crawls up my spine at the memory, and my smile vanishes. Because I learned the truth.
“I stopped loving you the night of my eighteenth birthday. You remember that date, don’t you, Domenico? It was the night you were supposed to come and find me… isn’t that what you said when we were torn apart as teenagers? I will find you. No matter where you are. Well, you’re a decade too late and I am no longer interested.”
“What happened to you?” I call out. “What happened to the boy I grew up with?”
His voice is low and dangerous. “He died.”
“I will kill any man who dares to put his hands on you. Nobody touches what is mine.” He leans forward and hands me the handkerchief to wipe the blood off my face. “You would do well to remember that.”
I take the glass and discard it on the floor. Shattering glass fills the room as I grab her and crash my lips to hers.
She fights me at first, of course she does, but as my tongue fills her mouth and my lips command a response, she moans into the kiss and responds with surprising hunger, kissing me back like a woman starved of kisses.
“What the fuck?” Lust shimmers in his expression, fusing with his anger. “Are you trying to fucking kill me?”
I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do with her. One thing I do know for sure is she’ll probably be the death of me.
“Jesus, Nico—why was it so easy for you to forget me?” I cry.
“You think I didn’t lie awake every night after you left remembering every tiny detail about you? Your smile. Your hair. Your eyes. Your body. You think I didn’t remember how your lips tasted?” He moves his hand to my jaw and squeezes. “Or how it felt to be inside you? How hard you made me. How I died with pleasure every time you came on my cock.”
“Do you know what it was like for me when you left? The crushing ache I felt for you. The need to touch you. The desperate longing. Do you have any idea what it did to me remembering those whimpers you made every time I slid my cock inside you and know I’d never hear them again?” His black eyes burn with raging fire. “And the way you’d cry out and scream my name when I made you come over and over and over again.”
“I remembered everything, Bella. The way you moved. The way you felt. The way you tasted. The way you told me how much you loved me.”
“Yes, I was goddamn watching,” he barks. “I was watching as my entire fucking life came crashing down around me. I had run away to find you. To disappear with you. To be with you. Only to find you with him…” His eyes blaze, his jaw ticks. “It was like being struck by fucking lightning. In a split second, everything changed.”
“Don’t look at them, look at me,” Nico says with a kindness in his voice. “Today, they don’t matter. Today is about you and me.”
“Am I enough?” I ask.
“What do you mean, are you enough? Bella, you are every-fucking-thing.”
"Look at her... she's a queen.” His words brush the soft shell of my ear in a low, luring rumble. “She’s my queen.”
My wife is an angel. If only she’d never married the devil.
“It won’t work, Nico.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The only reason you’re leaving is because you don’t feel safe. But I’m here now telling you that I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe, Bella. I’ll fucking burn down the goddamn world if I have to.”
“I’m sorry you got hurt. And I’m sorry you’re scared. But nothing like that will ever happen again, you have my word. You’re safe. Let me prove it to you.”
“You’re delusional.”
“No, I’m fucking in love with you and am willing to do anything to keep you by my side.”
“I would’ve come sooner, my love, but my stubbornness is as impenetrable as yours. But I’m here now, and this is me getting on my knees and begging you to return.”
“You want me to get on my knees and beg you to come back to me?” I ask. “Saving you from vicious killers isn’t enough?”
I take her hand in mine. And then surprising us both, I lower my knee to the ground.
Hell has officially frozen over. Domenico De Kysa, the Heartless King from the North, is on his knees.
Something I never thought I’d ever see in this lifetime.
I’ve been aching for his kiss for weeks. And because I’m already high from the insanity unfolding around me, I give in to the deliciousness of his lips and the delightful sensation of his tongue stroking into my mouth.
I don’t want to be a slave to this man’s kisses. I don’t want to crave his touch. But I do. Because I’m in love with him.
Live with the fear so I can love him. Or live without the fear but lose him.
As he takes the kiss deeper, whatever resistance I feel gives way, and I know exactly which one I’ll choose.
I choose him. I will always ...
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