The thick door buzzed open, and he stepped inside the dark and pushed the door closed instantly. My heart leapt at the bang.
“What is this? What are you gonna do to me?” Fear crept into my voice.
He put me down, but I couldn’t see or hear a thing. The heady scent of cologne filled the place. Jasmine, lemon and basil. Not Dom’s. His was more masculine, sandalwood and musk.
Lights, even though dim, flared in my eyes. He must have turned on the light switch. My eyes took a second to adjust before I took in where we were. “What the…” I couldn’t even say fuck. Not in this room.
He grabbed my wrist and dragged me to some sort of a dresser where he got out some new cuffs. Leather ones. “This is where you’re going to learn that you’re mine.”
CHAPTER 32
Nicky
Pain. Dom had a room of pain. Not like the red room or the purple room but a real one. Everything here was black and blue like the bruises that covered his victims when he was done with them. While it had a four-poster bed, there were shackles and rope dangling from the posters and more restraints attached to the mattress. A couple of Tally Ho chairs were placed strategically back to back in front of mirrored cupboards. Endless shelves of not just floggers and canes but sharp tools and blades of all sizes. Scattered against the walls were benches of all shapes, some scarier than the others. Like the one I was spread and shackled against now. While it was covered in leather, and only my head, shoulders, ankles and feet were against it—my back, ass and thighs were fully exposed—it felt like a fucking crucifixion beam or a medieval stock, not a sex bench.
This wasn’t just a playroom or a sex dungeon. It was a real room of torture.
“Dom, this isn’t funny.” I writhed against the leather restraints on my wrists and feet. Strangely those weren’t the ones hooked to the stock. There were chains coming out of them, and those were inserted in special holes in the stock and hooked from the back. I could move my arms a few inches in them, but the ones on my feet restraints gave very little leeway. What was the purpose of this design? Psychological torment? The taunting sense of unattainable freedom? “Get me out of here. I’m scared.”
He stood in front of me, all naked, all terrifying in that light that magnified the intensity of his tattooed muscles and the scars underneath, in that room that he owned like a fucking king.
He came toward me, his eyes glowing yellow like a real coyote, consuming me. “You weren’t scared when you tried to play me that day in your apartment? You weren’t scared when you ran away from me?” He circled around me, and then stopped in front of me again, the back of his hand traveling down on me from my cheek to my hip. “You weren’t scared when you tried to play me again today?”
I shuddered in fear and from the havoc he wreaked on my body with his touch. “I didn’t. When did I play you today?”
“When you were soconcernedabout my status in the family. Don’t think you can fool me. I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?” I certainly didn’t know what I was doing.
“Trying to turn me against Capo. Trying to get me in command. To call all the shots. To callyourshots.”
My breath caught. “No. I didn’t know anything about your parents and Enzio until you told me. I was just trying to get to know you.”
“Perche you care? Perche you’re trying to be a good wife, and not because you’re fishing for stuff you can use to do your bidding?”
Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I did think of ways to get Dom on my side, to do my bidding like he said, and I might have thought the idea of him in charge was going to help. But when he explained the risks, I dismissed it. A scheme that big and dirty was never my intention, and my target was never the Lanzas. “Dom, I—”
He squeezed my throat, silencing me. “Here you’ll know everything you need to know about me. The real me you once told me you wanted to see.”
Oh God. “Are you gonna hurt me?”
He licked me from the dip in my collarbone and up the length of my neck, like he was licking salt after a shot. “Yes.”
A gasp shook on my lips. “Because you hate me?”
“Just like you hate me. I’ll hurt you just like you hurt me.”
“Dom, I’m sorry.”
“Silenzio.” He placed his palms on either side of my face. “No more lies.”
I wasn’t lying. Part of me was sorry. I’d never hurt anyone in my life, and I’d never thought I could hurt someone like him. But he hurt me, too. He’d hurt me some more.
His eyes, full of lust, the kind condemned in religion, the one you went to hell for, suddenly, dipped to my lips, and he licked his. Then he devoured me in a kiss that was intense, passionate and violent all at once.
I was too scared to bite again, so I surrendered, in this one moment, in this one kiss, to the force of masculine sexual domination Domenica Lanza was. All plans, hate, revenge and fear aside, I couldn’t deny Dom was the only man that made me want to bend all my rules, forget all caution, drop all my guards and forsake all good to become one with his malice and sin.
Just for one moment, I did. Even though I knew for certain it’d be impossible to go back to who I was before that kiss. And fuck it felt so good I wanted to submit to his darkness and let this feeling last forever.
