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Willow had anticipated pain and knew how to take it. This was just the first salvo; she was sure of that. Angelo liked to punish people. By her reckoning, it was a sort of projection. He knew how deeply he deserved judgment and punishment, but he had managed to evade it so long that it had become something like a gift he gave to others.
Every time that leather landed, it was not her flesh he was aiming to turn red. It was his own. To a narcissist like Angelo Vitali, the world was not full of others. It was a stage full of props that were largely willing to play their role and become extensions of his ego.
For a time, he contented himself with the act of thrashing her, and for that time, Willow remained stoic. She knew what he wanted. He wanted her to beg for him to stop. He wanted to see her facade crack and fall away. What he did not realize - and could not realize, is that she did not have a facade. Her bravery went through to her core. Her nobility was her truth.
He threw the belt down at some indeterminate stopping point. Perhaps his arm was tired, or maybe he could tell that his usual techniques were not working. She did not know, and she did not care, for the fire was still burning in her loins as well as her ass. He had imparted much sensation to the dripping core of her. For all her stoicism, Willow was still a woman, and her body reacted like one.
Angelo pulled her up from the bed and turned her around to face him. His dark eyes searched her face, looking for some sign of weakness. He would see none there, of that she was determined.
"You are a challenging one, aren't you," he said, smoothing her mussed long hair away from her face. "Much stronger than your brother."
"Noble women have traditionally been required to be much stronger than their male counterparts," Willow replied.
"Yes, and the more modern ones are increasingly weak, are they not?" Angelo seemed to commiserate, even as he transparently schemed. "I've smelled what you want since you came here. You live surrounded by the weak. You crave the strong."
He backed her slowly against the wall, one step at a time. She felt a certain fuzziness in her head, but that was from lying down and coming to a vertical position, she told herself. It wasn't because this was working or because Angelo had the kind of raw magnetism which might start to erode her away.
His hand caressed the outside of her thigh and then moved around to the inside. He was testing her reaction, waiting to see horror or desire. He saw neither. She responded to his touch because fighting the pleasure was as stupid as trying to fight the pain.
She spread her legs and allowed him in, let him believe that there was some triumph or conquest in touching a woman until those commanding, exploring fingers were rubbing her pussy and finding the button at the apex of her labia. Her knees were threatening to buckle, but he held her there against the wall and made her take the pleasure.
The sounds Willow made as an orgasm ripped through her were guttural and feral. She was not familiar with this intensity of pleasure. She did not know how to handle it, all the hatred in her flesh, all the desire between her thighs. But she knew how to ride a wave, and that was what she did, letting it all be inside her while she composed a pretty riposte.
"There," Angelo murmured, pushing her hair back from her flushed face with a strong hand. "Wasn't that nice? Wouldn't you like to be a good girl and feel this way all the time?"
Willow laughed in his face, though her fake mirth was shakier than she would have liked.
"You think making me orgasm will break me, Mr. Vitali? If that were possible, my vibrator would have destroyed me many times over."
Broken?
"How long will you keep us here?"
Gemma was lying on the bed she'd been sleeping in. Bobby's room was through the door. The first night, she'd lain awake expecting… something. But nothing had happened. He'd left her to rest, and she'd woken up almost feeling like herself. Almost normal.
Bobby had come up not long ago with snacks. He wasn't exactly a chef. It was cereal and milk, but hey, better than nothing. She'd finished hers, and now they were just sort of sitting around, talking shit.
"As long as it takes. Angelo won't tolerate people plotting against him. He will break Willow."
"I don't think he will. She's not exactly breakable. I've never known anyone like her. She's not a normal person."
"Neither is Angelo. He can destroy anybody."
He meant Angelo had destroyed him. Gemma felt sad for him. Bobby had been given free rein to hurt her, and he'd not so much as lifted a finger beside the window incident. This didn't add up. He was supposed to be a brutal, torturing maniac. All the information she'd ever seen about Bobby indicated that he would take any opportunity to destroy someone, that Angelo had help restrain him from a life of reckless torture and crime.
