Page 39 of Stolen Vows

“What?”

“Your hair. I’d like to see it down when I take your virginity.”

“That’s presumptuous.” I tilt my chin. “Besides, who says I’m still a virgin?”

Something dangerous flashes in his gaze. “How about we test my theory?”

My hand immediately goes to the side of my head, feeling the soft strands held back by Valerie’s pins. Every nerve in my body tightens, like wire coiling around a spring. “I…no. I’m not going to do that.Wearen’t doing that.”

“I’m happy to see your spine is still intact after all these years. I won’t feel so bad about coming to collect what I’m owed.”

“I don’t owe you shit.”

He grins, big and toothy. It’s unsettling—predatory. Like I’m prey, and I just walked into his trap.

“Your father is dead,cara mia.Normally, that’d make the deal we struck up null and void.” His long legs carry him to me in a few strides, and I back up, trying to keep as much distance between us as possible. “Problem is, we’re still very much married. So the deal transfers to you…and is currently unfulfilled, I’m afraid, as you left my condo without consummation.”

“I don’t remember signing anything legal?—”

Within seconds, he slams me into a wall, and I’m thrust back in time to when he pinned me in the alley behind the church and kissed me. How it felt like my world shifted on its axis with that kiss. I’ve been secretly yearning for that same high ever since.

The only difference is that now I’ve tasted freedom. I won’t give it up so easily—and certainly not for some measly kiss.

Leo’s hips brush mine. My chest heaves, each breath a struggle as my brain begins short-circuiting from his presence and scent alone. I don’t know why he has this effect on me—I can’t even make sense of it biologically, though I know the technical evidence is there.

He’s attractive, and my body remembers how good he is with his tongue and hands. But all that should be moot, given everything he represents.

Yet I ache for him to touch me. After all this time, the sting of his rejection still reverberates in the back of my mind, and I wish he’d prove it was a fluke.

After reaching into his interior jacket pocket, Leo pulls out a folded slip of paper. He presses it to my chest, his grin turning sinister.

“You signed. Or at least,someonesigned your name.”

“Forgery? Seriously?”

A shrug. “All I have to do is show a judge the security footage of you naked in my kitchen, letting me put my filthy mouth between your luscious thighs. It wouldn’t take much more to convince them that we consummated, and in that case, why wouldn’t you have signed? These factors are all very easy to manipulate, I’m afraid, Stella. And youdidcommit to being my wife in your vows. Before you left me.”

Exasperation heats my body. My fingertips itch to scratch his eyes out. “I didn’t leaveyou. I lefteverything. Do you think that was easy, abandoning my life? My sisters? I didn’t even get to attend my parents’ funerals, and you have the audacity to come in here and demand things from me, push me around, and try to drag me back? I’m not going.”

His face remains impassive, as if he’s unaffected by the raw emotion dripping from my words. It makes me angrier.

“Why do you even care all of a sudden? You rejected me, and then for seven years, I didn’t hear a fucking peep. Why come back now when I’ve actually got things going for me? Do you just enjoy seeing me suffer? Is that why you showed up? Have you just been stalking me, waiting to ruin a perfect moment?”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“Fine. You want me so badly?”

I shove him backward, then scramble toward him, reaching to undo the belt hidden beneath his jacket. His brows furrow and he moves to stop me, but I smack him away and crouch.

Getting on my knees in this dress is probably not a good idea, but I’m so filled with rage and fear that I don’t care.

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind?—”

“Shutup. You want to come, right? That’s why you want to fuck me. New deal—if I make you come, we’re even. Tit for tat. You can leave me and the orchid alone. Sound good? Good.” Iundo his zipper, ignoring the tremor in my fingers, and peer up at him for some sort of confirmation.

His gray eyes are impossible to read. Sweat slicks my palms at the thought of him rejecting me once again, but he just tucks the folded marriage license back in his jacket and says, “I want to comeinsideyou.”

For some reason, the image causes goosebumps to sprout along my arms and my nipples to tighten. “Then you’ll leave me be?”

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