Page 53 of Sinner's Vows

A weighted silence drags the moment down.

“Yes.”

“Then get under the covers.” I watch as she does so, then turn my back on her and head to the bathroom where I grab my toothbrush and get busy at speed. While brushing, I look out of the bathroom door, only to see her lying in bed, on her side, exactly as I left her.

I finish up my night-time routine, dim the lights, then head to the closet. Her eyes are on me, watching my every move. I give her my back as I strip. Let her watch. Let her plot. Let her pounce on me from behind and try to strangle me. I’d love to wrestle her to the bed and pin her down with a few little threats and some discipline that comes with this type of behavior. Physically, she’s no match for me, but with what she’s gone through?—

Overly conscious of my experiences displayed on my skin, I turn my good side to her as I drop my shirt. I hasten to put on a T-shirt and strip to my boxers. It’s ample coverage. I dip into the drawer with my silk ties I wear to business meetings. I have six here as I have only made a half-assed move of my closet at home. That’s plenty.

Ariana Morelli doesn’t want to be tied up to something—I bet Franco tied her up while he had her prisoner, maybe even while he violated her twelve years ago to keep her immobile—but I have other plans.

The headboard isn’t made for constraints, but we don’t need those. There’re plenty of knots for a situation like this, and I know them all. I switch off the lights but turn on the one on my nightstand. As I kneel onto the bed with my bundle of ties, her eyes widen, and she licks her lips.

“Nothing to hurt you, sweetheart,” I murmur. “Just something to keep you contained. You sleep on that side?”

She nods, and when I reach for her arm, she doesn’t resist. I caress her inner wrist’s delicate skin out of habit. I love every part of a woman, but there are a few places I always give special care to. The most vulnerable places. Those little nooks and dips that whisper back to me when I lick or nip at them, when I slide my tongue along the length of her pulse points, or drag my open lips and close them in tender kisses in her most erotic and hidden places.

Her breathing is strained as I slip one silk tie around her wrist, the movement measured and slow, and it’s killing me how I can’t do more for her. She’s opened up to me, and she isn’t the first woman to do so. I’ve served women with the sole purpose of reconnecting them with their own sensuality, to overcome their trauma and take charge of their sexuality again. What I’m doing here is nothing new for me, but from her subtle reactions, it is all new for her.

I know the patterns. Women either slide into complete promiscuity, trying to paint so many layers over the original abuse until they can’t find it amongst the rest, or they never let a man touch them again. Every signal her body sends me is like a dot on a line plotting to the latter.

Fuck, sweetheart. Twelve years.

And here I am, wanting to make up for all of them.

28

ARIANA

Dominic is on his knees next to me, his face cast in shadows, the bedside lamp’s light glowing behind him like a halo.

My guardian angel.

Touching me with what feels like the tips of his angel wings. Featherlight teases dance over my wrist as he wraps a dark blue silk tie around my arm, gliding it over my skin, slow and erotic as he knots it, circles it around itself, and again. I have no idea what he’s doing, but I’m mesmerized by his big hands’ rhythmic movement, how he binds one tie together with another and then another, making a length looping around my lower arm.

The little finger on his one hand isn’t playing along, like an errant child always in the way, but he doesn’t seem to notice it. I want to reach for that finger, feel why it’s so wayward. I breathe through the need, knowing this could never be. Unsure why I even want to touch him.

But I know why. He’s twisted me up like no man ever has, like one of those knots, and the urge to rub my thighs together, to still the secret pulse between my legs, washes over me in waves.

Not him.

When he starts to loop the ties around his own arm, I still even more. I had no idea where this was going, no choice but to wait and see, but now… This is so unexpected. He is tethering me tohim.

My heart beats slow down, with no anxious little pauses from one thud to the next. My pulse seems to hush where it’s been spiked with adrenaline for days. A river’s rush finally culminating in a calm lake that only doubles the world in size with its mirror-like reflection. From here, I can take my time. Be still. Just breathe.

This man can take all of me, and more. Like a final destination for everything I’ve bottled up, and now that I’ve opened the sluices, taking course in his direction, I don’t know if I can stop.

I close my eyes, trying to block every sensation his touch unleashes in me. Every uncharted desire and want, every emotion I’ve suppressed for years push up to his light. Uninvited and dangerous. Deadly.

I can’t. I can never tell him everything. As it is, my life is hanging on a thin thread of some stupid DNA test.You know what they’ll do to you when they’ve figured you out.Franco’s words when he found me at that sex-slave auction sound like a fire alarm in my head, and it’s a bucket of ice water over my body.

Dominic is Mafia. He will be no different from Franco or any of Randazzo’s ring. Not once he’s figured me out.

The ten thousand euros I stole from Franco got me all the way to Milan and in hiding, but it’s what happened next that I can never talk about. Least of all to Dominic, who seems to have me like a faucet in hand. Just turn, and I spill all my secrets.

I try to regulate my breathing so this war of emotions doesn’t show, unable to stop staring at what he’s doing. Now he’s busy with his own arm and no longer touching mine, I flex my handto distract myself. He’s left space between the silk and my skin, barely two millimeters but a snug fit that won’t keep me from sleeping. It’s expertly done. The knots are complicated, and there’s no way I can untie them with my dumber left hand without waking him up.

He’s already proven to be a pro at feigning sleep. I bet he’s a light sleeper. If he sleeps at all.

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