Page 49 of Saint Valentine

I went silent, her words echoing in my mind. Was I really the villain to her?

The bed shifted. “Why is your face balled up like that? Are you mad. Are you… jealous?”

I didn’t answer. I was both. She was fucking up sherlock Holmes for me.

I could feel her eyes on the side of my face. “Oh my God. You are jealous. Over a fictional character. If it makes you feel better, I don’t like the actual person, just the character he plays. That Sherlock’s sexy.”

I moved before she could react.

Rolling over onto her, I caught her wrists, pinning them above her head. Her breath hitched, her eyes widening slightly as my body pressed her into the mattress.

“Say it again,” I muttered, my voice low, dangerous.

She licked her lips, then with a wicked grin, she opened her mouth.

“Sherlock Holmes is—”

I lifted her leg, opening her pussy to me. I slammed into her, burying myself deep in one thrust. She was soaking fucking wet, but she still managed to grip me tight.

She gasped, her head pressing back against the pillow, but she didn’t break eye contact. “Sherlock is sexy…” she drawled.

I thrust again, harder this time, making her body jolt beneath me.

“You want me to fuck you angrily, Aria?” I growled.

“Yes, please!”

Leaning in, I traced her areola with the tip of my tongue before biting into her nipple, eliciting a sharp gasp from her.

“Come on, Saint, fuck me hard,” she demanded.

I left her breast, splayed my free hand across her belly, and drove into her, giving her exactly what she asked for—over and over—until I painted her inside with my DNA. Dick still hard, I kept fucking her.

She panted beneath me, her body trembling as I kissed her shoulder, biting and sucking my way up to her neck, leaving marks on her brown skin. She was in a frenzy, trying to match my rhythm, pushing against my weight until her body stilled, her nails nearly tearing through my skin as she came. Sweetmoans and whines escaped her lips, her breasts heaving as she struggled to catch her breath.

When her breathing returned to normal, she laughed. “I never watched Sherlock.”

I stared down at her, my dick still in her.

I stared down at her, my dick still buried inside her, and shook my head. “Why couldn’t you just ask me, ‘Saint, fuck me hard’?”

“I’m not making shit easy for you.” She laughed more.

And then, despite everything, I laughed too.

Chapter twenty six

Saint

February 14th. Valentine’s Day. My birthday. The day my mother died.

It was a day wrapped in contradictions, tangled in a mess of sentimentality that I didn’t have the capacity to feel. People called it the day of love, a celebration of devotion, romance, passion—but for me, it had always been marked by loss. By blood. By the reminder that the one person who had given me life was taken from it.

The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but I’d been awake for hours. Time was slipping through my fingers, and I wasn’t about to let anything ruin this. Aria was going to be mine—officially, irrevocably. I’d wanted a grand wedding, something worthy of her, something that would make her see how serious I was. But circumstances had forced my hand, and now I had to make do with what I could pull together in a single night. I put my business with my father on hold. He would get his for endangering Aria’s life, but that could wait a day.

I didn’t grieve or mourn or even celebrate like normal people did, but if I was ever going to take something as irrational as marriage, a wife, love, and make it mine—it would have to be on a day already etched into my bones. A day already saturated withmeaning. A day where the world expected devotion, loss, and new beginnings all at once.

I made a call at 3 a.m. to a friend, Vincente.

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