Page 76 of Ruthless Reign

“Stay still,” he growled. “You’ve denied me for two days, and now you’re lying to my face. I should punish you. I should pull you over my knee and edge you until you can’t walk. In fact—” The sound of jingling metal and the soft whoosh of leather made me look over my shoulder. He took off his belt and bent it in half, holding it with one hand while he admired the sight of my wet cunt and exposed skin. “I will give you two chances to tell me the truth. You can call your safeword and I’ll let you up, but if you do that and run away again without an explanation, I can assure you any restitution after that will be much…much…worse.”

He paused, waiting to see what I would say.Mercutiohovered on the tip of my tongue, and perhaps I should have said it. Perhaps I should have slowed this down so we could talk about it like reasonable adults, but I deserved the pain.

I deserved to be belted for having run away. I deserved the hurt for going along with this ridiculous marriage. And worst of all, I deserved the agony because I’d had the idiotic idea to fall in love with him in the first place.

“No? Nothing to say?” Roman tightened his hold on my hair.

“Well, go on then,” I snarled. “I don’t have all fucking night.”

The whip of leather through the air preceded a hard, fleshy smack. I heard it before I felt it, and when the bite sizzled up my back and into my legs, I collapsed against the table, all of the fight draining out of me. The belt came down again, this time onthe other cheek, and I arched into it, perking my ass toward him, desperate for more. It hurt. He certainly wasn’t being gentle, but the sting on the outside had started to evaporate the fire on the inside.

“Such a fucking stubborn woman,” Roman sneered through clenched teeth. “I’m your husband. I’m the one you lean on, the one who shares this with you.”

Another hit caused another burn, and a huge chunk of my emotional armor split off, landing somewhere near my heart.

“I love you”—another lash, another sting, another moan—“no matter what you do, no matter what happens. I love you. And you don’t have to love me, but goddamn it, I won’t tolerate dishonesty.”

I dug my nails into the wood under me, struggling for purchase, anything to hold on to to keep me grounded, but my fingertips only grasped the burned outline of the SRMC logo. There was nothing, only him and me and the one thing I didn’t want to say.

“Tell me, Julia,” Roman growled. This time, the belt hit my cunt and I hissed in a gasp, the torture shooting into my gut and down to my toes. It decimated my defenses, cracking them like shattered glass. Any minute now, I’d lose. I could call the safeword, but deep down inside, perhaps I wanted to lose. Like he said, he was supposed to be the one that helped me share this burden.

Would he still love me if he knew what my returned adoration would mean for him? Would he make fun of me for my fears? Would he accept them, welcome them, soothe them?

Sometime around the tenth or eleventh strike, my gasps finally became sobs. The dam inside me broke, and a flood of torment rose inside me.

“I can’t lose you,” I finally said through heaving cries. “I love you, and I can’t lose you.”

“There we go,” Roman said, dropping the belt before grabbing my shoulders to ease me up. “There we go.”

“Fate abhors me.” I sucked in air as tears rolled down my cheeks, blurring my vision. “Anyone I’ve ever loved has died. I’m not meant to be happy. And if you…if fate takes you from me… I can’t do that again, Roman. I can’t.”

“Shh,” he said, scooping an arm under my knees so he could pick me up. When he sat in the president’s chair, he put me in his lap and hugged me close while I let it all out—all of the weight I’d been carrying for months. It wasn’t just the threat of loving and losing him. It was this whole situation. There was no one else who could go up against Gabriella, no one else who knew the family the way I did. If Leo were going to take over the helm, the burden to keep him in line had always and would always rest on my shoulders.

If he went down, I went down. And now, I shared a similar relationship with Roman. Trapped and surrounded by people that didn’t trust me, that barely knew me, I’d been playing a high-stakes game of Jenga, praying I didn’t accidentally pull out a piece that would topple the whole thing.

The pressure had become unbearable, and I let that all out on Roman’s shoulder while he pet my hair and rubbed circles in my back and dried my tears.

“Oh, my love,” he said. “Mia cara, amore mia.”He whispered other endearments in Italian, muttering something about never leaving me, no matter what happened. “I’m yours, and you’re mine, and I will fucking run to the end of the earth to have you. Do you know that? Nothing will separate us. Not Gabriella, not the Caputi family, nothing.”

“Everyone I’ve ever loved has died, Roman,” I said. “And you—” The words came out of me now, the whole truth. “No one has ever meant as much to me as you.”

He brushed the hair out of my face and wiped my eyes with his thumbs, leaning in to kiss me so tenderly, it almost broke my heart all over again. “We are meant to be, my wife. My love.”

I snorted and shook my head. “We’re star-crossed.”

“Well, fuck the stars,” he said, giving me another tender kiss. “And fuck fate. If it wants to take me from you, it’ll have to fight like hell. You understand me?”

I nodded and kissed him, wrapping my arm around his neck, delighting in the safety of his hard body and his strong, capable arms.

“You wear my ring,” he said. “You have my last name and my entire family. You have everything I am, and I’ll be fucking damned if anything, fate or Caputi, is going to stop that.”

“I love you, Roman,” I said, leaning back to look him in the eye as I said it.

“I love you, Julia.” He kissed me again, this time deeper and slower than before. I pushed my hands up his chest to his neck, intertwining my fingers with the hair on the back of his head. At first, we reconnected with gentle pecks and slow licks, but soon we grew more passionate. He picked me up and twisted me around in his lap so I straddled him, my knees on either side of his hips.

He explored my body, grabbing my hips and sliding his palms up to my breasts to cup and knead like he’d never touched me before. I arched into it, opening my lips when his tongue demanded entrance. I wrestled mine against his, and I loved the spark that went through my center, straight to my nipples and cunt. Rolling my pelvis against him, I ground down to find that perfect cock, which had gotten harder since I’d stopped crying.

Roman kissed down my jaw and lapped at my neck, tugging the strap of my dress and bra down to free my breasts. When his greedy mouth found its way there, I leaned back so he had more room to explore.

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