Page 73 of Auctioned To Her Dad's Mafia Enemies

His thumb strokes along my cheek, reverent andpossessive. “Tell me you understand.”

I nod, my lips parting, but no words come out.I don’t need to say it.

He sees it in my eyes.

His confessions make me whimper. Beneath mythigh, his cock stirs thick and hard, and my body primes in response before mymind can catch up. Heat unfurls inside me, slow and insidious, a craving I haveno business feeling. I trace the lines at the corners of his eyes, the roughstubble at his jaw flecked with silver along his jaw, the deep scar that cutsinto his flesh—marks of a man who’s lived, survived, conquered, so much a partof him that I can’t imagine his handsome face before time and violence hadmarked him. He closes his eyes against the gentleness in my fingers as iftenderness is harder for him to accept than a knife in the gut.

When it becomes too much for him, he grasps mywrists, encircling them with one vicious hand, his grip like an iron shacklearound my bones.

“I shouldn’t want you,” he says, his voicegravelly. “You understand that, don’t you?”

His fingers tighten, not enough to hurt, butenough to make me feel small, powerless. My pulse pounds. Not in fear. Never infear with Luca.

“I look at you, and I see a woman who turns mybody and mind into an inferno. Your beauty, your strength, your fire, itconsumes me. But then I remember carrying you in my arms when you were nothingbut a little girl with too big eyes and tiny hands. And now...” He exhalessharply. “Now, all I want is to do what my brothers did—to bury myself in youuntil I’ve marked every inch of you, inside and out. To claim you. To own you.”

His voice turns hoarse, and something likeregret flickers behind his blue fire. “But I’m the Boss of this family. And—”

His voice seems to die at the end, turninginto nothing but breath.

“And you should resist?” I finish for him.

His jaw clenches. “I should know better. Athirty-eight-year-old man, losing his fucking head over a twenty-year-old girl.”

“Woman,” I correct.

His nostrils flare. His grip on my wriststightens. “At the wedding, Antonio said that my dick doesn’t have to feelguilty for wanting you.” He lets out a low, humorless chuckle. “Even then…”

“You wanted me?”

“Yes. Like the first hit of a drug. And youwanted me, too. Every time our eyes met…”

“I want you,” I whisper. “I want…”

“To forget?” His tone is knowing, like he cansee through me, through every broken, needy part of me, to the aching heart atthe center who never believed that love could find her.

“Yes…”

“To hand over your power, your will, yoursense of self?” He studies me like he’s reading the pages of a book only he canunderstand. “I feel it, Aemelia. How much you hate to be weak, but how much youcrave it.”

His thumb drags over my lower lip, slow andpossessive. He hooks it inside my mouth, pressing against my bottom teeth,forcing my lips apart. Everything with Luca feels like a test, a challenge, aboundary crossed, a line eviscerated.

A battle between resistance and surrender.

I touch his thumb with the tip of my tongue,tasting the salt of his skin, and sense the tensing of his body. Still, heholds me tightly by the wrists, anchoring me to him while he fights a war withhimself.

“The things I want,” he murmurs, staringtransfixed at my mouth. “The things I need… I shouldn’t take them from you.”

I wrap my lips around his thumb, hollowing mycheeks, and his eyes blaze. I can’t voice what I want, but I can show him. Hisbreath hitches, his pupils blowing wide, undone by something so small.

“Sweet Aemelia,” he rasps. “So precious. Soeager to please. Such a good girl.”

A shiver runs through me at his praise,burning through my skin, settling deep in the hollow place inside me that hasalways ached to be filled. I hate how good it feels—how much I need his praiseand compliments. I should have enough backbone to stand on my own, to know myworth without a man‘s approval. But I was stripped of so much by my father’shatred, left with so little when he abandoned me.

Now, I press myself against Luca Venturi, oneof the most feared men in the city, like he’s my savior. I take the scraps ofhis kindness and feast on them. I crave to crumble under the weight of hisdominance, to let him tear me apart and piece me back together.

I can’t resist the pull of him—the promise ofsomething darker, something deeper, something that feels like belonging.

When he withdraws his thumb, I whimper.

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