His breathing is ragged now, his fist still working his cock and as scared as I am of him taking me, I’m more scared of what will happen if he doesn’t.

“You hunted me,” I whisper. “You caught me. Please take me.”

He closes his eyes, green lamplights dimming. It’s just the two of us alone in his bed. The last people in the world. The hand on his cock slows and he angles himself between my legs. My body aches, my clit is flushed, and I know I’ll come while he fucks me. I’ll come screaming and shaking and pleading for more, and my husband, whoever he ends up being, will not be the first man to make me feel these things. Adriano Rossi will be. I close my eyes, waiting for the moment my pussy stretches to let this brutal murderer inside me. “Please be my first,” I whisper, as a small tear drops from my eye.

The head of Adriano’s cock rubs against me but doesn’t penetrate.

I buck my hips, urging him inside me. “Take me. End this.”

“Pryntsesa…” Adriano rears back like a stallion, looking me right in the face. I don’t know what he’s trying to see but he doesn’t find it. He bares his teeth and then he’s above me, his fist juddering across his cock, one hand grasping my breast.

His cum is thick and warm as it rushes across my hips and stomach. He throws his head back in a snarl, a grizzly bear straining against a trap. It’s over. Adriano finished without penetrating my body. I am still, somehow, a virgin.

He turns away and I hear a zipper snarl. “Let’s go.”

“Adriano?”

He looks at me, his expression as hateful as the night I arrived in Velvet House. “We’re leaving.”

Chapter Eighteen

Adriano Rossi

January sits bolt upright in the car seat beside me. I told her to put on makeup, enough that anyone who knows her wouldn’t recognize her right away. She’s done a good job. Heavy gold eye shadow, pink cheeks, shiny red lips. The clothes help. A thin little nothing of a dress and the ruby necklace and sky-high heels Eli bought her. She looks like a snotty little socialite.

She stares straight ahead, her green eyes vacant. I want to break her head open and read her thoughts. Is she thinking about what we did? Or is that calm, empty expression for her future?

After I was done with her, she picked up one of my T-shirts and wiped my cum off her stomach like she’d been doing it her whole life. “Can I go see my Zia now?”

It was like my head had been turned inside out. I’d finally touched the girl who danced in my dreams and the only reason she’d allowed it was to get her own way. I wanted to throw her back in her cage and hide the key. Instead, I pushed myself to my feet. “If I take you to see your housekeeper, it’ll be the last thing you do on US soil.”