My Love Forever

by Anna Antonia

  It was something.

  Blowing out a fortifying breath, I said, “I never told you about my family…my real family…because I never told anyone. The truth was sacrosanct. It wasn’t a reflection on you, Risa. I never wanted my secret to touch your life. The longer time went on the more I feared your reaction. Your opinion of me matters more than anyone else’s—”

  Risa coughed once. She looked at a point over my shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me this, Damian. It doesn’t affect where we are today.”

  “It does. I…I need to apologize. Make amends. I never meant to hurt you, but I did. Please forgive me, Risa.”

  She tore away from me with a small cry. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for!” She shoved a hand through her hair, disrupting its perfection. She spared me a glance, brutal as it was. “Look, I came here for one reason only. I want you to stop it.”

  The alcohol in my brain receded from the moment I saw her, but even now it left me befuddled and unable to connect the dots. “Stop? Stop what?”

  “Stop looking for me! I want you to stop what it is that you’re doing. As you can see I’m perfectly fine. There’s no need to take it any further.”

  She was so unnaturally stiff all it would take was one push and I was afraid she’d break. I had to take care.

  “No, you’re not fine. You don’t think I know my little girl?”

  Risa pulled her shoulder in. She grimaced as if in pain. “Don’t call me that. Please.”

  Her reaction didn’t make sense. Neither did her denial of who and what we were to each other. “But you are my little girl. You always will be.”

  Risa cringed again, choosing to put a significant amount of space between us. Her exposed fist clenched and unclenched. Her left leg tapped, the heel bouncing off marble as if it couldn’t stand to stay still one second longer.

  “You can’t say things like that, Damian. We are not together. I made that perfectly clear a month ago. What more do I have to say for you to get it?”

  Cruelty lashed me. The pain became needles digging under every inch of my skin. I heard her words. I just couldn’t understand them.

  “Risa, why are you saying this? I know you love me. Is it because I failed you? I swear I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

  “Don’t say that! You’re wrong. You’re wrong about what you think you know about me.” She stopped and took several breaths. Her pitch softened into rational calmness. “Damian, please. Please just let this go. I don’t want to have to hurt you more than I already have.”

  “Hurt me? You haven’t hurt me. The only way you can do that is by leaving. You wouldn’t do that. You swore.”

  Risa turned her face away. A small moan punctured the growing silence. I couldn’t stand her suffering. Instinct demanded I take her in my arms. I didn’t make it more than two steps before her head popped up.

  “No! Don’t come closer!” Her arms came up, small hands splayed in defense. Risa then looked at them, me, before wrapping them around her waist.

  I froze. The animal panic in her voice sent chills down my spine. I feared she’d been hurt. Badly.

  I couldn’t expose the darkest part of my fears for the past month. I didn’t want to take the chance my love would think I blamed her for her abuse. Or that I thought any less of her.

  I’ll kill whoever hurt Risa with my bare hands. I swear it.

  Swallowing hard, I softly asked, “Did anyone harm you, Risa?”

  “No. No one hurt me. I promise.”

  I searched her gaze, studying her and looking for deceit. As if she knew my reasoning, Risa faced me squarely. Her body, expression, and eyes told one shared truth—she was sincere.

  My knees went weak with relief. The tension slid off my shoulders. Whatever had happened to her this last month I could now trust abuse hadn’t been part of it.

  One problem was solved but it still left another in its place.

  “But you were shaking. Why? I would never hurt you. You know that.”

  Risa’s open posture snapped shut. She cupped her forehead and hissed, “Don’t you get it? You’re hurting me right now! You’re hurting me because you’re not listening to me! I need you to let this go. I’m in hiding because of you.”

  “I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

  Risa dropped her hand. “And that is why I came to you tonight, Damian. I know you don’t believe anything has changed between us, but you’re wrong. Everything has changed. Everything has changed because of who you really are.”

  This time I couldn’t ignore the words.

  “You know who I am, Risa. I’m the man you love.”

  “It’s not that simple. Everything has changed between us, Damian, because of who you really are. Your family is Russian mafia! Look, I’ve never been attracted to bad boys. I have zero interest in having a boyfriend who has a criminal record.”

  Stiffly I corrected her. “I do not have a criminal record.”

  “Only because you haven’t been caught! Don’t try to stand there and tell me you don’t have criminal tendencies, Damian, because I know better. I know what you’re capable of!”

  My greatest fears were happening right before me and I barely had anything to say in my defense. Logically, Risa had the right of it. She had every reason to feel the way she did. Yet, it didn’t stop the betrayal from boiling through me.

  This was the one woman I’d given my heart to and just like that she deemed to me unworthy of her affections. This was the same woman who swore she loved me and would always love me until the day she died.

  And she didn’t fucking mean it.

  I always knew this would happen if she ever really knew the truth. I just hoped it wouldn’t. I hoped Risa would love me like I loved her. Completely. Forever.

  The truth of who Risa really was gutted me. And still my traitorous heart refused to believe the words coming out of her mouth.

  I just had to remind her of what we had before it all went wrong. Maybe her anger with my lying clouded her memories. It had to be because otherwise…

  “You love me.”

  Risa shook her head. “Don’t do this, Damian. Let’s just call this what it is and what it isn’t. We never had a grand romance. It was filled with lies from the beginning. I didn’t trust you and you didn’t trust me. Whatever we had is gone. We just didn’t know it yet.” Her mouth pressed into a vicious line. “Correction. You knew it even when you didn’t remember. You knew I wasn’t the one for you.”

  Our first argument bookending our last. I couldn’t stand it now any better than I could then.

  “Stop.”

  “I can’t. You won’t let me.”

  “Why are you saying these things? You don’t believe in the words you’re speaking. You don’t believe them, Risa.”

  She paced in a wide line. Back and forth like an agitated cat. “No, you’re the one who doesn’t believe in them. I’m telling you the truth. How many times do I have to keep repeating the same thing? I don’t want to be with you, Damian. Stop looking for me. Stop interfering in my life. Do that so I can move on and put this all behind me.”

  “Who are you hiding with? Who is helping you? Elaine? Thomas?”

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  I watched her closely. Risa didn’t have the resources to evade me but she’d done just that. I needed to know who it was. I’d find him or them and then I’d force the truth right out of their broken body.

  Her mouth puckered. She let out a tiny huff. “A friend.”

  “A friend? Who?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I ran through a miniscule list of possibilities and kept circling back to one. Impossible.

  “You mean the very same man who kidnapped you off my estate, held you hostage—that is your friend?”

  “Yes!” She sounded hysterical. “The very same one! He was the only person I could turn to. He was the one who told me the truth about you.”

  “And you
believed him just like that?”

  I thought back to her ‘friend’, the one who took Risa away from me the first time and apparently was keeping her away from me now. I wanted to close my hands around his throat and squeeze. Crush the very life out of him. Slowly, nothing too quickly.

  I wanted him to suffer.

  I wanted him to beg for his life, to plead forgiveness in destroying my life.

  I’d deny him.

  “No! But you confirmed everything he said, Damian. Your silence confirmed it and I knew then every word he told me was the truth.”

  Her voice grew in strength if not volume.

  “He didn’t hurt me, Damian. He saved me. He gave me a chance, a choice, to get away from all of this and I took it. I would take it again and again.”

  My body shook. My heart broke bit by bit and still it couldn’t believe the destruction coming from Risa’s mouth. I thought back to a million and one memories we’d forged between us. They couldn’t be true and this too.

  Both truths couldn’t exist in the same world.

  Risa, the girl who could never hide her emotions from me, the one who wore everything on her face as vividly as the lip gloss on her lips, she somehow managed to trick me all these months?

  It wasn’t possible.

  “What is he threatening you with? Your parents?”

  “Don’t bring them into this, Damian. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I continued as if she hadn’t interrupted me. “Did he threaten to kill you? Me?”

  Risa looked cornered. Her eyes were wide with fright, fury, and panic. I lit a truth in her she couldn’t hide.

  It was me.

  The threat this bastard held was against me.

  Risa wanted to protect me. All she’d wanted to do was protect me from the beginning until now. I’d denied her, but this bastard had seen right through her and was using it to control Risa.

  Relief made my knees go weak once more. I could breathe again. Risa wanted to protect me because she didn’t trust me to take her of her and who could blame her? I’d let her down but I wouldn’t do it again.

  I just had to convince my love of the fact. I’d prove myself to her. Then I’d turn all my resources on this man and make him wish his bitch of a mother never gave birth.

  “I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t betray me like this.”

  “You don’t know shit, Damian. I need you to listen to me. I will not resurface again until you stop looking for me.”

  “He sent you up here to get me to stop.”

  “You have to!”

  “He’s running scared for a reason.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I won’t fail you again, Risa. Not this time. I have resources available to me that you can’t even begin to imagine.”

  “I know about your resources. I know you’re contacting dangerous people. And I know that you’re endangering my life, yours, and my family. Damian, if you don’t give a shit about yourself—fine. But you have no right to drag my family into this. You have no right to interrupt their life. They never asked for this. And I will do whatever it takes, fair or unfair, to get you to back off.”

  I reached for her but she slapped my hand away. “I will go to the press, Damian. If you think I’m lying—try me.”

  “You don’t have to keep saying this to me. I’ve got you, little girl. I’ll protect you.”

  She let out a scream. “Argh! Don’t keep saying that! I don’t want your help. I don’t need you to protect me. I need protection from you!”

  Her hysteria fueled mine.

  I grabbed Risa, wanting to shake the truth out of her. “You know the rules, little girl. Truth above all else between us.”

  The hypocrisy didn’t escape me, but I was a desperate man. My expectations for my love would always be different from the ones I held for myself. But Risa was better than this. She was better than the lies bubbling out of her throat.

  Risa looked at me as if I were a mad man. I had never gone so far as to grab her in anger. Her face paled, but her voice remained strong. Calm even.

  “Let me go. I mean it.”

  I wanted to dig my fingers deeper. Not to hurt her but to squeeze the lies right out of her. Shaking with suppressed rage, I shoved back from Risa. I walked far away enough to give us distance.

  I had to get it together.

  “I know you don’t believe the words you’re telling me. I know you’re being forced. Tell me the truth so I can help you.”

  “You’re wrong, Damian. I mean every word I’m saying. Every word.”

  “No. You. Don’t.”

  “Yes, I do! I don’t love you anymore, Damian! I don’t want to see you ever again. Do you understand me now?”

  Fury transformed me, eating away at my logic. I had to see the angles, rework the formulas, but I couldn’t. Not when confronted by a woman who looked like Risa but wasn’t.

  “If all you’ve said is true you wouldn’t want to see me. You would’ve sent a cease and desist letter. You would’ve had it sent to my office, to my attorneys. You did not have to come here to rip my heart out. I know you, Risa. You’d never be this cruel, even if you hated me. You don’t have it in you because you’re pure light, the sun to my moon.”

  Risa’s overly plump mouth opened in a gasp, as if she couldn’t believe what I had just said.

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Of course, I do. I’ve known you from the beginning. Why else do you think I love you?”

  “You…you…wouldn’t understand. I have to be this way. I mean…it had to be this way because…you…because…you’re wrong…I’m sorry…I just…”

  “Ssh.” I approached Risa carefully, afraid she’d bolt if I moved too fast. I took faith when she stayed still, eyes watching me as if I were the only one capable of plunging her into hell.

  Or heaven.

  “I won’t hurt you, Risa. I love you, little girl. I’ll always love you.” My arms closed around her, not too tightly. A violent shudder went through her, but she didn’t try to escape.

  Then I did what I’d been dying to do since I first saw her.

  I took Risa’s mouth in a kiss.

  29

  RISA

  Oh God.

  Damian kissed me, sending lust through me like wildfire. My heart raced, pumping harder with each delicious thrust of his tongue in my greedy mouth.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to slash the love right out of him. Instead, he kissed me like I was his life and he was mine.

  I fucked it all up, but right now? I didn’t care.

  This man, this glorious man with all his terrible secrets was the only man I could ever love.

  He knew it and now he made sure I’d never forget.

  His touch turned possessive. Damian squeezed my neck hard, forcing me to gasp for air. I craved it, wanted more.

  His perfect mouth whispered against mine, “You say you wanted to forget me but you didn't. You want me, your body wants me, because you know the same thing I do. We're forever. We'll never be done.”

  I rubbed against him, lost in the beauty of his words. “Punish me. Please, please, please.”

  Damian dragged me down to the floor. My excitement level increased. I was so creamy wet I could hardly stand it. I needed him. I couldn’t wait for his thick cock to open me up and make me scream his name.

  He must’ve seen the filthy thoughts all over my face because he growled, hauling me up against him before turning me around. “Open your fucking legs.”

  They fell on either side of his thighs. Damian slid his hands down my thighs, paying special attention to the garter belt and stocking seams. “You wore these for me.”

  I moaned louder when his fingertips traced the seam of my aching pussy.

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You bad bitch.” Damian slapped my mound. “You knew this was inevitable and yet you tried to lie to me.”

  I didn’t want
to talk about this. I didn’t want Damian to remember the ugly things I said. Turning towards him, I opened my mouth in mute apology. Damian took it, sucking on my bottom lip before deepening the kiss.

  His hand slid back down and firmly opened me up. The cool air touched my hot flesh. Damian’s middle finger tapped against my clit. I twisted, moaning his name and cooing, “Oh that feels so good!”

  Damian growled against my neck, squeezing me tighter with one arm and finger-fucking me hard with his other hand. The slippery sounds of my pussy excited us both, especially when Damian’s palm slapped my clit over and over again.

  I ached to come, practically begging for it. My lover wasn’t about to get me off that easily. He took me to the edge and then stopped. Damian’s wet fingers shoved into my wanton mouth, easily forestalling my plaintive moans.

  He fucked my mouth this way before starting all over again. Several pinches to my clit, delicious rubbing on either side, and then plunging back into me.

  Damian tormented me. He kissed my forehead gently while slapping my pussy in time to my jagged groans. I reached for my nipples, rubbing and pinching them to keep from digging my nails into his legs.

  “You want to come for me, little girl?”

  His hard whisper sent shivers throughout my body. It was so easy to beg. “Yes, Damian. Please let me come. I want to come all over your hand!”

  He let go of my waist only to push my chin up. “Don’t close your eyes. I want to see.”

  Staring into his silver and bronze gaze, I felt myself quickly coming apart. The knot in my tummy grew taut as my legs drew up around his arm.

  “Oh my God! Damian! Fuck yes!”

  Breaking into lovely pieces, I looking into his eyes. The longer I looked the more confident I became in believing that Damian saw right down into my soul. The past didn’t matter. Only now.

  Damian held me close, his hand slowing down but never leaving my throbbing clit. He rained kisses along my neck and shoulder. I felt his stiff cock against my back while his heart thundered as hard as mine.