That was our reality. If I let myself escape into a fantasy and enjoy this, I’d be playing his game—and losing.
And if he thought I wanted this, he’d never see himself for the monster he was.
He drew back, his breathing labored. “What is it?”
My dry throat made my response hoarse. “Nothing.”
“What did I tell you about lying to me?” He squeezed my arms, bringing me to the tips of my toes until our mouths nearly touched. “Don’t deny me, Natalia. You want this. I need it.”
Need. To be needed by a man as dominant and typically dispassionate as him was a heady feeling. It inspired my unsettling—and dangerous—impulse to obey his orders. He made it too easy to fall under his spell. I had to douse any embers of passion between us and detach in order to come out physically and emotionally unscathed.
Sex couldn’t always equal intimacy. I’d thought I’d had that with Diego, only to find he he’d broken that trust. Sometimes sex was an exchange of the world’s most valuable currency—power—and it was the only playing field where I rivaled Cristiano.
I tilted up my mouth and put my tongue in his with the same enthusiasm I’d show a brick wall.
He didn’t kiss me back. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I vowed to obey you.” When his grip loosened, I wriggled free and backed away toward the bed. “That’s what I’m doing,” I said, removing my wedding ring to set it on the nightstand.
“Put that back on.”
“As you wish.” I replaced it, sat on the edge of the mattress, and lay back.
“I asked you what you think you’re doing,” he said slowly. “Answer me.”
“Do you want me a different way?” I spread my knees and stared up at the ceiling as I gathered my dress. “This is the only position I’ve known.”
“Never mind what I want. What do you want?”
“We have a contract. You brought me here, so take what you’ve bought.”
“Did you sign anything?” he asked.
“I took vows before God. Before you. It’s my duty—”
“Stop.”
I parted my lips and took a breath. A breeze passed through the room and the fire roared in response. Cristiano was known for taking what he wanted. He’d declared he would many times. He’d made it clear sex was non-negotiable.
And yet he kept his distance. It was my unwillingness that stopped him. That puzzle piece snapped nicely into place. If he needed me to want this before he proceeding, that gave me something I could use against him.
“Close your legs.” It took me a moment to register his order. With his face turned toward the fire, he fixed his collar. “I said close them.”
I dropped the hem of my dress and sat forward, bringing my knees together. “Why?”
He smoothed out his shirt. “Go to bed.”
I almost couldn’t believe it had worked. He could be stopped. Victory rushed to my head like alcohol, and for a moment, I was high. I’d won.
Except, I hadn’t.
Reality came crashing through. Until the people I loved were safe, I hadn’t won.
“My protection only extends to your family so long as it is mine. As long as you are mine. Leave me, and my obligations go with you. One phone call to the Maldonados is all it would take.”
“Wait,” I whispered as he turned and walked to the door. “Wait!”
He didn’t.
As he reached for the handle, I jumped to my feet. Cristiano wouldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety until he’d had me in the most carnal way. We would consummate the marriage regardless of what he or I wanted—I’d make sure of it.
Now, I knew how to stop him—but I’d always known how to start him up.
I ran across the room, my bare feet slapping the tiles until I stopped short. “Please.”
He froze.
“You can’t go,” I said, grabbing his bicep with both hands to pull him away from the door. “We had a deal.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I changed my mind.”
I tugged him toward the bed with me as I repeated, “Please.”
With a lazy blink, the same desire he’d worn earlier returned to his face. He’d told me once I would beg. He wanted me to beg. My dignity had been stripped away in the last twenty-four hours. My virginity had been stolen, my love rejected, and I’d been forced to my knees before God to pledge my obedience to the devil. What more did I have? I was the only person who could keep Cristiano’s wrath at bay.
And I knew what he needed to give himself permission.
Only one word—please—had warmed his demeanor just now.
I dropped to my knees. I wasn’t begging for sex but for the lives of my father, everyone who worked for him, and any innocent person who’d pay the price of Diego’s deal. I had no idea how far the Maldonados would go, and I wasn’t going to find out.
“Please what?” he asked.
“Consummate this marriage as you promised you would.”
His chest heaved. “I don’t like the word consummate. Choose another.”
“I . . .” My throat thickened. I doubted he meant make love, and whatever shred of dignity I retained wouldn’t allow me to call it that anyway. “Fuck,” I said. “Fuck me, Cristiano.”
He seized my bicep, urging me to my feet and spinning me around. “You’re willing to take whatever I give to save Diego?” he asked, hauling my hips back and making his erection known as he walked us toward the bed. “This is what you want?”
What I didn’t want was to admit that my quaking was just as much born of desire as it was fear. But I had to if I was going to break his control. “I want this.”
He fisted my hair and bent me over the lip of the bed. Despite the fire’s warmth, I shivered. Cristiano’s dominance finally matched his threats, and it was as thrilling as it was terrifying. He held me down as metal clinked, and his zipper purred. He pushed my dress up over my ass and pressure weighed against the crotch of my underwear. I gripped the comforter, fighting warring urges to push him off and gyrate against him. I thought I’d wanted gentle, but gentleness had deceived me.
I wanted the monster.
Break me so I can break you. What would it do to him to lose control? To look himself in the mirror tomorrow knowing deep down he’d taken me against my will? I would soon find out.
He closed his body over my back, his mouth in my hair. “This is how you like it?” he asked, pinning my hands to my sides. “Answer me.”
“Yes.”
He thrust, and my damp underwear pressed against my opening as he begged for entry. “No other woman has ever gotten me this hard. I could break right through your panties. Maybe my brother put his dick in you and moved around, but I’m going to wreck your pussy and show you what it truly means to have your virginity taken. To have it destroyed.”
Ohh, God. I sucked in a breath. In any other moment, his words might’ve confused me, but now that I was poised to be thoroughly shaken and ravaged, I understood what I’d experienced before him was simply a tremble. “Whatever you command is yours,” I said through gritted teeth.
He groaned in my ear. “You thought what he gave you was an orgasm? Child’s play. When I’m through with you, you won’t even remember my brother’s name. You will clench on my cock so hard, you’ll suck me dry. I will show you,”—he thrust again—“how a man fucks his wife. How an animal fucks. So tell me. How do you want it the first time? Like an animal or as my wife?”
I needed him to fill me, to rid me of the confusing, consuming ache between my legs.
I needed him to break me once and for all so I could hate him for it. So he could hate himself for it.
“Animal,” I said.
“I see,” he said evenly. “The beast scares you in the light, but not only do you crave it after dark . . . you become it. I’m not surprised—I knew it all along.” He released me and stood, taking his heat with him. “That’s why you’ve soaked the tip of my cock right through your underwear.”
I began to shake, trying to connect his words to his actions. With a zip, the moment disappeared into thin air. I glanced over my shoulder to find him doing up his pants. “Why are you stopping?”
“I told you once,” he said, buckling his belt, “I have no need to force myself on a woman.”
My body flushed as I became acutely aware I was still baring my ass to him while he was fully dressed. “But I told you I want this.”
“You lied.”
“I won’t fight you,” I said.
“You should. You should fight anyone who touches you against your will. Diego tricked you into sleeping with him—I won’t do the same, no matter how hard you pretend to beg for it.”
I scrambled into a sitting position, pulling my knees to my chest. “But what about our deal?”
“Indeed,” he said, his eyes wandering over me as he walked backward. “What about it?”
He turned and left the room. The silence following such chaos was deafening, and I covered my mouth as a sob ripped through me. I’d stooped to a level I never thought possible, and Cristiano had still managed to make me feel even lower. He was right. In the dark, my desires were shameful. I’d wanted him to follow through with his threats.
But he was also wrong. My begging for the beast had been real. What kind of animal did that make me?
And in the end, I’d failed. Cristiano claimed he wouldn’t force himself on a woman, but he would. It was only a matter of time before he did, and until then, we were all still in danger. If he thought walking me down an aisle, filling my stomach with world-renowned cooking, and lying with me on the finest sheets made him anything different than a captor, then there was no question he was a master at justifying any sin to himself.
And I might be in the best position to show him who—and what—he truly was.
6
Natalia
Bright light flooded my dreams. I’d been on an airplane soaring through cotton-ball clouds, headed somewhere that wasn’t here.
In Cristiano’s bed.
I cracked my lids as Jaz yanked apart the white curtains and opened the door to the balcony. Sunshine, warmth, and ocean air filled the room as waves crashed through the silence.
Cristiano hadn’t come back to bed until well after I’d cried myself to sleep. I barely remembered the mattress dipping with his large body. With as riled up as he’d been, was there any question what had kept him out so late?
I sensed the bed was empty now, but I still held my breath as I checked over my shoulder. He was gone.
I sat up against the headboard, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “Buenos días, Jazmín.”
“Oh, perdón,” she replied without inflection. “I forgot you were here.”
“What time is it?”
“Late. Don Cristiano is waiting for you downstairs.” She disappeared into the closet and called, “He sent me to get you dressed.”
“I thought you forgot I was here,” I said.
She didn’t respond. It didn’t matter. I was going to see my father today, and together, we’d find a way to fix this. We had to. If Cristiano respected my father as he claimed, then this was his chance to prove it.
“What do you want to wear?” Jaz asked. Hangers scraped in the closet. “You don’t have much.”
“I was only planning on staying in México for two weeks,” I grumbled.
“The rain has stopped.” Jaz returned from the closet with my jean shorts. “It’s pretty warm today—” She stopped short and screamed.
I whipped my head around, following her gaze to the patio. Under the grand arched doorway, backlit by sunlight, stood the tall, muscular silhouette of a man with a gun in each hand.
My heart jumped into my throat as I scrambled to Cristiano’s side of the bed and Jaz lunged for the top drawer of his nightstand as the man stepped into the room.
Broad chested with dark, spiky hair, a wide jawline, and impeccable posture, I recognized him instantly. Relief filtered through me. I laid eyes on a friend, not an enemy.
Jaz yanked a semi-automatic from Cristiano’s drawer, racked the slide, and leveled it on him.
“It’s okay, Jaz,” I rushed out.
Footsteps barreled down the hall. Cristiano burst through the bedroom door in a suit and tie, his gun raised. “Barto,” he said, cinching his eyebrows a millisecond before his jaw clenched. “What the fuck—”
“Don’t take another step.” The head of my father’s security team, a man who’d been blindly loyal to my parents since I could remember, aimed both pistols at Cristiano. “I’ve been hearing for years about Calavera’s impenetrable walls and top-notch security.” An uncharacteristic grin crossed Barto’s face. “Yet here I am on my first try.”
Cristiano’s knuckles whitened around the grip. “How?”
“You forget, I grew up with the same training you did,” Barto said, walking forward when Cristiano did. They stopped before their extended guns touched, eyeing each other—Cristiano, in his tailored suit, aimed his pistol at Barto’s chest, and Barto, in head-to-toe black, kept both of his on my new husband’s head.
Though the two men were similar in stature, Cristiano had both height and muscle on his former comrade. Apparently, they were matched in other ways, though—Barto had pulled off the impossible feat of breaching my gilded cage’s security system, and I was secretly cheering him on. He’d been Cristiano’s closest friend at the ranch, and my father’s number one since my mother’s death, after Cristiano had vacated the position.
“What’d he tell you, Natalia?” Barto asked, keeping his eyes on Cristiano. “That you’d be safe here with a whole town to protect you? I’ve disproven that completely, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you—it’s the people within its walls you need to fear.”
“Get in the closet, both of you,” Cristiano ordered Jaz and me over his shoulder.
“Barto won’t hurt us,” I started. “He—”
“Now.”
“Not until you put your guns away,” I snapped at Cristiano. Leveling my voice, I tried my luck with Barto. “There’s no need for them. Please, Barto.”
With obvious reluctance, he made a show of lowering one gun. “Now you,” he said to Cristiano.
Cristiano followed suit but didn’t completely holster his gun until Barto had put away both of his.
Jazmín kept hers raised until Cristiano said, without turning around, “Está bien, Jaz. I’m good.”
Once we’d crossed the room and entered the walk-in closet, she hugged the gun to her chest while I stayed at the doorframe where I could see and hear everything.
“Is it true?” Barto asked.
“It is,” Cristiano said instantly. “We’re married.”
“You’ll pay for it, you know.”
“I’m sure you hope that’s true, but you’re in for disappointment.” Cristiano crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re threatening what’s mine, Barto. And just because it has been mine less than twenty-four hours, don’t think that means I won’t protect it fiercely.”
Barto shrugged. “A man who calls his wife ‘it’ has no regard for her.”
I stopped just short of shouting my agreement. Finally, I had a true ally on my side.
“We’ll handle this as Costa sees fit,” Barto said. “But I see his only daughter in the bed of a man she has hated for over a decade, and I can only assume you forced yourself on her. For that alone, I hope Costa locks you in a room with someone who’ll repay the favor.”
“Are you offering?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you,” Cristiano said. “You know me better than to think I’d hurt Natalia.”
Barto snorted, his posture easing marginally from his militant stance. “You’re not the person I knew. You’re a stranger, and I don’t trust you. Costa wants to give you a chance to explain. Me? I’d have already put a bullet in your head.”
“You would rather she belonged to Diego?” Cristiano asked, arching an eyebrow.
&n
bsp; Barto narrowed his eyes, shaking his head. “We’re not talking about Diego. You’ve interfered with Costa’s family. For some reason, he wants you alive, but he’d believe that you attacked me and I had to defend myself. Especially with Natalia as my witness.”
“Good luck getting her to lie for anyone but Diego,” Cristiano muttered.
I pursed my lips. It wasn’t exactly the time to passive-aggressively raise grievances. “I think I’d make a concession in this case,” I offered.
Cristiano clenched his jaw. “Get back in the closet.”
“Change, Natalia,” Barto said. “You’re coming home.”
“She’s my wife. Where she goes, I go. Costa is invited here.” Cristiano turned his head over his shoulder while keeping Barto in his sight. “Tell this brute of a bodyguard, Natalia.”
“It’s . . . true,” I conceded. “Cristiano was planning to invite my father over today.”
“Forgive Costa if he’s lost any reason at all to trust the man who might have murdered his wife,” Barto said.
Barto still believed Cristiano was guilty. Or was it that he was beginning to waver in that conviction? Barto generally didn’t use words like might or maybe.
“He wants to see you both at the house,” Barto said. “Now.”
“Where he, or Diego, or anyone can try to ambush us?” Cristiano straightened his tie. “Costa can come to me.”
“Diego isn’t there,” Barto said.
Where was he? I refrained from asking, knowing any mention of Diego from me would change the entire tone of the conversation, and not in my favor.
They stared at each other, distrust radiating from each of them, an interloper and a kidnapper in a standoff. We were going to be here all day.
I exited the closet, approaching them slowly, like I might a pack of wild dogs, and touched Cristiano’s back. He stiffened, his tensed muscles only reinforcing the obvious power beneath my hand. “Please, can we go?” I whispered. I hoped Papá wouldn’t need any convincing to get me out of this marriage, but on my turf, I’d have a better chance of making my argument. “Your problem is not with my father.”
Violent Ends (White Monarch Book 2) Page 7