Page 45 of Empire
“I was in my head,” I lie, my words muffled by his shirt. “You left me alone in all this silence, with not even the nightlife making a sound, and I… my mind wouldn’t shut up—”
He calms me with his lips against mine. It isn’t gentle—God, I am glad it isn’t. It’s ugly, desperate, and a little punishing. His mouth is moving against mine as if he’s trying to force the truth out of me through pressure alone.
I answer him just as hard because I don’t know how to do this any other way now. Not tonight. Not with betrayal still sour on both our tongues.
He backs me up against the counter, big hands palming my ass underneath his shirt. I need the pain tonight, I need to feel his viciousness one last time.
“Salvatore,” he breathes against my lips. “Talk to me,lyubumiy.”
I can’t, cuore mio.
I drag him back to me by the front of his shirt and kiss him again, needing the shape of his mouth to fill every part of mine still capable of speech.
Then one second I’m against the counter; the next, he’s lifting me with one arm under my thighs because anger has always made him stronger, and desire makes him stupid enough not to care where we land.
We hit the rug in the sitting room in a tangle of limbs and breath and half-buttoned clothes. There’s something almost embarrassing in how quickly the fight drains out of both of us.
He rolls us so I’m on my back, but there’s no triumph in it; no dominance game. He looks down at me with a tender look on his face that makes me feel rotten inside.
“You’re cruel when you’re scared,” he murmurs.
I tug him down until his weight settles fully over me, and he comes without resistance. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and breathe in his scent. “Stay here.”
He lets out a small laugh. “I’m literally on top of you.”
I caress his face and shake my head. “You know what I mean.”
His arms tighten around me, and I feel him finally soften. “I know.”
We lie like that for a while, the villa gone quiet around us, and the sharp edges of our fight dissolving into something worse because it’s softer.
Ruslan presses a kiss to my throat, then my collarbone, then just rests there with his cheek against my chest as if listening to my heartbeat like it might tell him more than my mouth will.
It probably does, since he owns it.
“You shouldn’t trust me so much,” I say before I can stop myself.
He lifts his head enough to look at me properly. “Where the fuck is that coming from?”
I should stop, I know I should. But there’s some hideous need in me tonight to leave him with something that counts as a warning, even if he refuses to hear it.
Maybe because I’m a coward. Maybe some part of me wants the absolution of having tried.
“You trust people too easily when you love them,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Not people. You.”
That fucking undoes me so completely, I have to turn my face away. But he catches my jaw gently and turns it back.
“No, look at me.”
I breathe out a long, painful sigh and look into his eyes.
And there he is—Ruslan Dragovich. Future king, arrogant bastard. My ruin and my love, lying over me on the floor of his secret villa, with his heart exposed in his eyes. Because with me, he forgets enough of who he is to make that mistake.
“I trust you,” he says, each word a dagger to my heart. “Completely.”
If he’d struck me, it would hurt less. If he accused me, doubted me, dragged the truth out of me by the throat, it would be easier to survive this.
