Page 28 of Vow of Desire

Is this the pleasure Matteo was speaking of? If so, I want to get lost in it. I want to know what it’s like to experience something that makes me feel alive.

But when his hands move lower towards my backside, all I can think of was the image of fury on his face when he punched that man. My husband is a violent man when he wants to be.

That sends fear straight to my heart.

A perfect wife wouldn’t be enjoying the touch of a man like him.

I step back, ending the moment. “I can’t.”

“You can’t or you don’t want to?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters,” he says in a gruff voice.

“I can’t be the perfect wife if I’m married to a man like you.”

“What does that mean?”

“A man who is able to kidnap an innocent woman. A man who punches another man until he can’t get back up.”

“That was to protect you.”

“Maybe so. But you’re a violent man, Matteo. And it scares me. A perfect wife would not put up with it. She would not be with a man like you.”

“But you are with me, Luciana. You’re stuck with me for the rest of our lives. What do you make of that? Are you going to push me away forever? Are you going to judge me forever? I thought a good wife was supposed to do her duty and you duty is to me now.”

“I will do my duty. But I cannot give you my consent. Not when you still frighten me.”

“If I’ll always frighten you, then it doesn’t matter what I do, does it?” He grabs my waist and spins me around and spanks me. Hard. I gasp and stumble away from him.

“What was that for?”

“I know that spanking you gets you to admit the truth to me. I think I’ll keep doing it until you finally open up to me. Until you finally show me your real self and stop pretending with all this perfect wife bullshit.”

“If you keep spanking me, I’ll only hate you more.”

“Then I guess we’re at a crossroads.”

“I guess.”

Matteo towers over me. “You will break at some point, Luciana. I tried being nice with you. But if you’ll always see me as a monster, then a monster I’ll be.” He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.

A scream erupts from my mouth. “What are you doing?”

He carries me to our bedroom and throws me onto the bed. My heart skips a beat, wondering what he might do to me. Will he finally consummate our marriage? Will it be terrible or surprisingly pleasant?

Matteo walks into the closet and comes back out with silk ties in his hands.

“What are those for?” I whisper.

He grabs my wrists and ties them together before tying the silk around the headboard.

“What are you doing to me?” I ask.

“I am showing you what kind of man you think I am.” He grabs my ankles next and ties them to the bed, making it so I can’t go anywhere. “You want to be the perfect wife so badly? Then I have to say, Luciana, you have been bad. And bad girls get punished.”

“I am not a child.”