Page 11 of Forced Mafia Bride
“Yes, yes, I said that. Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because…because he—”
“Doesn’t make you feel good?”
She blinked, and I watched her fingers curl into the seat. The hidden innuendo had been made clear, and the blush on her cheeks meant she’d caught onto it. She turned her face away, giving a subtle shake of her head.
I sat on the couch beside her, near enough to feel the heat radiating from her black gown. Near enough to see the brown-black flecks in her green eyes, making them appear like some symbol of the Earth. Near enough to know she wasn’t wearingany perfume but somehow managed to smell good. I slipped a hand under her chin and forced her face up to mine.
“You can tell me,” I encouraged softly. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to reject a man because he doesn’t fuck you the way you like.”
The red on her cheeks turned a shade matching the fiery flames of her hair, and when she chewed on her lip, that fire burned right through the walls I’d put up from the moment I saw her walk out of that building.
She shook her head again, playing with her fingers. Seeing this same cheeky, assertive woman, now shy, was ludicrous.
“I’ve never…um, we’ve not…we’ve never been physical. Tristan and me. I can’t even….” The rest of her words trailed off with a frightful shudder. “He’s an old man.”
A sudden pull, like an overwhelming magnetic force, pushed me closer to her until we were sharing the same bubble of air. My hand slid up her jaw in the gentlest caress I had never considered myself capable of, and I leaned forward.
Curiosity picked my brain. I needed to know.Why?I couldn’t tell, but soon, the words went tumbling out of my mouth without restraint.
“So, you’ve never had sex before, Rosalyn?”
I heard someone’s heart beat fast, and I thought it was mine till I realized her pulse thrummed like a jackhammer at the crook of her neck. She exhaled ragged breaths.
“No,” she rasped, and her eyes burned my lips. “I haven’t had sex before, Nikolai.”
The doubts in my head had been confirmed, and I mirrored the triumphant smirk she’d flashed at me during the auction. She might have come from a line of Irish mutts, but she was pure and untainted. And I was going to infiltrate her unblemished mind to make her want me,needme, crave me.It felt like a sick twist of fate thatI,one of her brother’s most vicious opponents, was destined to ruin her innocence.
“Fantastic,” I growled and flicked my tongue over her lips. She welcomed it, gasping, and I swallowed it, relishing in the delicious shiver that made her hands tremble.
Just fucking fantastic.
Rosalyn Gallagher was mine to devour.
With a swift move, I pressed her lips against mine and smiled when she molded her body to my chest, letting her hands explore their way to my neck. I pulled her closer from her waist and kissed her slower, taking time to feel her as I made an assessment:
No wine tasted better than the one on her lips.
Chapter 5 – Rosalyn
No one said anything about the possibility of the tongue being a pain reliever. Maybe I could share that discovery because I was a firsthand witness that it was.Hiswas.
The way he kissed me,tastedme, made me forget the reason I was so close to blowing over fifty thousand dollars that should have been for a wedding dress.Mywedding dress. The way he held and touched me dampened all the painful memories that drove me to my brother’s enemy to offer him a proposal that could destroy everything Father had worked hard to build.
I hadnever, everbeen kissed like this.
When he groaned into my mouth like a hungry lion feasting on delicious prey and drove his fingers into my hair like he sought solace, I saw the white puffy clouds through airplane windows and the brown, rich, earthen peak of tall mountains. He brushed the hair away from my shoulder and nipped on the tender spot on my neck, and my head fell back in bliss. I saw colorful meadows, daffodils, and sunflowers. I heard morning birds sing and smelled rich coffee and buttery croissants. I saw the sunrise, and I felt freedom.
A man like Nikolai Yezhov didn’t please women. The reverse was always the case; they lived to please him. But now, in this moment, I felt like a sacred being. He kissed me like he wanted me, touched me like the mere action was an intimate art of worship, and slowly began to lift my dress….
My eyes snapped open when I realized, and I pushed his chest with all the internal force I could muster.
“What are you doing?”
I took my time to look at him, likereallylook at him. I’d barely gotten a sneak peek at the auction and didn’t maintain eye contact long enough to notice how the dazzling brown in hiseyes matched the coffee strands of his hair or how chiseled his bone structure was, as if the gods themselves had sculpted him in Olympus.