Page 22 of Beauty and the Daddy

4

BELLE

Iwake up feeling like I've been fucked by a freight train.

Every muscle aches in that specific way that screamsyou let a dangerous man rearrange your insides last night.

My thighs burn when I move. There's a bruise on my hip shaped like his thumb. Another on my throat where he sucked hard enough to mark.

I should be mortified.

Instead, I press my fingers to the bruise on my neck and shiver.

This is the kind of sore that hums low and satisfied, that makes my thighs twinge when I shift.

The memories flash through my brain like a porno slideshow starring yours truly and who has to be the scariest man in New York.

Holy shit.

I, Belle Donovan, certified disaster and former card-carrying virgin, just had mind-blowing sex with the actual Beast of New York.

The other side of the bed is cool, the pillow dented. Of course, he's gone.

The Beast doesn't do morning cuddles. Shocker.

Still, though, the ghost of him lingers on my skin, in the ache between my thighs, in the faint bruises forming where his fingers gripped too hard in the heat of the moment.

"You're mine now," he'd whispered against my lips.

And damn if my body hadn't screamedyes pleasein response.

What kind of twisted mind fuck is this? I should be plotting my escape, calling the FBI, or at least having a breakdown about my father selling me to the mob.

Instead, I'm lying here, replaying every brutal, perfect second of last night like it's my favorite movie.

I stare at the ceiling and think back to the way Luca had looked at me when he caught me with my hand between my legs.

The heat in his eyes when he spread me open.

The delicious weight of him pressing me into the mattress.

The sane part of me should be drafting a text to my future self that starts with "Dear idiot, never again."

Instead, I lie there and feel the ache where he was, and my chest does a stupid little tighten, like I lost something I never had.

I replay it. I don't even try not to. Every brutal, perfect second.

His mouth on me like prayer and blasphemy got married. His hands pinning me down like gravity chose a favorite.

The way he looked at me—as if I were a secret he'd waited years to break open.

I never imagined my first time would be with a mafia don. That sentence alone should come with a lawyer and a therapist.

He is dangerous.

He is exactly every headline I used to tut-tut over at brunch.

And yet regret is conspicuously absent.