Page 12 of The Sicilian Billionaire’s Neglected Wife (A Painful Kind of Love #14)

In their room—temperature controlled, sterile as a hospital, nothing like the chaos in his chest—he laid her on the bed.

The Egyptian cotton sheets seemed to swallow her whole.

Got water from the mini-bar, the bottles sweating condensation in the climate-controlled air.

Made her drink, though most of it dribbled down her chin.

Held her hair back when her body rejected everything, the sick splashing into pristine porcelain while she sobbed apologies. Her spine felt like a string of pearls under his hand, delicate and breakable.

Stayed beside her until she finally passed out, curled on her side like a child, one hand tucked under her cheek the way she always slept when she dreamed badly.

Then he sat in the chair beside the bed, leather creaking under his weight, watching her sleep and trying to make sense of the possessive rage still burning through him.

The thought of her with another man—looking for another man, telling strangers she needed someone better—made him want to destroy things.

Starting with every man who’d looked at her and ending with himself for caring so much.

Several men , Eusebio had said. His hands clenched into fists. How many had looked at her and thought she was available? How many had she touched while asking about fidelity? How many had heard her say she needed someone who could love her properly?

But why did it matter? This was a business arrangement. She was his wife on paper, in his bed, but not...

Not what?

He didn’t let himself finish the thought.

****

H ER HEAD WAS GOING to explode. Actually explode. Grey matter on the hotel walls, and wouldn’t that make a spectacular headline?

“Racing Champion’s Wife Dies of Hangover, Husband Still an Ass.”

“What the hell were you thinking?” Aivan paced their suite like a caged panther, all coiled muscle and barely leashed violence. Morning light streamed through the windows, turning him into something gilt-edged and dangerous. “Do you have any idea what could have happened? What almost happened?”

She pulled the pillow over her face. Maybe if she suffocated herself, the pain would stop. The pillowcase smelled like her own sour breath and regret.

He yanked it away. “I’m talking to you.”

“I don’t even drink!” The words exploded out of her before she could stop them. “They said it was non-alcoholic!”

He stopped pacing. “What?”

“The champagne. For your victory toast.” She pressed her palms against her temples, trying to hold her splitting skull together. “Someone gave it to me. Said it was the alcohol-free kind. I was just trying to celebrate your win and—”

“You were drugged.” His voice went deadly quiet.

“I was trying to be a good wife!” She sat up too fast, immediately regretting it as the room performed a nauseating carousel spin. “Supporting you. Toasting your success. While you were letting that reporter climb all over you!”

“Letting her—” His eyes flashed. “That’s your excuse? You talked to half the men in Monaco because of a reporter?”

“I didn’t mean to! I was looking for—” She stopped, horror washing over her as fragments of the night returned. “Oh no. Oh no. Did I really ask strangers about fidelity?”

“Five men.” His voice could have frozen hell. “Eusebio counted five men you approached. Asking if they were faithful. Telling them you needed someone better than your husband.”

Tears burned her eyes. “I didn’t mean—”

“Telling them I don’t love you.” He stalked closer, fury radiating from every line of his body. “Advertising our private business to strangers. Making yourself available.”

“I wasn’t—”

“That reporter means nothing.” He was looming over her now, hands braced on either side of her hips, caging her in. “Less than nothing. But you? You were ready to replace me with the first ‘faithful’ man you could find?”

“That’s not—” The tears came then, hot and unstoppable. “That reporter was all over you! Touching you! Offering herself to you! And you just sat there!”

“It’s part of the job—”

“Part of the job?” The words tore from her throat. “Part of the job is letting other women paw at you like you’re some prize stallion?”

“You’re being irrational.”

“I’m being—” She was sobbing now, all the pain and fear and jealousy pouring out. “Do you know what it’s like? Watching them throw themselves at you? Knowing you could have any of them? Knowing one day you’ll realize you can do better than some nobody you married out of obligation?”

“Sienah—”

“My father did it.” The words poured out like poison from a wound.

“Left my mother for his secretary. Someone younger, prettier, more exciting. Someone who wore red lipstick and cheap perfume and laughed like breaking glass. Broke Mama’s heart so badly she never recovered.

Used to find her crying into her pillow at three AM, trying to muffle the sound so I wouldn’t hear. ”

Her chest heaved with the effort of finally saying it all. “And then he died. Died trying to steal money from his employer to keep his new woman in designer bags. Died for her while Mama cried herself to sleep every night, clutching his old shirt that still smelled like his aftershave.”

She looked up at him through her tears, seeing him blurry and beautiful and terrible.

“And I swore I’d never be her. Never let myself become my mother.

But here I am, watching my husband collect women like trophies, waiting for the day he decides I’m not enough anymore.

So please don’t cheat on me. Don’t make me into her.

If you can’t be faithful, if you need variety, just let me go before—”

“Never.”

The word came out savage, ripped from somewhere deep in his chest. Like the very thought of letting her go incensed him beyond reason.

Damn her.

The thought of her trying to leave him hit like a rival’s car in his blind spot, unexpected and potentially fatal. His perfect wife, who never complained, never demanded, never asked for anything beyond what he chose to give—she was already planning her escape route.

Over something as meaningless as a reporter’s pathetic attempts at seduction.

And she’d been looking for his replacement. Talking to other men. Five of them. Asking about fidelity like she was conducting interviews for his position.

“Aivan, I need you to understand—”

He crushed his mouth to hers, swallowing whatever rationalization she was about to make.

He didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to examine why the thought of her leaving made him want to tear apart hotel rooms with his bare hands.

Didn’t want to think about what it meant that he’d been ready to kill that man in the bar just for breathing near her.

She resisted for a moment, hands pushing at his chest, her mouth tasting of tears and toothpaste and desperation. Then she melted, like she always did, going boneless against him with a sound that might have been surrender or salvation.

“You’re not leaving,” he growled against her lips, the words scraping his throat raw. “Not today. Not ever. You’re mine, Sienah. Do you understand? Mine to protect. Mine to keep. No other man gets to hear you ask about fidelity. No other man gets to know our business.”

“But you don’t—”

He kissed her again, harder, bruising. His hands tangled in her hair, still matted from last night’s ordeal, holding her still for his assault.

This he understood. This he could control.

Not the chaos in his chest, not the foreign emotions her tears provoked, but this—the way she gasped when he bit her lower lip, the way her pulse hammered when he traced her throat.

Her nightgown tore under his hands with a sound like surrender. He’d buy her a dozen more. A hundred. Anything to keep her here, in his bed, where no other man could even think about having her.

“Aivan—”

“No more talking,” he cut her off with a growl. “No more looking for other men. No more telling strangers our business.”

He stripped her bare with hands that shook from fury at the thought of those five men, at her drugged vulnerability, at his own weakness in caring so much. Her skin was flushed rose-gold in the morning light, chest heaving with broken breaths.

“Look at me.”

Her eyes fluttered open, still swimming with tears but dark with want.

“You think I’d let another woman touch me the way I touch you?” He traced one finger through her slick heat, watching her face as she gasped. “You think I’d give this to anyone else?”

He lowered his head between her thighs, breathing her in before tasting her, and the first touch of his mouth made her cry out, hands fisting in his hair.

“This is mine,” he murmured against her, the words vibrating through her core. “Only mine. Say it.”

“I—oh—”

He pleasured her ruthlessly, using every trick he’d learned in two years of studying her responses. She tried to close her thighs but he held them open, determined to make her understand that no other man would ever know her like this.

“Say it,” he commanded.

“Yours!” The word broke on a sob as she felt him delve deeper. “Only yours, always yours—”

He rewarded her with two fingers, curling them to find that spot that made her see stars while his mouth continued its relentless assault. She was close—he could tell by the way her thighs trembled, the pitch of her cries, the desperate grip of her hands in his hair.

“Come for me, Sienah.”

She shattered with a scream, back bowing off the bed, but still his mouth remained on her even through the aftershocks, his lips nibbling the sensitive skin of her inner thighs.

When he finally rose over her, she looked destroyed in the best way, lips swollen, hair wild, eyes unfocused with pleasure. He positioned himself at her entrance, watching her face, needing to see her acknowledge what was between them.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said, holding himself just outside where she needed him. “Tell me you understand.”

“I understand,” she whispered, then gasped as he thrust home in one smooth stroke.

He set a deep, devastating rhythm, each thrust designed to brand himself on her body and soul. She wrapped around him, legs at his waist, arms around his neck, internal muscles gripping him like she’d never let go.

“No other woman exists for me,” he gritted out, fighting for control as she clenched around him. “No reporter. No temptation. Nothing. Just you.”

“Aivan—” His name was broken music on her lips.

“Just you,” he repeated, shifting the angle to hit deeper, to touch that place inside her that belonged only to him. “Always you. Only you.”

She came again with a sob, her release triggering his own. He poured himself into her, marking her from the inside, making sure she’d feel him for days, remember who she belonged to.

After, as she lay boneless beneath him, he studied her face. The tears had dried but something fragile still lingered in her eyes. Pain from memories of a father who’d chosen another woman over his family? Or pain from believing her husband might do the same?

He found himself speaking without conscious thought, thumb tracing the curve of her cheek.

“I gave you my word when we married. I’ll give it to you again.

” He looked directly into her eyes, making sure she understood.

“I will never cheat on you. There will be no other women. No affairs. No betrayals. You have my word as a Cannizzaro.”

Relief flashed across her features, followed by something that looked dangerously like hope.

He rolled away before she could respond, before she could ask for promises he didn’t know how to make. Physical fidelity he could manage. Had managed. Would continue to manage.

But the way she looked at him sometimes, like she was waiting for words he didn’t have, feelings he couldn’t name...

That he couldn’t give her.

Not when he didn’t even understand what it was she was asking for.

Not when the thought of her leaving made him want to lock every door and throw away the keys.

Not when she made him feel things that had no place in the carefully controlled life of a champion.

So he pulled her against him instead, her back to his chest where she couldn’t see his face, and held her while she drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow they’d return to their routine. Tomorrow she’d be his perfect wife again, and he’d be the champion who needed nothing beyond the next victory.

But tonight, with her body still trembling from his possession and the ghost of her father’s betrayal hanging between them, he allowed himself one moment of weakness.

He buried his face in her hair and breathed her in.

“Mine,” he whispered into the silk of her hair, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “Always mine.”

Even if he didn’t understand why that mattered more than any trophy.

Even if he couldn’t name the feeling that made his chest tight when she smiled.

Even if the word “love” remained as foreign to him as losing.

Even then.