Vow to Protect by J.L. Beck
Adrian
From the moment I climb out of bed to the moment I’m standing in the shower with the hot water beating down my back, I’m thinking about my little Val.
My little Val. I don’t know how I’ll accomplish it yet, but I always get my way in the end. And if killing her bastard of a fiancé and coward of a father is what it will take to make it happen, then...it’ll be fucking Christmas.
The crystal clear gray of her eyes comes back to me. There was no guile in them when she talked to me. Hell, I didn’t even think she knew who I was when I told her my name. It had been a very long time since I met a woman who awakens me the way she does.
I hang my head and stare down at the hot marble under my feet. My cock has been aching since I got out of bed, and I suspect if I don’t do anything about it now, it will continue to rise every time Val’s pretty eyes or sexy mouth spring to my mind.
I grip my dick roughly and give the head a squeeze. No, she wouldn’t touch me like this.
She’d have to use both her delicate hands to work me. But she wouldn’t touch me to hurt me. The innocence written in every line of her body told me she’d touch me to explore, to witness, and watch how to make me come apart for her. That’s the kind of power the innocent crave. Not pain and torture, but pleasure and peace. It’s the peace men like me grow addicted to. It’s the peace I see in her face when I look at her. It’s the peace making me fuck my hand in my own goddamn shower right now.
I continue pumping my fist up and down my length while I tease my senses with the little hints of Val she gave me last night. The soft soap scent wafting from her skin. No perfume, barely any makeup, and that fucking hair.
I groan, pumping faster now as I imagine my fingers twisting in the strands, brushing it from her face while I fuck her tight hot body. Again, I picture her unbound length spread across my white sheets and waking up with it draped across my chest and her thighs between mine. How she’ll look at me in wonder while I lick her cunt for the very first time. Because I know fucking Sal hasn’t been doing a damn thing to pleasure her during their engagement. In fact, I doubt she’s ever had a man between her thighs.
A fucking virgin. The thought makes me shoot my load on the marble, and I spend longer than usual pumping myself as I come down from the fantasy. When I release myself, I’m thinking about the innocent smile she gave me and realize I’m back to fucking peace.
She will belong to me one day, but I’ll never be able to have peace. Not while my mother’s killer is still alive. And not while I have an entire society to bring to heel under my control. My father managed it effortlessly until his age got the better of him, but I’m not quite ready to earn my crown in a river of blood. Maybe after I claim Val and Christmas comes early.
The thought of her fiancé’s blood spilling across black concrete chases away the sour mood I felt building. I usually didn’t take joy in killing. If I had to do it, I had to do it, but him...no, I’d be more than fucking happy to insert a bullet into his pervert of a brain and then watch him shit himself as he dies.
I grab the towel off the rack, then quickly dry off and dress before stepping out of my suite in the hall. The maids have already been through, but I hear the murmur of someone toward the dining room of my penthouse condo.
Breakfast should have been finished hours ago. When I enter the room, I find Kai, my best friend and the leader of my unruly band of enforcers, talking on the phone. He’s speaking Portuguese too fast for me to keep up.
When I step into the room, he quickly ends his call and shifts to face me. “Did you talk to Novak’s daughter last night?”
I take the seat beside him at the round glass table and survey the black suit he’s wearing today. “Ermenegildo, is it? Do I pay you enough to afford a thirty-thousand-dollar piece of fabric?”
“Ari,” he says, his tone edged with reproach. He’s the only one who can call me by the name I used as a child—the name she called me. And he’s the only fucking one who can use that tone of voice when he says it.
“It wasn’t as if I planned to speak to her. She stepped out of the restroom when the twins were escorting someone out of the stairwell. Would you prefer I ignore her and make a scene?”
His eyes narrow. “The way I hear it, you did make a scene when you kissed her knuckles in front of her fiancé.”
Back to fucking Sal, and my good mood evaporates into nothing. “Oh, did the big bad child trafficker call to tattle on me?”
Kai sits back, his dark skin catching the light from the window on the far side of the room. “We can’t move on Novak yet. If you rile Viktor and his partners, it might change something that we won’t be able to account for in enough time to adjust the plans.” Now he’s calm, using a tiger tamer voice as if it will keep me from marching out the door and dumping Sal into oncoming traffic.
A maid comes into the room carrying a tray of coffee, and I snag a mug as she sets it between us. When she leaves again, I meet Kai’s eyes. “I told you it meant nothing. Now drop it. If Sal is upset, well, he should know better than to make a fuss. The fact that he doesn’t know better worries me more than anything. Usually weasels like him have a strong sense of self-preservation. If he feels confident, then there has to be a reason he feels that way.”
Kai takes a sip of his own coffee. “He is about to marry Novak’s daughter. Maybe he thinks Novak’s position in the society will shield him?”
I shrug and slick back the wet curls from my face. Eventually, it will dry that way and stay in place, but for now, it pisses me off. But not enough to take ridicule from one of my five for asking them to buy me a blow dryer. Maybe I’ll shave it off and be done with it.
I wonder if Val would like my head shaved. She seemed interested in my hair as she scanned my features last night. No. I force my focus back to Kai.
“He thinks he’s safe for now. And maybe he is. We can’t move, and I doubt many are strong enough to take on Novak’s operations. For this season, at least, he might be safe,” I say. But the words taste disgusting in my mouth. I hope that dickhole never feels a day of safety again. If only for the sadness I spotted in Valentina’s eyes last night.
“What else do you have?” I prompt, then take another sip of my coffee. “Any fallout from the party last night? Any new battle lines drawn in blood this morning?”
He shakes his head. “It’s been a relatively quiet morning. I sent the five out to do a little digging in all the territories. See if they can pick up anything we might want to know about. I sent the twins to Novak’s territory since Alexei is the most levelheaded of that lot, and Andrea will never risk his safety.”
“Tell them to come and talk to me when they return. I want a personal report.”
He nods and then sits and watches me, saying nothing.
“What, Kai? If you are going to bring up Sal again, I’m going to punch you in the dick hard enough you won’t be any use flirting at the casinos tonight.”
“It’s not about him. No, I’m just worried about you.”
My heart rolls over in my chest, but it doesn’t show on my face. He knows I’ve been hunting for a wife, and the woman who stands by my side, who becomes my queen, has big shoes to fill. My mother is the only woman I’ve ever loved, and the only woman I’ve ever cared about losing.
“Why? I’m confident I’ll make an alliance this season or next, and then we won’t have to worry anymore.”
“You might be confident, but I’m not. Hell, you scare most women away with just a glance. Last night, people were walking to the other end of the room so they didn’t have to cross your path to get to the bar.”
I shrug. “When have I ever been the sort of man who puts people at ease, tell me that? How is it news to any of you that finding someone I can trust who puts up with my very special level of insanity is going to be a difficult task?”
My mother’s death had broken something inside me. Inside my father too, not that he ever showed that pain to me. Now, I live to take his place and do it better, build things stronger, strong enough that when I’m old and gray, no one will dare put a knife in my back.
“Maybe you need to get laid. You want me to call that girl from the casino you like?”
“No. I don’t want you to find someone to get my dick wet. I want you to do your fucking job and give me a way to bring down Novak, and soon.”
For a second, I entertain the idea of going to the casino, hunting down a girl with wild curls and a petite frame to slack this knife in my gut. But even the thought of it feels like a betrayal to her. A betrayal. To a fucking woman I have no claim over. At least not yet.
No. I won’t do that. Because when I look her in the eye and tell her she belongs to me, I want to believe it, and I want her to know it as fact.
Kai shoves out of the chair and buttons his jacket. “For the record, since you asked, I won this suit off one of the Italians in a card game a month ago. He stripped it off right there at the table.”
I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Were you playing strip poker with one of the Italian boys, Kai? What would your mother think?”
His turn to smile now. “She’d think I was crazy for walking away from his lambo in favor of a few yards of fabric.”
I study him from the tip of his polished shoes to his short immaculate haircut. “She wouldn’t be wrong, but you do look good, man. If you head to the casino, make sure everything is ready for the fight next week. I don’t want any issues, and I don’t want anyone thinking they can rig our system.”
With a nod, he takes his coffee, his phone, and his iPad with him as he walks out. A few minutes later, the front door slams, and the alarm activates behind him with a sharp chime.
Immediately, my thoughts zero back on Val. I wish I’d been able to talk to her longer last night. Spend a few minutes more listening to her talk and studying her.
Fuck.
I shove back the chair and stalk out of the room toward my office. For now, I need to put her out of my mind. The upcoming fight I’m hosting at my casino is an inter-society event, which is always fraught with danger during the season. I have shit to do, and it doesn’t involve mooning over some girl who will be mine soon enough.
No matter how fucking beautiful she is.
