Vicious Promise by M. James
Sofia
I’m waiting for Luca when he returns to the penthouse.
His look of surprise is almost satisfying enough when he sees me standing by the window in the living room, wearing a knee-length red sleeveless dress and nude Louboutin pumps, a pair of yellow gold diamond studs in my ears to match the ring on my finger and a diamond cuff on my wrist. I don’t have any makeup or anything to style my hair with here, but I did find a hairbrush in one of the drawers, and there’s enough product left in it from last night that it still falls in slight waves around my face.
“It’s still blonde,” I say, allowing a hint of apology into my voice as I push a curl away from my cheek and look across the room at him. “But I’m sure the stylist you’re sending will take care of that in the next few days.”
It’s incredibly gratifying to see Luca speechless, even if it only lasts a few seconds. Then I see his expression go carefully blank, and he strides into the room, his hands shoved carelessly into his pockets. It reminds me of the way he stood across from me in his bedroom last night, and a small shiver runs down my spine.
“I see you enjoyed your shopping trip.”
“Is it a shopping trip, if I don’t leave the house?”
“I’d hate to know how much it would have cost otherwise, if it wasn’t.”
Luca and I face off on opposite sides of the window, the vast city stretching out underneath us. Looking at him in the soft light, it’s easy to see why so many women have swooned over him—why he expected me to do the same. I’ve never seen a more handsome man. Everything about him is perfection, from the chiseled lines of his face to the cut and swoop of his dark hair, to the expert tailoring of his suit. Every inch of him screams wealth, power, and control, and it both terrifies me and intrigues me all at once.
Mostly I want to know why he’s going to such lengths to keep me safe. Is it the possibility of breaking me? The gratification of owning a wife the way he owns everything else? Something darker? I can’t believe that this is all because of a promise that he didn’t even make.
“Why did you bother dressing up for me?” Luca’s voice is dangerously soft. His eyes linger on my face for a moment, and then boldly sweep downwards over the rest of my body, reminding me that even if he can’t touch, I can’t stop him from looking at me—the wife he bought today.
And in five days, I’ll be his wife in the eyes of man and God—in word, if not in deed.
“Who said it was for you?” I look up at him, lifting my chin and meeting his eyes. “Can’t a girl wear a pretty dress for herself?”
Luca shrugs. “I don’t pay much attention to the things women do to amuse themselves.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. Only what they can do to amuse you.”
His gaze darkens, and he takes a step towards me. “Are you planning to amuse me tonight, Sofia?”
I pretend to look shocked. “We’re not even married yet, Mr. Romano. Surely you wouldn’t expect—”
“You’d be surprised what I might expect.” His voice drops an octave, and he takes another step. He’s too close to me now, closer than I’d planned to allow him. My heart flutters in my chest despite myself—this wasn’t what I’d planned. “And call me Luca. Mr. Romano was my father. Husbands and wives should call each other by their given names.”
“That wasn’t in the contract.” My voice sounds breathier than I meant for it to. Silently, I curse the fact that he seems to affect me like this every time he’s near. How am I supposed to gain the upper hand in this situation when just being within touching distance of him makes my hands tingle and my palms sweat, my stomach tying itself in knots just from the scent of his cologne?
He smells like salt and lemons, but not the cleaning-product scent of cheap citrus fragrance. Luca’s cologne smells rich and expensive, like saltwater and lemon trees and sugar, like dessert with an edge, like drinking limoncello on a sailboat while the sea breeze tousles your hair. I take a deep breath, and I realize as my skin flushes with embarrassment that I’m breathing him in.
I can’t help it. I’ve never been so close to a man like Luca, never spent so much time around any man who looks like him, who commands others the way he does, who truly believes that the world was designed especially for his pleasure. And in five days, I’m supposed to marry him.
“How do you know?” His mouth twitches slightly, as if he wants to laugh. “You didn’t read it.”
“Because you told me what was in it!” My voice rises, and Luca’s mouth does quirk upwards then.
“And you believed me?” His voice is deep and rich, drifting over me like smoke. “You’re very naïve, Sofia.”
I swallow hard. “How do you think I ended up in that club?”
Luca’s gaze slides over my face. “By listening to the wrong people.”
“And I should listen to you?”
“You’d be safer if you did.”
I tense, stepping back and breathing in deeply again. A few inches further away from him and the air is mine again, smelling blandly of furniture polish and woodsy air freshener. “Ana didn’t mean any harm,” I say defensively. “She had no idea what would happen.”
“I’m sure,” Luca says dryly. “If I’d thought she meant you harm—”
He trails off, and I can feel my eyes widen slightly. “What? What would you have done?”
Luca ignores the question, changing gears as smoothly as a Ferrari. “You still haven’t told me why you’re so dressed up. I saw the invoice from your shopping, you did pick out some more casual clothing.”
“I ordered us dinner.”
That look of surprise crosses his face again, only to be quickly smoothed away. “I planned to have dinner in my office. I have plenty of work to do—”
“We’re getting married in five days, Luca.”
He looks at me curiously. I’m not sure if it was my admission out loud that I’m going to marry him, or my use of his name, but for once Luca doesn’t look as if he’s already thought of what he’s going to say next.
“We should talk,” I say simply. “I know that you want us to avoid each other as much as possible, and believe me, I’m fine with that. But we have to go out in public occasionally, like you said. And that public will expect us to behave like a happily married couple.”
“And?” I can see the irritation in Luca’s face. “If you have a point, Sofia, hurry up and make it.”
“Happily married couples know things about each other. Their favorite foods. Favorite colors. What they like to do on the weekends.”
Luca frowns. “I’m partial to wild mushroom ravioli with cream sauce and a good red to go with it, I don’t have a favorite color, and—” he leans closer to me, as if to tell me a secret. “On the weekends, I like to go out and find the most beautiful woman I can, bring her home, and then fuck her until she screams my name.”
I know he’s trying to shock me, to get me to back down. Instead I look up at him, keeping my face smooth and blank. “Don’t you have anything more creative than that?”
Luca purses his lips. “You’re right,” he says finally. “Sometimes I bring home two. If it’s an exceptionally good weekend, maybe even three.”
“No one can satisfy three women at the same time.”
“You’re right about that, too.” Luca’s smile spreads across his face. “But two of them can entertain each other while I’m fucking the other. And then I move on to the next.” He’s still too close, looming over me in the light from the window. “Can you imagine that, Sofia? Three beautiful women in bed with me, all of us naked, tangled up in each other. Have you ever heard two women come at the same time? It’s like music. And the scent—” he breathes in, closing his eyes, and then straightens, grinning down at me as if telling me a joke that he knows I don’t understand.
“No, of course you can’t imagine that,” he says coolly. “And if you keep clinging to your innocence, Sofia, you never will.”
“I don’t have any interest in sharing your bed with other women,” I snap, before I can think that sentence all the way through. But Luca grabs onto it immediately, his smile almost mocking now.
“So you do have an interest in my bed.”
“No, I—” I try to backtrack, quickly. “I don’t have any interest in what happens there at all.”
I’ve never told such a barefaced lie. Just the thought of Luca naked and tangled in the sheets of that massive bed makes my heart race. The thought of what his body might look like under that carefully tailored suit sends a shiver down my spine, and for a moment I can’t speak. I never thought anyone could make me feel something like this—the kind of breathless wanting that I’ve seen in movies or read about in books. I never thought it was real.
But right now, I think that if he tried to touch me, I might not be able to tell him no.
And I’ve only been here for a day. How am I going to manage until he gives me my own apartment?
Remember why you’re here. What he’s done to you. What he wants from you.
Luca has made it plain that he doesn’t plan to be a real husband to me in any way. What he wants is to fuck me once and toss me aside like any of his other women, and I refuse to be treated so callously. But anything else is out of the question. He isn’t going to love me. And I shouldn’t want him to.
I’ve never felt so confused.
“Are we done here?” Luca looks down at me, his face expressionless once again. “Or do you have any other inane questions to ask me? How I like my steak, maybe? Who my eighth grade history teacher was? Some other trivia that I suppose married couples know about each other, in whatever world you live in?”
“I grew up in the same world as you,” I say defensively, crossing my arms over my chest. “Until my father died—”
Luca’s face hardens then, and he takes a step back. “No,” he says coldly. “You did not. Your father shielded you from the worst of what he did. Your father did all he could to make sure that you would never be a part of any of this. But I was the son of Rossi’s underboss, the eldest Romano son, and my life has never been anything like yours, Sofia.” His gaze has that steely edge again as he looks down at me, and I’m reminded of the way he behaved in the dining room earlier, when I signed the papers.
It should terrify me. Everything about this man should. But the feeling in my stomach when I remember his hands on either side of my chair and his mouth hovering above mine has nothing to do with fear.
“When it comes to my world, Sofia,” he says, his voice icy, “you are nothing but a child. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that we’re the same. We’re not.”
And then, before I can say another word, he turns on his heel and stalks out of the room.
* * *
I’m backin my room before I remember about the dinner that I ordered. It’s probably still on the dinner table, getting colder by the minute, but I can’t bring myself to go back out—especially with the possibility that I might run into Luca.
Even as unfamiliar as the bedroom is, I wish I could just hide away in here until the wedding. What was I thinking, trying to get to know him, as if he’s anything other than a heartless criminal who takes what he wants and gives nothing back? I’d thought that if I could draw some kind of humanity out of him, get some insight into who he is, that maybe we could come to some kind of understanding. But instead, I was just left feeling overwhelmed again, small and helpless in the face of his wealth and power and raw masculinity.
But I’m not helpless.If I have to put on a show every time I have to appear in public on my “husband’s” arm, if I have to give vague answers to hide how little I really know about him, fine. Once I’ve settled into my own apartment, I can do my best to forget about him, just like he said. We can forget about each other. The ridiculous jealousy I feel, the way my knees turn to water and my blood heats every time he’s near me, all of that will fade away.
I just can’t pretend that there’s anything special about me, that the way he seems to focus on trying to seduce me every time we’re near each other is anything other than what he does to every woman. The difference is that I won’t be fooled by it.
A knock at the door jolts me out of my thoughts, and I stiffen, hesitating. If it’s Luca, the last thing I want is to talk to him again. But all I hear is a metallic clank, and then the sound of footsteps walking off down the hall.
After a moment’s debate with myself, I get up and walk to the door, gingerly opening it. To my surprise, I see a covered silver tray outside on the floor, like something a hotel might leave for room service, and no one waiting outside.
Quickly, I pick it up and shut the door again. When I set it down on the bed and take off the cover, I see my portion of the meal I’d ordered—a lamb chop and garlic potatoes on an etched white china dish, and a salad in a crystal bowl with a miniature silver pitcher filled with vinaigrette.
For a moment, I just stare at it. Did Luca drop this off for me? The thought of Luca going to the dining room, parceling out my portion of dinner and serving it up in this ridiculously elegant—if completely on brand—way seems entirely out of character. It must have been some member of the staff that he almost certainly has—except I haven’t actually seen any staff. No housekeeper, or cook, or maid.
They’re probably just very good at staying out of sight.It’s impossible that Luca did this for me. It doesn’t fit with anything I’ve seen from him. It would imply that he actually cares, that he has a heart, which he’s already gone to great lengths to show me isn’t true.
But as I pick at the food, my appetite completely gone, I can’t help but wonder if there’s another side to this man that I’m about to marry—that I hardly even know.
