Vicious Promise by M. James

Sofia

His voice drifts over me like smoke, dark and thick and dizzying. I’m so embarrassed that I can’t look at him, can’t move, can’t even bring myself to try to get up, despite the fact that he’s no longer holding me down.

I wait for him to clean me up, to fix my dress, to reach for me, but a second later I hear the sound of his footsteps walking away, and although I wait a few minutes more, they don’t come back.

That’s when it hits me.

He touched me for the first time where no one besides myself ever has, brought me so close to an orgasm that I was almost on the verge of begging him for it, and then came all over my ass—and left me here.

Like a discarded blow up doll. A toy. Something to use and forget about.

I can feel myself flushing hot with shame and rage and humiliation. I’d come so close to pleading for him to keep going, to make me come—hell, for a minute I’d even fantasized about what his tongue might feel like, or even—

No.I’ll never let him have that. I’ll never let him inside of me. If I have my way, he’ll never even touch me like that again.

But even as I stand up, pushing my dress down and walking gingerly towards my room, I can’t stop thinking about the way his fingers felt against me. He played me as expertly as an instrument, drawing his fingers over my flesh the way I draw my bow across my violin, bringing me to the very crescendo of pleasure before taking it away.

And then spilling his own all over me.

I can feel my eyes welling up with hot, embarrassed tears. I can feel him on me still, sticky and cooling as I strip my dress off in my room without even turning on the lights, throwing it into the laundry hamper and hurrying to the bathroom. I feel dirty now, humiliated, but I hadn’t felt that way in the moment. When he’d stood over me just after pulling his hand away, I’d just been overwhelmed with pleasure, flushed hot with it, and the thought of him stroking himself above me had almost turned me on more, until I’d thought I might come anyway, even without his touch.

I’d been on the verge of finishing it myself, but something had told me that would only make him angrier.

That, and the fact that I refused to give him a show. Never in a million years can I imagine myself doing that for his pleasure, touching myself while he watches. Just the thought makes me blush from my forehead to my toes all over again.

But you wanted it, the tiny voice in my head whispers as I step under the water. You wanted him to make you come. You liked how it felt.

“No,” I whisper, gritting my teeth. I don’t want to admit it to myself, not out loud and not even in my head. I don’t want to admit that his fingers felt a thousand times better than mine ever have, that the way he built it up, slow and teasing, murmuring filthy things above me as he held me down over his couch, was so intensely erotic that I’d been more turned on than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I don’t want to admit that I’d liked being pinned down, unable to argue, made to give in to the craving that’s been simmering inside of me since he had me up against his front door.

I don’t want to admit that for just a moment, at the height of it, I’d wondered what it would feel like to let him take my virginity. To really make me his, in a way that his fingers on me or his cum on my skin could never really accomplish.

Although right now, washing him off of me in the shower, I feel pretty fucking owned.

And a tiny part of me, one that I don’t want to examine too closely, likes it.

What would it be like to be really desired and loved by, really belong to a man like Luca?I’d never have to be afraid again. I’d never worry that he’d get tired of my rebelliousness, my stubborn refusal to give in, that he’d decide I was more work than I was worth. I could stop running, which if I’m being honest, is what I’ve been doing all my life. Planning to leave Manhattan after graduation was just a different kind of running away. Running from my past, my memories, all the things I didn’t fully understand about my childhood and who my father really was.

Those answers are here. Safety is here too, if I allow myself to accept it.

But I don’t just want Luca’s tolerance. I don’t want to give myself to him only to have him tuck me away in another apartment like a discarded sweater, a game he’s already played, a story that he already knows the ending to.

There was a moment, a brief one, at the reception. One where I’d caught a glimpse of what it would be like if we were a normal couple, if we were getting married out of love instead of obligation.

Luca introduced me to his best friend, and Caterina’s fiancé, a handsome red-haired, green-eyed man named Franco Bianchi—the only name I’d remembered—with pale skin and a freckled face that looked nothing like the other members of the family I’d met.

“Is he Irish?” I’d whispered when we’d walked away to find our seat at the table, and for the first time since I’d met Luca, I saw him struggle not to burst out laughing.

For the first time, I saw him as almost human.

In that moment, I’d caught a glimpse of what it would be like if we actually liked each other—even cared for each other. What it would be like to be married to him in some other reality, where we’d chosen this, and he wasn’t heir to the mafia throne and everything that I despised, everything that took my parents from me. I could imagine, in that fleeting second, what it would be like to be at a party with Luca, whispering something inappropriate in his ear and watching him try not to laugh.

I saw the same realization in his eyes, too, when he looked over at me. The realization that I’d almost made him laugh—that I was a person, someone who he might actually like, if he took the time to get to know me.

Just as quickly as it had come, though, the moment had passed.

“Don’t ever say that in his hearing,” Luca had replied sharply—more sharply, probably, than he would have if we hadn’t ever so briefly shared a moment. “It’s a point of contention within the family. But no, he’s not.”

And with that, the subject had been dropped.

But I’d realized something in that moment, the same thing that I know now, standing in the shower and trying to shake off the memory of what just happened in his living room.

If I let him have me, all of me, I’d want him to love me.

And that’s the most humiliating thing of all.

Because I don’t think Luca Romano can love anyone.

When I’m clean again, the last traces of him washed off my skin, my hair sticking wetly to my shoulders, I get out and wrap a towel around myself, stepping out of the bathroom with a heavy heart.

If tomorrow were a normal wedding, I’d be spending this night away from our shared apartment, in some fancy hotel room with my bridesmaids. Ana and I would be laughing about something—probably her insisting on joking and teasing me about the upcoming wedding night. I’d be happy, joyful, anticipating one of the best days of my life.

Instead, I’m back in a bedroom that doesn’t feel like mine, with a fiancé who has barely spoken to me in a week, except for at the rehearsal today, and then tonight to whisper filthy things in my ear until he came all over my bare ass. I’ll spend the night alone in my strange new bedroom, and I won’t see Ana until tomorrow, when she comes to help me get dressed.

I don’t even know if Luca is dragging me onto a faux honeymoon, to keep up appearances. I’m guessing he won’t—but who knows? It would be just like him to force us into spending a week avoiding each other in the Caribbean, or something insane like that.

After tonight, who knows?

It doesn’t matter,I tell myself firmly as I reach for the lights. After tomorrow this whole mess of a wedding will be over, and we can go back to ignoring each other. Hating each other. Trying to spend as much time away from each other as possible. I can forget about what happened tonight, and we can move on. Luca can go back to fucking as many nameless women as he wants, and I can pretend like I was never close to begging him to let me come.

But now, with that memory still filling my head, I can’t help but think of how tomorrow night could be different.

It’s just my luck that he’s fucking gorgeous. If he were older, or ugly, or losing his hair, it would be easy to avoid sleeping with him. But instead, I’m engaged to the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. A man with a jawline that could cut glass and piercing green eyes, a man who wears suits that fit him like a second skin, a man who kisses like he wants to eat and drink and breathe me all at once, like my mouth is the only thing keeping him from dying. Like he wants to devour me.

Thank God we’re getting married in a church, I think grimly. If he kissed me like that tomorrow, I’m not sure what I would do.

Climb him like a tree in front of everyone, probably, and damn the consequences.

I flick on the light, and my heart stops in my chest.

The room isn’t strange and unfamiliar anymore. While we were gone, it’s been transformed. The grey quilted duvet on the bed has been replaced with my thick blue-flowered one, the sleek white hotel-style pillows have been replaced with mine from my apartment, and the cable-knitted, light pink blanket that I used to love curling up under on rainy days is thrown across the foot of the bed. My bookshelf is against one wall, filled with my books, and as I walk further into the room, I see my jewelry box sitting on the nightstand. Next to it is a flat black box and a smaller velvet one, and a note.

I don’t move to read it yet, though. I feel like I can’t breathe, and I can’t stop the tears from welling up in my eyes.

My things are here. Not everything I owned, but everything important to me—or at least almost everything—

And then I walk around to the other side of the bed, and I see it.

My violin case, propped against the wall.

I reach up to touch the necklace at my throat, my heart racing in my chest. I don’t know who did this for me, or why—but what I do know is that it couldn’t have happened without Luca’s approval. He had to have allowed this—if he didn’t outright ask for it himself.

Confusion floods me as I sit down on the edge of the bed, smoothing my hands over my duvet, looking at my violin case with watery, stinging eyes. I don’t understand him, I think, frustration welling up in me. I can’t reconcile the man who coldly told me to choose between marrying him and death, the man who’s avoided me for the last week, the man who wouldn’t even look at me on the drive home tonight, the man who pinned me down over a couch and used me as a fuck toy, with the man who left dinner outside my room, who defended Ana, who now has given me a better wedding gift than I would have ever thought to ask for—the feeling of being at home in my own room, on one of the most difficult nights of my life.

As if he knew how hard tonight would be for me, how scared I am of tomorrow, and wanted to make it better somehow.

Slowly, I sink down to the floor, reaching for my violin case. For eight years, I’ve left the last letter that my father wrote me inside of it, because I couldn’t bear to read it. But now on the eve of the wedding to the man that he promised me to, the man he entrusted me to, I know it’s time.

Maybe it will help me understand, somehow. Because I’ve never felt more confused than I do at this moment.

The envelope is still tucked in the lining of my violin case, stiff and slightly yellow with age. I open it carefully, sliding out the sheet of paper with my father’s spidery cursive trailing across it—the last words that he will ever say to me.

I can feel tears welling in my eyes before I even begin.

My dearest Sofia,

If you’re reading this, it’s because I’m no longer here. That’s a cliché way to begin a letter like this, I know, but I don’t know of any other way to start this off. It’s breaking my heart to write this, because I can’t bear the thought of leaving you so soon, of missing out on so much of your life.

You have so much ahead of you, my darling girl, and I want you to have all of it. I want you to have the life you dreamed of, to go boldly forward and pursue every talent and gift that you’ve been given. You are the smartest, most beautiful, most talented daughter that your mother and I could have asked for, and I have never regretted that you are my only child, Sofia, because it meant that all of the love I have to give is yours. You are the light of our lives, and if I have one regret, it’s that my own choices might ever put you in danger.

And that, Sofia, is why I’m writing this letter. In the future, you may find out things about your dear father, things that might cause you to question who I am, and if I’m really the man you think you know. It’s fair for you to question those things. But if there’s one thing you never question, I hope that it’s my love for you.

If events come to pass as I think they might, and this letter finds its way into your hands, know that I will have taken steps to protect you and your mother from what might come after. Know that I’ve done my best to make sure that you’re provided for. And know that I have made a choice—one that you might not understand, one that might even make you resent me, but that I feel was the only one I could make, under the circumstances.

Marco Romano was my best and dearest friend, and it is my hope that he will raise his son to be like him, a man who does what he must, but who takes no joy in cruelty, a man with honor, who will keep the vow that I will ask his father to make. I can’t tell you here what that promise is, but please know, my dearest daughter, that I would not have done it if I felt there were any other choice.

The tears are falling too hard and fast for me to continue reading, and I set the letter down, afraid of getting it wet and causing the ink to run. All I can think of is my father in his office at home, writing this letter with me in my room a few doors down, knowing that death was coming for him.

His heart was breaking, and I never knew it. There was so much about him that I didn’t know, and I cover my mouth with my hand as the grief hits me all over again, my entire body shaking. I will never, ever know the other half of the man my father was, the part of him that he hid from us. All I have is this letter, and the knowledge that he trusted his friend to raise a son worthy of me, if the day came that I had to marry him.

So is Luca that man? Or did my father misjudge his friend? Did his friend fail?A half an hour ago, I would have said yes. But now, sitting here surrounded by the trappings of my bedroom, I can’t help but wonder if I’m the one who has misjudged Luca. If there’s something more under his cold, heartless exterior, the way Father Donahue hinted that there could be.

Gingerly I wipe my hand on my skirt, reaching for the letter again.

I say all of that to say this, however—Sofia, if you have the chance to be free, to escape this life, I hope with all of my heart that you will seize it with both hands. It is the one great regret of my life that I didn’t take you and your mother, and run as far away from it as I could. There are some who will say that there is no leaving this life, and they very well might be right. But I wish more than anything that I had not been too much of a coward to try. If I had, perhaps I wouldn’t be writing this letter to you now.

Be free, my darling daughter. Be all that you were meant to be. Sing, and play, and make music that the world will weep to hear, and remember, above all, the last gift that I gave you. Remember what I told you about fairy tales.

But more than that, Sofia, remember that I love you.

Your father,

Giovanni

For a long time, all I can do is sit there with tears leaking from my eyes, wrapped in a towel on my bedroom floor. And then I fold the letter back into its envelope and slip it back into my violin case, closing it gingerly and pushing myself to my feet.

I walk back to my nightstand, and the two velvet cases sitting there.

Picking up the flat one first, I open it to see a delicate gold bracelet, essentially a looped chain with sapphires set into the ovals. And when I open the smaller velvet box, there’s a matching pair of earrings—oval-cut sapphires so richly blue that they’re almost black surrounded by diamonds and dangling from gold posts. They’re beautiful and look expensive, and well-loved. The gold is slightly burnished in places on the bracelet, as if someone wore it often and touched it.

With my heart pounding in my chest, I reach for the note next.

Sofia,

Anastasia tells me that it’s customary for a bride to have something old, new, borrowed and blue. She also tells me that the necklace you wear, that you never take off, is very old—so I suppose that will be taken care of. Your ring and dress are new, so here is your something blue—a bracelet and earrings that belonged to my mother. You may also consider them borrowed, if you like, although I would like it very much if you would keep them. As my wife, she would want you to have them.

--Luca

I stare at the note and the jewels, my thoughts whirling with confusion. How can the man who brought me home tonight and the man who wrote this letter be the same person? How can he sometimes seem to hate me, to resent me or want nothing other than to break me to his will, and then give me a wedding present of his mother’s jewelry?

Part of me wants to refuse to wear it tomorrow. I could—he won’t see me until I walk down the aisle, and what is he going to do about it then?

But as I look down at the bracelet and earrings, his note still clutched in my hand, I know I won’t. I feel worse than ever, anxiety and confusion churning in my stomach as I gingerly close the boxes and lay back on my bed, knowing that a sleepless night is ahead of me.

It was easier just to hate him. Just to see him as someone keeping me prisoner, a cruel man who I’d been given to against my will. The villain of the fairytale, the dragon at the tower. It was easier when it was black and white.

Now my emotions are a tangled mix of hate and fear and desire and curiosity, wondering what tomorrow will bring and how we’ll go forward after that. The thought of our wedding night makes my stomach clench all over again—now that he’s touched me, what happens next? He said he wouldn’t force me—but what if he doesn’t have to?

What if, in the end, he convinces me to let him?

He awakened something in me tonight, an awareness of pleasure that I never had before. The idea of spending years, if not the rest of my life never being touched like that again makes me ache in a way I don’t fully understand—but the thought of giving myself over to him completely feels just as impossible.

I wish, more than anything, that none of this had happened. Then I wouldn’t feel so lost, so confused.

But it did. And tomorrow, I’ll be Luca’s wife.