Shattered Vows: An Arranged Marriage Standalone Romance (Tarnished Empire)

The man pulled me to him and ravaged my mouth, devouring my anger.

He gripped my face in his hands like he wanted to hold me forever and then he kissed down my neck where he scraped his teeth over my skin like he needed to inflict pain to remind me I was his.

“You’re driving me insane, bellissima.”

Italian flew from his lips as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, trying to steady myself. His body was firmly against mine, his hands on every part of my back and my ass.

We lost ourselves as we clawed at one another, trying to make up for weeks of frustration and wanting.

“Please, please, please,” I begged, not sure what I was begging for.

He pulled back, holding me at arm’s length as he searched my face in the front office’s dim light.

Before I could say another word, he threw me over his shoulder.

“What are you–where are we going?” I stuttered out, now upside down as his hand stroked my thigh. I wasn’t fighting it. I wanted to have him.

Here. At home.

Anywhere.

This was long overdue and I knew the consequences would be a broken heart in just two months but I didn’t care.

Quick decisions needed to be made.

“I’m going away from the front doors in case someone wants to drop off a dog tonight.”

“Hm, all of a sudden daddy doesn’t like an audience,” I taunted him with what he’d done earlier today in front of so many.

He smacked my ass. “I don’t like anyone seeing anything about you, Mo.”

He tried to go into the front room with all the animals but I pointed. “Back room. No dogs to bark at us.” I rolled my pussy right into his shoulder, completely ready to drive him wild now. He groaned as he strode through the swinging doors. He slid me down his body and took his time dragging his hands over it, as he set me on the floor.

“All of this body is mine, Morina,” he murmured.

I bit my lip as his hands left heat in their wake. “For a few more months.”

“Are you so sure?”

I nodded slowly. “Like you said, we’re married until then. But just remember”–I circled him once and then tapped his finger where my makeshift ring sat–“you won’t have to wear this after that day. You’ll be free and so will I.”

“Until then, you’re mine.”

I shrugged and looked at my nails like I didn’t care about his rules. “It’s just an arranged marriage, Bastian. All for you to get some fucking shares in a company.”

The words were hurtful, but I was still mad.

He was too. And I wanted this side of him. I was ready to have Sebastian with me all night long. I wanted his pleasure, his pain, his torment.

I wanted what he hid from everyone else.

Bastian showed his teeth, slow, as if he was smiling. Yet, something was off. There was no happiness. My comment had pissed him off even if he tried to hide it. I wasn’t being a good wife or a wife really at all. I frustrated him instead.

Before I knew what was happening, he pulled me close and kissed me as he backed me against a kennel wall. I took his lips, so soft and yet so demanding, with mine and enjoyed what I hadn’t been able to for weeks now.

Suddenly, he shoved me back and a jolt of surprise ran through my body. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and moved quickly around the kennel’s gate. I stepped forward, but he slammed it in my face.

We stared at each other through the metal bars and I gripped them as I narrowed my eyes at him in question. “What are you doing, Bastian?”

“Locking you up so you can think about what you said.”

I chuckled at the ridiculous notion. “I have the keys to open the kennels.”

“You mean these keys?” He opened his fisted hand, and I stared blankly at the key chain that looked eerily like mine.

The light above us buzzed and flickered before going out. This was my punishment. Of course, the lights would go at this very second. Only the moonlight outside now shone in.

Bastian, the man of allies and good behavior with everyone else, stood before me like a devil shadowed in his fury. The angles of his cheekbones and the lush mouth that I knew kissed much harder than it looked were sinister all of a sudden.

“Ha, ha.” I shrugged like it was no big deal. “Joke’s over. Open the gate.”

“Morina, I don’t intend to open the gate. You have to work for me to do things like that. Show me you’ve learned.”

“Learned what?”

“Learned how to talk to and treat your husband.”

“Because of what? Saying this is arranged?”

“You can add that to the long list of shit you did wrong today.”

“Are you still mad about Quinton?” I smiled as I dropped his colleague’s name.

“I’ll forever be mad about that, ragazza.”

“Bastian, it was a topless beach.” I rolled my eyes. “Let’s not forget you letting Elizabeth hang on your arm.”

“Jealous now, are we?”

“No apologies for that?” The hitch in my voice let some of my hurt show through and he stared at me long enough to probably see it.

“You don’t get it, do you, Morina?” He shook his head, and he swore in Italian. “I shouldn’t be apologizing for a woman flirting with me. I should be apologizing that you even care enough to be jealous about it. I wanted to keep this arrangement clean and I dirtied it.”

“What’s dirty about this? The fact that you feel something for me? The fact that you can actually show me that feeling?”

His finger traced a metal wire. “You go with every gut instinct and emotion, love. I can’t do that.”

I shrugged. “You can with me.”

Like a whip, his gaze flew to mine. We stood in silence only a gate between us. “You sure about that ragazza? Today, I wanted to rip a man’s eyes out for looking at you without your top on.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” I lifted my eyebrows. “Maybe I should have had them look longer.”

“Do you not understand that I’m your husband? That they stared at what’s mine for far too long?” Ah, so this was a respect thing to him.

He wasn’t really jealous. He didn’t really care.

I don’t know why that hurt so bad. Maybe because I’d seen how another woman looked so much better on his arm than I did.

“We aren’t actually married.” I threw out in pain. “A real husband of mine wouldn’t have let another girl hang on his arm.”

He searched my face and then put his forehead on the metal wires before whispering, “I hurt you.”

I nodded once and went with honesty. “You did.”

He winced at my omission like I’d physically wounded him. “You mentioned separating and I reacted poorly. It’s not an excuse. For that, I’m sorry, Morina. I see now I don’t want your pain, not when it looks that devastating in your eyes.”

His words broke away the anger around my heart. Even in his frustration with me, the man still found a way to show he cared about me. He hated my plants, yet he watered them. He didn’t believe in the salt lamp but he turned it on. He hadn’t left even when I was the one person annoying him through the day.

I might only have a few months left with him, but it made me want all of him even for that short amount of time.

I sighed and kissed his forehead before I teased him. “It’s okay, daddy.”

His gaze narrowed as he looked at me, a small smirk on his lips. “Want to go home, ragazza?”

“Of course. Open the gate.” I pointed to the lock.

His lips rolled between his teeth before he said, “Show me you know who your husband is and I’ll let you out.”

“How am I supposed to do that, Bastian?” I stomped my foot.

“Since I apologized, I think you need to also.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, Morina. Get on your knees like a good wife.” His voice held menace and I wondered if I’d ever been turned on like this before, because my nerve endings went from zero to 100, the shock of it like lightning, fast and electric.

I bit my lip but didn’t really hesitate. He’d see who his wife was. He’d see that I had dirtied and muddled this arrangement just as much as he had, that I owned him like he owned me.

If this was how I’d finally get to have my way with him, I’d take it. I’d slept with enough men to know Sebastian Armanelli was the one I wanted.

I’d pushed him over the edge. When we’d hooked up before, it had just been a fling, something to get out of our systems. I’d tapped into his hidden emotions, the place he wanted to keep confined all to himself.

In marriage, nothing is a secret though.

He slowly unbuckled his belt and I watched how the prong slid from the brown worn leather. His moves were deliberate, like he was waiting for me to tell him this was wrong and disrespectful.

“Is this what you want, Morina? For me to command you all the time, for me to take what’s mine, to make you see every fucked up side of me?”

“I just want the real you,” I murmured, licking my lips as I waited for him to move on to unbuttoning his slacks.

“You’re going to get more than you asked for.”

“We’ll see if you can really deliver on that threat.”

“Crawl to me, bellissima. Come. Right. Here.” He pointed to the spot just in front of him. I moved slowly, my eyes on his zipper as he lowered it.

His cock sprung free, thick and so big, I wasn’t sure he’d fit it through the wire.

Yet, he slid one hand through the space between the gate and the post and threaded his fingers through my hair. With a yank, he brought me right up to him.

His other hand pushed his dick through the wire bars so I had only access to that part of him.

“Open, ragazza.”

I stared up at him. We warred with our gazes, and I almost didn’t, the defiance in me strong.

“Your choice at the end of the day. Decide who you want.”

That quick decision, the one to choose him or his soft counterpart, Bastian.

I opened for Sebastian Armanelli, and he shoved my head down on his dick faster than I was ready for.

He was so big, I almost gagged, but I kept my mouth open, taking all I could. I ran my tongue over his veins, the precum salty in my mouth. He throbbed against the roof of my mouth and I swirled him like I couldn’t get enough.

I stared at his face, how his neck tightened more and more as I went up and down faster and faster.

Moaning on his dick gave me all the power even when I was on my knees, hands clasped on a kennel cage, locked in.

“Ragazza. Bellissima. Mi amore. My wife. My love. Mine.” He strung all his words together as he fucked my mouth, his hips thrusting faster and faster.

And just as he was about to cum, he pulled my head back so far that I arched my back, putting my breasts on display in the bikini top. He let the cum spurt from him onto my top, over my chest, and across both of my breasts as he moaned my name.

His forehead fell to the kennel wire and his hand slid from my hair, grabbed the keys, and unlocked the door.

In a daze, I didn’t move as he picked me up off the floor and carried me like a baby to the humane society’s washroom.

He placed me on my feet long enough to grab paper towels and dampen them before turning me in the mirror to stare over my shoulder at me.

His seed dripped from my chest, there to mark me.

“If I could leave it, ragazza, I would.” His head fell to my neck as he placed gentle kisses there and rubbed away the evidence of him on me.

What a sight we were.

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure I could forget him in a few months. I found myself completely and utterly frightened by the idea that I’d be ruined from this.

What man would lock a woman in a kennel and what woman would enjoy every second of it?

“I won’t enjoy divorcing you,” I murmured.

He looked up and assessed my chest before he did anything else. It was all clean, every piece of our encounter wiped away.

“I won’t enjoy it either, Morina.”

I took a shaky breath. “Will we still be friends?”

He kissed my cheek. “Sure, ragazza. Sure. Let’s go home, huh?”