Vow of Deception: A Dark Marriage Mafia Romance (Deception Trilogy Book 1)

My wild gaze flits from his vacant eyes to the belt looped around his hand.

He must be kidding.

But he isn’t.

Adrian said he’s not the joking type, and I believe him.

I’ve been squirming all day long from the feel of the handprints he left on my ass, so I wholeheartedly believe he’s going to whip me with his belt right now.

“Please, don’t…” I don’t want to resort to begging, and as soon as I say the words, I know it’s a waste of my energy. I know that someone like him isn’t deterred by pleas or tears. If anything, he gets off on it. Just like he gets off on punishing me.

So when he speaks his next words, I’m jolted out of my skin with surprise. “What are you willing to do instead?”

“Anything,” I blurt.

“I’ll fuck you against the wall.”

“Fine…” I hesitate for a second, a little apprehensive about his intensity. I saw his size, I know it’ll hurt like hell, and a man like Adrian seems as if he likes it rough.

However, agreeing to that is the better choice. Fucking or being whipped. Yeah, it doesn’t take a genius to decide.

“And you won’t bite your lip. You won’t suffocate your moans as your cunt strangles my dick.”

“No,” I snap.

He tilts his head to the side as if I’m some sort of problem and he’s contemplating whether he wants to solve it or eradicate it once and for all. “No?”

“You just get to fuck me; you don’t get to tell me how I react to it.” My silence is my only defense mechanism against him, my last piece of armor, and if I let him take that, too, then I’m well and truly screwed. My identity will be erased and I’ll merely be a washed-out version of his wife.

“I decline then.”

“W-what?”

“Either you come completely undone or you take your punishment.”

I glare at him, my fists burning with pain from how tightly I’m clenching them. My nails dig so hard into my palms, I’m surprised I don’t draw blood.

Sucking a long gulp into my lungs, I lower myself to my knees.

As I do so, I notice a shadow of disappointment and something else crossing his face.

Fuck him. He won’t break me.

My name is Winter Cavanaugh. I’m not Lia Volkov and I’m no way in hell this madman’s wife.

I chant that in my head in preparation for what’s to come. To say I’m not scared would be a lie, but my dignity keeps me upright.

“It’s unfortunate that you chose the high road with me. Very unfortunate.” The smoothness in his voice sends chills down my spine.

“You have your conditions and I have mine.”

“Holding on to your conditions will only heighten your suffering. Understand this, Lia. I’m not to be crossed or defied. The harder you push me, the more ruthless I become. The greater you challenge me, the harsher I react. You do not want me to react, and you certainly do not want to see my inhuman side. I’ve been showing you mercy, so be grateful for it.”

“Mercy?” I mean to scoff, but my lips tremble due to the assault of his words. “In what world are your actions a show of mercy?”

“Believe me, they are.”

“You might think of them as such, you might consider yourself some sort of a twisted, gracious god, but you’re not. You’re cruel and callous. You’re brutal and sadistic. You’re perverted, too, because you get off on inflicting pain. Your calm and quiet demeanor doesn’t fool me, and neither does your warped sense of benevolence. Your sole purpose is to hurt and take as you see fit. So don’t stand there, holding a fucking belt, and say that you’re showing mercy.”

I’m breathing heavily after my outburst, and I’m fully prepared for the number of punishments to go up, because that’s what sick bastards like Adrian do; they use any chance to turn the circumstances against you.

It’d be worth it.

For the first time since I stepped on his radar, I’ve given him a piece of my mind.

A cold object touches my cheek—the belt. He taps it gently against my skin—dotingly, even—but his expression remains the same, impassive and unreachable.

“If I’m perverted for liking to inflict pain, what does it make you if you enjoy it?”

My cheeks redden, both at his statement and especially at his veiled admittance. That he does enjoy inflicting pain. That I wasn’t wrong for recognizing his need for control. But I push those to the back of my head as I lift my chin. “I do not enjoy it.”

“You came all over my fingers this morning after a mere spanking. What do you think will happen when I whip you?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you truly believe that or are you hoping for it? If it’s the latter, I recommend that you abandon such hopes, because you’ll learn the hard way that I was indeed lenient. That I was giving you leeway and that you lost those privileges by resisting me.”

“Just get it over with.”

“You’ll come to regret your impatience when your skin is red, Lia.”

The coolly-spoken threat covers me with goosebumps and to my doom, not all of them are due to dread.

Adrian picks me up in his arms and I gasp as he carries me to the bed. I’m momentarily distracted by how small I am in his hold, how he could easily crush me into irredeemable pieces without effort.

He drops me on the mattress, face down, and it dips under our weight. Did he change his mind?

I lift myself on all fours, but I don’t get to celebrate the thought before he flattens his palm on the small of my back, keeping me in place. My heart jolts and picks up in speed when his hand leaves my back and brushes against my hair.

Unlike his earlier demeanor, his touch is gentle, or pretending to be, anyway. His fingers sink into my strands, and I realize with horror that I’m leaning into his palm.

I try to buck against him, but he stiffens his fingers in my hair so they’re gripping my skull, communicating without a word that I’m not to fight him.

I couldn’t even if I wanted to.

I’m frozen in place, caught hook, line, and sinker in the depths of his chilling calm. It’s on the surface, a façade, and I’m learning the hard way that there are multiple layers to him. The more I peel away, the deeper and darker it becomes. Each one is more alarming than the one before.

“Last chance, Lia.” He strokes my hair like a doting lover.

I stare at the metal headboard with its exotic golden motifs, refusing to look at him. “Last chance to allow you to break me? Never.”

“As you wish, Lenochka.”

My muscles lock whenever he calls me that, and I have no idea whether it’s in a good or a bad manner. Just like most things he does to my body, whether it’s the way he touches or handles me. I want to convince myself that I hate them, that I can’t stand them or him. However, a morbid thing inside me beats out of control whenever he puts his hands on me. Whenever he’s anywhere near me. I want to think that I’m drawn in by how different he is, how silent yet lethal, but it runs darker and sharper than I’d like to admit.

Adrian unhurriedly removes the scarf that’s been holding my hair. He then pulls both of my wrists up and ties them to a metal nook near the headboard that seems to be designed for this purpose.

Did he do this to his wife before, too?

Chasing that thought away, I test the knot, but it doesn’t budge. It isn’t tight enough to cause pain or cut off my circulation, but it’ll prevent me from moving or freeing my hands.

A sudden panic expands in my ribcage like wildfire, eating away at everything in its wake. He can hurt me and I won’t be able to defend myself.

“You don’t have to tie me.” The emotion is apparent in my tone, and I hate it. I hate that I’m allowing him to see me like this.

“So will you do as I asked? Will you offer yourself completely?”

“No!”

“Then we will do it my way.”

“Adrian…”

“Yes?” I can feel him positioning himself behind me, and that fills me with both horror and a sickening type of anticipation that I’ve only experienced once, when he bent me over on the table this morning.

“Is there any way you’ll stop this?”

“Not unless you take my other option, no.”

“Are you ever satiated? If I give you more, will that even be enough for you? You took everything from me, everything. Why are you demanding more?”

His heat radiates against my back, even though he’s not touching me, and that does weird things to me—things that make me clench my thighs. “I didn’t take everything from you, Lia. You want to believe that because it’s easy to blame others for your mistakes, but that doesn’t make it true.”

“You brought me here and took me from my life.”

“Correction: I saved you from it.”

“First, you think you’re merciful, and now, you believe you’re a savior? You need a wake-up call!”

His fingers sneak over my collarbone and I stiffen as they trace up to my chin, propping it up as his lips find my ear and whisper in hot, dark words, “Maybe you do.”

My lungs burn and it’s then that I realize I haven’t been breathing since he caught hold of me. His fingers are caring, but couldn’t be any more brutal.

“Tell me to fuck you,” he rasps.

“Fuck me,” I murmur. “But you won’t be hearing anything.”

I realize my defiance has tapped an invisible red line when his fingernails dig into my skin for the briefest of seconds before he releases me.

“I was generous enough to give you two chances, but you chose poorly. As I already mentioned, defying me will only result in breaking the stubbornness out of you. Challenging me is like swimming against the tides, you’ll eventually tire and will be swept away by the current. Understand this, I make the challenges, not the other way around. It’s time you learn that.”

His impassive voice should have no effect on me, but it locks my muscles into a rigid line.

He lowers my shorts down my thighs, and even though it’s similar to what he did this morning, it feels entirely different, tenfold heightened. His hands are like lava from an active volcano, or maybe that’s my skin.

His finger curls into the band of my underwear. “You’re still wearing the ones from this morning. Did you like walking around all day, remembering how your cunt came undone from my fingers?”

My cheeks flame despite myself as I blurt, “Of course not. I didn’t find time to change.”

“You didn’t find time to change.”

“I really didn’t.”

“Did I say anything?”

“Your tone says it all. You think I’m lying.”

“Are you?” He traces my soft entrance and I jolt at the contact. “Is that why you’re already wet, hmm?”

I screw my eyes shut as he rids me of my panties and glides his fingers over my slick folds, fondling them, assessing them with utmost care.

“I haven’t begun to touch you, and yet, your body is burning with anticipation for the punishment. For someone who was acting high and mighty just a few minutes ago, it seems that the promise of punishment was enough to provoke your deepest, darkest secrets. Do you recognize what that is, Lenochka?”

I shake my head violently but stops when he brushes my hair to the side so his lips can find my ear again. With my eyes closed, everything is heightened—his callous touch, his warm breath, and his scent—that dangerous mix of woods and leather.

“You’re a masochist to my sadism, Lia.”

“Shut up!”

“And that’s eleven. Open your eyes or it’ll be twelve.”

I slowly do, staring at my bound hands, feeling the helplessness in my bones. And yet, a certain type of freedom overwhelms me. Something I’ve only ever felt when I was drunk, roaming the streets with no purpose other than to stay alive.

“Now count or it will go up.”

I don’t know what he means until the belt whistles in the air before coming down on my ass. A scream bubbles in my throat as searing pain explodes on my skin. If I thought his hand hurt, his belt is in a league of its own. The welt it leaves on my flesh aches and burns, bringing stinging tears to my eyes.

I want to shout, to express the physical agony, but I refuse to show him my pain as well as pleasure. I bite down on my lip.

“Do you want the count to go up, Lia, hmm?”

“One.” My voice trembles around the word.

It’s barely out before the belt hits again. I jolt, trapping my lip so hard that I nearly break the barely-healed skin from this morning. It takes me a few seconds to mutter, “T-two…”

“I wonder, how long do you think you can seal yourself off from me? Is it worth it?” Slap. Slap.

“Three…four.” I’m sobbing now, my tears wetting the pillow as my teeth break the skin. Blood coats my lips, forcing me to taste metal, but I don’t scream. Not even once. I don’t beg him to stop either, because that will only steal away my dignity.

“Have it your way.” His voice is so calm, and yet so dark that a shiver for something a lot different from the pain takes my body hostage.

By the seventh strike, I think I’ll stop feeling my ass altogether, but that’s not the case.

Far from it.

And it’s with horror that I come to terms with the reason behind the change.

Adrian brushes his fingers over the welts and I hiss, but the sound is about to turn into something else when he gently glides his thumb over the hurt skin, mixing the pain with a softness I never thought he was capable of.

A softness that confiscates my air and pauses my anguished sobs.

Something in me jostles and quivers with the need for friction.

Wait. What?

“What are you doing?” My voice is as shaky as my insides, full of tears and confusion—both at his behavior and mine.

“Shhh.” He dips a finger inside me and I buck off the bed at the harsh intrusion.

It’s like getting ripped from one phase of being and thrust into another.

“Ahhh—” I muffle my own voice by biting down on the pillow. Shit. A euphoric mixture of sensations rise and land inside me with a thud so resonant that I hear the vibration in my ear.

His belt comes into contact with my ass three times in a row and I scream into the pillow. The mixture of the agony and whatever is happening in my pussy turns me into a crying mess. I want it to end, but at the same time, I’m barely stopping myself from pushing against his hand to alleviate the ache inside me.

“That’s not counting, now, is it?”

For a moment, my screwed-up brain tells me to stop counting, to let the count rise up, to see how far I can go before I collapse.

But my brain is totally unreliable right now.

It’s succumbing to my body’s needs and losing all logic.

I release the pillow, leaving a smear of blood and tears on it as I whimper, “E-eight… Nine… T-ten.”

Adrian adds another finger and I feel myself disintegrating, decimating in the path of his destruction. My walls clench around his fingers and I cry with relief when he thrusts them in, giving me the friction I’ve needed since the first time his belt came on my ass.

I try to wiggle and squirm, but the binds keep me strapped in place with no room to move. I’m completely helpless in his hands, a marionette that he can do whatever he wishes with. And for a second, I surrender to that fate as he hits me for the last time.

“Eleven!” I scream as my orgasm powers through me at the same time as the sting. My heart lunges in my throat and I think I’m actually going to stop breathing and die in the throes of pleasure and pain.

It’s dark ecstasy, a demented bliss that plays on the edge of insanity. But every part of me craves it, falls for it without any thought.

I bite the pillow to muffle my moans, the defiance in me burning as bright as the orgasm.

Something cold and taut wraps around my throat, and I gasp when I realize it’s the belt. Adrian lifts me up using it. My back arches, but I tighten my teeth on the pillow, bringing it up with me.

His lips draw shivers down to my soul as he whispers against the shell of my ear in low words, “Let it go.”

I shake my head frantically.

“Let it the fuck go, Lia.”

I meet his vacant eyes with my daring ones and shake my head again.

Adrian yanks the pillow away and removes the belt as he flips me over. Pain explodes in my behind as it hits the mattress.

My bound hands twist before they’re settled in an easy position above my head. Now that I’m no longer biting down on the pillow, I can feel some other sounds trying to escape. I attack my lips again, uncaring about the blood that keeps oozing into my mouth.

Adrian pulls my legs apart and carves his way between them. He’s so large and strong that I feel like he’s able to rip me in half with each motion.

Every movement against the mattress causes overwhelming friction on my ass. I wish that was all. I wish the pain and resentment were all I felt right now. I wish there wasn’t a zap of pleasure shooting its way from the burning welts and straight to my pussy. The remaining tingles from my orgasm sharpen to an unbearable level.

I need something. I don’t know what, but that orgasm wasn’t enough.

Adrian undoes his pants and I hold my breath as he frees his cock. It was a magnificent sight when half-erect the other time, but now that it’s fully hard with angry veins visible at the surface, I’m scared.

But to my horror, I’m not only scared. A morbid sense of anticipation seeps into my ribcage and nestles between my bones.

Knowing that he got hard by whipping me, that he got off on causing me pain, should be degrading—blasphemous, even—but it’s not.

Adrian grips his engorged cock and fists it not so gently, as if he’s angry with it—or perhaps it’s me he’s angry with.

His muscles flex under his shirt with the movement, and his inked forearms appear ethereal, firm, and ready to inflict as much pleasure as pain.

A drop of pre-cum drips down his shaft and I bite my lip harder, unable to look away from it or from him.

My heart aches and my thighs clench.

I think I’m broken. Because right now, I’m having thoughts I shouldn’t, under any circumstances, entertain for this man.

Thoughts that will end in my ruin.

“Do you want me to fuck you, Lia?” His voice is raspy, full of unhinged darkness and lust. They seem to go hand in hand for him. Like he can’t feel any pleasure if it’s not as deranged as his screwed-up head.

I’m not like him. I tell myself that I’m normal. I’m fucking vanilla. And yet, I don’t shake my head. I know I should; I should tell him to screw off, that I never want him to fuck me.

But I don’t.

I’m still trapped by the sight of him jerking himself off. How his muscles and tattoos contract with the motion. How his eyes gleam and flicker from gray to a darker color. I want to know if his expression will stay the same while he’s inside me.

I need to know if I’ll have an effect on him like I did while he punished me, and if that effect will be more violent.

So I open my legs wider in a form of invitation, one I know I will regret come morning. But I’m already here, and I have nowhere to go. He made it clear since the beginning that he’d eventually fuck me, so what’s the point in delaying the inevitable?

“You want me to ram into that tight cunt of yours until you scream?”

I want to look away, because I’m almost sure he can read the embarrassment from my burning cheeks, but I force myself to continue staring at him.

“You will let me fuck you raw, won’t you? You’ll let me stuff you with my cum like a good wife.”

I’m not your wife.

I want to scream, but I don’t, because that will definitely ruin the moment, and my pussy is clenching for another release.

This is so fucked up. I’m practically begging the man who welted my ass with his belt to fuck me right after he brought me to orgasm.

“Release your lip,” he orders, his fisting movements getting faster.

I shake my head once.

Still gripping his cock, Adrian loops the belt around my throat and lifts me up so I’m suspended mid-air with my hands bound to the bedpost behind me.

I expected the position to be uncomfortable, but it’s surprisingly not.

“Open your mouth.”

I don’t, shaking my head once. Adrian grips my tank top and rips it down the middle. I gasp as he yanks the bra up, exposing my breasts. I want to turn away so that I don’t have to witness him staring at them. They’re small and I’ve always thought they were the most unflattering part about me.

Adrian, however, keeps studying them as if they’re pieces of art from a museum. My teeth loosen a little from my lip at the look in his eyes.

Holy shit.

I know he thinks he’s looking at his wife, and not me, but how lucky can a woman be to have a man look at her that way? Like he’ll destroy the world as long as she stays safe?

My nipples peak under his scrutiny, hardening to the point they ache, and then something hot covers them.

His cum.

It paints my breasts and drips down my stomach and to my throbbing pussy.

I almost cry with disappointment at realizing he did this so he wouldn’t have to fuck me.

As if my thoughts are written all over my face, Adrian wipes the blood from the corner of my lip. “If you carry on with this behavior, you’ll never get my cock, Lenochka.”

I close my eyes to keep from crying in frustration, both at myself and him. Why the hell am I so disappointed that he didn’t fuck me?

I shouldn’t. I hate him.

Adrian releases my hands and they fall limp on either side of me. He disappears into the bathroom, and my eyes start to droop, exhaustion getting the better of me. Then I make out his silhouette reappearing beside me. He’s all tucked in his pants as if nothing happened.

A first aid kit dangles from his right hand and a wet cloth from his left. He gently removes my shredded top and bra before he wipes his cum off my chest. I want to release a sound—I don’t know what, but I trap it inside.

After he’s finished, he turns me over, and I sigh in contentment as the pressure eases off my ass. He applies something cold to it, and I hiss when it burns.

“It’ll go away in a second.”

I mumble something that sounds like a protest, but then I’m drifting off as he continues rubbing it over my ass in soothing circles.

His fingers are long, slightly calloused, and feel way too good. They shouldn’t. They really shouldn’t.

I think I fall asleep, because suddenly, I hear a phone ringing and I feel Adrian’s fingers stroking my hair as he says, “What did she do now?”

And then followed by a sigh. “I’ll be right there.”

Don’t go. I scream in my head. She’s not me. Don’t go to her.

But his fingers leave my hair and the mattress dips. Even though I don’t see the emptiness, I feel it in the darkest corners of my heart.

I’m all on my own.

A tear cascades down my cheek, and I have no clue why or who’s the ‘she’ I internally told him not to go to.