THREE.

“Do you make it a habit to enter private property without permission?” His voice is cold and clipped.

Sighing, I rise to my full height and bravely, or just outright stupidly, I turn around to face him. 

I hate that his presence is magnetic, and I can feel the pull from where he is standing, glaring at me with his hands tucked inside the pockets of his slacks.  

I comb my fingers through my hair to mask my trembling body, then I meet his piercing, predatory, and gleaming gaze. 

“Do you always make it a habit of confining Savannah within the gates of your fortress, so she is excluded from the real world and her family?” I bite back.

As our gazes continue to bore into one another, I can’t shake the feeling that Don Valentino is an Italian God with intense eyes and a face that is carved from stone. 

I doubt he’s ever cracked a genuine smile, even when he’s balls deep in some random bitch, shuddering as he comes.

He is domineering. Broody. Built like a damn brick wall, and he is scary as hell.  

“You are not her famiglia.” He snarls darkly, striking my heart where it hurts with his harsh words.

I close the distance between us, stopping beside him, the hard balls of our shoulders touching, while I turn my mouth toward his ear. 

“Gods, you are a bigger jerk than I remember, Alessandro,” I whisper his name, refusing to address him as Don Valentino, as he prefers. “I can’t help but wonder what it was that Rose ever saw in you!”

“Rose was weak and couldn't control me, Farfalla.” He chuckles with a sneer. “But she always knew her place, and that was on her knees in front of my fratello.”

Clenching my jaw, I chuckle, mirroring his tone, and I raise my chin. “Is it because she couldn't control you, Alessandro, or is it because you simply lacked in…” Lowering my gaze to his cock, I scoff and shake my head. “It's okay. We don't expect every man to be a God between the sheets.” 

As the words leave my lips, a foul taste coats the inside of my mouth. 

Because I know he can fuck. 

Everyone knows Don Alessandro Valentino can fuck. 

There have been articles printed in his honour by women with loose lips. 

Raving about how he's the best that they've ever had.  

The vein on his temple pulsates, showing me I've hit a nerve. 

“I can certainly show you that I can fuck like a God, Farfalla. But you'd have to be willing to sit back and watch me with another woman. Because I don't have the stomach to personally fuck you.” His upper lip curls into a snarl with disgust as his gaze slowly trails over my body. 

“If only your mother could hear you now,” I spit out, knowing how much of a mama's boy he was. “She'd be… so proud.”

He leans in closer toward me, his lips softly grazing my ear, sending an icy chill down my spine and straight to my clit. 

His scent I previously wanted to bathe in now smells sour.

“Si,” he whispers in my ear. “I'm as holy as they come. And boy, do they come.”

“You're fucking disgusting.” I push past him, needing to get the hell out of here before I catch something. “And vile. You need God in your life.” I add for good measure. 

Unexpectedly, his fingers snake around my wrist like a tight vice, and I become paralysed with fear. 

He jerks his arm back, causing me to stumble backward, two feet. 

I collide with him, and he pulls me against his chest, pressing his forehead against mine. 

His eyes dilate with a sense of desire to make me suffer beneath his touch. 

And I'm almost intrigued to see what his touch would do to my body, which is currently humming to life in his proximity. 

“Tell me, Farfalla, can your God breathe life back into you, if I steal it straight from the nectar of your delectable lips?” He asks me in a sinister tone that makes me shudder with unadulterated fear laced with arousal.

“Why don’t you kiss me and find out for yourself?” I hiss, challenging him, knowing that I’d be the last person he would want to touch. 

His hands grip the sides of my head, tilting it back, and then his lips devour mine. 

His kiss is like pain—it demands to be felt. 

So fucking much that it makes me weak in the knees. 

He tastes like everything I need and despise, all at once.

His tongue forces its way into my mouth and I try to pull away, but he nips at my lower lip, eliciting a small whimper to depart my lips. 

I kiss him back. 

Aggressively. 

I take all my hate and pour it into this despicable kiss. 

Hoping he fucking chokes on it.

I bite his lip, hard, and his hands dive into my hair, fisting it. My scalp feels like it’s on fire and I like fire.

He bites down on my lip this time, drawing blood with a low growl vibrating from his throat. 

He pulls back, and I suck in a sharp breath, trying to clear my mind. 

This is my fault. I should know better than to pull a tiger's tail if I didn’t want to get bitten. 

I challenged him, hoping he would back down, but he didn’t. 

His blue eyes roam my face. He lifts his hand, and I flinch. His face grows hard as stone. 

“Looks like your God has forgotten all about you, Ivy Bishop.” He growls with a smirk. “If I wanted to, I could have taken you right here on the lawn. Planting my seed deep within your womb, corrupting your needy body with the spawn of a devil.” 

Lifting my hand, I touch my swollen lips, glaring at him. “I think you have it all twisted, Alessandro. If I wanted you to fuck me, you would have. Because no matter whose blood thrums through my veins, you Valentino men are infamous for fucking anything with tits.”

I giggle venomously, straightening my spine.

“Oh, and my God didn’t forget about me. We both know you’re incapable of killing me because all you see when you look at me is… Rose. This whole encounter was... Putrid. Just like your kiss.” I huff, pushing past him again. “I'll see you around, Jackass,” I add, marching towards the iron gates.