Copyright © 2018 by Elisabeth Naughton
ISBN: 978-1-945904-04-2
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All rights reserved.
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Cover art and design by Hang Le
Editing by Linda Ingmanson
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This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
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No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The brand-new series from New York Times Bestselling Author Elisabeth Naughton
Seduced into a Forbidden world,
Deceived by the man she loves,
Threatened with malicious intent,
She must remain resilient,
or she risks becoming forever
Undone...
Deceived
House of Sin
Elisabeth Naughton
Some doors were never meant to be opened…
I made a fateful mistake. I should never have peeked behind the doors into his forbidden world.
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But I did, and now I'm a prisoner. Trapped by the man I thought I loved. The man I once foolishly trusted. The man who, despite his lies and deception, I continue to crave.
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He can melt my resolve with one rough, whispered demand, and I feel myself giving in to the desire he still stirs inside me. And yet, if I want to survive, I must find a way to escape. Because if I don't, I'm afraid I'll be consumed by a shadowy world that will ultimately destroy me.
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Lost forever in his wicked House of Sin...
For Dan,
Because he taught me that every epic love story is worth fighting for.
“Deception may give us what we want for the present,
but it will always take it away in the end.”
—Rachel Hawthorne
Contents
1. Natalie
2. Luc
3. Natalie
4. Luc
5. Natalie
6. Luc
7. Natalie
8. Luc
9. Natalie
10. Luc
11. Natalie
12. Luc
13. Natalie
14. Luc
15. Natalie
16. Luc
17. Natalie
18. Luc
19. Natalie
20. Luc
21. Natalie
22. Luc
23. Natalie
24. Natalie
Don’t miss the next exciting story in the House of Sin Series
Thank You!
Also by Elisabeth Naughton
About the Author
Chapter One
Natalie
I was lost in a sea of darkness, unable to find my way.
Trees like gnarled hands clawed out for me. Rocks and twigs stabbed into my bare feet as I ran. The scents of dirt and moss choked my throat with each strangled breath, but I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t.
They were coming for me. Drifting closer with every step, their chanting voices growing louder in my ears, their hot breaths sliding over my skin until I trembled. Yet no matter how hard I ran, I couldn’t make my legs move faster. I couldn’t find a way out. I wrestled with the vines and limbs around me, gasped for air, but the utter blackness was all I knew. That and a sinking feeling in the bottom of my soul that told me I was trapped, never to be free again.
I blinked against the brightness. The shadows slinked away like fog rolling up the hillside in the dawn of morning’s light. Somewhere close, fabric rustled—at least I thought it was fabric—and a faint voice whispered, “She’s coming around. Go tell him.”
Footsteps sounded, then faded, and as my senses slowly righted, those words echoed in my mind.
Tell him.
Him who?
I blinked again, straining to bring my surroundings into focus. Struggling to figure out where I was and what was going on.
My limbs were heavy. My vision blurry. I continued to blink and slowly realized something above me was turning.
A fan. I stared up at the fuzzy blades moving in a lazy circle. My unfocused gaze shifted to the right, and blurry objects came into view. A dresser and doorway leading to…I didn’t know where. I looked to my left—damn, that light was bright—and squinted against the burn in my retinas. Something green moved outside the windows—trees swaying, I realized—and a blue-green object rose in the distance, one that almost looked like a mountain.
“There you are,” a female voice said somewhere to my right, distracting me. I shifted my head and tried to focus on the young woman moving close. She was maybe a little older than my twenty-four years, dressed in a floral-print sarong and black tank, but where my hair was dark and curly, hers was blonde and straight and looked to be pulled back in a ponytail. “We thought you were going to sleep all week. Careful getting up. Your legs are probably a little weak. I’ll get you some juice and crackers. I bet you’re starving.”
She disappeared from my line of sight before I could ask who she was. Confused, I looked back at the view to my left. As my vision slowly cleared, I spotted a wide deck littered with lounge chairs holding plush red cushions. Swaying palms reached toward the cerulean sky, and a deep blue infinity pool seemed to disappear into the rippling water of the ocean or sea or…
Holy shit. My eyes shot wide open, and my heart rate rocketed into the triple digits.
I bolted upright but immediately regretted it. Pain stabbed at the front of my forehead like a thousand tiny daggers piercing my brain. Grasping both sides of my skull, I groaned and breathed hard until the waves of agony dulled to an insistent throb.
I didn’t know where I was or what was going on, but when I finally opened my eyes again, I realized I was dressed in pink cotton pajama shorts and a deep blue tank. A warm breeze blew in through an open window, telling me it was at least eighty degrees outside, which explained why I was sweating.
Lifting my aching head, I registered I was in some kind of bedroom suite, one I’d never been in before. The walls were stucco, the pitched ceiling lined with rustic wood beams, the bed beneath me gigantic, with four posters and a plush comforter, the furniture in the room teak or bamboo—I wasn’t sure which—and expensive. And that view…
My gaze strayed to my left once more, and I stared at the staggering, lush green mountains and the sea of water as my heart thumped a hard rhythm against my ribs. Where the hell was I? The Caribbean? The Bahamas? The Seychelles?
A twinge in my finger drew my gaze down. And my eyes grew even wider when I saw the ink darkening the skin on the ring finger of my left hand beneath my second knuckle.
The ink was fresh, the skin slightly red around each mark, and the entire area was covered in something shiny, like an ointment or salve. Heart pounding, I turned my hand and read the one word branded into my skin:
Slave.
Shocked, I flipped my hand over and spread my fingers. The skin on the side of my ring finger was also tattooed with three small letters:
LS’s.
Horror shot through me. I knew of only one person with those initials. One person who had recently uttered the word slave to me.
Luciano Salvatici.
I jolted out of the bed and pressed my trembling body against the wall. Luc had told me he’d lived
in the tropics before he’d moved to New York and taken his position as CEO of his family’s fashion magazine. He hadn’t said where, but I knew instinctively that wherever he’d lived before was clearly where I was now.
I wobbled on legs that were—exactly as the woman had said—weak. Pain shot through my left calf, but I ignored it as I steadied myself against the wall. Frantically glancing around the room, I balked against the images surging in my mind. Images and visions that came out of nowhere and made no sense.
Men in black robes, standing in a circle in the woods, their haunting white bauta masks illuminated by torchlight. Me, running through my small house in Idaho and being slammed to the ground from behind. A hypodermic needle plunging into my flesh. Another man dressed in black—this time a suit, not a robe—with a book in his hand, asking me something I couldn’t understand. And Luc’s stormy gray eyes with his left, unique keyhole-shaped pupil, staring down at me while his familiar voice encouraged me to say yes. Telling me as soon as I did, everything would be okay.
Perspiration slid down my spine and dotted my forehead as I lifted my hand and stared at the vile ink branding my skin. A growing panic rose in my chest. I swallowed hard. Tried to think. Tried to rationalize. Tried to tell myself it wasn’t what I thou—
Footsteps sounded outside my door. My wide-eyed gaze shot in that direction. The door pushed inward. Then I saw Luc leaning against the doorjamb, his muscular body draped in faded jeans and a loose black T-shirt, his dark hair mussed as if he’d run his hands through it several times, his unique gray eyes as stormy and intimidating as ever.
My heart bumped, and a familiar warmth spread through my chest when I remembered this was my Luc. The man who’d taken control of my body and awakened my heart with just one touch. The man who’d rearranged every one of my priorities. The man who’d saved my life on more than one occasion.
But just as quickly I remembered he was also the man whose family was involved in multiple illicit activities throughout Europe, from drug trafficking to prostitution to even, and most horrifyingly, the creation of beta slaves—women whose sole purpose was to serve the depraved needs of the men in his House. And, I remembered, he was the man who’d followed me to Idaho after I’d run from him, who’d drugged me and, now obviously, abducted me.
Everything inside me hardened like ice.
His eyes locked on mine, but they weren’t the warm, familiar eyes I remembered from our steamy time together in Italy. No, the second his gaze met mine, his stormy eyes flattened in a way that told me he was not, and never had been, the man I’d foolishly let myself fall in love with.
“You’re finally awake,” he said in his clipped Italian accent. “That’s good because we have a lot to talk about, wife.”
For a heartbeat, I didn’t move. Then that word—wife—hit me like a two-by-four to the forehead, and my gaze dropped to his left hand, resting against his hip. A thick black band encircled his ring finger.
Sickness shot up my throat, and my fingers curled into the stucco at my back. “No,” I managed in a shaky voice. “You didn’t.”
But even before the words were out of my mouth, visions flickered in my mind again. Visions of the man in the black suit telling me all that was left was the paperwork. And then Luc whispering I’d done well while he wrapped his thick arm around my waist to hold me up and drew my fingers toward a crisp white paper where he urged me to sloppily sign my name next to his.
“I didn’t.” Luc’s square jaw turned to a slice of steel beneath the scruff on his skin as he straightened from the doorjamb. “We did. And I suggest you get used to it, Mrs. Salvatici, because we’re not leaving here until you do.”
Panic turned to a rage I couldn’t control, coloring everything red. He thought he could drug me, kidnap me, force me into a marriage I didn’t want, and that I’d just get used to it?
No.
Hell no.
My gaze shifted to the sliding glass door at my side. And seeing my one chance for freedom, I didn’t even hesitate to reach for it.
“Natalie,” he warned in a hard voice at my back, “I wouldn’t step out that door if I were you.”
“Fuck you, Luc.” I shoved the door open and moved out into the warm tropical air.
And then I ran, exactly as I should have done the moment I met Luciano Salvatici.
Chapter Two
Luc
Well, fuck. That had gone about as well as botched root canal.
Frowning, I watched through the open sliding glass door as Natalie stopped on the deck, glanced right and left, then tore off into the trees, barefoot and wearing nothing but a cotton tank and sleep shorts.
It took every ounce of willpower I had not to go after her.
Footsteps sounded behind me, followed by Sela’s harsh sigh at my back. “She ran off already? And you’re not stopping her?”
I clenched my jaw and turned to face the woman who managed my estate while I was away. “Yes.” I pushed past Sela. “And no. I’m not stopping her. She’ll tire herself out soon enough. Trust me, she’ll come back when it gets dark.”
“And what if you’re wrong?” Sela called after me.
I wasn’t wrong. I knew Natalie was angry, but she wasn’t stupid. She was in a strange part of the world with no knowledge of the dangers that lived in the wild here. She’d use common sense before too long. I turned into my office and shot Sela a pointed look over my shoulder. “Then you can tell me what an ass I am to my face instead of muttering it behind my back like every other day of my life.”
Sela chuckled. “Something tells me you and your ass are in big trouble this time.”
I slumped into the chair behind my desk as Sela’s footsteps disappeared toward the kitchen. I wasn’t upset with her. She’d been managing my Balinese-style villa here on the island for the last two years. But the woman didn’t know how right she was when she said I was in trouble. I was in deep shit because I hadn’t stayed away from Natalie James when I should have, and now we were both in danger because of my inability to keep my hands to myself.
My gaze shot beyond the wall of glass to the lush tropical foliage beyond, and I immediately searched for any sign of Natalie, but I knew she wouldn’t be hovering close to the house. Odds were good she was already a quarter mile away by now, thinking if she ran far and fast enough, she’d find a means of escape. Too bad the only thing she was going to find was that she was still trapped—just not in any way she expected.
My mood plummeted with the realization she was soon going to hate me more than she already did. Knowing there wasn’t much I could do about that though, I flipped my laptop open and decided to see where she was.
After typing in my access code, I pulled up my cameras. They were positioned all over the island for security reasons. I scanned the five closest to the house and found her fairly quickly. She was headed toward the north side of the island where the waves broke against the rocks with increased force this time of year.
A whisper of unease shot through me. The last thing I needed was for her to get some bright idea to try to swim to freedom. Sitting forward with a scowl, I watched her swat at a bug and sweep away the brush so it didn’t scratch up her legs.
Muscles flexed in her quads and shoulders. The base of her tank was already damp with perspiration, reminding me of the way she’d looked in Italy after I’d ravaged her that last night, lying limp and sweaty in my arms. Heat spread through my body—a familiar heat I’d been trying to bank since we’d arrived on the island. Refocusing on what she was doing, I held my breath as she stopped and looked around. And when she angled to her left—away from the rocks and water—and disappeared into the trees, I finally relaxed in my seat and breathed a sigh of relief.
Natalie was deathly afraid of water. I’d seen it in Venice when she’d clung to me on that water taxi as if I were her last lifeline. Even if the hounds of hell were on her ass, she wouldn’t dare try to escape through water. Which meant bringing her here was the smartest thing I’d done si
nce I’d met her.
My mood dipped even lower as my mind shifted to the reason I’d had to bring her here. My father was likely fuming in the family villa in Tuscany right this minute. Especially since—by now—he knew I’d thwarted his attempt to have Natalie quietly disposed of.
The only thing I had going for me at the moment was the fact this island was off the grid and that no one knew where we’d gone. They’d find us eventually—with the Salvatici resources, my father wouldn’t give up until he scoured the ends of the earth—but I was confident I had time. Enough time to convince Natalie that the only way she could survive now was as my wife.
My lips turned down. Somehow I had to find a way to make sure she accepted that willingly, or we were both fucked.
Reminding myself that she would, that I had time to make her see reason, I scanned the rest of my cameras, not for Natalie, but for any signs of a threat. There were none. The twenty-five-acre private island in the South Pacific wasn’t on any maps, and only a handful of people I trusted with my life knew about it.
Confident Natalie would be back before too long, I closed my laptop, retreated to my bedroom, and changed into gym shorts and a tank. I’d been a ball of stress ever since I’d discovered Natalie had run from my parents’ estate in Tuscany. That stress had only amplified when I’d found her in Idaho, being attacked by that assassin my House had sent after her. And it had flown sky-high when I’d had to drug her to get her out of there without anyone taking notice. I thought I’d feel better once we were here on the island, but so far, I didn’t. My stomach was a hard knot in the pit of my gut, and I had a sinking suspicion that knot wasn’t going anywhere until Natalie submitted the way I needed her to.