Substitute Wife for the Mafia King R18-Chapter 381: I Love You

"Why? Don’t you believe me when I say that I feel sorry?” I asked him.

"I don’t know. It feels a little sudden and not so like you," Bradon replied while keeping his eyes on me as I wondered if he was simply teasing me.

"I wonder what I can do to make you believe me," I said, smiling a little at him.

The way his eyes held mine made me feel that he was sincere. Bradon couldn’t possibly imagine just how attractive I found him in that moment. I suddenly felt the urge to move even closer to him, and it took all my strength not to lock my arms around his neck and pull him in for a kiss. The feelings that I had for him felt so overwhelming, making him even more irresistible than before.

"I’ll believe you if you tell me one thing," he said as he brushed the pad of his thumb gently along my lower lip.

"What is it?" I asked in a breathless whisper.

"Tell me that you love me, Dahlia. Now and back then, tell me that you’ve always been in love with me," Bradon said in a voice dripping with tempting seduction.

If he was right and it had always been him in my jumbled up memories, then perhaps it was true that I had always been in love with him without knowing it. Above anything else, I couldn’t deny that he was the one who had captured my heart and my love right now.

"I love you..." I confessed truthfully and simply.

Those words never felt so true to me as they did in that moment when I said them to Bradon. For a moment, he looked extremely satisfied with my confession. The smile that graced his lips made him look even more irresistible, but I only had a moment to admire that smile before his lips were on mine.

This time, I no longer needed to resist the urge. I threw my arms around his neck to pull him closer to me. Bradon leaned over me and slowly pushed me down onto the sofa, all the while our lips were busy seeking pleasure from each other. He thrust his tongue firmly between my lips before seducing mine into a passionate dance that did nothing to hide the desire that we felt for one another. My arms moved downwards to caress the muscles of his back through his shirt as our kiss continued to deepen.

"This is supposed to be a romantic moment," he murmured close to my lips after he broke our kiss hesitantly.

"I guess you’re right," I replied in a whisper. It truly was supposed to be a romantic moment after it made me realize my love for him and even drew a confession from me. However, it seemed like we could no longer control the yearning that we had to have each other.

I could tell that Bradon wanted to cherish the moment, and perhaps he thought that making love might ruin the sweetness of our love and the romance of the moment.

"Should we do it?" I suggested shyly.

"We don’t have to if you don’t want to," Bradon replied, and I could tell that he was hesitating. It was clear that we both wanted each other very badly.

As if to reemphasize my words, I wrapped my legs around his hips suggestively. Bradon looked slightly surprised before desire clouded his eyes as he stared down at me.

"You might not get any sleep tonight," he warned before smiling mischievously down at me.

...

A few weeks later

To Bradon’s complete dissatisfaction, I began meeting with Desmond again to fulfill my part of our deal. Despite Desmond’s wishes for us to be glued at the hip every single day, I managed to strike a proper deal for myself to attend a public event with him two to three times a week. Our appearances together cemented the public’s understanding that we were back together and that our relationship was starting to get extremely serious.

The media were very divided in their sentiments when they presented news about my relationship with Desmond. Some celebrated our union, looking forward to the new king getting engaged and having a marriage ceremony. They were excited to have a new queen and to see the king build a strong and stable royal family to continue the reign of the monarchy. Even though the press was supposed to fear the king and the royal family, the sentiment against our fabricated relationship was just as prominent and strong, with the press expressing concern and worry for the royal family as if the safety of the royal family was their primary concern. Regardless of what anyone had to say, Desmond was extremely pleased that everyone was talking about us and that our appearance together always made headlines and was covered intensely in the media.

Getting out of the mansion became a more difficult task than ever before and for a very unexpected reason. I never expected that Bradon would act so clingy as he complained that I was seeing Desmond too often. I had no idea that sharing the truth about our past could bring us so much closer and could turn Bradon into another version of himself. It wasn’t like he was a completely different person; sometimes he could still be extremely ruthless, calculating, and dominating. However, his usual coldness and the distance that seemed to separate us, even though we were in close proximity, seemed to have completely evaporated. I had made an agreement with him a long time before to be myself whenever I was with him, and to a certain extent, I believe that I had lived up to that promise. However, I had never felt so at ease with him the way that I had felt in the past few weeks. In addition to that, it seemed like Bradon had become more comfortable being himself when he was with me.

–To be continued...