CARINA

 

T he fade into awareness happens slowly. It’s like ice melting, the water is still present, yet, its newly formed. My mind can’t fully process the entirety of my situation, as it feels like I’m traipsing through a dense fog. Soft, warm, delectable sheets and a thick comforter graze against my skin, but all I can focus on is the pressure. Sweet, sweet, pressure. The sting in my arm. It causes a sigh of tranquility to slip free from my lips. It all feels wrong, but in some way, completely right.

Suddenly, the ice ailing my mind liquifies, and my veins fill with frigidness. My heartbeat intensifies as my muscles attempt to pump the viciously sweet solution. The sting of my puffy eyelids helps level me more as I strain to remember how I got here. I strain to listen, to hear anything that might help me. But the only sound that registers is the incessant ringing in my ears. What happened to me? Why does everything feel so different?

“Ciao.” Turning my gaze, I spy a man with a tumbler of dull brown liquid resting on his knee. He seems so familiar.

“Hello,” I rasp. “Do I know you?”

“Yes, I’m Mateo Calvetti. How are you feeling?” Getting up from the chair, I silently watch as he sets the drink on the table before slowly making his way toward me.

I have to think about his question more than I originally should, which is new. Most usually I can snap it out, but this, having to think about how I feel, is new. Different. Terrifying.

Furrowing my brows, I worry my bottom lip. “Uncaged. I feel—”

“Something tells me you hate that feeling, bella.”

“You have no idea” I whisper, a stoic expression on my face. “It feels like I’m someone else entirely.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Yes. I feel like it is.”

He smiles, but yet again, nothing; not even the first stirs of excitement I would usually get by ensnaring the attention of a man such as him. There’s nothing but that fucking shit I’m beginning to hate. I feel joy, sadness, worry, terror—all the things I can’t decipher.

“Do you know what happened?” Cocking my head to the side, I regard him with a critical eye.

He seems to think about something for a moment, running his fingers through his jet-black hair, before rolling his finger over his top lip. He’s battling with something inside him, that’s easy to tell. But, what? I wish I could remember what happened to make me feel like this, but the only thing I can remember is mud, water, and having a visceral notion of repeating something over and over until I couldn’t breathe. Everything in-between is blank like my entire emotional slate’s been wiped clean.

“Unfortunately, I do.”

“Can you tell me?”

Shaking his head, he replies, “I don’t think that’s the best thing for you right now.”

How would he know what’s best for me? I don’t even remember who the fuck I am. I know I have parents, I’m twenty-two years old, and I’ve been ripped away from them to somewhere I can’t explain. I have a feeling that joy, happiness, sadness, and worry are emotions that I should not be feeling. Only, I have no idea why. Wouldn’t a person want to feel all of that? To muddle through their day and feel as if each moment were their last and not to take it for granted.

“But I would like to try something.”

I reply, whispering, “Okay.”

I watch silently as he hesitantly takes a gold handled pocket knife from his slacks, his chest rising and falling heavily. Flipping it open, I never say anything as he jerks the covers off me. I don’t even react to him seeing me naked.

Wait, what? Did someone undress me, or did I forget?

“Um, where are my clothes?” I chance, biting my lip.

“I took them off,” he says, never once offering an apology. What if I didn’t want him to see me that way? The embarrassment clouding my thoughts leads me to believe I should care, but I find that I don’t. The caged part of me seems to be battling with the uncaged, trying to see who will come out the victor. But still, people are supposed to apologize for shit like that, aren’t they?

“You going to apologize? Come up with an excuse why I shouldn’t be mad at you?”

“No. To be honest, I couldn’t care less if you were mad. You were wet; you needed out of them. Period.” Ah, I can feel the door of my cage sliding shut a little more with his crassness. It feels heavenly.

“Okay. Well, can you tell me how long I’ve been here?”

“Just a little over two weeks,” he answers, coming closer.

Surprise envelopes me as I stare back at him, never once seeing him waver. I wish I could remember how I got here. Maybe if I could, I wouldn’t feel so desolate.

Closing my eyes, I try my hardest to remember the events of last week before my body shut down on me. Sifting through my tumultuous thoughts, I find it hard to sort through the hazy memories. Something terrible must have happened to make me the way I am now, but for the life of me, I can’t get the memories to clear, the fog to dissipate. A part of my mind doesn’t want to remember what caused my outlook to flip, but whatever it was must have been completely soul-sucking.

Sighing, I reopen my eyes and pin him with a blank stare. “You may commence with your little study.”

Cocking a brow, he stares down at me, lips thinning. “You’re a strange individual. You know that?”

Shrugging, I reply, “Not strange. Just don’t remember. There’s a difference.”

Nodding as if he agrees with my observation, he clears his throat and advances toward me. Something screams inside me I should fear him holding a knife this close to me, but somehow, another part of me beats it into submission.

“This may hurt,” he says, more to himself than me. I merely shrug. What else am I supposed to do? I can’t bring myself to care. I know knives are dangerous, I’m not ignorant. But something tells me this isn’t going to be an uncomfortable experience, but a freeing one.

The moment he places the blade against the flesh of my thigh, putting pressure on the tip, a pleasure I know and love assaults me, wringing a groan from deep within my chest. My eyes flick down in amazement as blood wells around the alloy steel, already wishing he would do it again.

“That felt …” He pressed harder, and my voice trails off as more blood runs down my leg. A sharp sting has my back arching off the bed, a deep-seated moan heaving from deep within me. I clutch the sheets in my hands, almost shredding it with my nails. The prick in my arm intensifies until something pulls free, leaving behind wetness coating my arm. “Oh, God! Shit, shit, shit … Mmm, more! Please, more!”

“Shit,” he groans low in this throat. When he takes the blade away from my skin, the sting that ensues still has me on a high I’ve never felt before. A high I want to continue over and over again.

“More,” I choke out, writhing.

I wish he would give me more. More of what I know and love.

 

MATEO

 

That’s the hottest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The blade, her—the blood. Just the sight causes an ache so fierce to catch me in the gut. I want more. Need more. I need to make her bleed. Force her to feel everything I have to give her, then push her to take more. Her desire for pain is awakening a part of myself I swore I would keep locked away. It’s something the doctor and I spoke about, but I never knew the fierce need that would blindside me from a mere prick of a knife on the top of her leg.

As if some unknown force is directing me, I press the blade to her other thigh. I only stab the tip deep enough into her skin to draw blood, but it still gets the desired effect. It seems enough to send her closer to an edge I’m not too sure either one of us are ready to tumble over. But fuck me, if I can’t stop. It’s too delicious of a reaction I’m pulling from her to even fathom.

“Fuck! Please, please, please,” she cries out, squeezing her legs together.

Within the blink of an eye, her pleas of more have me dropping the knife on the floor and covering her naked body with mine. Crushing my lips to hers, I suck her bottom lip between my teeth roughly, biting until I taste a hint of her sweet blood. Instead of turning her off, like it would most, it seems to excite her more. She runs her tongue along mine, tasting her sweet nectar, moaning as her efforts double. Her nails claw at my back, shredding my shirt. Her legs wrap around my waist, grinding her core against my aching cock.

She’s on fucking fire, and it only drives my need for her through the roof.

“We should stop,” I whisper, breaking our kiss, panting.

“If you stop, I’ll kill you.”

“You are weak.”

Shaking her head, she peppers kisses along my lips, searching for something unknown. “Not too weak for this … please.”

She didn’t need to say anymore. Just the word “please” falling off her lips like a whispered prayer is enough to do me in. Crashing my lips against hers, we’re nothing more than animals as we attack each other, both giving as much as we take. Ripping her up from the bed, my hand tunnels in her tangled hair, fisting it as my arm wraps around her like a vise. Wrapping her legs around me, she grows more aggressive as she dry humps my lap, stroking me so hot I can barely catch my breath.

Breaking the kiss, I nip and suck down her neck, growling against her heated skin as her fingers grip the strands of my hair and force me tighter against her. Allowing the desire to pump through my veins at full velocity, I bite down on the cord of her neck, sating myself a little more at the entrenched pant that escapes her plump lips. It nags at the back of my mind that I shouldn’t be doing this. She’s been in a fucking coma for two weeks, but with each caress of her hands and roll of her hips, all rational thoughts leave me.

“Mm, I’m going to fuck you so hard.” Grabbing her hip, I force her to grind against me harder. Every fragment of my being is roaring to take her fast, rough. Mark her creamy flesh with bruises until we’re both sated.

I won’t be able to stop until she’s under me, crying out in pleasure.

A commotion in the hallway draws my attention as I break away from her skin. The door flies open, cracking the drywall behind it, instantly making me curse. “If you don’t want to die, you’ll tell me what the fuck is going on.”

“Boss, we have a problem.”

“What is it?” I ask. Carina bends my face down and draws her teeth along my jawline. Groaning, my hold on her hips tighten. “Fuck.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she whispers, taking the shell of my ear into her mouth, sucking.

A throat clearing has me whipping my head around, staring daggers at the person who clearly wants to die. “Fucking hell. What the hell is it, Domino?”

“It’s Camille.”