CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
~Oscar Wilde
PRESENT
I lay very still in my old room, but I wasn’t sleeping.
I was battling with myself, beating back all the memories this house, this town, and particularly this room brought back.
I was especially vulnerable to distraction just then, because I needed it. Anything was better than the old memories, even if it meant making new ones to torture myself with.
And so when a quiet Dante came creeping into my room, I did the foolish thing.
I should have turned him away.
I did not do that. I did the other thing. The foolish one. I let him have me again.
And again.
In my defense, I was unutterably weak at that moment, too desperately in need of not just distraction but comfort.
And Dante came in the form of both.
So what if it came with a price?
A heavy price. Of torment. Regret. Bitter nostalgia.
I just chalked it up to my self-destructive streak taking its obligatory pound of flesh. My flesh was so weak; it always paid the price with little to no hesitation.
Just the opposite. My weak flesh paid it eagerly.
This wretched night was no different.
He was a large man, but he’d always had an uncanny ability to move with quiet grace, and so the sound of the door shutting and locking behind him was louder than the quiet shuffle of his feet.
My first reaction was fury. Of course it was. He was such a presumptuous bastard. The sheer, brazen nerve of him coming to me, here, like this?
But he knew me so well. This entire day had been an ordeal for me. Perhaps he sensed my weakness, the lengths I would go to just then for a powerful diversion. For a few guaranteed moments of blessed oblivion.
And also, though this reason was harder to admit, it was just as significant. If he was with me tonight, in this room, that meant he wasn’t in another room . . . with her.
He didn’t say a word as he quietly shed his clothes, but I could feel his eyes burning into me, could tell he knew I was awake though I kept my eyes closed and my mouth shut.
Neither of us needed words to sense the other’s avid attention.
When he was done, he put one knee on the bed, and then the other, crawling over me.
Still silent, brazen as hell, with no hesitation at all, he began to strip me.
Hating myself, hating him, needing him, despising that need, but still helpless against it, I didn’t stop him.
I was panting now in my fury, in my runaway, out of control lust.
He tugged my shirt impatiently over my head, tossing it aside, his hands going to my skin. I could feel his thick, bare member poking into my leg.
With a stifled groan, he ran his hungry fingers down my body, from my jaw, over each bone of my collar to the tops of my breasts, across each pebbled nipple, slowly, reverently along every bone of my ribs, down to my naval, until he reached my hipbones, where he unerringly found the top of my panties and slipped them off with one smooth pull.
We weren’t quiet by then, we were both making noises we couldn’t hide, gasping, panting loud enough to fill the quiet, but still we didn’t speak.
Without even one kiss, he turned me on my side, straddled one thigh and raised the other high over his shoulder, and pushed his pulsing, engorged length against my entrance.
Foreplay or no, it didn’t matter. I was wet and pliant, slick, steady beats of arousal pulsing between my thighs. I was already beyond ready for him, and he hadn’t even had to check. He’d just known, damn him.
He shoved his tip in, then more, and more, inching forward steadily, not stopping until he was buried to the hilt.
The pressure then was almost too much. He bore into me so deeply and intensely that I felt split open, exposed and raw while he held himself there, at the deepest part of me, his heavy tip smashed up against my cervix unrelentingly.
Tears stung the back of my eyelids, and I couldn’t beat them back.
I couldn’t handle it.
His possession was so extravagant and so absolute. In that moment I couldn’t hide, even from him, how it devastated me.
And in the dark room, with only the barest sliver of moonlight illuminating it through the shades, he still saw my tears.
His blunt thumb traced over each one softly.
“Shh,” his voice soothed me. “Shh. I’ll make it better.”
He dug a fist into the mattress, his other hand cupping my face almost gently as he leaned forward heavily.
And he began to move.
And my body began to quake. A body quake that took me over completely, turned me upside down and inside out.
It was almost too quick for me like that, at that deepest angle with his unstoppable thrusts that put me into exquisite distress with every dip and plunge.
He crashed into me relentlessly.
Possessing my flesh every time he bore into me, and ruthlessly taking everything in his path as he withdrew.
My hand reached up to grab the wrist of the hand that held my face, my nails digging in as I got closer to my end.
My grip was as savage as his was gentle, scoring deep scratches into his flesh.
More marks I’d be leaving on him, more proof of my ownership that wouldn’t fade with morning.
I tripped over into my release with a helpless sob.
It was so good. Nothing could compare.
Sex with Dante was so acutely satisfying that it felt both essential and damaging.
I wanted to thank him and curse him out both.
I did neither. It was something. At least I didn’t say anything I’d regret later. Instead, I only did—many, many things I could regret later.
He wasn’t far behind me, rooting deeply just five, six, seven more heady times, keeping me worked up and in distress with him, clenching around him, coming even while it felt I might peak again.
He held himself deep as he emptied inside of me, staying there while I milked out every last drop, holding my legs split open like that, stretching me so wide and for so long that I knew I’d be sore in several places come morning.
I could have slept after that. Could have passed out cold and slept deeper than I had in months.
In fact, I tried to, but he wasn’t finished. Not even close.
He’d only just begun to slake his great thirst on me, to assuage his terrible hunger.
He pulled out of me slowly, with great hesitation, dislodging himself with regret, lingering at it, moving not just out but around, shifting inside of me, making his presence and its exit known and felt.
When he was finally free of me, he flipped me onto my back like a rag doll, pushed my thighs wide apart and climbed between.
He started kissing my neck, making his way down until he was licking my nipples.
My back arched off the bed.
“So responsive,” he murmured into my skin a beat before he sucked one needy nub into his mouth. “So sensitive. Never get enough,” he muttered, his big hands pushing my breasts together so he could feast.
He kneaded with his big hands and suckled with his perfect mouth until I was crying out his name.
“Yes,” he said against my nipple. “Say that to me, Scarlett. Say yes. Yes, Dante.” He went back to sucking.
“Yes, Dante, yes,” I complied.
“Now say please for me,” he urged. “Please, Dante.”
I was scratching at the top of his back, but I couldn’t hold back what he asked for, “Please, Dante.”
He groaned, moving up my body. “I want to feel your naked breasts against my chest when I take you this time.
Without an ounce of resistance, my body in full rut, I let him have me again, our chests rubbing together, his weight heavy on me, in me, my face in his hands, his mouth possessing mine.
I cried when I came. He kissed my tears away.
It was just too bittersweet, the pleasure and the pain of it, and at my very weakest, when all my defenses were stripped away, there were things even I could not deny.
The brutal, unrelenting truth was all too apparent to me in these moments.
I belonged to him. I was his.
I’d never stopped being his.
It was a cruel, unbearable, and undeniable fact.
He dragged my pliant, naked body into the adjoining bathroom, drawing a bath and tugging me in to straddle him.
I tried to lay my cheek on his chest, but he gripped my face with both hands and started kissing me. Not an idle, satisfied kiss, either. His mouth devoured mine like he hadn’t just had me. Twice.
His hunger reignited my own, and in spite of myself I was grabbing his neck and kissing him back with equal fervor.
I’d never been able to get enough of him like this, when he was so wildly passionate for me. Hungry to the point of desperate.
As ever, I answered that hunger in kind.
I don’t need food. I don’t need air or shelter. I just need this, my body told me with each fevered throb.
His proximity. His touch. His own all-consuming need. Nothing felt more vital to me.
He held me captive like that for a very long time, with his gentle hands and his desperate kiss, devouring me from the outside in, insinuating his all-encompassing craving into every part of me until I was a mindless slave to it.
Eventually the kissing led to more. I had my thighs on either side of his hips, and gradually he worked me closer, his hardness pushing insistently between my legs, ramming teasingly, and then harder against my sex, finally entering me, working in slow inch by slow inch, sucking in each needy breath I gasped out as he invaded me, my cunt sucking in each needy thick inch of his cock.
I tried to move on him, to create the friction that would relieve us both, but his hands let go of my face, snaking down to grip my hips and hold me flush and unmoving, keeping still and buried to the hilt.
All the while, his mouth was unstoppable on mine, kissing, licking, sucking, gasping out the words he knew would get to me the most and the fastest.
I was whimpering by the time he let up, his hands on my hips working me against his thick length in small, jarring movements.
“More,” I managed to get out, but barely. Passion made him vocal, but for me it was the opposite. I was a blithering mess of in-articulation when I was this far gone.
He rewarded me with a few more hard thrusts then began to pull me off.
I protested, but he shushed me, gave me one last long kiss, then lifted me clean out of the bath and perched me on the lip of it.
Gram had given me one of the best suites in the entire mansion, and the bathroom had a garden tub set in a corner with a scenic window. He set my back against the glass, leaned down between my thighs, and went to work.
I gripped my fingers into his hair, head falling back, eyes drifting closed.
His mouth, God, his mouth. It’d been so long.
Pulling me open, his tongue and fingers clamoring inside, he finished me in seconds.
I was still reeling when he rose. He propped a foot up near my hip, gripped both hands into my hair, and pulled my slack mouth within licking distance of his thick tip.
I started to get it then. He wanted to do everything, wanted to have me every way before the night was through.
I knew him well enough to know he’d have his way.
Neither of us was going to get a wink of sleep until he’d gone through his hit list, which was mind boggling and extensive.
He carried me back to bed and laid me down. When he straightened and started to move away, I wondered if I’d been mistaken and he was actually done.
But he was just turning on the lights.
Of course he would. The intrusive bastard wouldn’t let me hide anything from him.
As he moved about, I admired the view. Even the fresh scratches I’d left all over his back. Every inch of him was the benchmark of my personal preference.
I’m so fucked, I thought, my eyes drifting closed.
But the bastard didn’t let me sleep.
He kept me up until the sun was rising and every inch of my body ached.
“I might let you sleep after this round,” he told me, kissing my shoulder.
He was on my back, groin flush against my ass, my legs spread wide, his clenched fists on the mattress on either side of my head.
I was in exquisite, tantalizing distress, my face in the pillow, mouth opened wide in a silent scream as he rutted hard and deep into my sensitive flesh.
His pace increased as he got close, his thrusts getting almost too rough to bear.
He lifted my face from the pillow with a firm hand in my hair, bending down to kiss as close to my mouth as he could reach, and, buried to the hilt, he emptied himself deep.
He stayed inside of me, hips flexing as he rubbed out every last twitch of his orgasm.
“Jesus,” I groaned, as he pulled out of me with excruciating slowness. It was just too much.
And still he wasn’t done. He kissed his way down my back, pushed my knees up on the bed, and fitted his head underneath me.
I braced myself on my elbows, moving my hips as he ate me out yet again.
My body was still vibrating with pleasure as he flipped me onto my back and straddled me.
“You’re a beast,” I panted, and it wasn’t an insult.
He pinned my wrists above my head, staring solemnly down at me.
A million things were pouring out of his ocean eyes at me.
I didn’t even have to say it aloud. We stared at each other and thought the words, a silent conversation with nothing but our starving, devouring eyes.
It doesn’t matter what’s happened tonight. It doesn’t matter that we mourned together, and made ourselves and each other feel better for one bittersweet night.
I can’t forgive you. I can’t and won’t trust you again. You betrayed me and it can never be made right again.
Also, I can’t forgive myself. The things I did to hurt you, to survive after you left, and of course, the things I did to take revenge for the things you did, have damaged me beyond all repair.
But we didn’t say one word out loud. Finally he bent down and kissed me, and it was so soft and so tender as to be devoid of passion.
It held something else, something even more dangerous. A thing I was afraid to even think.
He pulled back with a gasp and started panting like he’d been underwater.
After that, he let me sleep.