Wicked Surrender (Regency Sinners)(16)

“Dante,” she gasped, hands moving, fingers digging into the hard muscles in his shoulders. “Dante?” she questioned uncertainly as he instantly ceased what he was doing to look up at her.

“Hands,” he reminded her harshly.

She uncurled her fingers from his flesh before lifting her arms and replacing them back on the pillows behind her.

His eyes glittered darkly. “Because this is our first time together, I will allow you that one transgression, but do not test me again. Not unless you wish to have these pinched.” He tweaked one of her nipples with less than gentle fingers before he returned to sucking her clit. His teeth lightly grazed that pulsing flesh, the thrusting of his fingers inside her channel increasing in speed, the stroke of a third finger against her forbidden rosette sending her over the edge of release for a second time, the pleasure even more intense than the last time.

Bella lay boneless as Dante began to caress and pleasure her again. “No more,” she finally managed to groan as her body began to soar for a third time. “Dante, it is too much.”

She did not use her safe word, and her body betrayed her as Dante moved to lay beside her, his mouth latching on to one of her bared nipples, both sucking and biting. His fingers continued to stroke the slickness between her thighs over and around her clit before moving lower, those fingers now caressing the sensitive circle of flesh between the globes of her bottom. It was both shocking and wildly exciting. Forbidden, and yet Bella craved more of Dante’s touch. There. Everywhere.

Her body bowed off the bed, her eyes wide as one of his fingers breached her there, his teeth biting painfully into her nipple and his thumb pressing her pulsing clit.

Her body was racked with shuddering sobs as the pleasure grew more and more intense, Dante’s fingers thrusting inside her slick and open channel, stroking that knot of nerves as he demanded she give him her third release.

She screamed her climax when it came. Tears streamed down her cheeks as those fingers stroking inside her once again hooked forward to press on that knot of nerves, prolonging and continuing her release as Dante sucked greedily on her other nipple

Bella sobbed, her body continuing to shake even after the pleasure had subsided slightly. She could not stand any more, was too tightly wound, too sensitive, too— “Daffodil,” she gasped. “Oh God, daffodil!” She no longer cared what her punishment might be as she moved her arms downward, fingers entangling in Dante’s hair as she pulled him away, forcing his mouth to relinquish her nipple.

His eyes were dark and unfocused, his lips swollen, the beard on his chin slick with her juices.

Dante continued to stare at Bella blankly for several long seconds before his gaze slowly came back into focus. His eyes widened as he saw the wet tracks of the tears that had fallen down Bella’s pale cheeks. “I believed you were enjoying our lovemaking. Why did you not use your safe word sooner?” he demanded harshly.

“I—I was too lost in pleasure, but then… It became too intense.” She trembled anew, her eyes glistening with fresh tears.

Dante moved abruptly to lie back on the pillows on his own side of the bed, one of his arms thrown across his eyes.

He was well aware of his demanding nature and the dark desires that drove him to excess. He had thought Bella as enthralled and lost to pleasure as he was. She had not used her safe word, so he had assumed when she cried out, it was in the throes of ecstasy. It had been initially, he was sure, but he could now see the slight shock in her eyes, telling him he had demanded too much too soon.

He swung his legs to the side of the bed before standing, his back toward her. “I shall return to the adjoining bedchamber and come back when you have fallen asleep.” He strode across the room and through the open doorway, leaving that door open as he entered the darkness of his room.

Bella felt the tears falling down her cheeks as she watched Dante leave without giving her so much as another glance, and knew she had disappointed him with the use of her safe word.

She had been unprepared, far too comfortable in the pleasant but unexciting lovemaking she had known with Jeremy for so many years, to have ever guessed at the intensity of pleasure involved in making love with Dante.

His lovemaking was dark and all-consuming.

Addictive.

And unlikely, from the manner in which he had left her, to ever happen again.





Chapter 6


Dante knew, before he had even opened his eyes the following morning, that Bella was no longer in the bed beside him.

He growled low in his throat as he glanced at the empty pillow where he could see the indent of where her head had lain during the night.

It had been a very long night for Dante. He had paced his bedchamber for over an hour as he waited for Bella to fall asleep in her bed. His thoughts had been as restless as he was. He had been so fucking hungry for her, merely being in her company having become tortuous, that all restraint had disappeared the moment he touched her.

He had tried to maintain that control, to distance himself, by warning her of his need for total submission and insisting she have a safe word.

Before promptly losing himself to the touch and taste of her.

From the stiffness of Bella’s posture and the back she had firmly turned toward him by the time he returned to her bedchamber, he seriously doubted she was asleep. But she made no effort to acknowledge his presence as he quietly slid into the bed beside her. Dante had lain awake for hours after that, tormented by the knowledge that Bella, if not actually afraid of him, now had every reason to fear the darkness within him.