Fractured Freedom(28)
“Not necessarily.” I tried to work through how I could protect her here, if I could make it work. For anyone else, I wouldn’t even have contemplated it. Yet, Delilah didn’t stick to her guns about anything. She’d always been the person everyone could rely on to go along with whatever made everyone else happy. Her not doing that told me she must really need this. I also knew from experience that I had a hard time not giving her exactly what she needed. “But this can put you in harm’s way.”
“I’m the good girl, Dante. No one has been worried about me, right? I hung out with Izzy the whole time she was here with no mishaps. Just leave and know that I’m fine.”
“It would be easier if you went home.”
“I’m staying here. Leaving doesn’t actually help you two, anyway. It would look suspicious.” She turned on her heel and waved me off. Like she could walk away from me.
My hand shot out and grabbed her elbow. The sparks between us, the ones I felt every time I touched her, singed my skin and ignited the fire in me for her. “You make things so damn difficult, you know that?”
“I definitely don’t. I make things less difficult! I never put up a fight, and I don’t normally do things for myself.”
“Could have fooled me,” I grumbled, and she spun around to stare me down. I didn’t waver in my stance.
“What are you talking about?” she whispered, like she was daring me to bring it up just one more time.
No one had to dare me or coax me into that. I had it locked and loaded. “You know damn well what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t think I’d be held liable for decking you in the face at this point,” she ground out. “But go ahead. If you’re going to keep circling it, you might as well spell it out for me, Dante.”
Bold and fiery Delilah. It was a side of her I had a feeling I was going to like.
A side where her chest heaved, the color on her cheeks deepened just a little but not too much like when she was embarrassed, and her chin lifted to accentuate that thin, beautiful neck of hers.
It was a side of her that I was instantly addicted to.
“You think I wanted to be the one to fuck the virginity out of you?” I asked the question slowly and pointedly.
“Oh my God. That’s how you’re going to describe it?” Her voice carried disdain at my audacity.
She was going to learn I had a lot more where that came from. If she was staying here, she was going to get a whole new side of me.
9
Make a List
Delilah
Focusing on his words rather than my own embarrassment was the only way I could come out of this situation with any pride intact. I wanted to crawl under a rock and never show my face to him again. Still, I stood my ground. I’d learned that it was the only way I could face things. If I didn’t, they’d eat away at me for months and months. “You have some nerve throwing that in my face like your dick wasn’t happy.”
“Delilah.” His gaze was fire now, his voice low. “My dick is always going to be happy when it’s inside that pussy of yours.”
I gasped at his words. I think I even took a step back because I wasn’t expecting them at all. Dante used to be the sweet man who treated me like Dom’s baby sister, and then I was this girl that he seemed to think had his heart. But his words were laced with lust and bite this time. I wasn’t used to the sting of them. “I don’t think this is the best time to discuss this.”
“When would be a better time?”
“Well, probably never. It’s not going anywhere. It already happened. We’ve both moved on from it.” I shrugged.
“Did we move on, though?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Was he insinuating that I was still hung up on him? If so, I could get over his huge ego and his huge everything else real quick.
Or at least, that’s what I would tell him.
He sighed and pulled at his neck while looking at my ceiling. “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m tired. You’re tired. You probably haven’t had a good shower since you’ve been in jail, and we need to make a plan for Izzy.”
“Great. Good. Go do that. I’ll be here.”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “You won’t be, sweetheart. You can’t stay in this room. You shouldn’t have been staying here in the first place.”
“It’s the best place for me to be.”
“The street isn’t patrolled enough, your locks on this level aren’t great, and the lobby man is letting strange men walk in with you. Not to mention that staircase is so dark a man could kill you in it without security cameras picking up on it. We’ll have to change that.”
“I’m fine.” Scratching my temple as I thought over his assessment and backed up toward my bathroom, I realized I should probably just give in and go home.
Yet, whatever little food I had in my stomach curdled in disgust at the thought.
“I’ll agree to you staying in this hotel because you’re right that anything else would cause attention, but I’ll be talking to them about changing your accommodations and room number. You’ll be moving to my level,” Dante concluded.