Fractured Freedom(72)

“Well, they will very soon,” he growled as he glared at the door like they might appear.

“What? You intend to have them hear me moan your name?”

“Is that what you want, Lilah?” he asked. His gaze flew back to mine, and he moved his hand to hover over the sheet on my stomach. We both watched it, and I swear I felt the heat of it spreading through my body, up to my breasts that tingled and down to my core that clenched with need immediately. I licked my lips as his hand moved up and then down, parallel to my body but never touching it.

I may have been struggling internally with what our future held, but the present always led to my body overpowering my thoughts.

He curled his fingers into a tight fist, and my body tensed with it, my soul somehow connected to his movements, wanting only what he showed—tension, heat, or both, I wasn’t sure.

He growled before he said, “You’re fighting me and building up walls I want to tear down.”

“You’ve never used force to get to me before, Dante,” I murmured, mesmerized by how we connected, how my body felt his energy, how he must have felt mine too.

His fingers danced over my collarbone before settling on my neck. “Some force, torture, or punishment could be classified as something else.” He breathed in deep and glanced at the smoke curling up from the candle that was still lit on the table across from us. “Remember your safe word, Lilah.”

Why my cunt instantly got wet when he said those words, I wasn’t sure, but I nodded before he squeezed my windpipe, and then I gasped as his other hand went to the sheet to rip it from my breasts. It all happened at the same time his lips flew to mine and tore them apart with ferocious lust.

A moan escaped from deep down inside me as his hands worked my breasts, kneading and squeezing them to the rhythm of his tongue.

“That’s the sound I want everyone to hear,” he said, his voice a whisper on my lips as he rubbed his nose back and forth over mine. “I’ve perfected the job I do, Delilah. You know that right? Do you think I do it just because it’s the job I was given in the military, because it’s my family name?”

His hand left my breasts to skim down to my center folds, and he didn’t waste time testing if I was ready for him. I stuttered out a response, not even sure I could string together a sentence with his fingers so close to the bundle of nerves I knew he could work into oblivion. “I guess that’s what I thought. Of course. I mean, most people do that. I fell into nursing. It’s fine—”

“Don’t downplay that job. You love nursing.”

“Of course, but I heal people.”

He rolled his thumb over my clit, and I hissed. “And I do what, Lilah?”

Biting my lip, I didn’t answer. His question was meant to goad me, to push me to say what we hadn’t discussed properly.

He tsked when I didn’t answer, and suddenly his hands were gone from my neck and pussy. He turned around while I fumbled with my protest.

“What are you doing? Are we not …? I mean, should I—”

Right when I started to sit up and saw him fiddling with his phone, he commanded, “Stay where you are.”

The music in the spa’s room changed to a darker instrumental. “Is this … from Bridgerton?”

“It’s the music I play when I work. Keeps me and my victims focused.”

“Focused on what?” I whispered.

“On whatever I want. What I want them to tell me. They say if you play music, your mind can only process a certain number of things. You surrender to the ones you need to focus on. Ready to surrender to what I want you to?”

The music built, but I felt a million and ten things just looking at him there in those slacks. Like I wanted him but couldn’t have him and needed him all the same. I took a shaky breath, “We should go back to the room.”

“You should tell me what it is I do.” He moved back to hover over me and placed both his hands on my shoulders. Then he slid them up to hold my cheeks in his hands. We stared at one another, his green eyes pulling me in, losing me in that deep forest of his.

“You do the opposite of me, Dante. You hurt while I heal. I enjoy healing, but how can you possibly enjoy coming home wound up like this or enjoy …” My words drifted off because it wasn’t that I was scared of what he did exactly.

I was scared that we couldn’t fit together.

That I would lose him.

He may hurt others, but he always, always healed me.





22





Wax Play





Dante





“Inflicting pain on another human being?” I asked Delilah because I needed her to finish what she’d started. We needed to rid ourselves of whatever was infecting her views of this relationship.

She recoiled at the idea, and my instinct was already on high alert. I wanted to tower over her, make her cower in the corner, and make her beg for mercy from me.

I would have done it with anyone else.

I was bred to acquire information. I was the predator to her prey.

I leaned forward, and she sucked in a breath like she was about to lean back, like she wanted to run. Retreat looked good on her.

“That I enjoy seeing someone squirm in fear?” I asked. “That I like to earn a scream or a gasp or a moan?”