Fractured Freedom(95)
Dante had tried to soften the blow. Every day he did. He let me go out to the animals on the farm where I cried in the stables with the young ones. I swear the mothers in that stable knew my pain. Our big red horse stayed by me always. Sometimes, I climbed up on her back and just laid on her mane, and she let me. We mourned our losses together.
Dante did too. Even now, he handled me like I was fragile, like I was about to break. Even though I’d seen firsthand how he’d ripped apart a man for me, his touch was the softest, most delicate thing I’d ever experienced. Dante knew people, though. He studied their weaknesses and their strengths. He could break you or put you back together better than you could yourself. Maybe he knew I was about to self-destruct, that the ticking time bomb of being perfect had already exploded, and now he didn’t want the nuclear bomb in me to go off too.
He was doing everything perfectly, exactly by the book, and still, I couldn’t climb from the darkness to tell him. The way he touched me, the way he softly kissed my neck, it all felt like sympathy. Like sadness.
I stepped into the tub, sat down, and let him wash my body. The silence between us was so loud with pain that I couldn’t handle the heartbreak. When he shampooed my hair, he massaged my scalp and stared at me staring at him. Our gazes were locked on one another, and I searched his eyes for anything other than agony.
The man who normally looked at me with unrestrained heat and desire was leashing it, and suddenly I wanted to see it. He held the pain of losing our baby too, and yet he tamped it all down.
For me.
Dante did it all for me.
And I wanted to do the same for him.
I grabbed his wrist and slid his hand from my hair to my neck and then down to my breast.
He jerked it away. “I’m taking care of you, Lilah.”
I stared at his hand where he’d fisted it and saw the veins pop in his forearm.
“I want you to take care of me in a different way now.”
“I don’t think we’re ready for that. You’ve been through a lot,” he said. I knew he meant it, but his eyes raking over my body told me differently.
“Get in the tub with me.” I stared at him as he stood up from kneeling, a frown on his face.
“We have to get over to your parents’.”
“They can wait. I want you, Dante.” I pronounced each word slowly so he could take them all in. “Remember how you always tell me to use my words? I’m using them. I want my husband between my legs.”
When he didn’t answer right away, I glanced down at his sweat shorts and saw the massive tent that told me his cock wanted me, even if he was trying to talk himself out of it.
I sat up from the bath, bubbles and water cascading down my breasts, and shoved down his shorts. He let me do it, glaring at me now. I didn’t care, though. I was taking in the way he stood there, completely naked, chiseled like a Greek god with a pierced cock big enough for me to choke on. I loved how it stood to attention just for me, how the dark metal glinted in the light like it wanted to show off.
He shook his head as I crooked a finger and moved to the side of the tub that was against the wall. “This isn’t a way to solve our problems.”
“Our problem is that you’re babying and pampering me and I’m moping.”
“It’s not moping, it’s coping. We’ve been over this, and you’re allowed to have ups and downs, Lamb.”
I nodded. I knew he was right. I knew that my depression would hit and I wouldn’t be able to smile sometimes. Today, though, I felt strong enough. I knew we’d get through anything, and I wanted to make sure he knew that too. “So are you. You can’t be my savior every single time.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. I could tell he was frustrated, trying to tamp down on his pain to deal with mine. “It’s not about me. You need to be loved—”
I shook my head. “You would baby me for the rest of my life, Dante. I swear it—”
“I wouldn’t regret a single moment of it either.” He shrugged, turning toward the mirror and vanity behind him rather than stepping into the tub with me.
“If you don’t get in here and fuck me without a look of sadness on your face, Dante, I swear I’ll scream and cry all night.” There. That was using all the words I wanted to.
The man did as he was told. He couldn’t deny me even if he tried. We worked through my emotion that day in the way I loved best. He fucked me like a man on a mission in that tub.
After, I stepped out of it smiling at him. He reached for me, and I jumped away. “Stop. Now, we really have to get ready.”
The man’s green gaze held mine for a second longer before he murmured, “I love you, Delilah Armanelli. I love your smile, your hair when it looks like I’ve fucked you into oblivion, and the blush on your tits when I say things like what I just said. I love how hard you tried before you tried hard not to try. I fucking love you. I know this has been challenging, but I wouldn’t want easy with anyone else. I think you know all that, but I wanted to remind you.”
Dante’s vows had been just like this, so deep from his soul that I think everyone in the farm fields of our home, where we had the ceremony, had been crying.
“I love that you love me at my worst but enjoy me at my best, and I love that I can sometimes catch a glimpse of the worst in you, even if you’ve practically found a way to control every part of you and the world. We might be living through a hard part of life together right now, but I’m an overachiever, so we’re going to get to easy if it’s the last thing I do.”