Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
DANI
He speaks my name, and I almost crumple to the floor.
How many nights have I woken with it echoing in my mind—the sound I’ve imagined a thousand times, only to find my bed cold, and the silence that accompanied it deafening.
To hear it now, alive and spoken from his lips just feet away, strips my defenses.
Seeing him from a distance was agony, a sweet penance, an atonement for my sins committed in the name of love.
One I accepted freely. But seeing him up close…
it’s my undoing. He sees the tears threatening to fall, and his eyes soften for me. I know it’s only for me.
I lift my hand to him, desperate, and his fingers find mine. Then my body, pulling me into him. I sink into his arms, the comfort is a memory made flesh, and I have no intention of ever letting go.
“Vic,” I whisper, but my voice dissolves as sobs spill freely. I can’t stop them, nor would I want to. After all these years, this man who holds me now deserves every one of them.
“Shh, baby,” he coos, voice low and reverent, and I melt into him a little further.
“You’ve been so brave, my little angel, and I know what you did for me.
” His words fall like absolution, yet they burn through me like a confession with sobs that wrench from me with desperate pleas.
I cling to him, trying to get closer, clawing at him with a need to be inside him, not physically, though I expect that, too, but spiritually.
To be stitched into his heart, fused where nothing could ever rip us apart again.
Somehow, I’m lifted, set upon the desk. His body stands between my parted legs, like my protection and tether all at once. The air is cool against my skin, ghosting up the slit of my gown, turning the ache in me to a molten desire.
Through the black slits of his horned mask, his eyes are black, hollowed pits devouring me with one look. His mouth curls, not quite a smile, but a premonition of what’s to come. I swear I can hear his unspoken vows, spilling from the darkest recesses of his mind.
His hand glides upward, deliberate, along the ruffled edge of my gown.
A single, featherlight touch brushes my thigh, and a shiver overtakes me.
He hums approvingly because he knows it not just from the contact.
As I shift my legs slightly, hoping he will move them in the direction I want, a breeze travels up my thigh and hits my panties, starting to soak from just the closeness of Vic, causing me to rock when I feel his cock harden.
And when I look up at his devil-horned mask, his hand gently drifts up the slit of my dress.
I inhale sharply, anticipating him to touch me where I need him to.
Still, then he pulls back, his hand changing course and traveling up the side of my waist and up my ribs, barely touching the outside of my heaving breast that arcs involuntarily, presenting it to him in offering, as I fight the urge to lean further into his gentle touch.
His fingers continue trailing to my neck, then cheek, and then he holds himself there.
Touching the side of my mouth, he rubs at the red on my lips, but it doesn't smear. He stares at me for a moment before he wipes away some tears and then rubs my lips with the moisture, smearing it slightly at the corner. His cock twitches in his pants at the memory of what I assume is me taking him in my mouth and the sight of the red around his base as I swallowed him down, his hot cum shooting down my throat as his head tilted back, roaring with his release. I’m reliving the same memory, and when he looks at me, it’s like he wants to devour me whole.
And all I can think is, Damn, please do.
His fingers slide into my hair, searching until they find the silken ties of my mask.
With a slow tug, the ribbons loosen, and the mask slips away.
My face is bare to him now, revealing my mascara-streaked eyes that flow like dark rivers of secrets between us.
Every fractured piece of me is laid bare under his scrutinizing gaze.
I look up, caught in his gravitational pull, and I want to live in his orbit forever.
He crushes a thumb underneath my lower lids, smearing the remnant of my tears.
I don’t know if he’s trying to stitch me back together, much like he does with his practiced surgical precision, wipe away the evidence of how I unraveled in front of him mere moments ago, or maybe he just has the innate need to touch me.
Just to remind himself that I’m here in the flesh, not another dream, or conjured up memory.
For a moment, I can’t fathom the years that have passed between us.
Time feels irrelevant, just a cruel trick of distance and silence in the time apart.
Because here he is, looking down at me with the same obsessive devotion and the same raw hunger, as if not a single second has passed since he last held me.
Every fiber of my being still belongs to him.
This time it’s my turn to reach for him, and he doesn’t hesitate.
He surges closer, closing the gap, until his body pins me against the desk.
His cock grinds against my core. He’s so hard, unrelenting, and I bite back a cry at the sheer pressure of it.
My panties are already drenched, clinging to me, not doing much to soften the reality of how badly I want him inside me.
Instead, I lift my hand to his cheek. He leans into the touch like a starved man, like a child deprived of love, and sometimes I forget that he was.
His vulnerability was exposed and reserved only for me to witness.
His hand grips my thighs, spreading me wider and dragging me closer to accommodate him.
My fingers find the clasps of his mask, and even though I am desperate to claw it off, I undo them one by one, and he helps me—tearing it off and tossing it aside.
Suddenly, there are no barriers between us.
No masks and no obstructions. No more walls and no more lies.
Only his eyes burning into mine, with a wild hunger that makes the breath seize in my chest. He clings to me like I’m still his entire world, but the rigid length straining against me tells me another truth, a darker, more primal one.
His hands tremble with reverence, yet grip me with desperation.
It’s the duality of him, the man who wants to protect me, and the beast within him that wants to devour me.
When he leans closer, I can tell that we are beyond remembering now, and beyond tenderness.
His mouth crashes onto mine, and I moan into him, clawing at his jacket, at his shirt, and anything in my way, frantic for bare skin.
Frantic for him. He presses into me harder, cock grinding against the thin, soaked fabric that does nothing to protect me from him.
I rock helplessly against the pressure, chasing the friction, chasing the years we’ve lost with every thrust of his hips.
It’s his demand. It’s my plea. But it’s our surrender.