Chapter 13
Lucia
When the first bite of the meal Dante made me graces my taste buds, the cogs I keep tightly wound to protect myself from getting hurt loosen in a way I’m unprepared for.
The dish is a simple meal—fried eggs layered over tomato slices on toast—but the richness it spreads through me closes my eyes and releases a moan of appreciation.
I can’t remember the last time I ate something that wasn’t manipulated beyond recognition. The shelter’s meals are a means to fill my stomach. They don’t nourish it. Their eggs taste like chalk mixed with too much salt.
The meatloaf is worse. I push aside the rumors about where the meat comes from when I eat it because dining at a shelter allows me to put every dollar I earn toward the agreement that will award me custody of Gabriele.
I used to live in shelters too, but I quickly learned that a cardboard camp in a wet alleyway is safer than being preyed upon by people paid to help. I only had to fend off one person when I was living on the streets. In shelters, I stopped counting when I reached double digits.
It wasn’t fellow shelter-goers expecting me to do anything for a candy bar.
It was the staff.
Although I now set aside two hundred dollars a month for a dump, I eat whatever is on offer, and I do it fast. Hunger makes people watch each other in ways I don’t like. They’re vultures. They won’t kill you, but you should never die in front of them. Not even mentally.
Yet here I am, inhaling two slices of toast without pausing for breath. I don’t realize how fast I’m eating until the plate is empty and Dante eyes me with an expression I can’t decipher.
Embarrassment prickles across my skin. “Sorry.” I wipe at my mouth even though there’s nothing there.
Dark locks brush Dante’s forehead as he stitches his brows. “Don’t apologize.”
I gesture at the plate, mortified by how fast I devoured the food. “My table manners are usually better than that.”
“You were hungry,” he says, as if the truth is the simplest commodity in the world.
It is, but I haven’t used it in so long that I’m struggling to remember that.
A pricey cologne infuses my senses when the cuff of Dante’s business shirt brushes my thigh. “I can make you another plate.”
“No.” The word comes out snappier than intended. “I’m full.”
He studies me for a moment, trying to understand my refusal. Two meals in one day are a necessity for most, but to me, it’s a luxury I can’t afford to get accustomed to.
“Thank you.” Gratitude is all I can offer without giving in to the chemistry brewing between us, so that’s what I give. “It was delicious.” Not quite as delicious as your cologne, but a close second.
Needing to leave before I forget why I can’t stay, I hop off the kitchen counter.
As I move away from Dante, a shift in the air spikes my pulse.
The bedtime story he told Camille drifts back to me, uninvited and imposing.
The dancer who rode into Happily Ever After with the dragon and the princess was a beautiful story, but some of his points were a little awry.
“I don’t think you’re a dragon.”
Dante’s mouth curves, but the silence drags on until the thread I’m clutching dangerously frays.
“How long has Camille been mute?”
I’ve told myself on repeat the past hour that I shouldn’t care, but I do.
Dante quickly hides the snippet of pain flaring in his eyes, but I see it, nonetheless.
His pain gravitates me toward him how gravity does with anything that’s falling.
After glancing away, he pulls the rug out from beneath my feet. “The only time I’ve heard her voice was when she thanked you.”
My heart painfully twists. Now everything makes sense. The shock, the hope, and how my presence must have felt like both a miracle and a wound at once. Imagine standing there, hearing your daughter talk for the first time, only for her words to be directed at a stranger.
Gosh.
“Dante…” I whisper, because anything louder would be too overwhelming.
He still doesn’t look at me. His shoulders are hunched and his hands hang loosely at his sides, as if trained to mask the pain but never show it.
With battle lines forgotten, I inch closer. I shouldn’t—the chemistry between us is still blisteringly intense—but the desire to soothe the agony in his eyes draws me to him like a moth to a flame.
My heart backflips when I meet him in the living room. Wordlessly, I encourage eye contact. When I get it, electricity hisses as erratically as the pounding of my pulse.
“She loves you. You know that, right?”
When he delays replying, I gather his balled hands in mine. I understand his fear. I’ve experienced the same with Gabriele, and I imagine it growing worse when I’m finally granted custody.
“She may not be able to express it, Dante, but she shows she cares in actions.”
My limbs tingle when he sheepishly nods.
This is where I should walk away and maintain the arm’s-length theory I use with anyone not named Gabriele, but I can’t. I want to comfort him and weather him through his latest storm. I crave it more than my lungs crave their next breath.
Dante blinks when I weave my arms through his, then curl them around his waist. With my ear pressed to his chest, I offer him silent comfort.
His heart gains an extra thump when he draws me in until I’m steeped in his masculine scent.
Our heights differ so much that the buttons on his dress shirt dig into my cheek when I switch from my right ear to my left, eager to capture his smell on both sides of my face, and my hair gets caught in his beard when he rests his chin on top of my head.
As his fingers count the bumps in my spine, I grow tipsy on a scent I’ll never forget. It’s familiar and comforting.
It feels like home.
Snapping my eyes shut, I strive to block out the onslaught of emotions I’ve only felt with one other man before.
It is useless. I’ve already trampled over multiple lines I swore I’d never cross with this man, so I’m not surprised when my hand slips beneath his crisp business shirt seconds after releasing it from the waistband of his trousers.
Dante’s muscles twitch when I run my fingers over the twin indentations in his lower back. Every minute flutter quickens his heart rate. It’s the simplest of touches but detrimental to my sanity.
I shift, needing to lessen the pressure between my legs. The tortured groan that rips from Dante’s lips when my erect nipples graze his chest smudges the lines even more. I’m desperate for skin-to-skin contact and apparently willing to get on my knees to make it happen.
Dante swallows hard when I back away, then try to lower myself onto my knees. I say try because before I can, Dante pulls me back toward him and crushes our mouths together.
With one hand on my ass and the other tangled in my hair, he lifts me until my legs curl around his waist and I’m grinding down on his rapidly thickening shaft.
The way he lifts me so easily is a huge turn-on, but it’s nothing compared to the tingles that race through my body from his heart-stuttering kiss.
I’ve never been kissed like this.
Anyone would swear his entire existence depends on this kiss.
While lashing his tongue against mine, Dante moves us through his apartment. I assume he’ll take us to one of the many bedrooms on the far side of our shared abode, so you can comprehend my shock when he walks us toward the mattress he plucked me from twenty minutes ago.
Through kisses and moans inappropriate for someone who’s meant to be keeping their distance, Dante pulls my shirt over my head, unlatches my bra, then disposes them both halfway across my cramped apartment.
I work as quickly and efficiently to strip him as bare as his attention always makes me feel. I fiddle with the pearl buttons of his dress shirt without removing my lips from his mouth.
Once his fantastic pecs and ripped abs are exposed, I shift my focus to his belt. As one hand tugs on the buckle, the other strokes him through his pants.
Somehow, he gets even harder.
He’s impossibly large, and more than my mouth waters when his erection springs free from his boxers.
I’m drenched front to back.
With a growl, he slaps away my hand before it can circle his fat cock, and then he tosses me onto the bed.
“I’m not done kissing you yet, angelo.”
Cupping my butt, he drags me to the edge of the mattress before shifting his torturously delicious kiss from my mouth to my pussy.
He doesn’t waste time with unnecessary formalities.
He spreads me wide with his shoulders, stuffs his hands under my ass, then sucks my clit into his mouth.
My scream ripples in the evening air when he pierces his tongue deep inside me, followed by a long, leisured lick, triggering an immediate orgasm.
“Oh god…”
I’ve never unraveled so easily before, and its speed doesn’t diminish its potency in the slightest. My climax rushes through my body, making me a critic of delayed gratification after only one taste.
Patiently and gently, Dante brings me back from the high. As his tongue finds my clit, one of his hands moves from my ass to my drenched slit. My eyes roll skyward when he stuffs two fingers inside me while he strikes my clit with back-to-back licks.
The combination of his tongue and fingers is overwhelming. It’s so erotic that before I can make our exchange anywhere near even, another orgasm shakes my limbs.
I gasp and moan as goose bumps trek over every inch of my skin.
Yet Dante still doesn’t relent.
He keeps eating me until I feel used in the most delicious way possible. My body sings in harmony by the time Dante climbs up my spent body and curls my legs around his sticky waist.
He’s naked, and his dick is sheathed with a condom that has to be labeled extra-large. He’s long, veiny, and thick. Even though our last exchange was only hours ago, I can’t wait to feel every inch of him again.