Chapter 31 Dante #2
Slowly, she lowers herself onto me. Her tight walls curl around my length, inch by torturous inch. A simultaneous moan tears out of both of us as she takes me deeper, the orgasm she stole rising again inside me, brick by fragile brick.
My hands claw at the chair’s arms until the wood cracks, splintering beneath my grip. I grit my teeth, forcing myself to stay still while she adjusts, sinking further, her breath stuttering at the angle.
Tears form in her eyes, shimmering trails against the shadows as she begins to circle her hips, grinding herself onto me. The slow rotation drags me along her inner heat, every movement squeezing me tighter, coaxing another groan from deep in my chest.
“Fuck,” she breathes, her face tightening with effort, sweat beading along her hairline.
Before I even understand what I’m doing, my hands lift—wiping the sweat from her forehead, from her temples, my fingers soft where everything else inside me is feral.
She didn’t want us touching, but I can’t sit here and take everything she gives without giving something back.
Estella leans into my touch, pressing her forehead briefly to mine as she pushes down until she sits fully on me—her body stretching, trembling, accommodating every last part of me before she finally, greedily, swallows me whole.
Shifting her rhythm, she begins to rock her hips back and forth, each movement sharper, more deliberate, until she’s fucking me in earnest. A gasp tears from her throat when the chair’s arms finally snap under my grip, wood cracking loud enough to echo through the room.
The sound spurs her on—her pace quickens, her desperation matching mine beat for beat.
The room fills with the frantic cadence of our bodies, skin slapping hard, breath turning ragged, moans tumbling out of us without restraint.
We’re both seconds from breaking, but neither of us crosses the line.
We hold the promise, hold the distance, hold the restraint that somehow turns everything hotter.
We take everything from each other.
And we give everything back.
Pleasure crashes over me in relentless waves—bigger, brighter, fiercer than anything before. A faint ringing hums in my ears, a hot buzz sparking beneath my skin, and it strikes me with startling clarity.
I must have been fucking dead for years, because only now I feel like I’m finally breathing for the first time.
That truth imprints itself inside me as Estella lunges forward and crushes her mouth to mine.
Her teeth sink into my lower lip, tugging until she tastes the dried blood, then she moves to the upper one, biting, sucking, claiming.
I groan into her, whispering against her lips as she tears me open, layer after layer, until something snaps inside me, the force of it blinding.
I detonate.
A shattered moan rips from deep inside me as I spill into her, my body breaking apart under the force of release. She collapses with me, convulsing in sync, her pussy clenching so tightly around me as if she’s terrified I’ll slip away.
I thrust up into her a few more times, helping her ride the crest of her orgasm until her arms wrap around my neck, clinging to me like an anchor. Our foreheads collide gently, breaths syncing, chests heaving as we struggle to find the ground again.
Heavy, warm silence settles over the room, broken only by the soft, uneven gasps we try to steady.
My hands drift across her back, tracing slow circles over her trembling skin. Gradually, a realization creeps in before exploding in my mind like a bolt of lightning slamming into a bare tree, sending chills racing up my arms.
Because in the aftermath… There is no cold.
No freezing void creeping in.
No claws of ice, no dark whispers, no echoing emptiness.
Only warmth. A blooming, tingling comfort I’ve never known—born right here, in the wreckage of our breathing, forged in the spark of everything we just created.
A new star, lit from the flames of us.
I’m still frozen, limbs soft and useless, as if spun from cotton candy.
She slips off me, and the absence of her sends a hollow ache through my chest. A thought claws its way up from the back of my mind—the instinct to rise, to clean her, to kiss her, to dress her, to do anything that keeps me anchored.
But I can’t.
Not when a violent storm is ripping through me, each wave crashing so hard I have to consciously remind myself to breathe.
My vision smears at the edges, and my mouth falls open slightly when she settles on the bed in front of me.
Through the haze, I catch the softness in her eyes—no questions, no urgency. She simply sits.
A lighthouse in a blackened sea while my own vessel gets tossed and dragged beneath the swell.
“You are not broken, Dante,” she says softly.
I press my lips together, desperate to hold back the tremors that begin to shake me. They feel unnervingly familiar, like a memory resurfacing through the warmth still clinging to my skin.
I’ve known these tremors. I’ve lived with them. They’ve etched themselves into my bones, followed me like a shadow I never asked for.
“I’m—” The words choke, thick and wet, as something burns at the corners of my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
The air shifts, growing heavier, almost suffocating. Her words seem to uncork something hidden inside me, letting it spill out and stain the space between us.
“Your need to turn pain into pleasure,” she continues, her voice trembling with something that mirrors my own inner unraveling. “Remember what you told me? About where it comes from?”
I nod slowly. “Yes. My father.”
The admission leaves my mouth with unsettling ease. I’ve already remembered what he did to me, and after being with Estella, I’ve begun to face it, even when it slices me open.
“He, um—” My voice cracks again, and shame rises fast, bubbling and frothing inside me. I’m a grown man, yet I can’t form a single, complete fucking sentence. “He beat me. Regularly.”
She pauses, her gaze steady on me. “You told me you were always on alert. Locking yourself in the closet, even when he wasn’t home.”
A sharp discomfort coils in my spine, like thorns scraping under the skin. I shift in the chair, pulling my back away from it, suddenly too aware of every inch of my body. “Yes. Because I was scared.”
My jaw twitches, tightening painfully. My eyes lock onto a point ahead of me, refusing to move. “I didn’t want him to find me. And one day, I was looking out the window, terrified he’d come back, and I didn’t notice how far I leaned out. My hands slipped, and I fell.”
The words spill from me—the same story I’ve already shared with her—but this time they feel heavier, as if they carry more weight than before. Something pierces from beneath them, making them taste even more acidic on my tongue.
“Where was your mother, Dante?” she asks, her words thin and trembling, threaded with tears. I can’t bring myself to look at her. I can only feel the faint shiver running through her body, her unease rising in perfect sync with mine.
I shake my head before I can stop myself, and the sensation strikes me like needles piercing through my skin from the inside out. The old, dangerous itch awakens beneath the surface, urging me to rip myself open, to claw the truth out of my own flesh.
“She was home,” I manage, clinging to the frayed scraps of memory.
Each piece is jagged, embedded deep in the folds of my mind, and speaking them aloud feels like pulling them out one by one—each removal ripping open a wider, bloodier wound.
“She came to my room to ask how I was doing, and I got scared, so I—”
My vision darkens at the edges, closing in like a shutter, and my hands tremble violently. The rest of the memory tries to surface, but it feels like shards of glass pushing deeper into my skull, grinding as they go. The longer I hold them in, the more the wounds rot, festering in the dark.
But I can’t say it. I can’t. Not when everything inside me is collapsing.
“You weren’t looking out the window because you were scared of when your father would come home,” she says, each word pulled through her own pain. “You were doing it because—”
“No.” The protest slips out, barely a whisper, soaked in uncertainty. “It’s not true.”
“You heard her coming into your room again,” she continues, despite my shaking head, “and you panicked.”
My chest tightens, then seizes while air turns to shards in my throat. My breathing spirals into rapid, jagged gulps. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the memories don’t disappear—they rearrange themselves, falling into place like puzzle pieces that have been waiting too long for someone to notice them.
My head keeps shaking, desperate to stay inside the cocoon of denial I’ve wrapped around myself for years. My mind refuses to let me understand what my body has always remembered.
“You panicked because you didn’t want her to take control again,” Estella whispers. “You didn’t want her to put out the fire your father lit—the heat you’d learned to survive—only for her to freeze it, turning it into shards of ice that sliced through your veins.”
Every word hits with the force of a hammer, breaking through the barricades inside my skull. With each impact, another jagged fragment falls away, revealing more of the wounds beneath—ugly, raw, and far too familiar.
“That’s why you always need control, Dante,” she says, a sob rattling through her. “Because you can’t bear the thought of feeling what she made you feel when she touched you.”
The final shard rips free, dragging its serrated edge through every hidden corner of my mind.
The shock spreads through my body in violent, crackling waves.
And then, the clean picture snaps into focus, untouched by time.
A memory quietly preserved in the back of my mind, waiting for someone to wipe the dust away.
My father beat me. Regularly. He locked me in a cage to ‘make me stronger’, to shape me into the man he believed I should be. The pain became routine, even bearable. My skin broke, but inside I grew numb. So numb I couldn’t move.
And that’s when she came into my room.
“I couldn’t make her stop,” I choke out, a breathless, broken chuckle trembling in my chest. There’s no humor in it—just the hollow, dry echo of what I felt the first time she did it.
“I thought she wanted to comfort me, but then it started to feel so strange, and I couldn’t… Fuck, I couldn’t… I can’t breathe.”
My knees crash against the floor, the impact sending a violent shudder through the room, but my body barely registers it. A scream claws at my throat, desperate to escape, but the only sound that comes out is a thin, strangled sob as the last pieces of me splinter apart.
Her arms wrap around me instantly, pulling me into her as she sinks with me, collapsing to the ground like the weight of my confession has dragged us both under. Her tears slide into my hair, mingling with the tremors rippling through me.
She holds me as I crumble, piece by piece, our hearts finding the same aching rhythm—a duet written in misery, carried on shared breath.
Her warmth is the only thing anchoring me, the single thread tethering me to the present while my mind forces the memory to replay in brutal, unforgiving loops, drowning out everything else.
My hands wind into her hair, gripping desperately, clinging to the only anchor in the world that can steady me. I bury myself in it, inhaling her as if she’s the only air left that won’t cut my lungs.
We fall together, our skin burning with the heat of everything we’ve tried to outrun. The wildfire cracks open inside us, raging fast and merciless, consuming every corner of the darkness we’ve carried for far too long.
The night absorbs it all—the grief, the shame, the sorrow bleeding from our pores—and holds it for us.
And when the fragile dawn finally rises within us, it will find us still bound together, forever intertwined in the place where pain has finally met its match.