Chapter 24 Trilby
Trilby
I press my back against the pillar and hold my breath. The only sound I can hear is the beating of my pulse as blood pumps through my temples, and it’s getting faster.
This is what foreplay must feel like.
For almost a month I’ve been moving around Cristiano, testing the boundaries, seeing how far I can push it before one of us snaps.
I’ve felt the burn of electricity whenever he’s entered the room and wondered what would happen if his fingers coasted just a little bit higher than my wrist or my arm.
What if they stilled across my breast? What if they lingered on my hips?
What if they went to places forbidden to anyone but the man I’ve been ordered to marry?
The thought makes my bones weak and my core smolder.
I strain to hear the soft click of an Italian leather shoe or the rustle of designer cotton, but nothing comes. I slowly breathe out and press my palms to the cool concrete.
In the distance something scurries along the edge of the garage, and every hair on my body bristles. What was I thinking when I leveled this challenge?
It’s simple. I wasn’t thinking. I was taunting.
I was doing everything I could think of to provoke him, to push his buttons, because I can’t keep up this act anymore. Something has to give.
Someone has to give in, and I’ll be damned if it’s me.
The tension between us is so taut it’s about to snap, and neither of us can afford for it to snap in full view of Savero, or my family, or even the friends I keep at the wrong end of town.
I don’t know what the snap will look like. All I know is I can’t take this tension anymore. It needs to break; to leach out into the air. The pressure needs to release, otherwise I’m going to explode.
My virginity feels like a chain around my neck.
A broken hymen and a high-five. That can’t be all this comes down to.
This moment, this anticipation, is so much more.
I feel as if this is what I’ve waited my whole life for, not a tick in the box that supposedly determines my worth and my value as a woman.
Every cell in my body sings for Cristiano. I’m crying out for him to touch me, to feel me, to hear the song my body’s performing for his ears only, before it’s obliterated by a false sense of duty.
I breathe in again slowly and turn my head to the right. Nothing. Not even the dart of a shadow.
I lean over a little, careful not to overbalance. My fingers grip onto the concrete as I brush my cheek along the smooth pillar, then I turn my body until my front is flat against it.
The cool wall is soothing against the heat of my chest and my stomach. I bring my hands up to steady myself and lean toward the edge of the pillar a little more.
He’s nowhere to be seen. Everywhere is silent.
Then the hairs on the back of my neck shiver under a hot breath.
“Caught you.”
His whisper drips with promise, and my eyelids flutter shut.
A shudder rolls down my spine as he closes in on me.
“Now, what am I going to do with you?”
I don’t miss the dark teasing behind his tone. It warms my pelvis and turns my stomach to liquid. I want to turn my head, but I can feel his heat right there, tantalizingly close.
His breath strokes my nape, and his lips press softly against my hair.
The suspense, the not knowing what he’ll do, has me teetering right on the edge of sanity. If he doesn’t do something to ease this unbearable tension, I’m going to lose it.
My heart is in my throat, every sense on high alert. Then I feel his fingers pushing between mine, his hot flesh pressing my hands into the cool concrete.
Slowly, he works his fingers beneath mine, curling them into my palms, and finally, his body pushes up against my back.
A satisfied sigh leaves my body, along with a soft moan. He’s pressing his erection into the small of my back and holding it there, like a warning.
A low, desperate growl rolls through his chest. “This is what you’ve done to me.
I’ve been walking around with a fucking hard-on since you strutted into that damn bar.
My cock has never been so fucking needy.
It won’t settle for anything less than you.
I can’t even sleep when you’re in the next room. I can’t breathe.”
His words light me up like a flame. He’s halfway to explaining just how deeply I feel.
Like a brazen cat, my back arches, lifting the cheeks of my ass so his hard-on slips between them.
My head drops backward onto his shoulder, and an untethered sound I’ve never made before in my life curls its way out of my chest.
His breath scorches my collar bone as he dips his mouth toward my shoulder. His teeth graze along the sensitive skin, from the tip of my shoulder to the curve of my neck. I tilt my head to the left to give him access, because the need for him to sink his teeth into me burns.
His voice trembles with restraint. “I’m afraid if I taste you, I’ll never stop.”
One word leaks from my lips. I never thought I’d resort to this, especially not with someone like Cristiano.
“Please . . .”
He pauses, his lips drifting lightly over my skin, making me raw with need.
I hold my breath.
And then I weaken under his strong hold as he pins me to the concrete.
“You drive me fucking crazy.” His low murmur sets my skin alight, but he cools it with soft brushes of his lips. It’s maddening, and it’s doing nothing to burst this tension.
“Cristiano . . . please . . .”
“Please what?”
My breath leaves my lungs in short bursts. “I don’t know,” I admit honestly. “I don’t know what I need, but I can’t bear this anymore.”
Very slowly, he pulls my right hand in toward my body. He takes a long breath and then extends my arm down until my hand is about level with my underwear. The throbbing between my legs grows needier, as if my body knows something I don’t.
With his fingers threaded through mine, he pushes them beneath my dress.
I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s balancing on a fine line between torturous and darkly promising.
His fingers guide mine toward the soft cotton of my panties, and then, with my mind dancing to an uneven rhythm, he presses softly into them.
A loud, uncontrollable sigh rushes out of my lungs.
God.
“Is this what you need, kitten?”
I swallow repeatedly, unable to speak.
As he presses my fingers more firmly, a strange wetness coats the tips through the fabric, and a shocked gasp makes my spine rigid.
“Yeah, you’re soaking.” His smile is unmistakable against my skin, and in that split second I decide that’s enough to live for. We’re doing this, and I’ve never felt so desperate yet sated in all my life.
Gently and slowly, he works my fingers in circles against my panties. I turn my face and cool my forehead against the pillar. I want this unbearable need to give, but also to never end. Small notes of desperation drip off the edge of my tongue in time with the rough breaths caressing my neck.
“You’re shaking so hard,” he says gruffly. “Is that for me, kitten?”
I can’t respond. I can only gyrate between the growing burn at the top of my legs and the dark promise pressing into the base of my spine.
I open my mouth to speak, but he nips me with his teeth, halting me.
“Don’t tell me we can’t do this.” His voice is edged with desperation, making my legs weak.
An image of Savero crawls across my lids, a replay of his fingers shoving into the depths of a man’s throat.
Ice cold fear winds its way from my heart to my fingertips, but still it doesn’t cool the burning embers coating my skin.
As terrified as I am of Savero, it’s his brother I want, with every dying fraction of my soul.
I breathe out with absolute conviction. “I wasn’t going to,” I whisper, my own voice in tatters of need.
“I want you to put an end to this feeling.”
His tone softens. “What feeling?”
“Like I’m going to explode. I don’t know how to live with it, and it’s burning me up.”
Suddenly, the heat against my back disappears, and I hear him settle on one knee behind me. He wraps a hand around my left ankle and lifts it up to rest it on his raised thigh.
“What did I say about wearing these short dresses?” He teases the hem with his tongue, tickling the curve of my bottom. Lust pools between my legs, and I’m mortified, because his face is so close to it, yet I’m desperate for him to put an end to this longing.
He feeds his hand through the lace, curls it into a fist, and then yanks, ripping it clean off.
The tips of my fingers are sore from where I’m gripping the pillar, and my breaths are short and needy.
Then something hot, wet, and firm presses against my clit.
Oh God.
He hums his approval, sending tendrils of fire across every inch of my body.
Taking hold of my hips, he licks me hard and slow, from the uppermost tip of my clit to the puckered opening of my bottom. An animalistic moan escapes my throat, but I’m too far intoxicated to care.
His tongue circles my entrance, and when I’m thoroughly soaked and slippery, the cool underground air dances over me. He leans into me again and laps at my pussy with a focus bordering on obsessive, the pressure increasing gently with the speed of his tongue.
I press my forehead harder into the cold concrete and close my eyes.
“Jesus. Fucking. Christ,” he murmurs between licks. “I didn’t know sin could taste so damn sweet.”
He makes a long humming sound and then pulls back before turning me around in his thick hands.
My eyes remain closed, because I don’t want to lose this feeling.
I know how treasonous this is; I know I should put a stop to it.
But, for the life of me, I can’t. I want to be the sweet sin on the flat of his tongue for as long as I live.