Chapter 15 Elena #2
His hand leaves my breast only to slide down my stomach, fingers splaying wide and possessive.
When his palm cups me through my pants, the heel of his hand presses firmly over where my clit is.
He rocks it there with enough pressure to make my hips jerk but not enough to let me chase any kind of release.
Teasing, torturing… all of it to remind me who’s in control.
I’m so desperate, I start to beg. “Please, Dante. Touch me. Please. I need—”
He doesn’t let me finish the sentence.
In one fluid motion, he hooks his fingers into the waistband of my pants and rips them down over my hips, taking my underwear with them. Cool air hits my heated skin, and I shiver violently, my thighs trembling as he yanks the fabric past my knees and my ankles until I’m bare beneath him.
He pauses for one heartbeat, just long enough to look.
His gaze rakes over me like fire, hungry with want.
I feel exposed in a way that has nothing to do with nakedness and everything to do with the way he’s seeing me.
Not just my body, but the marks—the proof—of the secret I kept from him for three years.
Heat rushes to my face before I can stop it.
Instinct takes over. My hands move quickly to cover the stretch marks along my skin.
I’m not ashamed of them, not usually. They are proof of Luca, proof that I survived something beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Proof that Dante and I are forever tied together, whether the world approves of it or not.
But under his gaze, vulnerability blooms. This is the first time he is seeing the aftermath, the silent story my body tells of the child I hid from him. For a fleeting second, I’m afraid to know what he sees when he looks at me now.
Dante’s brow furrows and he shakes his head almost immediately, a quiet disapproval flashing across his features. Not at me, but at the way I try to shield myself from him. His hands close gently around my wrists before I can pull away, firm but careful as he lifts them.
“Don’t,” he murmurs.
He draws my hands away from my body, ignoring the faint resistance in my muscles.
Unexpectedly, he laces our fingers together.
The gesture is more intimate than I expect, leaving me no room to hide.
His thumbs brush lightly over my knuckles and when I finally gather the courage to look up at him, the intensity in his expression steals the breath from my lungs again.
“Beautiful,” he breathes, the word rough with emotion. “So… unbelievably beautiful.”
The sincerity in his voice cracks something open inside my chest.
For a moment, I can’t speak. All I can do is stare at him, stunned by the tenderness threaded through his tone and the quiet reverence of a man realizing what was created in his absence.
His gaze softens further, his thumb lifting to brush along my cheek in a touch so gentle, it makes my eyes sting unexpectedly.
“You carried our son. You brought him into this world. There is nothing about you I could ever see as anything less than extraordinary,” he says quietly, bringing my hands up to kiss each knuckle.
Emotion swells painfully in my chest, nearly too big to contain.
He lowers himself again, letting my hands go while his broad shoulders force my thighs wider. His mouth trails a devastating path down my stomach until his breath ghosts hot and unsteadily against the slick heat between my legs.
His tongue drags up me in one long, slow stroke.
The sound that tears out of me is unrecognizable, primal.
My hips buck off the cushions to grind against his mouth, but he pins me down with one heavy forearm over my stomach and the other latched onto my right leg.
He presses it back, holding me open for him while he licks again, circling my clit with the tip of his tongue before sucking it gently between his lips.
Stars explode behind my eyes. My hands fly down to his hair. Every flick, every slow drag of that incredible tongue makes my body jolt. My thighs tremble around his head, muscles clenching and releasing as pleasure coils tighter in my belly.
He groans against me, the vibration sending shockwaves straight through my core.
His tongue laps at the slick leaking out of me, sliding it inside my hot, aching core.
I’m so pent up that I’m shattering before I even have a chance to soak it all in.
He works me through my orgasm, drawing out every aftershock until I’m a whimpering mess.
When he finally lifts his head, his mouth glistens. “I could live between your legs for the rest of my life and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
He crawls back over my body, kissing every inch of skin he passes until he’s hovering over me again, his forehead pressed to mine.
I reach for him with trembling hands at the same time one of his own moves between my thighs again.
Two fingers are pressed against my entrance, slipping inside easily.
The first stroke of his fingers makes me moan.
“Fuck,” he breathes against my mouth. “You’re so wet for me. You’ve always been so fucking perfect for me.”
The orgasm rips through me like wildfire. My walls pulse and flutter around his fingers, greedily trying to keep him inside even as the pleasure crests and crashes over me. My thighs shake violently around his wrist, hips jerking in helpless little spasms while I sob his name.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, Dante. I need you inside me. Now.”
My body clenches around nothing for a second when he pulls his fingers out of me. I’m left feeling empty and desperate, aching so fiercely, it borders on painful. The sudden absence is unbearable. My body mourns him instantly, slick and fluttering uselessly around nothing.
He leans back just enough to unbuckle the front of his pants, practically ripping the button apart in his haste to wrestle himself free. His cock springs out as soon as he shoves his pants past his hips, too impatient to strip himself any further.
He looks painfully hard, the head of his cock beading with precum and flushed dark in the low light.
Thick veins run along the length of him, pulsing visibly with every frantic beat of his heart.
He’s so rigid he curves upward, the tip already weeping, smearing a wet streak across the pristine white shirt covering his lower stomach when he shifts.
I can’t look away from him. My mouth waters, my core throbbing in answer. I reach for him without thinking, my fingers wrapping around the hot length of him. The sound he makes is guttural, almost wounded, and his hips jerk forward into my grip involuntarily like he can’t help himself.
“Elena,” he chokes out, his eyes fluttering closed. “Fuck—don’t. Not yet. I’m too close.”
But I don’t stop. I stroke up him, my thumb sweeping over the slick head to spread the precum down the shaft. He shudders violently, one hand gripping the back of the couch to steady himself so hard, the couch shakes with it.
A muscle tics in his jaw like he’s fighting not to come right there in my hands.
“Look at me,” I whisper, echoing the command he always used to love giving me.
He forces his eyes open instantly. The raw need in them steals what little resolve I have left.
I squeeze him gently. “I want you. No more waiting.”
Something fractures in his expression, relief so sharp, it looks like agony.
He nods once, jerkily, then reaches between us to take his cock from me.
His hand wraps around the base of it, guiding himself to my entrance.
The blunt head nudges against me, hot and thick, and we both gasp at the contact.
He holds it there, letting me feel him, letting me feel the promise of the stretch I’m about to take. The way he’ll fill me until there’s no room left for anything else.
“Tell me you want this,” he murmurs, breath ragged.
I lift my hips, trying to take him deeper. “I’ve never not wanted you. Give it to me.”
He exhales slowly and then thrusts slowly inside, inch by devastating inch.
The stretch burns in the best way, overwhelming and so fucking perfect. My thighs clamp around his hips, heels digging into the small of his back to urge him deeper until he’s seated to the hilt and we’re both trembling.
He stills there, buried inside me, and then leans forward. His forehead drops to my shoulder, his breath hitching as his cock twitches inside me. I can feel every inch of him throbbing, stretching me wide open, claiming every empty space I’ve carried since he left.
“Fuck,” he chokes out again. “You feel… fuck, you feel like home.”
Then he shifts with just a small roll of his hips, the friction sending sparks racing up my spine. I moan, something that he answers with a groan that vibrates against my neck. Each thrust drags against every sensitive place inside me until I’m whimpering continuously.
“Harder,” I beg.
He snaps.
The restraint he’s been clinging to since the moment this all started shatters.
He pulls back almost all the way and then slams back in.
The couch creaks violently beneath us. His hips snap forward again and again, driving into me with a rhythm that’s pure desperation, years of pent-up longing finally unleashed.
I can’t think. I can only feel him filling me, stretching me, claiming me in the fullest sense.
The slap of skin on skin and the wet glide of our bodies is almost overwhelming.
The way his cock hits that spot inside me over and over until stars burst behind my eyes nearly drives me to the brink of insanity.
His teeth graze my pulse. “Come for me. Come on my cock like you know how to do, Elena. Let me feel you.”
The command is all it takes.
I shatter around him, harder than before, my walls clamping down like a vise. They flutter and pulse, milking him as wave after wave of pleasure crashes through me. I scream his name, back bowing off the cushions, thighs shaking so badly, I can’t control them.
He fucks me through it, rough and relentless, drawing it out until I’m a sobbing, oversensitive mess still coming in helpless little aftershocks. His thrusts turn erratic, hips slamming deep a few more times before he groans my name.
Heat floods me in hot, thick pulses that seem to go on forever.
He trembles above me, every muscle locked tight as he drains himself inside me.
He collapses onto me, keeping his face buried in the crook of my neck.
I wrap myself around him, holding him as tightly as he’s holding me.
He doesn’t pull out. He just stays inside me, softening slowly, still twitching with aftershocks.
I feel the first tear slip from the corner of his eye onto my collarbone.
For a moment, I don’t understand what I’m feeling, just register a faint warmth against my skin and the slow path it takes as it disappears onto the cushion beneath me. I could mistake it for sweat.
I almost do.
Dante has never been the kind of man who allows himself to fracture. At least not where anyone can see it happen. He is control carved into flesh, discipline honed into instinct. Even when Matteo died, his grief had been contained and wielded rather than surrendered to.
My heart twists painfully as realization settles over me. I lift my hand slowly and cradle the back of his head, my fingers sliding into his hair.
He doesn’t pull away. If anything, he leans closer, his forehead pressing into the curve of my shoulder as another breath leaves him, shaky this time.
Carefully, I tilt my head until my cheek rests against his temple.
My thumb brushes a slow path along the back of his neck, the same way I used to when the weight of the world threatened to drag him under.
In that fragile closeness, I realize something that makes my throat burn. This might be the first time in years that Dante has allowed himself to be held instead of being the one who holds everything together.
“I’m right here,” I murmur softly.
For a long moment, he says nothing. It isn’t until my eyes grow heavy and my body starts to slowly drift that his arms tighten where they rest around me, his fingers curling gently along my curves.
He breathes me in, his voice soft.
“I know.”