Chapter 5
TERINA
Present
My orgasm is an atomic blast igniting me from the inside out. I can’t fathom how such a storm could have built so quickly. A handful of minutes, and my entire body is glowing with radioactive pleasure.
I usually take longer to reach the finish line.
My body was primed for release, and I choose to believe that is entirely due to the lengthy lull since the last time I touched myself.
It has nothing to do with the scene that played out in my head while I fingered myself with that devious little bullet teasing my swollen clit.
Nothing about DiAngelo screwing me against the outside of my parents’ house, pounding into me from behind, was hotter than any other fantasy I’ve ever had.
Not remotely.
Whatever the reason, the orgasm was exactly what I needed. Now I—
DiAngelo’s masculine rumble follows two sharp knocks at the door. “Time to come down.”
My thighs snap together so fast my skin claps.
Sweet mother of God, I hope he didn’t hear that.
“What?” I’m so damn disoriented that I can’t scrape together a thought.
“Dinner. It’s time to come down for dinner.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there,” I holler a bit too loudly.
Dinner. That’s right. I need to get dressed for dinner.
I bolt into action, throwing myself together faster than a pop singer manages a mid-concert costume change.
The whole time, I reassure myself that even if DiAngelo heard my thighs slap together, he wouldn’t have a clue what I’d been doing.
It could have been my hands clapping for all he knows.
Maybe I was scrolling, saw a hilarious video, and slapped my thigh with hysterical silent laughter.
It could happen.
Dinner is a master class in artful avoidance.
I engage with my family as though all is forgotten while successfully pretending DiAngelo doesn’t exist. My gaze never strays in his direction.
His stare, on the other hand, borders on obsessive.
It heats my skin like shards of sunlight on a crisp winter morning.
I bask in my refusal to acknowledge him, despite the temptation. And that temptation is incessant. I want to see the turbulence in his multicolored irises. I want to confirm he’s as unsettled by me as I am by him. But I hold strong throughout dinner, not caving once.
“You square things away with D?” Renzo asks me after we eat while the others are relaxing in the living room. I slipped away to go to the restroom and find my brother waiting for me in the hallway when I return.
“What do you mean?”
“Did he smooth things over?” Creases settle into my brother’s forehead.
“No, why?”
Renzo frowns. “When he came down after getting you for dinner, I caught him smiling. I was hoping he’d apologize and that maybe you two had come to an agreement.”
Tremors of unease tickle the skin on the back of my neck.
“That would have been nice, but no. He’s not exactly the apologetic type.”
“It’s not that,” Renzo starts with a sigh. “He takes protection duty very seriously. It’s nothing personal.”
I clear my throat to hide my scoff because everything about our encounter outside felt very, very personal, but I’m not about to tell my brother that.
“I get it, and I’m not planning to give him any trouble, so you can stop worrying.” My smile is genuine because I truly don’t want to make this situation any harder for Renzo than it already is. He must sense my sincerity because his features soften before he pulls me into a warm hug.
“Thanks, Rina. I really appreciate that.”
“You’re not leaving, are you?” DiAngelo’s baritone voice is rugged in a way that only maturity can accomplish. He’s a few years older than Renzo, which puts him close to ten years older than me. The innate authority in his words refuses to allow me to ignore him any longer.
I finally bring my gaze to his.
“We need to talk first.” He spears me to the spot.
My brother jumps into motion. “Yeah, of course you do. I was just going to check on Shae.” He scurries away to check on the woman who might just be a bigger badass than he is, leaving me alone with DiAngelo.
Traitor.
I cross my arms and lift my chin. “You need something?”
Did I just see the corners of his lips twitch? The motion was so fleeting, I question whether I saw it at all.
“I need your number, and we need to talk about schedules. I don’t want you taking a step outside without me.”
“I hope you realize that if someone wants me dead badly enough, there’s nothing any of us can do about it.
” I’m not sure where the sentiment comes from.
It’s morbid and reeks of defeat—two descriptors I wouldn’t normally use to label myself.
Even when I think I’m over the past, it haunts me in new ways I’m not expecting.
This seems to be one of those times.
DiAngelo’s eyes flash with conviction as though I’ve laid down a personal challenge.
I don’t understand it.
I don’t understand him.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are we not even supposed to try to prevent it? You have a death wish I need to know about?”
“No, I’m just saying that crazy people do crazy things. I’d prefer not to have your death on my conscience because some Russian lunatic decides he wants me dead.”
“That’s not your choice to make,” he counters firmly.
“Isn’t it?”
His hulking form inches closer. My breath catches.
“Someone kills me because I’m protecting you, only two people are responsible—me and the twisted fuck who manages to catch me by surprise.”
“But if I’m the target—”
He stops me with a raised hand. “That. Isn’t. Your. Fault.”
A wave of emotions crashes over me. Suffocating me.
But I can’t let him see my struggle.
DiAngelo has no way of knowing that he’s touched on the most sensitive, exposed nerve that I possess. And he’s the last person I’d be willing to open up to about something so deeply painful.
My only defense is anger.
So I do what I have to and cling to my outrage. I encircle myself in its decadent velvet embrace and wear my fury like a crown.
“The outcome’s still the same, so you’ll excuse me if I’m not in favor of your sacrifice, no matter how voluntary or honorable.” I poke his chest with my finger as the anger surges.
DiAngelo wraps his huge hand around mine and tugs me so close our noses nearly touch.
“Good thing for both of us, I’m a hard sonofabitch to kill.”
He suddenly looks down at our hands as if to examine them.
His shift in focus derails me, leaving me flailing, unsure what to feel. I can’t imagine what’s going through his head until he slowly lifts my hand toward his face and takes a long, heady sniff of my fingers.
His multihued eyes dilate.
And somehow, I know that he knows what I was doing before dinner.
I locked the doors.
I scrubbed my hands.
I was nearly silent.
But like a wild animal scenting prey in the wind, DiAngelo knows. And he likes it.
My lips part, and blood floods my cheeks.
“Like it or not, Rina, I’m your new shadow.” His gravelly voice rakes across my skin. “You won’t take a single breath without my knowledge. Not a whimper … or a moan.”
Dear God.
This is so much worse than I ever imagined. DiAngelo is so much more than I realized—more intense, more aware, more raw.
If masculinity were a drug, most men would be mild recreational users, whereas DiAngelo is freebasing enough to stop an elephant’s heart. And it’s natural to him, not some manufactured facade to compensate for insecurities. He’s the real deal, and it’s intoxicating.
I’ve never known a man like him.
I can remember thinking Craig was a man’s man—watching action movies and getting excited about spotting rare sports cars. Looking back, I realize he was rather average in that department, and not in a bad way. He was exactly what I was looking for at the time.
I was different back then.
Life was different.
Had I met DiAngelo back then, he probably would have terrified me.
I wish that were the case now. And while he causes adrenaline to course through my veins, fear has nothing to do with the electric energy heating my bloodstream.
His mere presence causes a chemical reaction inside me that’s impossible to ignore.
If Craig was a twinkling sparkler on the Fourth of July, DiAngelo is an all-consuming atomic blast.
Both serve their purpose. And while sparklers don’t excite me like they might have before, there was a time when that was exactly what I needed.