Chapter Eight #2
His face was…a kaleidoscope of bruises. The lower lip she was so obsessed with was swollen and cut with crusted blood.
A cut under his right eye made his cheekbone swell up, and a blue-green bruise the size of her palm painted his jaw.
This was so far from the calm, remote Alessandro she’d known from day one that she forgot her anger. “Are you in pain?”
Leaning against the desk, he threw his legs forward. “Pain was the point of it.”
“You look like you took part in a street fight. And lost.”
“Ahh, your lack of faith hurts more than all of this, tesoro. I promise Bruno looks worse than me.”
She rubbed her palms over her hips, just to do something. “I thought you were beyond all this, your control ironclad.”
His gaze searched her face and held hers. “I was in a nasty mood, and there were only two ways to work it out of my system.”
Heat flushed through her in warm rivulets at his tone.
“What were you about to do? Alcohol messes with your medication.”
Back to this, were they? “Two sips won’t kill me.”
He raised a brow, and even with his face all bruised, it was the most arrogant gesture she’d ever seen. It made her blood boil, brought all the anger and hurt back to the surface. Looking away, she grabbed her jacket from the desk. “I was stupid enough to want to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
She reached the damned heavy double doors. “I’m leaving.”
He stalked toward her. There was no other word for it. “And going where exactly?”
Sam took him in—how the drop of blood on the pristine white of his shirt looked so out of place, the buttons undone to his abdomen showing olive skin sprinkled with sparse chest hair, how his usually immaculate black trousers were rumpled.
How he hadn’t even waited long enough to change before sparring.
As if all the masks of politeness had been stripped off, leaving him with only pure instincts and wants.
She wanted him even more like this. Wanted this raw, distilled version of Alessandro to want her.
“Angelina’s cousin’s apartment. I’ll still visit Matteo daily. Angelina knows the truth. There’s no need for us to pretend.”
“Did you have fun at the club?”
The sudden switch in the conversation left her unbalanced.
“I did.” She didn’t even have to force the smile.
“Angelina’s cousins are a hoot. Especially after she told them that I’d never been to a club before.
Had never danced before, never been flirted with before.
” The twins had been outrageous to begin with, sandwiching her between them on the dance floor, but it was harmless fun.
“Did you like all the attention you got?” There it was again, that feral quality about him. Somehow, he’d stalked her back across the room until she was leaning against his desk. Away from the door. “Did you dance with those two men to make me jealous, Sam?”
“I don’t play games like that.” She frowned. “Wait, how did you know I was dancing with…” She bit her lip, and his gaze zoomed down. Heat crested her cheeks as she remembered all the crazy things she’d gotten up to. “You saw those videos?”
“Matteo showed them to me.”
Whether he knew it or not, he’d pushed her into crawling out of her shell. Into owning her scar and her body.
She’d been terrified when she’d walked into the club. Terrified that her scar would be the only thing people would see, that it’d make them feel sorry for her. But while one of Angelina’s girlfriends had openly asked her about it, no one had given it a second glance.
While she was never going to be comfortable in provocative clothes, now she knew that it was her choice. Not one made out of shame.
“You won’t make me feel guilty about it. Not about this overtly provocative dress. Not about the secondhand smoke I inhaled. Not about the fact that I enjoyed flirting with two men. Men of my age. Men who found me sexy and interesting.”
He cast a long look at the dress in question, his lashes flicking down.
But his gaze didn’t linger on her scar. It moved over the upper swells of her breasts, the asymmetric hem that barely covered her left thigh and her feet clad in black stilettos.
Then it climbed back up over her, and this time it did linger on her scar.
Long fingers clasped her cheek with such gentle reverence that all the longing she’d fought flooded back into her. “Tell me why you want to leave.”
“I don’t want to let one arrogant asshole’s rejection ruin my trip.”
He laughed, a deep, hard sound that enveloped her. And then he hissed in pain. The cut in his lower lip had split again, and a drop of blood appeared.
She pressed the pad of her thumb to stanch it. He flinched but held still. “I didn’t mean to hurt you more,” she whispered, a languid heat spreading through her.
He clasped her wrist and pressed his face into her palm.
His body caged hers against the desk without quite touching.
“I like all the things you inflict on me, bella. Laughter, hurt, jealousy… They remind me that I’m alive.
” He nuzzled into the side of her face. His chest rose and fell, the tension in his body setting hers alight.
“You’ve no idea how much I loathe myself for hurting you. ”
The soft press of his lips at her temple cracked open her heart with such violence that Sam couldn’t breathe. Word by word, kiss by kiss, he was stealing away parts of her, and she didn’t know how to keep herself intact anymore.
“Then, don’t,” she whispered, tucking her chin into the crook of his elbow. He smelled of sweat and blood and whiskey, and she inhaled him as if he were air. Fingers around his forearm, she clung to him, loving the fierce heat of his body.
“I haven’t felt anything for so long… With you, it is futile to resist.” His soft words were breathed into her skin, as if he were releasing the shackles around himself. He tilted her chin up. “Tell me what hurt you so much.”
“You looked at me as if I was…broken. As if my history makes me damaged. Even Matteo behaved better.”
He was shaking his head, regret making his face even more severe. “Ahh…you know just how to hurt me.”
Sam shook her head. “I—”
Thumb notching into her chin, he cut her off.
“Look at me, Sameera. Listen to me.” His warm breath feathered over her face.
“In my eyes, you’re perfection. From the moment you walked in, I wished you were mine.
I burn with jealousy when you talk of him with such fondness.
How I reacted…it’s my weakness, bella. Not you. ”
His hands cradled her head, and his mouth hovered an inch over her mouth, and Sam thought she might be drowning but she didn’t care.
“I want you so much, Sam, it’s an ache in my body.
Even the bruises won’t kill it. But the thing is…
” he licked her lower lip, and a hot poker of sensation hit her “… I can’t offer anything beyond a few weeks.
No future, no relationship. This would be an affair to work you out of my system.
For some goddamned reason, you’re a novelty. But the fascination will wear off.”
“How does your brutal honesty make you hotter?” she said, chasing his lips. She licked his lower lip, tasted the blood and then nipped him right where the lip was split.
He shuddered, jerked her toward him until she wrapped her arms around his neck and every inch of her was plastered to him. “All I have to give you is pleasure. But you’re the kind of girl—”
Sam buried her face in the hollow at his throat and scraped her teeth over his pulse.
“I’m the kind of woman who has filthy dreams about you, Alessandro.
The kind that wanted you from the first moment, even though I came here for Mateo.
The kind of woman who touches herself thinking of you.
The kind of woman who survived three surgeries as a teenager and wants to taste life.
If you hated hurting me, then make it better. Make me feel good.”
“Bene.” He licked the shell of her ear, and Sam shivered. Then his mouth went south, trailing warm, wet kisses across her neck, her shoulders, the swell of her breasts.
She swept her hands over him, the sharp jut of his shoulders, the warm, taut skin of his chest, the hard muscles beneath. That she could touch him with such abandon made her breath falter. She snuck her fingers under his shirt, scoring his abdomen with her nails, then trailed them lower.
“No.” His forbidding tone made her belly roll. “My control is so thin, tesoro. And my need to be inside you…too high.”
“Yes.”
Gripping her wrists with one hand, he pushed them above her head with a growl that made dampness gush at her sex. “I want to make it up to you. I want you to forget the men you were dancing with, the ones you flirted with. I want you screaming my name.”
Sam twisted, trying to throw off his hold. She felt a soft breeze on her bare breasts before she heard the hiss of the zipper on her dress. Her nipples instantly puckered, brazenly begging.
“Perfection,” he whispered, gray eyes heavy with desire.
He watched her as he cupped them. As he swirled mindless circles around her nipples. As he rubbed the aching buds with his fingers. As he played with her relentlessly until her spine was bowing toward him. As he bent his head and flicked at one aching bud and then…feasted on her.
It was greedy and dirty and wet, and she was bent over his arm as he licked and nipped and drew her into the wet cavern of his mouth. Need pooled low, making her thong damp.
She moaned in protest when he released her, afraid he was abandoning her again. Until firm fingers clasped her calves.
Heart fluttering behind her rib cage like a trapped bird, Sam looked down.