10. Carmen
Chapter 10
Carmen
M y heart is practically beating through my ribs.
Not once when I propositioned Dante this morning did I ever think he was going to take me up on it.
Now he’s standing here, calling my bluff.
As if my body isn’t already screaming at me to accept his offer, to let him do whatever he wants to me. Even if he wasn’t holding the key to my freedom in both his metaphorical and physical hands.
“What’s the problem, princess?” Dante smirks at my clear distress. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
I swallow hard. “I didn’t really think you’d be interested. Are your mother’s bachelorettes not entertaining enough for you?”
This wipes the smile from his face. “We need rules.”
“Rules?”
“Should you accept, of course,” Dante pulls away from the bars. “I’m still expected to announce an engagement before we return to Brooklyn, so this won’t be an exclusive…situation.”
I bite back the bile that rises in my throat at the thought. “You recall I have a fiancé of my own waiting for me back home.”
Dante’s eyes darken at that. The thin line of his lips becomes weighted with distaste.
Not that I can blame him when the reminder is just as unwelcome for me. I don’t think it’s anything personal; there’s a reason my father has been trying to keep the arrangement quiet. Even if it’s expected, the age difference is still unsettling.
“And you need to preserve your virginity for Prince Charming?” Dante’s voice is chilling.
“Only if you enjoy having your neck attached to your shoulders,” I reply haughtily.
“That might be more threatening if Amos Rubio was in the same continent,” he quips back.
For the first time, a trickle of fear begins to run down my spine. It was one thing to flirt with this man through the bars of a cell where there was at least an illusion of separation.
But now, there’s really nothing stopping Dante from coming in here and taking whatever he wants from me.
And yes, there’s a part of me that wants that. I want to push him to see how far he’ll go, want to see if he can pull me apart with those hands, those lips. I want to taste him for myself.
But there’s still a part—the loyal part, the one that desperately wants to remain my father’s debutant, and for all those years I’ve spent curating this perfect image—that doesn’t want Dante to take everything from me.
I swallow down the fear. “I mean it. You can’t…I won’t let you?—”
“Carmen,” Dante’s face is suddenly very serious.
“I’m not willing to?—”
“We won’t do anything,” Dante levels me with a stare that makes my knees shake. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. I will walk away right now if that’s what you want.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
He smirks a little at that. “No, I suppose not.”
And suddenly, we’re at a stalemate. The silence stretches, and I become increasingly aware that the ball remains in my court. Dante has made an offer, one that I have no reason to believe, and yet…
“I would like to trust you,” I say on an outblown breath.
Because he’s my only way out. Because there are parts about him that I trust already. All those conversations sat on opposite sides of this cell wall felt earnest. How fiery he gets when talking about his mother, and how fond he looks when talking about the past.
Those things felt real to me.
Dante seems to be thinking hard himself, gaze scattering around the cell for a moment. “What if I got you out of here?”
I stare at him in disbelief. “What?”
At my tone, he immediately backtracks. “I meant if I moved you out of the cell. There are like a thousand rooms in this place, and it’s not like you’d even manage to reach the front door before someone stopped you.”
“You want to give me my own bedroom?”
“As a sign of good faith.”
“With a window?”
Dante gives me an odd look. “Most bedrooms tend to have those, yes.”
“And sunlight?”
I don’t miss the way his shoulders sag with something very akin to guilt. “I’ll find one that’s south-facing, how about that?”
And God, if that isn’t the most tempting thing I’ve ever heard. Having been trapped down here for weeks with nothing but the cool monotony of stone and iron. The idea of being somewhere else, to even just explore just a little bit more of this castle…
“Can I come in?”
The question catches me off guard. “What are you, a vampire?”
Dante smirks a little, showing off the dimple on his left cheek so beautifully as he picks through the keys in his hand.
“I was trying to be a gentleman.”
“ Dickhead. ”
With a dull click, the door to my cell swings open for the first time since I arrived with a low groan.
And for the first time since I arrived, I see Dante, unobscured by iron bars.
He shouldn’t look any different, yet I feel oddly emotional at the sight of him standing there. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
He’s all muscle and casual stance, tattoos that peek out from his shirt and up his neck. His dark eyes, closely shaved beard along that strong jaw, and that damn dimple are so familiar to me now I could draw them from memory.
He meets me where I’m at, standing in the middle of the cell. His steps are hesitant initially, then more hurried as he gets closer. I know why. I can feel the tug toward him, too.
I half expect him to stop and tease fun at me for just staring at him. There’s already an Italian insult on the end of my tongue.
But then his arms wrap around me.
And oh.
Fuck.
I melt into his embrace, unable to stop myself, especially when the sting of emotion threatens to well up in my eyes.
When was the last time someone touched me like this? So gently and yet so entirely consumingly that I never wanted to break away again. Definitely not the boys I’d rejected along the way.
Red. Mia Natali had held me like this once. Back when I thought she was my friend.
“Hi,” Dante whispers as he slowly pulls away. I momentarily mourn the loss of his touch, but he leans his forehead against mine, and that’s somehow better.
“Hi,” I reply.
If he feels my body shaking beneath his, he doesn’t comment on it. I blame my inexperience for why this suddenly feels so intense. It’s just a hug. He’s just breathing me in. I’m just surrendering myself to the embrace like the touch-starved virgin I am.
Because this is how I always imagined lovers might hold each other in a world where I got to make that kind of decision for myself.
And isn’t that a very dangerous thought?
“You can’t kiss me,” I breathe, scrambling to throw down a safety net below my wayward thoughts.
Dante frowns slightly. “Anywhere?”
I feel the flush in my cheeks. “Where else is there?”
Dante pulls away with a smirk before ducking his head by my shoulder. I’m about to protest, but then…
“Oh,” I gasp as his lips brush just behind my ear.
“Here,” he breathes. Then his lips begin to trail down my neck, mouthing at the skin in reverence as my toes begin to curl. “Here.”
He reaches the neckline of my shirt and peppers kisses across my exposed collarbone. Every single movement sets something within me alight. My hands find his hair, tangling my fingers through his curls in encouragement.
When he reaches my jaw, it’s the gentle press of teeth against my skin that jolts me back into reality, granting me just enough wherewithal to place a hand over his mouth before he can reach my lips.
His dark eyes bore into mine, amusement crinkling in the corners.
“Not on the lips,” I tell him, my voice only wavering slightly.
“You sure about that, princess?”
No .
“Yes.”
With a hum of disappointment, Dante returns to my neck. Only this time he caresses it with his tongue.
I gasp as the sensation sends merciless bolts of electricity between my thighs. Everything suddenly feels heightened on my sensitive skin.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Learning,” he breaths in my ear, sending another shudder through my body. Then there’s a gentle tug on my earlobe with his teeth that makes me gasp again. “Learning all the ways, I can make you do that. ”
I have to bite down on my lip to suppress the groan.
Impossibly, Dante notices. His own fingers ghost over my mouth, then pull down on my bottom lip to free it.
“You want to learn too, don’t you?”
I nod, helplessly.
“Then let me hear you.”
“ Merda.”
“Good girl,” he pulls away with an infuriating smirk. “Now, show me. Show me how you’ve been touching yourself.”
My hands suddenly feel clumsy as I move to obey. One finds a familiar purchase on my breast, already massaging into the skin the way Dante instructed before. The other hovers just above the waistband of my pants.
At my hesitation, Dante’s hand covers mine, cool and assertive, guiding me down, pushing us both toward the warmth between my thighs.
I gasp again as my fingertips blush against the wetness already forming there.
Dante attacks my neck again with a satisfied smirk, his hand never leaving mine. Fingers pushing against my fingers, urging them on, directing them to touch, to stroke, to push .
So much is happening at once. My other hand palms at my nipple in a frenzy, desperate for something to ground myself. But all progress is thrown out the window as Dante licks the length of my neck hungrily.
“Very good.” He bites and I don’t even know where his teeth sink into my skin because a cool finger slips into me right next to my own.
The sound I make is obscene as he stills, waiting for me to adjust to the intrusion. I feel stretched out, pulled in a thousand directions as he slowly withdraws. His other fingers clutch at my shaking hand before inserting us both again, together.
Two fingers work me open, but only one of them is my own.
I don’t know how I remain standing. Stars erupt in my vision. I lean so heavily into Dante, there’s nothing I can see but the broad expanse of his chest, the overwhelming scent of amber drawing me into the expanse of his bare neck.
In a heated frenzy, I press my lips against the skin I find there, burying my face into the base of his shoulder, tongue lapping at the taste of salt, of Dante himself.
The man stills.
I’m too dazed to understand the sudden absence, the sudden rush of cool air, the way my body stumbles, only to be caught again at the hips.
Our conjoined hands break apart. Then, there’s the snap of elastic as my pants are removed entirely.
I blink down at the sight of Dante kneeling before me.
The exact way I had imagined kneeling before him.
That same hunger in his eyes is intensified tenfold.
“Keep touching yourself, just like I showed you,” he whispers.
My hand quivers as it obeys, self-conscious under his watchful scrutiny. But I quickly lose myself to the feeling once more, replacing Dante’s absent finger with my own.
I barely notice him getting closer, barely registering the tug on my underwear before it falls to my ankles.
Until his nose nudges my hand to one side and…
“Ah!” It’s a strangled, desperate, keening sound that I make as his lips envelope the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top of my now throbbing core.
“ Merda!” It’s an unholy kind of worship the way his tongue encircles me entirely.
“FUCK!”
As the sucking pressure registers, something within me simply snaps.
An overflow of heat and pressure charges through me at breakneck speeds as my vision entirely dissipates.
There is nothing but this sensation. Nothing but his lips, his tongue. Nothing but his fingers digging into my hips. I barely feel my own on my breast, in myself.
It’s just simple, unfiltered pleasure.
Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
Vaguely, I’m aware of movement. That I’m being dressed maybe, that I’m being lifted.
The high of it, the adrenaline slowly dripping out of my spent body, makes things feel infinitely slow. I feel my face nestled against a firm chest, the unmistakable scent of amber. My sleepy eyes register the firm jaw, the dark beard, the tattoos peaking out of his t-shirt.
How long has he been carrying me now?
“Dante?” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own.
His jaw tics, and then suddenly, I’m being deposited.
I’m embraced by an entirely new sensation, sinking into a softness I’ve not experienced in months. Warm sheets, cloud-like pillows, a thick, unused comforter at my feet.
I feel my senses scrambling to return as I gaze up at the figure looming over me.
“As promised, princess,” his expression is unreadable as he steps away. “Get some rest.”
As if he has now conditioned me to obey his every command, I feel my eyelids become heavier.
The last thing I register before sleep consumes me is the fading evening light through the south-facing window.