16. Carmen
Chapter 16
Carmen
D elirium is a funny thing.
Not that I’m delirious now—but there’s something about tonight that makes my thoughts feel loose, unhinged from where they usually sit.
I let the pins in my hair slip through my fingers, each one hitting the vanity with a tiny, metallic clink.
My dress pools around my legs as I sink onto the edge of the bed, toes pressing into the thick, antique rug. I need a minute before tackling the intricacies of untying the corset. It had taken an embarrassing amount of time to get it on in the first place.
The fire has burned low, throwing lazy golden light across the room, and yet I feel…restless. Like I’m falling and falling though my feet are firmly on the floor.
It’s not exhaustion keeping me here, staring into the flames. It’s not even confusion.
I know exactly what happened tonight.
Dante Grasso held me in his arms and listened to me like I was saying something worth hearing. Like my wants, my desires—things I’ve spent my entire life pushing down—actually mattered.
Like he has done ever since he started visiting me in the dungeons.
And I let him.
I wanted him to.
It’s dangerous to want like that.
Because if I let that desire bloom, if I let it root itself too deeply in my chest, then what?
A sharp knock at the door cuts through my spiraling thoughts.
My breath catches, fingers curling into the fabric of my dress. I already know who it is.
I stand slowly as if something might shatter if I move too fast. The distance between the bed and the door is only a few steps, but it feels like miles.
When I pull it open, Dante is standing there. His tie is loose, his jacket long discarded, and there’s something wild in his eyes.
For a long, stretched-out second, we just look at each other.
Then—his voice, low, rough, “Tell me to leave.”
He’s giving me an out. One last chance to pretend that dance, that moment, meant nothing.
I don’t take it.
I don’t say a word.
Dante exhales sharply, then steps inside, crowding the space between us. His hands come up to cradle my face, his touch impossibly gentle despite the fact I’m certain he’s falling and falling with me.
And then?—
Then his lips are on mine, and everything else vanishes.
How we’d gone so long without this…why I’d denied this for us for so long…re both questions I no longer have any capacity to answer.
I’m swept up in the rightness of the way we press into each other. The way his body curves around mine as I stagger back into the wall. The way our mouths just slot together…
It’s all perfect. It’s like we were designed for this.
“Tell me what you want,” his voice whispers against my mouth.
And oh. This.
This is more perfect. This is him listening to me. This is him showing me that I’m still in control. This is him telling me that my choices are all that matters.
“I want it to be you. I want it to matter.” I can’t stand the thought of another man’s hands on me.
“It matters,” he kisses me again. “It matters.”
“I want it to feel like…” You love me.
The thought threatens to choke me. It’s too soon, too complicated. And yet there’s that feeling again of falling and falling. It might be too late.
“You matter. You matter so much to me.”
It’s enough.
I respond to the kiss with more enthusiasm, snaking my arms around his neck and pulling him ever closer. My lips part, allowing him access to deepen the kiss. To explore my mouth with hungry excitement.
There’s a part of me that wants to laugh with the sheer joy of it all. The rightness of it.
He’s leading me off a cliff (we’ve already fallen off), and I’m happily following behind. Matching every kiss with my own, every lip nibble with a retaliation. I’m echoing every press of fingers against cheeks and arms and throat as he crowds me against the wall.
“You taste so sweet,” he murmurs as his hands explore my body with reckless abandon.
Warm hands, sure hands. Practiced hands. Of course, Dante knows what he’s doing. Knows how to hold me, to draw out my pleasure. The thought sends a pang of jealousy through me that I try to stifle with another kiss.
How many times has he done this? How many other women have known how to hold him back?
Suddenly, I feel nervous. Inexperienced.
He must feel my sudden hesitancy as he pulls away, concern pulling on his eyebrows.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I blurt out before he can ask.
Dante relaxes instantly, a small smile tugging at his lips as he presses his forehead into mine. “I’ll teach you.”
“I just…” my thoughts scatter as his hand caresses my face again, and I have to scramble to pull them together again. “I want to be good for you.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath before his lips push heavily into mine. Gone is the gentleness. This kiss is urgent, demanding. Breathtaking.
“You are good for me,” he whispers against my lips. “You are so good for me. There is nothing else I want. You have no idea how much you affect me just like this. ”
I let out a short gasp as his crotch pins me against the wall, revealing just how true his statement is.
“You are perfect.”
I should be embarrassed by how much the press of his hardened cock turns me on. Especially as I instinctively rut against the firmness, desperate for some friction of my own.
Dante hisses his protest, though the only heat is from his own echoing desire.
“Although, if you keep doing that, I won’t be able to hold myself back,” he breathes in my ear, maneuvering himself so that his thigh now presses between my legs. “And I have every intention of taking all the time in the world.”
His thigh presses in harder as if granting me permission to resume my previous activities.
This time, it’s my turn to hiss as I’m finally able to chase that glorious friction for myself.
“That’s it. You’re doing so well.”
His praise only makes me rut faster. Dante’s mouth reclaims mine with almost lazy endurance, a perfect compliment to my near-frantic chasing of my pleasure against his thigh. He’s humming his approval against my lips when a soft whine escapes me.
I barely notice when his hands deftly unfasten my corset—only gaining awareness as the air begins to fill my lungs without constraint. It’s greatly needed as I’m fairly certain breathing has become dangerously far down on my list of current needs.
“Look at you,” Dante whispers as his hands graze across my chest. “You’re so beautiful like this. I want to show you every possible pleasure your body is capable of.”
Lips suddenly trail down my exposed neck. Further and further until…
“ Fuck!”
Dante takes my nipple into his mouth, sucking slightly as his tongue flicks over the sensitive peak, worshipping it to overstimulation. Nothing else registers, not even my frantic thrusting against him.
As I think I might have to push him away to save myself from the pure torment of his tongue, he pulls back, a smug grin on his face.
“I want to be your first everything. I want to claim every part of you. I want to draw every pleasure out myself.”
Never before have I truly understood the appeal of “purity” until this moment. Until my own body sings to this obscene, possessive statement.
Because fuck. I want that, too. I want Dante’s mouth on every part of my skin. I want him to brand me, to stake his ownership on every single part of me. I don’t want to think of anyone else but him.
“I want you,” the words escape my mouth with pathetic reverence. Not nearly as poetic as he had been, finding myself simply incapable of more coherent thought.
Regardless, my words affect Dante instantly. One second, he’s pressing me into the wall, the next, he’s hoisting me up, and my legs instinctively wrap around his waist.
He carries me a few paces backward toward the bed, never once removing his lips from mine. Ravenous and starved, I match every lash of his tongue with my own.
He lowers me to the mattress, and I desperately try to cling to him, but he holds me there as he pulls away.
For an appalling moment, we’re separated. The noise I make is needy and loud, and I’m aware my hands are reaching out to grasp onto him.
Dante chuckles softly. “So impatient.”
Annoyed, I sit up on my forearms, only for my mouth to go dry at the sight of Dante removing his clothes.
It’s not like I haven’t seen partially bare before. Those arms of his have always been positively lethal, and it took me a long time to recover from seeing the man in swim shorts.
But standing before me, unabashed by his nakedness, is a god. Carved from some unholy, tan stone. Broad and muscled and perfectly…perfectly…fuck.
My eyes snag on his cock.
I remember once fantasizing about putting it in my mouth. It’s almost laughable now. There’s no way that thing would fit.
“Um…” I croak.
“See something you like, princess?”
A retort is on the tip of my tongue, but when I finally tear my gaze away to meet his, I see I’m not the only one affected. Dante’s dark gaze roams my body—now entirely bare except for the flimsy fabric of my panties.
Dante makes short work of removing them before crawling back over me. Everywhere our skin meets, heat burns between us.
I love the way it feels, the way he feels, the way his weight allows me to feel so safe, so secure.
I attack his mouth first this time, pulling at him to lie flush against me. I tangle my hands in his hair at the feeling of his stiffness pressing into my stomach.
A minute or an hour pass with nothing but insatiable, frenzied everything . My lips are on fire, swollen and wounded and desperate for more. My nipples are savaged, my neck no doubt covered in feverish bites.
He hovers over me, arms pressing into the mattress and caging me in.
And for a moment, we do nothing but breathe. Catching our breath, tasting the electricity in the air, the sweat, the amber.
I stare up into his endlessly dark eyes, and he gazes straight back. An unspoken question, a soft caress of my cheek. I kiss the palm of his hand, and something in him softens. The frenzy from before quietens as he reaches down to adjust his position.
“Hold on to me,” he says.
An offering, I realize a moment later, as the pain of his intrusion shocks my body into shuddering out a sharp gasp. My fingers dig into the planes of his back, and I’m immediately grateful to have him there to ground me.
He doesn’t move for a moment, letting me adjust to his length, letting me catch the breath I hadn’t realized I’d lost.
His voice reaches me a moment later. I don’t know when he starts murmuring sweet encouragements in my ear, but he doesn’t stop.
“...doing so well. You feel so good. You’re so beautiful. It’s okay. You’re safe with me. You’re safe. This matters.”
I nod numbly into his shoulder, and slowly, my body relaxes under his gentle coaxing.
“I trust you.”
He pushes in further, and we repeat the process. This time, it’s easier. This time, I don’t need so long to recover. The next is better again.
Finally, he pulls out entirely. His eyes suddenly search my face as if worried he might find regret in my expression.
“Is that it?” I say instead.
His expression changes in a pulse-racing flash as he enters me again. And…
Oh…
There’s no rush to his movements, but there is something else. Something more. That feeling of fullness doesn’t seem so intrusive anymore. The stretch isn’t painful…it’s…
Pleasurable.
“Fuck, you’re so tight, ” Dante hisses, overwhelmed himself.
But I barely register it. Not when he withdraws to push back in, and…oh…it builds.
“Dante.”
“You feel so fucking good.”
“ Dante! ” and there’s panic in my voice now because. Fuck. I’ve never felt like this before, like there’s something threatening to rip me open from the inside. It feels so good. So, indescribably good. I shouldn’t be allowed to feel like this.
A thumb brushes over my cheek, capturing the tear I didn’t know I’d shed. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Do you want me to stop?”
“NO.”
He chuckles through another deep groan as he slides to his hilt. “Do I feel good, princess?”
“Mmmhmm.”
“Let me make you feel good.”
With his permission, I let myself succumb to the sensation of him all around me. To that building, ripping, coiling pleasure. It bubbles higher and higher with every thrust.
Until Dante’s rhythm suddenly stutters. Until his body tenses over mine. Until I jolt right over the edge myself.
Dante has shown me pleasure before, but this…
Our cries of release mingle into the warm air between us.
And for a moment, we stop falling and falling.
For a moment, we simply float.
* * *
The world feels softer in the quiet after.
Warmth lingers between tangled limbs and linen sheets. My head rises and falls with Dante’s breath, his fingertips tracing slow, aimless circles on my back. I’ve never felt like this before—light, unburdened, safe.
He presses a lazy kiss into my hair, his voice rough with sleep. “Well, that’s one less virtue for your father to auction off.”
I huff, tilting my face up to meet his gaze. “You assume there were many to begin with.”
Dante grins, teeth flashing in the dim light. “You’re right. Pure is not the first word I’d use to describe you.”
I swat his chest, and he laughs, catching my hand before I can pull away. Instead of letting go, he lifts it to his lips, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to my fingers.
The teasing fades into something else. Something softer.
There are so many things we should probably talk about. So many things to figure out and decide and worry about. But this isn’t the time.
Instead, I watch him, feeling the steady beat of his heart under my palm. “Do you think your mother will be mad I stole you away from the marriage mart tonight?”
He exhales long and slow, stretching an arm behind his head. “I hosted the damn ball, didn’t I?”
“She’s terrifying.”
Dante chuckles. “ You’re scared of my mother?”
“I have sense,” I reply. “That woman could run a country if she wanted to.”
He shrugs. “She runs this one well enough.”
I don’t argue—because he’s right.
The first golden streaks of dawn creep through the south-facing window, turning his skin warm under my fingertips. He shifts, propping himself up on an elbow, watching me with an expression so open it almost steals my breath.
A lazy, knowing smile curves his lips. “Come out with me.”
I blink. “What?”
“Montecroce,” he says. “Let me show you the city.”
I hesitate—but only for a second.
And then I nod.