20. Isabella
20
ISABELLA
T wenty-four hours after I last saw Teo, I finally try to open the door. It’s locked, of course, but after last time, I know it would have been idiotic not to try.
Thirty hours after I last saw Teo, I wake up from a nap to find another tray of food has been placed by my bedside table. He always waits until I’m asleep, the coward.
Thirty-eight hours after I last saw Teo, I’m about ready to tear my hair out.
There is nothing in this room besides the medical equipment.
I’ve already read through my doctor's notes about fifteen times. I know exactly how much tranquilizer I took, how many seconds my heart stopped beating, and how long it will take me to recover.
Well, I’ve officially recovered as of this morning. Or evening. The clock on the wall gives no indication of a.m. or p.m., and there are no windows. There’s just plain grey walls and matching, freezing tiles on the floor.
A cell, for all intents and purposes. It doesn’t matter if I can craft a shiv from the needle that was once feeding me life-saving fluids. Unless someone opens that door, I’m not getting out of here.
Exercise is my only form of entertainment. I’ve sweated through my hospital gown a dozen times by hour forty-eight.
The small bathroom in the corner of the room, hidden by a plastic curtain, offers little relief. The sink is barely big enough to fit my entire hand, so despite my best efforts to bathe, my hair still clings to the back of my neck.
It’s hour fifty-two when the door finally opens while I’m awake.
Teo walks in looking unfairly fresh in a shirt and jacket, as if he’s just walked straight off a runway. It makes me want to irrationally cringe away from him, as if I should care about the stark difference between us.
“Isabella,” his voice is tight and formal. His hands are clasped behind his back as he comes to a stop a few feet away. This should be good.
“You finally deemed me worthy enough to visit, did you?”
He looks at me, at where I’m half crouched on the bed, and raises a bored eyebrow. “Shall we get this over with?”
My hand tightens around the shiv I have hidden under the blanket. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The part where you try to seduce me, only to put a blade against my neck,” he sighs. “You’re getting predictable.”
I scowl back. “I knew you were watching me. A little creepy, don’t you think?”
“Had to make sure you wouldn’t pull something stupid.”
“Like kidnapping me, you mean?”
“Like attempting to poison someone with an unknown substance.”
We glare at each other for a long beat before Teo sighs again. “I’m here to negotiate with you.”
“Not interested.”
Teo merely nods and turns to leave. “Then I’ll come back later.”
Shit. Wait, no.
“I want a shower,” I blurt out before he can leave.
He turns back to me. “You’re willing to give up your mother for a shower?”
“No,” I scowl back. “You’re going to let me shower.”
“That’s not how this works.”
“It’s not humane to keep me here like this.”
“What part of imprisonment is so difficult for you to understand?”
I take a calming breath. “Okay then, what would it take?”
Teo walks back over to me, looking frustratingly pleased with himself. “Information.”
“I’m not going to?—”
“About your brother.”
I pause as I consider this…I’ve had over two days to think about how I can get out of here and for any of my plans to work. “What kind of information about my brother?”
Teo shrugs. “Something worth my while.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “I want out of this room, too. Keep me in the bunker, fine, but I will go insane if I spend another hour here.”
He narrows his eyes. “Depends how good your information is.”
“And,” I tilt my head, allowing my eyes to rake over his body, “you join me in the shower.”
He wasn’t expecting that, and I momentarily indulge in the satisfaction of watching his body turn rigid.
I offer him a pretty smile as I kick my legs over the side of my bed and let them swing. “My brother is being financed by a Californian mafioso. That’s where he flew to earlier this month.”
Teo seems to slowly turn this information over in his mind. Not that it matters. Even if Teo confronts them, my brother already has the money.
“To what end?” he says finally.
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
He looks at me before nodding once and turning on his heel toward the door.
“Hey—”
“Are you coming or not?” he says as he props the door open for me.
I have to pick my jaw up from the floor. “Right.”
I hold my head high as I pass through the door, doing my best not to be acutely aware of his every breath as he follows behind.
Outside my prison cell is more of the same gray on gray. There’s a long, thin corridor with several rooms branching off on either side. As we pass by, I glance through the glass door panes and spot…yes! There. A computer.
But for now, I let Teo guide me to the opaque door at the very end of the hallway.
I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted a shower, nor when I had asked Teo to join me. But now, suddenly facing the almost clinically clean wetroom, I begin to doubt myself. Especially when the door behind me closes with a soft click.
It’s just a power play. It’s always just a power play.
“Well?” Teo’s voice is low in my ear. He’s closer to me than I had thought. The hair on the back of my neck prickles with his soft breath.
I swallow hard. Then, I step forward toward the shower head on the far side of the room. As I walk, I begin to slip out of my gown and let it drop to the floor, making sure to sway my hips just so.
When I turn back to him, I keep my gaze sultry and unimpressed. “Well?”
His move. His face is half cast in shadow from where he lingers by the door, but even in the darkness, I can make out his eyes. That perfect shade of endlessness is staring directly at me.
I’m a forbidden fruit he just needs to reach out and take for himself.
I take a step back, still facing him, and turn on the shower behind me. The spray of water is immediate and perfectly warm to stave off the cold of the gray tiles beneath my feet.
He’s still watching me as I move into the stream. The gasp I make is entirely involuntary. After days of rotting in that room, I can barely imagine anything better.
I must close my eyes for half a second.
But when I open them again, he’s there, right in front of me. It’s terrifying and yet expected. Water splashes across his white shirt as those dark eyes bear down into mine as if he’s trying to look directly into my soul.
“Are you just going to watch?” I whisper, barely audible over the water cascading over my skin.
Every muscle in his body seems to tense up as if primed for an attack. And I welcome it. Oh, how I’m desperate for it. I’m open and vulnerable and at his mercy. Literally naked and presenting myself on a platter.
Please. Just feast.
His gaze rakes over my entire body, over my taunt nipples, the frantic rise and fall of my chest, the way I have to squeeze my thighs together to maintain any semblance of dignity.
“Touch me,” I say.
He doesn’t. My mouth dries up.
“Touch me,” I beg.
He steps forward, fully clothed and fully drenched, but still not touching me. “It’s not real.”
“Then let’s pretend.” I sound desperate now. “Just for now, just for this.”
His hand grabs the back of my neck, and I almost sob in relief as he pulls me up to him.
“I don’t need to,” he breathes across my lips. “You’re going to ruin me.”
My heart breaks as I close the distance between us. Because it can’t be real, and yet it is. It’s real when I open my mouth and swallow his groan, when his arms encircle my waist and hold me firm enough to bruise me.
It’s real, and it’s desperate, and it’s filthy when he licks inside my mouth and draws out a sound I’ve never made before. I drown in how he presses himself to me, growing agonizingly harder with every brush of my tongue against his.
The water makes it difficult to remove his clothes, but I endeavor, peeling the shirt from his broad torso and revealing the rock-hard abs beneath that I let my hands explore eagerly. Not softly. Every movement is all claws and teeth and desperation.
He pushes me back against the wall as he kicks off his pants. Water drips from his hair across his eyes and I’m so fascinated by the darkness of his expression, his parted lips that betray his haggard breathing.
But it only lasts a moment. He dives in to capture my lips again, and suddenly, I’m lost again to the sensation of him.
“You are everything,” he murmurs against my neck during one of the rare moments he lets me breathe. And I melt entirely, pliant to his every touch.
He picks me up and wraps my legs around his waist, and I can feel his nakedness pressed up next to mine and it’s both agonizing and the most spectacular thing I’ve ever felt.
I tear at his mouth, unable to hold back the frenzy as I squirm against him, desperate for him to be inside of me.
And he has the audacity to grin.
“You’re not going to pull a knife on me, are you?”
And it’s so unexpected that I can’t help but laugh. It’s wobbly and entirely unattractive, but he swallows it greedily like he can’t get enough of it.
Then my reward comes a second later when his fingers dig into my ass and he lifts me onto his hardness like I weigh absolutely nothing.
And he’s right. It is everything. To exist in this moment, to be filled by him entirely, to wrap my arms around him to keep myself pressed to every available inch of his body.
Our moans match, and his lips are on my neck as he moves me up and down. And it’s slow, but it’s so fucking deep, lubricated by the constant flowing water and splitting me entirely in two.
For a moment, it’s enough. It’s enough to just cling to each other and ignore the desperation of our situation. But that gnawing feeling within me craves more and more and more. More than anyone should be capable of giving.
But Teo can. Teo does.
The water goes off in time with his groan of frustration. Then we’re moving, and my nails claw into his back to keep me steady.
We don’t speak as he walks us out of the wet room and back into the corridor. The sudden chill makes me cringe into him, and he impulsively pulls me in tighter, wrapping his arms around my bare skin.
Then we enter a dark room, and suddenly, there’s a towel draped over my shoulders, and he’s kissing me again. I could kiss him forever, I think. It’s almost distracting enough for me to forget that he’s still inside me.
Then he moves. And then I don’t forget. Because I fall back onto a bed, and suddenly, he has me exactly where he wants me.
Skin meets skin with a delectable sting as he pounds harder and harder, and I’m entirely helpless to it. I’m thrown across the bed with every thrust. He uses me so hard that he has to reach down and hold me steady.
Everything is just stars and ecstasy. I don’t notice his hands until they're over my neck, pressing down on my windpipe.
I choke out a gasp, but he doesn’t relent. The pounding doesn’t miss a beat. The pleasure only continues to build inside me, and his hands close tighter.
And oh. He could kill me.
And I’d enjoy it.
And I’d let him, as long as he didn’t stop.
And that realization brings me over the very edge. My orgasm comes out strangled and utterly hopeless, but this is ours, and when I close my eyes, I’m at peace with the fact I might not wake up.
But then that pressure on my neck disappears, and Teo’s arms are around me gently, so unbearably soft as he cradles me to his chest while his own ecstasy pours from his lips with a tense shudder.
Then we're both falling back into the bed, curled around each other, unable to let the moment end.