47. Riley
I spend longerthan I should staring into the darkness after Chloe falls asleep for the night. I’ve never been an indecisive person, so the fact that I’m lying in bed thinking about the three men I’m about to leave instead of actually heading downstairs to spend some final time with them is just another sign that things have gotten all jumbled up and weird.
I don’t want to leave them that way though, so I finally get fed up with myself and roll out of bed.
“Everything okay?” Maddoc asks when I silently pad into his office.
Dante and Logan are with him, all three of them clustered around his desk, and my heart starts to thump with a longing I don’t have time for. “Yeah. Fine. I was just…”
Already missing them.
“Everything’s in place for the morning, princess,” Dante says with a warm smile that just makes the idea of leaving even worse. And suddenly, I can’t stand the thought that they’ve done so much for me and don’t know—not really, at least—how I feel about them.
“I want to give you guys some of the money,” I blurt out, which makes all three men freeze and stare at me like deer caught in the headlights. I swallow, the idea sinking in and feeling right when nothing else about leaving them does. “Tomorrow, after I claim my inheritance,” I go on, “I want to give the Reapers a cut for all your help.”
I owe them, but it’s more than that. They changed their minds about trying to force Chloe—or me now—to marry one of them so they could take it all, and that means everything.
But to my shock, Dante stays quiet, Logan’s face goes blank, and Maddoc’s gaze turns hard and flinty.
“No,” he bites out. “We’re not taking your fucking money.”
It feels like a slap.
“You deserve it,” I say, which just seems to piss him off even more.
This time, Dante speaks up before Maddoc can. “That’s not what any of this is about, princess.”
“I know you guys need it.”
“Is that what you think we did this for?” Maddoc spits out, advancing on me. “For a cut of your inheritance?”
“I think you’ve used up a lot of resources helping me and Chloe out.”
And all for no gain.
Maddoc’s eyes narrow. “And, what, you decided it was some kind of fucking business transaction?”
The accusation cracks into me like a whip, and he storms out before I have a chance to stop reeling. Logan follows him out, as tense and stiff as he’s been ever since the night we fucked, making me seriously wonder if I was mistaken about everything.
It… hurts.
“Hey,” Dante says softly as I stare after his brothers.
I quickly wipe the tears off my cheeks and glare at him. “Hey, what?” I snap. “Are you going to throw the money back in my face now, too? Money I know you guys need?”
He pulls me into his arms and kisses my temple. “It’s not that they’re not grateful for the offer, princess. They just care too much, and neither Madd nor Logan is used to that shit. They’ve got no fucking clue how to handle letting you go.”
I swallow hard, all the hurt draining out of me and leaving a different kind of pain in its place. “What about you?”
“I care too much too,” he murmurs, his green eyes dropping to my lips, “but unlike my brothers, I know exactly how I’m gonna handle it.”
I tremble, but he doesn’t leave me hanging. He swoops down and kisses me until I’m breathless… and he doesn’t stop.
“Dante,” I gasp when he scoops me up into his arms, still trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down my throat as I cling to him.
“I’ve got you.”
He takes me up to his room and doesn’t let me go until I’m naked and panting against him, all my confused feelings and the hurt about the way things are going to have to end buried for the moment under the deep, consuming lust that fires my skin.
“Please tell me you’re going to fuck me.”
Dante’s lips slowly curve in a smile so deliciously dirty that I shiver. “Oh, princess. I’m going to do so much more than that.”
He proves it with that wicked mouth of his, laying me out on the bed and making me come twice before he even bothers taking off his clothes. And once he does…
“Fuck, Dante. You’re gorgeous,” I breathe out, trying to lock those vibrant green eyes and miles of inked muscle into my memory.
He looks me over with hooded eyes and one hand wrapped around that thick cock of his. “Back at ya.” I reach for him, but he shakes his head. “I want to try something.”
He lowers the lights, and my heart skips a beat when he lights up a series of candles arranged near his bed instead. They’re tall and blood-red and their flickering light turns the night into something new.
Dante climbs onto the bed behind me. “Virgin skin,” he murmurs, tracing designs between my breasts with his rough, callused fingers before trailing them down my stomach.
He stops just above my shaved pussy and I spread my legs for him, eager for him to use me in whatever way he wants. Anything to keep this night going. To fill the time we’ve still got together with memories my body can hold on to.
But instead of plunging them inside me or, better yet, finally fucking me, he reaches for one of the candles. “Trust me?”
I nod, and he smiles with a hot, possessive gaze that shoots straight to my core, reaching past me to fish something out of his nightstand.
“Is that… baby oil?” I ask as he squirts some between his hands and rubs them together.
“That’s right.”
He palms both my breasts, rolling and pinching my nipples between his fingers, and the slippery slide of the oil in contrast to the roughness of his hands has me moaning in no time. At first, I think he’s decided to old-school romance me with flickering candlelight and a baby oil massage, but as soon as he has my skin coated with the oil, he lifts one of the red candles out of its holder and tips it above me, sending a thin stream of hot wax splattering down onto my body.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp, my back arching off the bed as the searing droplets of wax hit my skin.
“Now that’s fucking gorgeous,” Dante murmurs, his eyes heating up as they rake over the blood-red pattern he created. He leans down and scrapes his teeth over my collarbone, and my nerves flare to life like the wax somehow took my normal sensitivity and ratcheted it up to eleven.
When I gasp, he chuckles with satisfaction, then rocks back onto his heels and tips the candle over my body again, snaking it down my center.
“Dante.”
It’s the most perfect kind of pain. The initial shock of hot, burning intensity fades to a dull warmth that leaves everything feeling heightened. Dante does it over and over, until my body resembles one of his paintings.
Then he reaches for the baby oil again, pours some directly over my clit, and follows with a hot stream of wax.
“Oh shit, shit, shit,” I gasp, almost levitating off the bed.
Dante holds me down, setting the candle back on its base and then scraping his blunt nails over the wax on my breasts.
It’s too much. I scream for him.
He captures my mouth and swallows it down, then flips me onto my stomach and plunges his dick into me.
“Oh god.”
The friction of his soft bedspread on the heightened sensitivity of my skin is overwhelming, and the furious pace he starts fucking me at doesn’t give me even a single second to catch my breath.
I don’t want one.
It’s perfect.
Dante has always known how to play my body like an instrument; how to fuck me until everything else ceases to exist. But this time, it feels like something more. It feels like he’s determined to find each and every way he can pleasure me while we still have the chance.
“Oh fuck, princess,” he groans, holding me down as he pounds into me. “Can’t ever get enough of you.”
I’m close to coming again, my core tightening in a delicious coil as he works my body over, and then suddenly, he slows down. Lays himself over the top of me, one hand on my hip and the other pushing the long waves of my hair aside.
“Can’t ever get enough of you,” he repeats, murmuring the words against the back of my neck.
He kisses me softly there as he fucks into me so deep I can practically taste him. His cock fills me up, over and over until I’m whimpering. And when I come again, he comes too, pulsing inside me like he’s trying to leave a mark that will never fade.
Breathing heavily, he finally draws out of me, but even then, he’s not done. His fingers dip into my well-used pussy, gathering the cum that’s leaking out of me before he rolls me over to face him and lifts his fingers to my lips.
“Open,” he breathes, his voice hoarse. “Taste how fucking good we are together. You and me.”
I wrap my lips around his fingers, swirling my tongue to gather it all. And he’s right. We taste too fucking good together. I bite his fingertips gently, trapping them between my teeth for a moment before I release them.
“It’s good,” I admit quietly, and I hope he knows I’m not just talking about the taste of our combined arousal.
“Best I’ll ever have,” he murmurs.
Then he gently rubs the wax off my body, his large hands soothing the sensitive skin. When it’s all gone, he pulls me close, wrapping me in his arms like it’s exactly where we both know I belong.
I settle against his big frame, feeling turned inside out. Both raw and soothed.
Feeling like I’m home.
And not letting myself think about how, in the morning, it will be time to say goodbye to all of it.