Chapter 19 - Ana
“Your hands first,” I say, catching Dante’s wrist before he can reach for my arm. The blood on his knuckles looks black in our suite’s low light, split skin gaping where bone met flesh too many times tonight.
He gestures, impatient, at my arm.
"My arm can wait." I guide him toward the bathroom, my grip firm on his wrist. The precision Zio Roberto taught me for knives works just as well for tending wounds. "It's barely bleeding. Your knuckles are split to hell."
The same hands that were inside me three days ago, making me scream his name.
Now they're covered in blood from protecting me.
The memory makes wetness gather between my thighs, and I hate myself for the betrayal of it.
My body doesn't care about revenge. It only remembers how those hands made me come apart.
In the bathroom's harsh light, the damage looks worse. Deep splits across every knuckle, one cut so deep I can see white beneath. The copper smell of blood mixes with his cologne, violence and sandalwood. My nipples tighten against my dress, but my body has terrible taste in turn-ons.
I run warm water in the sink, testing the temperature before taking his hand. He lets me position him, watching my face rather than his wounds as I begin cleaning the blood away. The water runs pink, then red, then pink again.
"You didn't have to be so extreme," I say, dabbing antiseptic on the worst cut. He doesn't flinch, just keeps watching me with those dark eyes that saw me naked and begging just days ago. "The violence, I mean. You could have just—"
His free hand moves sharply: "Your blood." A pause, then his eyes go black, the same look before he shattered that man's spine. "Touch you again, they die slower."
Simple. Absolute. The kind of promise that makes my pussy clench despite everything.
"They barely grazed me," I argue, working on his other hand now, trying to ignore how my thighs press together for friction. "You broke that man's spine."
"He made you bleed."
Like that explains everything. Like my blood spilling is worth any amount of violence.
His thumb brushes my wrist as I bandage him, the same grip from when he held my wrists above my head, when he made me beg. My breath catches, and he notices. Of course he notices. His eyes darken with recognition, remembering exactly what I'm remembering.
"Now you," Dante signs when I finish bandaging his knuckles, his gaze dropping to where my nipples press against silk.
"It's nothing—"
He's already pulling me toward the bed, making me sit while he retrieves the first aid kit. When he kneels in front of me, pushing up my sleeve, we both see it: a shallow graze, maybe three inches long. Lucky. So incredibly lucky.
His hands shake slightly as he cleans the wound. Not from fear. From rage. He wants to go back, wants to kill them all again for this small hurt they caused me. The controlled violence in him makes my stomach flip and my pussy throb. Cristo, what is wrong with me?
"I'm okay," I say, watching him work with unnecessary care. My voice comes out breathy, affected by his proximity. "Really, Dante, it's just a scratch."
He doesn't respond, too focused on cleaning every speck of blood. His torn collar gapes as he leans forward, and I see them. Scars across his throat, white against olive skin, deliberate and cruel. The sight makes my chest tight, but also… God help me, I want to trace them with my tongue.
My hand moves without permission, stopping just short of touching. "Can I?"
He goes completely still, that predator stillness that makes prey freeze. His hand shoots out, gripping my wrist hard enough to bruise. For a second, I see the killer everyone fears, the man who could snap my bones like twigs. My pulse races under his thumb, and wetness floods my panties.
Then slowly, deliberately, he guides my hand to his throat. Permission and warning combined.
My fingers are gentle as they trace the worst of it, a jagged line across his throat.
The scar tissue is raised, rough, warm under my touch.
This is why he can't speak. Someone did this to him, took his voice with deliberate cruelty.
The scar tissue is old but extensive, and my eyes burn with tears I refuse to shed.
"Ten years ago?" I whisper, my finger following the path of old violence.
His breathing changes, chest rising faster. He nods.
The massacre. The same time Papa died. The timing isn't coincidence. It's connected, all of it tangled in blood and secrets.
"Show me," I say, the words escaping before I can stop them. "All of them."
Dante's eyes search mine, looking for mockery, pity, revulsion. Finding none, he stands slowly, fingers working the buttons of his ruined shirt.
The fabric falls away, and I forget how to breathe.
His body is a torture map. But underneath the scars, he's still devastatingly male.
Hard muscle, the V that disappears into his pants, the same body that I saw working out in the gym and the same one that covered mine three days ago.
My traitorous pussy clenches at the memory, even as my heart breaks at the damage.
Systematic scars cross his chest, ribs, shoulders. Not random violence but deliberate cruelty. Burn marks that are definitely cigarettes. Knife wounds too precise to be from fighting. The room feels smaller with his shirt off, the air thicker.
"Who did this?" I whisper, my hand hovering over a particularly vicious scar across his ribs. Close enough to feel the heat radiating from his skin.
He shrugs, but his eyes hold murder. His hand wraps around my throat, gentle but claiming. His thumb presses where his marks have faded, and I know he's thinking about putting them back. My nipples go painfully hard.
"The massacre," I say, pieces falling into place even as my body responds to his touch. "This happened during the massacre. We're connected by that night."
He nods once, thumb stroking my pulse point that races for entirely wrong reasons.
"They tortured you." The words burn my tongue. "Someone held you down and did this."
His free hand signs: "We both lost that night."
The truth of it crashes through me. He suffered too. Connected by timing, by blood, by losses neither of us chose. My body trembles, overwhelmed by conflicting needs. To comfort, to kill, to climb onto his lap and fuck the pain away for both of us.
The tears come before I can stop them, hot and shameful down my cheeks.
I'm crying for my enemy. Crying for the man who killed Papa. The betrayal burns worse than the graze on my arm, but I can't stop. Worse, my pussy is wet while I cry, my body a complete traitor that wants him even in grief.
His thumb brushes away a tear, and he signs: "Warriors don't cry for their enemies."
"Then what am I?" I whisper, catching his hand, pressing it harder against my throat. Needing the anchor of his touch even as I hate myself for it.
"Mine," he signs with his free hand, possessive certainty in every movement. "My warrior. My enemy. My wife."
I reach out without thinking, my palm flat against the worst scar over his heart. His skin burns under my touch. He covers my hand with his, pressing it closer rather than pulling away.
I'm supposed to be tending his wounds, but my fingers trace lower than necessary, following the V of muscle that disappears into his pants. My thighs clench.
He notices. Of course he notices. His hand catches mine, and his eyes promise he remembers too. He's getting hard, the evidence pressing against his pants, and my mouth waters. I hate that I know what he tastes like when I should only know how he bleeds.
"You feel too much," he signs with his free hand.
"I feel everything," I admit, the words raw. "I hate that you're human. I hate that my pussy gets wet when you kill for me. I hate that I know exactly how you taste."
His eyes darken to black, and for a moment I think he'll break, close the distance between us. His cock is fully hard now, and my body screams to drop to my knees, to take him in my mouth, to learn what that part of him tastes like too, to forget everything in the oblivion of sex.
Instead, he steps back, giving me space when every line of his body says he wants to claim me against the nearest surface.
I wrench away from his touch, stumbling toward the bathroom. "I can't. I need—"
He doesn't follow, doesn't try to stop me. Just watches with those dark eyes that see too much, know exactly how wet I am, how much I want him despite everything.
The bathroom door locks with a satisfying click. I lean against it, chest heaving, thighs pressed together trying to ease the ache between them.
In the mirror, a wild woman stares back. Tear-stained cheeks, blood on her dress, eyes that can't reconcile what they've seen. Is this a daughter? A wife? A whore who gets wet while crying over her enemy's scars?
I grip the sink until my knuckles match Dante's bandaged ones. Papa's blood demands justice. But my body demands Dante's touch, his cock, his possession. The war between these truths is tearing me apart.
"Who are you?" I whisper to my reflection.
Outside the door, I hear Dante moving quietly, giving me space but staying close. Still protecting me, even from myself. He's out there, hard and wanting, respecting my need for distance when we both know I'm wet enough to take him right now.
I still have to kill him. The thought arrives with cold certainty, even as my body throbs with need. Papa's blood demands it, and I can't dishonor his memory more than I already have. But my body burns for the enemy, wet and aching and thoroughly ruined for anyone else.