4. Dante #2
I rub my palm in tight circles over the sensitive nub. Grinding the fabric against her swollen flesh.
She is a mess of trembling limbs and desperate whimpers. Her legs tighten around my waist, locking me in place. Her heels dig into the small of my back.
I thrust my hips in time with the movement of my hand. A savage rhythm. Dry humping her with all the force of my frame, while my hand works her into a frenzy.
Every thrust of my hips sends a jolt of pure fire through my balls. The ache to rip my jeans open, to tear that scrap of lace aside, to plunge into her tight, wet heat and claim her fully. It is a physical agony.
But I cannot. Not yet.
We are in a war zone. I am the guard. I need to be ready to kill at a second's notice. If I bury myself inside her, I will be deaf and blind to everything else. I will lose myself in her walls, and that is a vulnerability I cannot afford right now.
My duty is to the door, but my body only cares about the woman in front of it.
"Dante! Fuck!" She thrashes against the wall. Her hips snap forward, chasing the friction of my palm, the hard ridge of my cock.
"I've got you," I rasp.
I slide my fingers under the edge of the black lace. The damp heat of her slick pussy coats my fingertips.
I find the swollen pearl of her clit with my thumb. Bare flesh.
She jerks violently.
I press down, circling the slick, sensitive bundle of nerves. The wetness coats my thumb. Her arousal is a slippery, hot mess.
"You like that, Gemma?" I growl, my lips grazing her earlobe. "You like my hands on you?"
"Yes," she sobs. "God, yes. Don't stop."
"I'm never stopping. You're mine now. Everything you are belongs to me."
I pinch her clit. Hard.
She screams into the dusty air. Her body bows off the wall, a perfect, tense arch of pure pleasure.
I swallow her scream with my mouth, plunging my tongue deep as my thumb works her mercilessly. The friction is raw. Relentless. I grind my hips against her simultaneously, the denim of my jeans crushing against her wet folds.
Her inner muscles clench. She spasms against me, through the lace, her whole body seizing as her climax tears her apart.
"Cum for me," I command against her mouth. "Give it to me."
She shudders, her nails digging bloody crescents into my neck. A long, drawn-out moan vibrates through her chest. The slick, hot rush of her climax floods my fingers.
Her body goes limp against mine. The only things holding her up are my hands gripping her thighs and her back against the wall.
I bury my face in her neck, inhaling the musky scent of sex and sweet orange. The cumin note is sharper now. Heated.
My own body is a coil of agonizing tension. My cock throbs against my zipper, demanding release. The ache in my balls is a leaden weight.
I slowly lower her feet to the floor. My muscles protest the loss of her weight.
She sways unsteadily. I keep one arm securely wrapped around her waist, anchoring her to my side.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly. The oversized shirt is bunched up around her ribs, exposing her soft, curvy stomach and the damp lace of her panties.
I reach down and tug the hem of the shirt down, covering her. Protecting her. Claiming her all over again.
I press my forehead against hers. We are both breathing heavily. The dust in the room settles around us.
"You're a menace," she whispers, her voice trembling. A small, shaky smile plays on her lips.
"I am a violent man," I say. My voice is deadly serious. "And you belong with me."
I step back, breaking the physical connection. The cold air of the fourteenth floor rushes in, replacing her heat. The loss is a sharp ache in my chest.
I turn my back on her and stalk toward the far window. I need distance. I need the tactical baseline.
The street below is a ribbon of black concrete and yellow streetlights. Empty. Quiet.
The Bellantis are out there. Searching.
My hands grip the rotting windowsill. The wood splinters under my fingers.
My cock still rages against my fly. The wetness from her climax coats my thumb. I lift it to my face and inhale.
Fuck.
I am spiraling. The specialist is sidelined. Only the predator remains.
If anyone touches her, I will paint the streets with their blood.
I force myself to scan the perimeter. The rooftops across the street. The alleyways. The shadows.
Nothing moves.
"Dante," Gemma says softly from the center of the room.
I don't turn around. I can't. If I look at her right now, standing there in my shirt, flushed and thoroughly ruined by my hands, I will throw her onto that bare mattress and bury myself inside her until we both stop breathing.
"Get some sleep, Gemma. I have the watch."
"You need sleep too."
"I don't sleep."
It is the truth. For twenty years, sleep has been a battlefield. A dark place where the phone rings endlessly and Matteo's voice cracks and the rain washes our father's blood into the gutters.
I cannot sleep without clearing every room. And this hotel is a labyrinth of uncleared rooms. Fourteen floors of darkness and decay.
"You can't stand guard forever," she challenges. The sass is returning. The defiance.
"Watch me."
She huffs a breath, the sound loud in the quiet suite. The springs of the bed groan as she climbs back onto the mattress. The rustle of the fabric. The soft sigh as she settles.
Every sound is amplified in my ears.
I remain at the window. The cold draft chills the sweat on my back.
The ache in my groin slowly begins to subside into a dull throb. The agonizing restraint is a badge of honor. A proof that I can still control the beast. Barely.
I pull my phone from my pocket. No signal. The dead zone.
Good. Isolation is safety.
Matteo knows we are here. He will cover our tracks at the compound. He will keep the rest of the family from tearing the city apart prematurely.
Matteo is the only one who knows about this fallback location. The old Costa properties. He won't send an extraction team until the heat dies down. Until the streets are clear.
We have time.
We’re trapped together in this expensive tomb.
I look at the reflection in the dusty glass of the window. My own face stares back. Rugged messy beard. Dark eyes. The hard lines of a man who has lived his entire life in the shadows of a war.
Behind me, the reflection of the bed. Gemma is curled into a tight ball, wrapped in my shirt.
She is beautiful. Curvy, soft, vibrant. Everything I am not.
She is the only real thing in a world I’ve turned to ash.
And I am going to drag her down into the dark with me, because I refuse to let her go.
My jaw locks. Heat climbs the back of my neck. The possessive rage flares again, a sharp spike.
I turn away from the window and begin to pace the perimeter of the room. Checking the oak door. Checking the locked adjoining door to the next suite. Checking the air vents.
Hypervigilance. The tactical armor sliding back into place.
But it is cracked. The walls I’ve spent twenty years building have finally been breached.
The scent of sweet orange and warm cumin lingers in the air. A constant reminder of the woman sleeping on the bed. The woman who just shattered my control with a single kiss.
I rub the knotwork compass on my arm. The ink is cold.
I stop at the foot of the bed.
She is breathing evenly now. Asleep.
I reach out and carefully pull the rotting velvet drape off a nearby chair, shaking the dust from it. I drape it over her, a makeshift blanket against the freezing draft.
My knuckles graze her calf. The skin is warm. Soft.
Mine, I whisper into the darkness.
The city of Chicago slumbers outside. The Bellanti family plots their next move. The Costa brothers prepare for war.
But inside this sealed, forgotten fourteenth-floor suite, there is only the guard and his obsession.
And the agonizing wait for the dawn.
Time loses its rhythm in the silence of the suite. The moonlight shifts across the floorboards, illuminating the layers of dust. The silence is complete, broken only by the wind howling against the glass.
I sit on the floor by the door, my knees pulled up, my combat knife resting loosely in my palm. The metal is a comfort. A familiar weight.
I listen to her breathe. In. Out. A steady, rhythmic pulse that tethers me to reality.
My mind drifts. The shadows in the corners of the room seem to lengthen and writhe. The exhaustion of the day, the adrenaline crash, the agonizing sexual frustration — it all coalesces into a fog in my brain.
Phantom scents begin to creep in.
The smell of roasted beans and cinnamon. No, that's not right. That's a memory of a place I've never been, a dream of a normal life. I shake my head.
The sharp tang of gun oil drifting up from her hair — my scent, transferred to her skin during the chaos of the alley.
But underneath it…
Cordite.
The acrid, burning smell of fired rounds.
My nostrils flare. The walls of the penthouse blur. I grip the handle of the knife so tightly the metal bites into my calloused skin.
Cordite. The scent of the drive-by. The alley. The ruined food truck.
But it's not the alley. It's older. Deeper.
Wet copper. Blood. Rain-soaked concrete.
A sudden, cold vacuum opens up in my chest—the unmistakable onset of a spiral.
The walls of the penthouse suite dissolve. The velvet drapes rot away into nothingness. The gilded mirrors shatter.
I am sixteen years old.
I am standing in the hallway of the Costa compound. The old house. The hardwood floor is cold beneath my socks. The grandfather clock ticks in the corner.
The phone in my hand is cold. The plastic receiver is slick with sweat.
"Matteo?" My voice is thin. Weak. A boy's voice.
Static on the line. The sound of rain pouring through the earpiece. Sirens in the distance.
"Dante." Matteo's voice is destroyed. Ripped to shreds. The sound of a man who has just seen the end of the world. "Dante, it's Dad. He's…"
A choked sob. The sound of my older brother breaking.
"Where are you?" I scream into the phone. "Where are you!"