Chapter Nine #2
The glass slipped from his grip, shattering against the hardwood floor.
Dario let out a ragged, agonizing breath, his head falling back against the wall.
His control was gone. The drug was boiling in his veins, his heart hammering against his ribs at a furious pace.
He looked at the beautiful, terrified woman kneeling beside him, knowing with certainty what his body was about to compel him to do.
"Listen to me," Dario rasped, his chest heaving as he stared into her wide, striking eyes. "There is a switchblade tucked inside my left boot."
Sheher froze. "What?"
"I have been drugged," Dario continued, the words tearing out of his throat, a final, desperate act of willpower. "It is an aphrodisiac... it is overriding my mind. I am losing control. I am going to hurt you. Reach into my boot, take the knife, and stab me in the chest."
Sheher stared at him, horror draining the color from her face. "I will not stab you! You need an ambulance—"
"There is no time!" Dario roared, his hands gripping the lapels of his own jacket to keep them away from her. "I am a monster, and I will rip you apart to get what I need! Take the knife and kill me, damn you!"
Sheher remained frozen on the floorboards, kneeling amidst the shattered glass. Her heart was pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs, but the terror was rapidly being eclipsed by an earth-shattering realization.
She had spent her entire life running from powerful, cruel men. She had been beaten, hunted, and oppressed by men who took whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, without a single thought for the women they destroyed.
Yet here, kneeling in the dark, was a man possessing power and strength.
His mind was fundamentally hijacked by a chemical fire.
And instead of giving in to the lust, instead of taking what he desperately needed from a vulnerable stranger, he was ordering her to end his life.
He was offering his own blood, demanding his own execution, purely to keep her safe from his touch.
The sheer, monumental honor of it broke something open deep within Sheher’s chest. The walls she had built to keep the world out instantly crumbled to dust.
She looked at his striking, agonized face, the sweat glistening on his jaw, the dark eyes wide with a desperate plea for her to save herself.
Sheher didn't reach for his boot. Instead, she leaned forward, her heart breaking wide open with an intense, sudden endearment that stole the breath from her lungs.
She lifted her trembling hands, framing his rugged face, and pressed her lips firmly against his.
The moment her mouth touched his, the final thread of Don Dario Vellucci’s legendary control violently snapped.
A guttural, animalistic groan tore from the very bottom of his chest. Dario surged upward, his hands wrapping around the back of her head, obliterating the space between them.
He didn't just kiss her; he devoured her. It was a brutal, all-consuming collision of heat and desperation. His mouth was hard and demanding, parting her lips with a raw, ravenous hunger that sent a shockwave of pure fire straight to Sheher’s core.
Sheher gasped against his mouth, her hands sliding up to grip his broad shoulders.
She had never been touched with such overwhelming, chaotic intensity, but there was no fear left in her.
She was consumed by the frantic rhythm of his heartbeat and the desperate, burning need radiating from his skin.
Dario swept her into his arms, lifting her off the floorboards as if she weighed nothing at all.
He backed her firmly against the nearest wall, his body caging hers, and impossibly hot.
He kissed her deeply, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips before sweeping inside, tasting her with a fevered, starving urgency.
"Sei Bellissima," Dario breathed against her jaw, his voice a ragged, broken rasp as his lips trailed frantically down the long, elegant column of her throat. "You are beautiful. So beautiful."
Sheher let her head fall back against the wall, a soft, uninhibited moan escaping her lips as Dario’s mouth branded the sensitive skin of her neck.
The thick, shapeless wool sweater she wore was in the way.
Dario’s large hands gripped the hem, pulling it swiftly over her head and tossing it into the shadows, leaving her in a thin cotton camisole.
He stepped back just a fraction to look at her, his dark eyes dilated, blazing with a feral, worshipful heat.
He traced the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips, his touch branding her skin through the thin fabric.
For a man who had been dead inside for two years, the sheer, explosive vitality crashing through him was blinding.
Sheher didn't hide. She didn't shrink back.
The woman who had spent decades blending into the shadows looked up at the dangerous, beautiful man pinning her to the wall, and she fearlessly surrendered.
She reached out, her fingers tangling in the dark hair at the nape of his neck, pulling his mouth back down to hers.
Dario let out a shuddering breath, undone by her willingness. He tore his jacket off, discarding his tie and tearing the buttons of his tailored shirt open. The heat of his bare chest pressed against hers was a revelation. Skin against skin, they were a maelstrom of desperate friction.
He lifted her by the hips, prompting Sheher to instinctively wrap her long legs around his waist. Dario carried her through the dark space, falling with her onto the mattress of the safe house bed.
There was no slow, tender seduction. There was only the brutal, magnificent urgency of two survivors colliding in the dark. Dario’s hands mapped her body with a frantic, worshipping reverence, stripping away the remaining barriers of their clothing until there was nothing left between them.
When they came together, Sheher cried out, her back arching off the mattress as the intense, overwhelming fullness of him anchored her to the bed. Dario froze, his muscles trembling violently as he braced his weight on his forearms, terrified he had hurt her despite his drug-addled state.
"I'm sorry," he gasped, his forehead resting against hers, his breath coming in ragged, desperate heaves. "Am I hurting you? Tell me to stop."
"Don't you dare stop," Sheher whispered fiercely, her eyes blazing with a wild, beautiful defiance. She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, pulling him flush against her, lifting her hips to meet him. "I am yours. Take me."
Dario let out a shattered breath, burying his face in the crook of her neck, and gave in to the demand of her body and the chemical fire in his blood.
Their lovemaking was a thunderstorm of raw, unbridled passion.
It was breathless sighs and tangled limbs, a frantic, desperate rhythm that pushed them both to the edge of their endurance.
Sheher surrendered, offering him the most vulnerable, hidden pieces of her soul, matching his brutal intensity with a fierce, uninhibited hunger of her own.
Dario worshipped her with his hands, his mouth, and the relentless, driving force of his body, pouring years of frozen isolation into the blinding, white-hot heat of their connection.
When the breaking point arrived, Sheher shattered first, her voice crying out his name into the dark room as a cascading wave of pure, agonizing pleasure ripped through her.
Dario followed a second later, a deep, guttural roar tearing from his throat as the chemical fire burned itself out, leaving him ruined and reborn in her arms.
He collapsed against her, rolling them slightly to the side so he wouldn't crush her, pulling her flush against his chest.
The room was silent save for their ragged, synchronized breathing.
Sheher lay in the dark, her head resting over Dario’s rapidly steadying heart.
The man who had been hollow just an hour ago tightened his arms around the woman who had saved his life, burying his face in her raven hair.
In the quiet darkness of the safe house, the ice encasing Don Dario Vellucci’s heart cracked open.