Chapter 13 #2
Cristiano draws my face back up to his. “I’ve spent every single one of the days we were parted wanting no one but you.
Living in the memory of touching you. I was a virgin the first time we were together, and I haven’t been with a woman since.
No one’s seen the tattoos on my back except my men, and they prefer their blood inside their veins and not spattered all over the ground, so they don’t ask about them. ”
Five years of celibacy for a man who looks like that. Who could have anyone. Who has women like Ariana Barone literally wearing an engagement ring for him.
It should make me feel special, chosen, cherished. But this isn’t devotion. This is obsession. A healthy man moves on. A healthy man finds comfort and connection with other women. A healthy man doesn’t preserve scratch marks on his back like relics from a saint.
But a small, dark part of me whispers, He waited for you. All this time, he waited. No other woman would do.
The door handle starts to turn.
Cristiano’s head snaps toward the sound, and the look on his face is murderous.
“Get out,” he snarls. “No one comes in this room or you’re all fired.”
Footsteps retreat rapidly down the hall.
He turns back to me, and the murderous expression softens. “Do you know why I used to wait for you at the school gates every day?”
I should push him away. I should run. I squirm in his arms, but not very hard. “Because you’re controlling and obsessive and wanted to keep everyone who wasn’t you away from me.”
“Because the sky wasn’t blue until I was with my Mina.” He strokes his thumb across my lower lip. “The sun didn’t shine. The birds didn’t sing. I didn’t exist until I was with you.” His voice catches, just slightly. “I’ve been dead for five years without you.”
Thick, hot tears well up in my throat.
I ball up my fist and hit his chest, crying out in pain and frustration. The blow lands against solid muscle and expensive fabric, absorbed like it’s nothing. All my fury and fear and confusion can’t even make a dent in him.
“You can’t say things like that, Cristiano,” I whimper, tears collecting on my lashes.
“It’s true.” He dips his head to plant a slow, hungry kiss on my throat. “Tell me. Tell me how you’ve existed without me. It’s devastating to me, how alive you look. All the things you’ve done. How have you managed to go on living? Tell me your secret, because I don’t understand.”
“I have a child.” My voice comes out choked. “I have no choice.”
Envy flickers across his face. “He’s a beautiful little boy, Mina. A happy child. But of course he is.” He takes my face in his hands, cradling it like something precious. “He has you to love him.”
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle. It’s not tentative. It’s five years of hunger compressed into a single moment, his mouth claiming mine with a desperation that steals my breath. I should stop this. I should remember the wardrobe, the belt, the blood on the car window.
I kiss him back.
A groan tears from his chest, and his hands slide into my hair, tilting my head back to deepen the kiss. His tongue strokes against mine, and heat floods through me, pooling low in my belly.
He pulls back just enough to speak against my lips. “How I envy him.”
“Who?”
“Your son.” He kisses me again, softer this time. “Having all of your love. Being the center of your world.”
He’s jealous of a four-year-old.
He’s jealous of his own son.
“I want you in my life.” He’s kissing down my jaw now, my neck, his breath hot against my skin. “I need you in my life. What can I do to convince you that I’m the only man you need? I’m asking, Mina. That was always where we fell apart. When I lost control and got carried away.”
“Carried away?” I try to laugh, but it comes out broken. “You were monstrous.”
“I am.”
He kisses me again before I can respond, swallowing my words, swallowing my protests. His hands slide down my sides, gripping my hips, pulling me flush against him, and I can feel how hard he is through his expensive trousers.
What new manipulation is this, to just agree with me?
“Night after night,” he murmurs against my mouth, “I dream about how wet you got for me. Do you remember how you wrapped your fingers around my cock and stroked me?” His hand slides between us, cupping me through my pants. “Are you wet now, Mina?”
“No.” It’s a lie. We both know it’s a lie.
“Let me feel you,” he breathes.
“No. I can’t. I can’t.” But my arms are around his neck, and I’m not pushing him away. When his fingers press against me through fabric, I can’t stop the whimper that escapes my throat.
“Yes, you can.” He rubs slow circles against my clit, and even through two layers of clothing it’s enough to make my knees buckle. “Good girl. Let me make you feel good.”
“Someone could come in—”
“They won’t come in.” His free hand works at the button of my pants. “This is my hotel.”
The button gives. The zipper slides down. His hand slips inside my underwear, and then his fingers are there, sliding through the slick heat of me, and I have to bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out.
“Fuck.” The word is spoken in soft tones of awe. “So wet. So tight. You’re soaked for me, Mina.”
One finger pushes inside, and my back arches off the wall.
“That’s it.” He works his finger in and out, slow and deliberate, his thumb finding my clit. “That’s my girl. Look at you, so desperate, so needy. You’ve missed this. Admit it.”
“I haven’t,” I sob.
A second finger joins the first, and the stretch makes me gasp.
“You have.” He curls his fingers inside me, finding that spot that makes stars burst behind my eyes. “You’ve thought about this every night. Touching yourself in your lonely bed, wishing it were me.”
I want to deny it. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that I haven’t thought about him, haven’t dreamed about him, haven’t woken up aching and empty and furious at myself for wanting someone who destroyed me.
But his fingers are inside me, his thumb is on my clit, and I can feel the orgasm building, coiling tighter and tighter—
He stops, fingers pushed all the way to the knuckles inside me.
“Don’t stop.” The words tear out of me. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please, Cristiano.”
“Say it.” His fingers are still stretching deep inside me, but motionless, and the lack of friction is agony. “Tell me what you want.”
I’m shaking and trembling in his hands. “Make me come.”
His fingers start moving again, and I nearly sob with relief.
But he doesn’t let me finish. Every time I get close, every time I’m right on the edge, he pulls back. Slows down. Leaves me gasping and desperate while he watches my face with those burning amber eyes.
“Cristiano.” I’m begging now. I don’t care. “Please. Please.”
“I love seeing you like this.” His voice is rough, almost drugged. “So vulnerable. So needy. Begging for me. I could keep you here for hours. Edge you until you’re crying, until you can’t remember your own name.”
“Please.”
“On the table.”
“What?”
He withdraws his fingers, and I whimper at the loss. He lifts me like I weigh nothing, setting me on the edge of the break room table. Papers scatter. A mug crashes to the floor. Neither of us pays any attention.
He hooks my thigh up and pushes me onto my back.
My body is on fire for him, and I let him manhandle me. He tugs my pants down my legs, my underwear following, and then I’m spread out, half naked and trembling, while Cristiano stands over me, his erection thick and prominent through his pants.
“I’ve dreamed about this.” He presses a kiss to the inside of my knee. “Every night.” Another kiss, higher up my thigh. “The taste of you.” Higher still, his breath hot against my inner thigh. “The sounds you make.”
I glance toward the door. We can’t do this here. This is crazy.
His mouth finds me, and I stop thinking entirely.
He devours me. There’s no other word for it. His tongue strokes through my folds, circles my clit, dips inside me, and I’m writhing on the table, my hands fisted in his golden hair, trying to pull him closer, trying to push him away, trying to do anything except fly apart completely.
“So sweet,” he groans against me. “Fuck, Mina, you taste so good. I could eat this pussy for hours.”
My hips buck up against his face, and he pins me down with one strong arm, holding me in place while he takes exactly what he wants.
“I’ve thought about this,” he says between strokes of his tongue. “Every day for five years. Worshipping you. Making you come on my tongue.”
I’m close. So close. The orgasm is right there, cresting in a white-hot wave.
This time, he doesn’t stop.
His lips close around my clit and when he sucks, I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me like wildfire. Like nothing I’ve felt in five years. I’m shaking and crying out, and my thighs are clamping around his head, but he just keeps going, licking me through it, drawing out every last tremor until I’m limp and boneless on the table.
He rises, looming over me, bracing his hands on either side of my head. His lips are wet and shining, and the look in his eyes is pure predator.
“How can I prove myself to you?”
I stare up at him, still trembling and reeling. “That you’ve changed?”
“I haven’t changed. I’ll never change.” He leans closer, his mouth hovering above mine. “How can I convince you that you should love me anyway?”
The post-orgasm haze should make me soft. Pliant. It should make me say whatever he wants to hear.
“You know what makes love so precious?” I pant.
This is important, and I have to say this now.
I struggle to form thoughts through the pink haze in my head.
“It makes you vulnerable. It hurts. My god, it’s agony sometimes.
But you can’t deal with that, Cristiano.
You try to be so strong that you crush the thing you’re trying to hold on to. ”
“I beg for your touch.” His jaw tightens. “For your affection. To be with you for even a few minutes. Is that not vulnerable enough for you?”
“That’s not love.”