23. Carina
CHAPTER 23
Carina
C onstantine’s eyes widen with worry. “Carina.” His voice sounds strangled.
He goes to take a step closer but I stop him by pressing the knife deeper in my skin. I hiss from the slight sting of pain as blood wells and drips down my neck. His eyes stay transfixed on the sight. His muscles are straining. His fists so tight his knuckles start bleeding once more.
“You want me to prove it to you. I can prove it to you by forsaking all others, even my own self.” The knife cuts me as I speak and he swallows roughly.
“Carina, put the knife down.” His voice is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. Stern yet soft. Even yet uncontrolled. Like a thread he’s unraveling.
I tighten my grip on the knife and his breath hitches. “My blood of your blood,” I tell him with an eerie calmness I don’t feel.
“Carina,” he says my name with warning and worry. Apprehension swallows his eyes whole. “Mia leonessa,” the sound of my pet name has my resolve weakening, “stop this.”
My fingers flex around the handle. “I will gladly bleed for you,” I echo the words he told me on the night I destroyed us. And as he meant it then, calling to my dark desires and accepting it, I mean it now but in a different way.
“I would never ask that of you.” I see in his eyes his words to be true.
“A King can die for his Queen but she cannot return the favor?”
He dares to take a step towards me, a small step forward to gauge my reaction. As he sees I haven’t dug the knife deeper he takes another. Step by step he closes the distance until he stands before me.
Slowly, cautiously, he raises his hand until his palm covers my own over the handle of the knife.
How heavenly it is to feel his skin against my own.
“If you were to die for me, Carina,” my name rolls off of his sinful tongue calling to my blood, “I would have nothing to live for.” His confession leaves me breathless. And wanting.
“You have an entire empire,” I remind him breathlessly. I don’t even know why I am arguing with him. Maybe I’m trying to convince him that what he feels for me isn’t that strong. Maybe I just want to hear him say the words that I mean everything to him.
Validation.
Is that what I’m seeking?
Or am I seeking the proclamation of love?
Gripping my hand he gently removes the knife from my neck without causing any more damage. Transferring the knife to his own hand he drops it to the ground between us.
The moment the knife is gone he closes the gap between us. One hand finds purchase on the small of my back, pulling me flush against him, while the other caresses my face.
Affection.
I’m starving for it.
But only ever his.
His affection is the only one that matters.
I sigh happily as I lean against his palm and his eyes are the softest I have ever seen them.
His thumb swipes across my lower lip before he rests his forehead against my own. “I have nothing,” he swallows and then continues, “I am nothing, if I don’t have you.”
Everything stops.
Time. My heart. My breathing.
The world stops spinning.
There’s only him and I.
The tether that binds us has never been stronger than in this moment.
My feelings are no longer suppressed. My very own being no longer in denial.
How I’ve resisted him this long I have not a clue, but I will not resist him any longer. Not when being in his arms feels like salvation.
“Constantine.” The feel of his name on my lips is one I’ll always cherish. And the way his eyes soften and pupils dilate with pleasure when I do will have me saying his name forevermore.
The Devil of the East Coast he is to the rest of the world but for me, and me alone, he’s my very own dark knight.
His eyes close in satisfaction as he breathes me in. When they reopen they’re swallowed by desire. Desire I would more than love to get lost in. “I love it when you say my name.”
My lips pull upwards in a sultry smile. My fingers tease with the buttons on his ruined dress shirt. Rising on the tips of my toes my lips brush against his ear as I rasp his name, “Constantine.”
I feel the shudder roll through his body.
The effect I have on this god of a man. . .it makes me feel more alive in ways he’ll never be able to comprehend.
The rush, the control, the damn power. It’s all so thrilling and addictive.
His hand roams down my back, sending electrical impulses, and finds it’s new home by palming my ass.
A gasp leaves me as desire pools in my lower abdomen. It ignites my blood and causes a wetness that should be shameful to gather between my thighs.
But I have come to learn that nothing is shameful when it comes to Constantine and I.
“Tell me, mia leonessa,” he drawls with that sensual mouth in his signature smirk. I would give anything to feel his mouth on my burning flesh. For him to cover every inch of my skin with those lips and his tongue to trace every curve. He continues to palm my ass and it’s as if he’s stoking the fire. I’m only growing feverish with lust in his hold. Captivated by the rough beauty of him. Dominated by his sweet hold. Enthralled in his entirety.
Constantine has corrupted me. Awakened my soul to divulge in a life of sin. And I’ll never seek penance for it.
Loving him will be a beautiful crime.
With his hand on my ass he pulls me flush against him. My jaw slacks open as I feel his semi-hard erection against my stomach.
He grinds his hips the slightest bit. Enough to tease me. Enough to turn me into putty in his hands.
My body gives into its carnal desires, and on instinct my back arches, flattening my breasts against his chest and searching for friction.
“Should I punish you for the sins you’ve committed?” His voice is as smooth as whisky.
I recall our first dance together. How long I’ve come since that night months ago. As much as I wanted him I hated him. I even remember what he said, every word. I believe, even when I am fortunate enough to become old and grey, I will always remember our first encounter.
I hadn’t known it then, but I had begun a re-birth that night.
Something inside me calls to the wicked idea of Constantine’s hands striking on my flesh. Of punishment being for the sake of pleasure.
I bat my eyelashes innocently up at him. With pouty lips I know he can’t resist, I respond, “What sins have I committed?”
He hums and I feel the vibration against my sensitive flesh.
Constantine and I have been a powder keg, it’s only a matter of time until we combust.
“I could count on my hand the amount of sins you’ve committed, mia leonessa.” His voice speaks directly to my libido. I’ve never heard a man who sounds like sex before and I highly doubt I will hear it from anyone else.
Boldly my fingers stop playing with the ruined buttons on his shirt to then slither around his neck to twine in the ends of his hair.
His eyes roll shut with an appreciative moan when I tug on the strands.
Pain. Pleasure. The blur of the line between the two is not what I had expected but am anxiously wanting to explore.
When his eyes open they’re blazing with lust. I’ll allow him to scorch me alive as long as he’s inside me when he does.
He lightly slaps my ass and my breath hitches. Wetness continues to gather between my thighs. If I were more ashamed I would shift back and forth, press my legs tightly together to conceal my desire. But I am not ashamed. And I am done pretending like this man doesn’t have an affect on me.
And so I find myself grinding against him. I want him to feel how wet I am. I want him to know how much I want him.
He hums appreciatively. It’s the most erotic sound I have ever heard. A woman could orgasm from it alone.
“The sin I hold you most accountable for is denying me when you have wanted me all along.” His hand then firmly grips my ass cheek to the point where it will bruise. And for the first time I relish in the pain. Those lips brush against my ear and I’m dying to have them reunited with my lips. “Ten days. Ten Nights. Do you know how torturous it has been for me, Carina?”
His candor shouldn’t come to me as a surprise. Constantine has been nothing but vocal of his emotions when it comes to me.
To the world he’s a closed book but to me he’s every page, every single word.
“Every single second has been consumed by thoughts of you. I’m a powerful man, Carina, and yet you have me wrapped around your pinky.”
I look at him through my lashes and I don’t just feel the intensity of his words, I see them in his eyes. “You don’t sound bothered by it.”
His hands travel from my ass to then frame my face in a tender yet possessive hold. Staring straight into my soul and speaking to my heart he says, “How can I be when this world doesn’t mean a damn thing to me without you in it, by my side.”
Every cell in my body becomes alight. My heart triples in size and races wildly. There’s a buzz to my skin and heat running through my veins.
I see the world in a different way.
I see the world how it was always meant to be seen.
Not black. Not white. Not through a kaleidoscope.
I’m no longer controlled through the lens of papa. No longer forced to see the world through the feared eyes of mamma.
There’s a startling clarity, seeing the world through eyes awakened and not dead.
I’m free of them. There are no strings on me.
I press closer to Constantine, skimming my nose along his and breathing in his cinnamon and musky scent that’s all man. My lips press gently against his as I ask, “And what would be of this world if I was no longer in it?”
With his hand on the back of my neck he forces my head back. There’s power in his movements, control. And I’m not frightened by his rough touch. I’m excited by it. My nipples peak harder as I have drenched right through my lace thong.
If I thought his eyes were intense before they are nothing compared to the intensity of them now. Dio mio, I love the way this man looks at me.
“I would burn it. Burn it all to the fucking ground.”