19. Dante #3
The thought disappeared as Renato increased the pressure of his bite.
Not enough to break skin, but enough to send another flash of satisfying hurt cascading through my nervous system.
I’d make him pay for the advantage later, but right now, I couldn’t stop my body from responding to the exhilarating threat of his teeth.
His arm tightened around me as he faltered. He muffled his groan against me, drawing a shout from me. His body shuddered against mine as he came.
A second orgasm tore through me with an intensity that bordered on painful. Unlike the first, which had built gradually and crashed over me, it now struck like lightning in a sudden, violent, and all-consuming burst that collapsed the boundaries between pain and ecstasy.
My muscles contracted so violently that my spine bowed backward, pressing me harder against Renato’s chest. I shouted as my cock jerked violently, spilling onto the sheets in thick spurts that felt torn from somewhere deeper than physical release.
Each pulse felt like surrender, like Renato was claiming pieces of me I’d never offered to anyone.
Tremors rippled through me, leaving me boneless and disoriented.
The room slowly stopped spinning as oxygen returned to my brain.
Reality reassembled itself piece by piece as my awareness returned about the cameras, the brothel, and the dangerous game I was playing with a man who’d discovered how to make me forget everything I knew about survival.
When the pleasure threatened to tip into overstimulation, Renato’s lips brushed against the spot he’d bitten, soothing the sting with gentle kisses.
The unexpected tenderness contrasted sharply with the savagery of moments before. Each soft press of his lips was a silent apology for the violence that had wrecked me so completely.
Our fingers remained interlocked against my chest, his palm warm over my racing heart.
I should have pulled away, because that intimacy was more dangerous than anything we’d done.
However, my body refused to obey the survival instincts that had kept me alive for years.
Instead, I tightened my grip on his hand, pressing it harder against my skin.
His kisses traveled up my neck, each one softer than the last, until he reached the sensitive spot behind my ear. The gentle attention made me shiver in a completely different way than his bite had.
He murmured in Italian against my skin, his voice so low I almost missed it. “I want to hear my real name on your lips when we’re alone. Someday, we’ll find a place where you can scream it without fear.”
The confession hit me harder than his bite had.
The words vibrated against my skin, penetrating deeper than his cock.
The promise of freedom, of saying his real name without cameras watching or Salvatore listening, unlocked something feral in my chest. It longed for a world where I could be Dante without consequences, where I could choose for the first time in my life who touched me and whose name I called out.
My mind was still fractured from back-to-back orgasms, my defenses shattered and slow to rebuild.
In my unguarded state, Renato’s tenderness felt like a greater violation than any physical act.
Sex was just bodies, mechanical, and predictable.
But his gentleness, the careful way he cradled me against him as if I were something precious rather than merchandise, slipped past barriers I’d thought impenetrable.
I wanted to hate him for making me feel things I’d worked so hard to bury by creating cracks in the walls I’d built between Dragon and Dante. Yet in my postorgasmic haze, with his heartbeat strong against my back and his fingers twined with mine, hatred was impossible to summon.
Instead, I felt a dangerous yearning take root. The cruelty lived in how badly I wanted to believe it was possible to have a life outside the brothel where I could say Renato’s real name and hear mine spoken with the same reverence he now pressed into my skin with each kiss.
I turned my face away, disguising my reaction as oversensitivity.
Better he think me overwhelmed by physical pleasure than suspect I understood the rebellion he was planting with each Italian syllable.
It was safer for both of us if he never knew how his words carved into the most vulnerable parts of me.
As the last tremors of pleasure subsided, Renato pulled out, his hands steadying my hips as my knees threatened to give way. The loss of him left me feeling devastated in a way I was unprepared to experience. Empty in places that had nothing to do with his cock.
He disposed of the condom before rolling me onto my back, positioning me away from the wet spot my release had created. His expression as he looked down at me held a tenderness that made my chest clench.
I’d spent years perfecting the art of emotional detachment. With clients, I was whoever they needed me to be. But with Renato, the lines blurred dangerously.
I was playing a dangerous game with no winning moves. Renato understood the rules of my world but was too reckless to follow them. Shaw didn’t even know he was playing, making him the most vulnerable piece on the board.
I stood trapped between them, craving what each man offered while knowing I deserved neither.