Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tatiana
The slamming of the front door makes me jump where I’m brushing my hair in front of the bathroom mirror. A moment later, Dante appears in the door frame, looking pissed off as hell. His tie is askew, and his hair is disheveled.
Watching me in the mirror, he stalks to me. I shiver when he stops with his chest against my back.
He bends down and kisses the shell of my ear. The act is tender, but the words he whispers are harsh. “Missed me?”
I tilt my head sideways, pulling away from his touch. “I thought you’d be home much later.”
“Where’s Noah?”
“In bed.”
Leaning his palms on the vanity on either side of my body, he cages me in. “Did he ask for me?”
I turn in his arms and crane my neck to meet his eyes. “What do you think?”
He trails his gaze over my face. “I had a business meeting.”
My smile is cool. “So you said.”
“I’ll spend time with him tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Dante. Tell that to your son. He’s the one who needs you.”
His nostrils flare. “As opposed to you?”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that for one minute, darling.”
“Let me pass.” I press my hands on his chest. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”
He takes in my cotton pajama top and matching shorts.
For once, I’m not wearing something I think he may find sexy.
My drawers are full of lacy negligées and silk nightdresses.
Most of them are new. This pajama set, however, is old, faded, and comfortable.
It’s something I would’ve worn to bed if I weren’t trying to seduce my husband.
He cups my breast and flicks his thumb over my nipple. “Aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been?”
I give him a hard look. “Ulysses told me. You met with the pakhan.”
If he thinks I’m going to demand who he’s taken to lunch, he doesn’t know me very well.
I won’t become a sobbing, insecure woman groveling for scraps of reassurance at his feet.
I’ll never lower myself to that level. I’m worth more than that.
If he won’t tell me of his own accord, I’ll find out for myself.
And if he’s gone back to his old habits, I won’t be staying, even if it breaks me to leave. I deserve better.
He lowers his head and kisses my neck. “Not that meeting.” He nips the tender spot before sucking away the sting. “Go ahead. Ask me. I know you want to.”
I try to push him away. “You know nothing.”
“You’re angry.” He lifts his head and stares at me with victory burning like golden flames in his eyes. “Jealous? Admit it.”
“I’m not the one who needs to admit anything, Dante.”
“So proud,” he mutters, pressing a butterfly-soft kiss on my lips. “I’ve always fucking loved that about you.”
“Stop fooling around.”
I try to duck under his arm, but he blocks the movement.
“Not until you admit you’re seeing green through those gorgeous eyes.” He bites down on the tingling skin behind my ear, making me shiver again. “Go on. Say it. You wish you could hurt me, don’t you?”
I turn my face away. “You’re going to leave marks.”
“That’s my intention. I want to show the world that you’re taken.” He sucks on my skin again and swirls his tongue around it. “That you’re mine.”
I look back at him, meeting his gaze.
“Go ahead,” he coaxes. “Ask me. Tell me the truth. Tell me that it’s eating you up inside, and I’ll tell you the truth in turn.”
I clench my teeth. “I’m tired of your games. Let me go.”
He dips his hand in my shorts, under the waistband of my panties, and slides two fingers inside me. “Not until you’re honest with yourself.”
The stretch steals my breath. A gasp escapes my lips when he curls his fingers. Pleasure coils through my lower body as he presses a thumb on my clit. Instead of shoving him away as I should, I grip his shoulders for balance.
He brushes the hair from my face with his free hand and strokes my cheek in a gentle caress as he gives me cruel words intent on destroying me. “I own you, Tatiana Morici, body and soul. You can lie to yourself and pretend it doesn’t matter, but you can never lie to me.”
He pumps in and out, destroying me a little more with each stroke that brings me closer to the edge. Once more, Dante is in control, and I’m lost in him. Everything I thought I’d gained this morning is gone, turned into dust, and he’s never felt farther away from me.
“Dante,” I cry out, begging him to stop this sweet torture, but my husband has always had a will of his own.
He pulls his fingers out and hooks them into the elastic of my underwear. Going down on his knees, he brings the shorts and the panties with him until they’re pooling around my feet. And lost as I am, I step out of them and allow him to push my feet apart.
He digs his fingers into the curve of my hips and buries his face between my legs.
I tense when he grazes my clit with his teeth.
The sharp nip he delivers has me crying out again, and then my back arches from the pleasure as he licks and sucks until my whole body bows under his will and I come with a violent moan.
Gripping my ass cheeks, he holds me in place while he ravishes me with his tongue and teeth.
He parts my folds between his fingers and licks around them before shoving his tongue deep.
Aftershocks rack my body. I’m barely aware of reality.
Everything else burns away. All that’s left is the heat and pleasure.
He straightens slowly, kissing my belly and curves through my clothes.
Then he pushes up my top and bites into the swell of my stomach before delivering sharp nips to my breasts.
I never thought something so animalistic could feel so good.
The carnal way in which he devours me already has me desperate for release again.
He leaves marks as far as he goes, turning my skin purple with lingering, sucking kisses.
A part of me loves his marks on me. I revel in his possession and the knowledge of belonging, but a voice in the back of my head warns me that vows can be broken. A ring and a promise can mean so little in the end.
“Dante.”
He takes my hands and puts them on his belt. “Do it.”
I can’t stop myself. I’m too far gone. Too lost. I unfasten the buckle and pop the button on his waistband. But then the lustful fog lifts, and my commonsense returns.
I pause as shame heats my cheeks. Where is my self-preservation? I’m not going to have sex with him if he slept with someone else.
He unzips and takes out his cock. “Ask me.”
When I only stare at him with defiance, he locks his fingers around mine and wraps them around his thick length. Using my hand, he strokes himself.
“Ask me.” He rests our foreheads together, jerking off faster in the fist he’s got curled around mine. “Ask me, and the truth is yours.”
I’m too scared. I’m terrified of the truth. The truth may shatter me, and I don’t want him to witness my humiliation. So I just let him use me, my own need already climbing again.
Almost angrily, he pushes my hand away. His grip isn’t gentle when he seizes the root of his cock.
“Dante,” I say in protest.
He positions the crest at my entrance. “I won’t let you run away from the truth, darling, not this time.”
Driving his hips up, he impales me with a single thrust. The force of it lifts me on tiptoes. My knees buckle under the intensity. Holding me up with an arm around my waist, he bends his knees and slams into me again.
There’s no pain. Only pleasure. But I wish for pain if only to ground me and bring me back to my senses because I’m already spiraling again, losing myself to a dangerous man and a game I can never win.
His voice sounds broken. “Damn you, Tatiana.” He pulls out and lifts me onto the vanity with his hands around my waist. “Damn you and your stubborn pride. You’d rather hurt than risk humiliation.
” He takes a foil packet from the drawer and rips it open.
He’s rough when he rolls on the condom. “I waited.” He stares into my eyes with a savage expression burning in his.
“Every day you took away from me, I waited for you.” Grabbing my thighs, he yanks me to the edge of the vanity and spreads them wide.
He doesn’t look away from my face as he shoves deep into me, fusing our bodies with brutal pleasure and honesty.
“There’s never been anyone else. Only you.
” He pounds into me as if he’s trying to punish himself.
“From the day I first set eyes on you, I’ve never touched another woman. ”
A heavy weight lifts off my shoulders. For the first time I can remember, my heart feels light. The tension in my chest gives, and I can breathe again. And for some reason, the truth he lays at my feet is more devastating than the pleasure that tightens my core.
“Oh, Dante.”
He slides two fingers over my clit. I rub against him while he slows his pace and lets me catch up. I’m there in just a few seconds, my orgasm shattering me from the inside out, my inner muscles clenching hard around him.
He continues to hold my gaze, to rip the truth from what he sees on my face, the feelings I can’t hide, and to give his own back as he comes with a violent shudder.
The truth he dropped lives in the air between us—a beautiful, pure, painful thing.
Because it hurt him. The days he said I took away from him got under his armor and his skin.
Ulysses was wrong. My husband isn’t untouchable.
I do have the power to hurt him, and knowing that I did is like walking on glowing coals.
As soon as he’s empty, he rests his forehead against mine to catch his breath. I don’t look away from those tormented, golden eyes. I have no idea what I’ve put him through, but I know he’s not lying when he says he waited. That’s the one thing Dante will never lie about.
I wrap my arms around his neck. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” he bites out. “The apology isn’t yours to give. It’s mine.”
The revelation is enormous. As before, when I stood on the sidewalk outside the condo where I used to live, the moment feels significant. But he neither apologizes nor explains. Instead, he pulls out and gets rid of the condom.
He’s just opened up to me, but he’s already floating away again and shutting me out. Because there’s more. There’s more he’s not telling me, that he doesn’t want to tell me.
He strips naked and lifts my arms to pull my top over my head.
I take in his strong chest and biceps, the stitched-up cut on his arm, his big hands, how his muscles bunch beneath the ink as he pulls me to the shower.
He presses me against the wall and shelters me with his body from the spray of the water until it runs warm.
Then he kisses every mark he’s put on my body, the color of my skin already red and purple around the shape of his teeth, before washing my hair and body.
When we’re lying in bed later, he presses up behind me and pulls my back to his chest with an arm around my waist.
“If you waited,” I whisper in the dark, “then why all those other women?”
His breath is warm in my neck, his tone amused. “Did you do a search on me?”
“What do you think?”
He chuckles. “It was a strategy.”
“To be voted playboy of the year?”
He kisses my nape. “To stop the families from shoving their daughters at me.”
I still. “They did that?”
“They were hoping for a deal.”
“A marriage contract?”
He tightens his arm around me. “At some stage, even Sav thought it was a good idea to make an alliance.”
“Saverio De Luca?”
“It was just business.”
“So you asked a different woman out every night?”
“As long as I had a woman on my arm, I could say I was dating. But I didn’t want to give any of them ideas by seeing them more than once.”
“So you never dated the same woman twice. That’s horrible. You used them.”
“They used me too, some of them for money, others for status.”
I turn around to face him. “But you never touched them.”
“The only woman I kissed or fucked in six years is you, darling.”
The relief that constricts my heart is so intense that it’s painful. “Is that why they were all blond?”
He pulls my thigh over his and splays his palm over the back. “None of them were you.”
My question is hesitant. “Did you try to replace me?”
His words are as brutal as his voice is harsh.
“You can’t be replaced, Tatiana.” And then he delivers the blow.
“And I’ll never let you get away again, even if it means locking you up.
” He grips my face in his free hand, digging his fingers into my cheeks.
“No matter what happens, no matter what I do or if you hate me for it, you’ll stay.
With me. Where you belong.” His fierce gaze penetrates mine. “Understand?”
My heart starts pounding in my chest. This is the cruel side of him, a side he rarely shows me. But he’s reminding me with stark clarity that no one is exempt from the monster, not even me. And as fear mingles with my regret and relief, I can only nod in his iron grip.