Chapter 22 The Past #2
The streetlight through the blinds painted stripes across his face, coloring his eyes with a drunken glaze. He asked, voice slurring, “So… how’re you holding up?”
I let out a ragged sigh, muscles loosening under the haze. “Honestly? Not great. I feel so pathetic and alone. I wish someone would just hold me and tell me it’ll okay.” I squeezed the empty glass in my hand, vapor of my breath drifting in the cold air.
My confession spilled out like poison: “My sister is dead, all because of Caiden. If he hadn’t gotten her pregnant, she might still be alive.”
The words cut the silence like a knife. I tasted bitterness on my tongue and let it coat every syllable. “I’m so angry, dammit. I hate him. I want him to pay.”
I leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper that carried a dangerous edge. “You can help me, Dante. Help me get justice.”
He blinked, unsteady, caught between loyalty and my desperate plea.
He hesitated. The alcohol had fogged his mind, but I saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. I pressed on, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. “If you really care about me, follow my lead. You know what he did was unforgivable.”
He licked his lips, gaze falling to my hand. “But he’s my best friend,” he murmured, voice cracking.
I echoed Lillian’s fierce words as if they were my own: “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s done horrible things, and he needs to pay.” I reminded him of the promise he once made, to do anything for me.
His resolve crumbled. “Okay,” he whispered.
Victory bloomed in my chest.
I scooted closer, the coarse fabric of the couch pressing cool against my thighs and captured his lips with mine.
The kiss was a collision, raw desire tangled with the acidic tang of anger.
He responded fiercely, hands gripping my hips as if to anchor himself. His pulse throbbed against my palm, wild and uncertain.
He lifted me easily, the room spinning as he carried me down the dim hallway to his bedroom. The door clicked shut behind us, plunging us into deeper shadow.
Clothes were shed in a frantic dance: a discarded shirt, a stray sock, the rustle of fabric on bare skin. We tumbled onto the bed, sheets twisting around our legs.
His mouth trailed hot, urgent kisses along my collarbone, and every brush of his fingertips sent a jolt through me.
“Touch me,” I whispered into the darkness, my voice fierce and trembling. I had never been intimate like this with a person, and it terrified me, but in the haze of my vengeance, I let that terror slip into oblivion.
As Dante explored, pleasure and anger braided together inside me. An intoxicating, poisonous elixir.
My body responded to his touch even as my mind churned with thoughts of revenge. I felt the glowing ember of rage pulse through each vein, delicate yet ruinous.
In that fevered haze, I understood that anger was everything I had left, and I would let it consume every last part of me, whatever the cost.
What happened next was equal parts inevitable and wicked. The alcohol dissolved the last hesitations; the chemical warmth swelled inside me, sparking electricity beneath my skin.
Dante was desperate, a match to my gasoline, hungry for whatever I would give him. And I was all edges and venom, ready to ruin us both if it meant driving a stake through Caiden’s heart.
Dante’s hands mapped my body with the reverence of a disciple, but my mind hovered above, cold and observing.
His lips bruised my throat, collarbone, the hollow above my heart.
I craved the sting, needed it to prove I was still tangible, that I hadn’t drifted into shadow with Lillian.
Each time he groaned, I thought of Caiden, imagined the sear of betrayal that would split his pretty, sneering face when he found out.
I dug my nails into Dante’s back, leaving half-moons he’d wear for days, marks I wanted Caiden to see and recognize. The thought alone made me arch harder into every movement, made me whisper Dante’s name so loud I hoped the entire block could hear.
I wanted to lose myself in the whiteout, to be remade by sensation, but the venom was always there. Pulsing, multiplying, refusing to let me go.
He cupped my face, breath ragged, whispering my name.
Dante, so careful and sincere, thinking he could rescue me with kindness when I only wanted the world to burn.
He slid inside me, slow at first, but I wouldn’t give him the luxury of gentleness. I wrapped my legs around his waist, nails biting into the flesh above his shoulder blades, daring him to go harder, to take what he wanted and leave me raw.
He obliged.
Our bodies collided with a violence that was almost holy, the headboard rattling, drywall cracking beneath the thunder of our need.
I arched up, teeth grazing the cord of his neck, and he moaned loud enough to shake the windows.
My anger braided with arousal, a double helix of need and hate, and I rode it until my body dissolved, until the past and present and every future pain blurred into a single, shattering scream.
I pressed my thighs tight to his hips, tears mixing into the sweat at our hairline, surrendering to lust because it was the only violence left to me.
I wanted to be filled, bruised, devoured; I wanted to erase everything and start over, to be reborn in the friction and the heat and the noise of it. His hands were everywhere, and so were mine, clawing, pressing, desperate for proof of life.
I rutted into him, not for pleasure to burn away everything that had come before. His breath hitched at my ear. “Amelia, God… you’re amazing.”
I almost laughed. Amazing.
That was one word for it.
He pinned my wrists to the mattress, but I twisted free, flipping us so I was on top, riding him with wild, reckless urgency. I didn’t care about his pleasure, only that I could make him lose himself, make him ache the way I did.
I wanted to split myself open and bleed out all the bad; I wanted him to see what Caiden had broken in me, to see the chaos that I had become.
My body knew what it wanted even if my brain was still somewhere else. Off at the graveside, off in some funhouse mirror where Lillian’s dead hands clapped approval at every savage motion.
He watched me with awe and pleasure written on his face. His hands reached up and fondled my breasts, his fingers twisting and squeezing as he allowed me to unravel and take control.
He tried to meet my gaze, brown eyes shining with something too soft, too tentative, and I hated it. I hated him for not hating me, for not seeing the monstrous thing I’d become.
He gripped my waist, steadying me, as if he was the anchor and I was the storm. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and I almost spat in his face.
I pressed my palm to his mouth, fingers digging into the stubble of his jaw, daring him to speak again. He bit the pad of my thumb, just shy of drawing blood, and the pain startled a harsh moan from my lips.
Harder, I thought, I want it to hurt. I wanted the marks, the memories, the proof that I could still be touched, still be moved.
I clawed at his chest, dragging red lines down to his stomach, and he only bucked harder, hands frantic on my ass.
“Fuck, Amelia,” he groaned, and I let the word ricochet in my skull like a gunshot.
I rode him until my thighs burned, until my lungs ached with the force of my sobbing breaths, each one more ragged than the last.
I clenched around the throbbing heat inside of me, letting it consume every fiber of my blood.
I let Dante pin me again after a few minutes. He wildly thrusted into me, his chest hammering against mine.
He came with a violence that belonged in war, not love, his muscles spasming under my claws as he jerked himself onto my stomach.
The wave of relief—of obliteration—hit me so hard I blacked out for half a second, the room tilting, his arms the only thing keeping me from falling through the mattress into some abyssal pit where Lillian waited.
After, we lay in the dark, both of us panting.
I stared at the ceiling, counting the cracks, not speaking.
Dante drifted to sleep almost instantly, the way only boys with unbroken hearts could. I listened to his breathing, the steadiness of it, and hated him for it.
I wanted to punch him awake, force him to feel every terrible thing inside of me.
The anger returned, black and bottomless. Overpowering the grief that I should have been feeling. Rage became infused into my bones, as if it was all I would ever be.
Look away, Lillian. Your sweet sister is too far gone now.