7. Sara #2
“There’s a bar of soap on the ledge by the sink.” I flinch at Dante’s voice, and Pistol grumbles in warning. “Make the most of it.”
Damn him.
I want to argue, but I haven’t showered since the night of our cursed date, so he’s right. I do stink.
Fixing one eye on the German Shepherd, I strip off my bra and panties and drop them to the ground. Then I grab the soap and embrace the sting of the nearly burning water.
I scrub my face, body, and hair until the grime and horror of the last few days slip down the drain.
Then I scrub some more. I can’t do much about my gross-feeling teeth without a toothbrush, so I rinse out my mouth with shower water and brush my teeth with a finger.
I even have a minute to wash my underwear with the soap bar before Dante returns and flips the water off with a bored expression.
Despite the short shower, I feel almost human again. Panties in hand, I straighten my spine and battle the impulse to cover myself as he drinks in my drenched, vulnerable state. I may be his prisoner, but I refuse to let him shame me any more than he already has.
He notes my defiant chin tilt with a twitch of his lips and tosses me a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt.
I dress in record time, pulling the sweats over my bare skin and rolling the waistband to shorten the length. Once I finish, he grasps my arm roughly and hustles me back to my cell, still without a word.
With a gentle shove, he pushes me inside. The door slamming shut behind me and the click of the automatic lock hit me like a physical blow.
Defeated, I turn toward my cot and freeze. A thin, neatly folded blanket sits on the foot of the bed.
The cell smells of Lysol, not bleach, and the blanket’s vivid yellow hue attempts to brighten my personal hell. My heart pounds painfully in my chest as I lie down on the cot.
The fabric’s soft. Warm. And smells like him. The clothes do too.
Tears over disinfectant and a freaking blanket sting my eyes. This is how he wears me down, until even the bare minimum of thoughtfulness feels like a gift.
With gritted teeth, I bury my face in the blanket. It’s probably a cruel trick. Gregor will be back tonight after dinner to rechain me to the wall, and the blanket will be just out of my reach. Torturing me. I’d best brace myself for it.
Gregor does eventually arrive with dinner—a fresh-from-the-oven baked potato with all the fixings—and while he stands in the corner waiting for me to eat, I don’t hear his lungs wheezing anymore.
After I finish, no one shackles my neck, and for the first time in a week, I can stretch out at night.
My stomach feels full, and though the cot amounts to little more than a pallet, it’s a luxury compared to before.
I dig my palms into my eyes. I’m not sure if this considerate version of Dante makes everything harder or easier, but judging by the ache in my chest, I’m guessing the former.
I don’t trust this tiny display of kindness. Not from him.
Dante slants his lips over mine and swallows my needy noises as his touch trails the length of my body. His hands are rough and calloused, even when he handles me with care.
I shudder when he drags his mouth across my jaw and down my neck and digs his teeth into my skin. My hips roll on their own accord, and when I whimper, he laughs. A deep rumble travels up from his chest to tease my ears.
“I know what you want, coniglietta.” He slips his hand between my thighs and inside me with ease, screwing me with his fingers the way he used to.
His ring finger curls against my G-spot with exquisite precision as if he’s trying to write his name, and I twist, desperate for more.
The motion is enough to wake me up, and when I open my eyes, it’s my own hand between my legs.
I want to stop, I really do, but I can’t seem to find the will.
Shouldn’t I hate him? Yes, but hate doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. It’s just…shit…it’s the way he looks at me. The way his muscles bunch when he hoists me up against his body…it breaks me. I want him back. I can’t stand the idea of losing him all over again, but what other choice do I have?
Desire and shame, guilt and resentment. Contradicting emotions rock through me in equal measure, but underneath it all, my fingers are a constant, traveling between my legs to sate that hot ache growing in my core.
Though I should put an end to this, I don’t.
Instead, I close my eyes and imagine him here.
Envision him watching me on the security camera, because my fantasy is safer than my guilt, my desire for release stronger than my shame.
Would he unzip his pants as I push my fingers deep inside my pussy?
Stroke his long, thick shaft as he pictures himself back between my legs?
I can see it so clearly, smell him so clearly, I lift the edge of the sweatshirt and bite, exposing my bare stomach and drowning myself in his scent of spice and aged sandalwood.
I can almost taste his skin through the lingering musk on his shirt. I visualize him standing in front of me again, looking over my naked body while I shiver, helpless and trapped in front of him.
I’m desperate to feel an emotion that isn’t fear or hurt, so I keep going. Dante’s sweats rode down while I slept, and my hand dips beneath the waistband. I buck my hips, rocking against my finger over and over again, so close to coming in his clothes that stars dance behind my closed eyelids.
“Bella regazza.” Dante’s husky baritone outside my cell, muffled by the heavy steel door, comes out of nowhere.
It shatters the perceived privacy of the moment, and I start violently.
Jerking my hand out of my pants, I scramble to fix my clothes, my heart pounding painfully as I lie back beneath the blanket and pretend to sleep.
When he doesn’t burst into my cell and accuse me of masturbating, I roll off my cot and creep silently across the room.
The floor is sloped ever so slightly to help various fluids slink toward the drains set up all over the place. Because of that, a narrow gap exists between the bottom of the door and the floor.
I’ve been staring at the light spilling from beneath that sliver for days, and now, I plant my cheek against the dingy cement ground to listen.
“You were amazing today, mia amata.” Dante, his voice gentle and adoring. “I know we started off on the wrong foot, but you’re improving every day.”
Air rushes out of me as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach. Is he talking to a woman?
“Hey, watch it!” An amused lilt colors his tone like a ghost. A remnant of the old Dante.
Something clicks on the hard floor, and I edge closer to the crack, peering as far as I can to the left until I spy a set of canine toes bouncing excitedly around Dante’s boots.
“For fuck’s sake, Pistol.” He mutters the words, but they’re clearly anything but irritated.
“I pay you one compliment, and you completely lose your shit. Have some self-respect, woman.”
I close my eyes, absorbing his occasional throaty laugh as Pistol darts in between his feet. It’s beautiful compared to the past week and a half’s icy sarcasm, and I drink in the joy until the elevator dings to signal their departure.
Too focused on picking my scattered thoughts up off the floor to move, I lie on the concrete with the chill slowly seeping through my clothes.
It’s impossible to make sense of what I just heard, and I’m half-convinced I’ll open my eyes only to realize that the whole thing was a dream.
I was so convinced that I understood him and that I’d finally seen him for the man, no, the monster that he is.
But his interaction with Pistol transports me to the past, to the lighter version of the man I fell in love with.
That was Dante without the filter, without the cruel, sadistic mask.
It’s the version he becomes when he doesn’t have to perform.
More than that, it’s the man he used to show me when we were together.
A trace of softness still clings to him, however small, however entrenched in the wreckage of whatever he’s become.
When I finally do slink back beneath the blanket, I’ve got one objective at the forefront of my mind.
I have to help Dante remember the man he used to be.
There won’t be a chance to escape. He has too many men, and he’s watching me too closely.
Besides Jeremy, Angela is the only person I really have a relationship with, and she’s just as much of a prisoner as I am.
Plus, I still don’t know if I can fully trust her.
Or anyone for that matter. The only person I can depend on is myself.
I need to find a way out of this mess, and the only idea I have is bringing back the old Dante.
Because the Dante I knew would never do this to me, and his love for Pistol gives me hope that a shred of that man still exists.
Earning his trust and forgiveness may be the only way I extricate myself from this alive, without endangering Jeremy.
Even though I still don’t understand what sin I committed to require forgiveness in the first place.
Not that the reasoning matters at this point.
Not after the awful way he’s been treating me.
But when morning comes and Angela enters the cell with breakfast and a new pair of underwear folded neatly on the tray next to hot oatmeal and a toothbrush, I start to wonder if Jeremy is the only reason I want to unearth the man I once knew.