Sara
Dante’s lips part, and his blatant shock is almost worth the pain…as well as my impending death at his hands. I spent the last few hours spectating as he tore apart another human being, so I understand that I just signed my soul away.
I lift my chin higher, my resolve unwavering. His jaw snaps shut, and I only get a few seconds to study how the muscles in his shoulders bunch before he grabs my hand and jerks me closer.
I choke down my scream and refuse to look away.
If he plans to kill me, then he can watch the life drain from the eyes of the woman who loved him like he was her whole world.
Dante’s body tenses like a too-tight spring, and a frustrated rumble escapes him. He rakes a hand through his hair, streaking the strands with gore.
“Have you lost your damn mind?” As he shakes the pliers at me, I recoil from the blood and saliva coating the prongs. “What good does taking his place do? You don’t have the information I need.”
He blinks repeatedly, almost as if he just woke up from a nightmare. I need to keep him here with me. If I lose him to that dead-eyed monster again, I fear I won’t be able to bring him back.
“So?” Seizing the pliers, I let them drop to the ground. “If the last few minutes are anything to go by, you don’t really give a shit about extracting answers. You just want to hurt somebody. So hurt me.”
Fear swirls in my gut, forcing me to dig deep for courage. Dante’s violence seems incited by instinct rather than true malice. Maybe if I can redirect him from the intended target, I stand a chance of saving them both. “If he was going to talk, he would have done so already.”
Over the last two hours, it’s become increasingly obvious that pain won’t motivate someone conditioned to withstand torture. Especially when Dante clearly prefers inflicting damage over getting into his captive’s head. The irony that his approach bears similarities to mine isn’t lost on me.
We both need to try something else.
As a nurse, I’ve dealt with people experiencing every type of pain imaginable, so while Dante’s wounds may be invisible, I can tell that internally, he’s bleeding out. Considering he’s more open wound than man, I can’t leave him to his own devices.
Between the time when we broke up five years ago and now, something hurt him.
An experience so terrible that it fundamentally rewrote his DNA.
And even if I don’t fully comprehend what happened and played no role in that event, he clearly believes otherwise.
With that being the case, his hatred for me isn’t difficult to understand.
The more I ponder, the more I wonder if the same men who terrorized us and drove us from the city lied to Dante about my involvement in the events that changed him?
Either way, if extracting information from the stranger in the chair will aid Dante, then that’s what I plan to do.
My breath hitches when I find the prisoner’s one good eye trained on me. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you anymore.”
Dante goes unnaturally still. Hostility seeps into the air, but before he can say anything, the door opens. Luca appears in the threshold. I wonder if Dante even notices how he positions himself between us like a shield.
“Anything the matter?” When Luca’s focus shifts from the prisoner to me, his features harden. Somehow, I definitely earned a top spot on his shit list.
Dante jerks his head. “No. Just a change of plans. Take him away.”
Prowling over on surprisingly quiet feet for such a big man, Luca unlocks the man’s chains. The prisoner’s legs buckle, compelling Luca to practically drag him away. At the doorway, the prisoner manages to crane his head and pin me with imploring eyes.
I swallow hard. “We’ll talk later.”
The door shuts behind Luca with an unnaturally loud click. In the next heartbeat, Dante shoves his furious face in front of mine and holds a balled fist by my jaw. “There won’t be a later.”
Dante’s whole arm quakes. The war waging in his deep gaze shatters what’s left of my reservations.
I can try to cut him out of my heart, but I’m fighting a losing battle. This man has owned the other half of my soul since the very first night we met. “It’s okay.”
Despite being half-convinced he’ll lash out before I can pull him back from the brink, I curl my fingers around his fist. The moment my fingertips brush his knuckles, he flinches as if burned.
That fearful expression from his bedroom camera resurfaces, and fierce protectiveness surges beneath my sternum.
“What happened five years ago, cucciolo?”
Recognition flares on his face, and I can almost see the memory reel play out in his mind.
“Cucciolo? Don’t call me that.”
Dante snatched the cell phone I was using to search for Italian terms out of my hands.
“Why not?” Planting my fists on my hips, I toyed with the idea of tickling him to reclaim my phone, but I already knew the attempt would end in failure. The damn man’s practically carved from stone. “I think it’s cute.”
Even if Dante has always been more of a wolf, I liked “cub.”
He scowled. “I’m not a ‘cub.’ I’m a grown-ass man.”
Snickering, I pressed my body to his and gripped him through his pants. “Yes, you definitely are. So how do I say ‘grown-ass cub’ then?”
“Cucciolone.”
His whisper lands like a pebble in a pond of memory, a depressing echo of his old playful correction of my Italian. Spoken in a sandpaper-like rasp, it breaks my heart in an entirely new way.
I reach for him, but he stops me before I get too close, the same as he’s done so many times in the recent past.
“Talk to me.” My throat feels like sandpaper too.
Dante’s unsteady hand reforms a fist. As I watch, breathless and aching for him, he uses that fist to draw lazy loops over my breasts and stomach. He expands the circle to my belly button as nausea roils in my gut.
“They cut me, il mio dolce tesoro. Carved me open and left me bleeding and starving in my own filth. The things I did just to keep breathing…” He releases a desperate, ragged noise. “All so I could come back to you.”
I flinch. This time, when I reach for the hem of his shirt, he lets me. I still don’t understand what happened or why, but I can tell he suffered. I’m desperate to see the full extent of the damage for myself.
Carefully, I unbutton his shirt. Standing like a robot, he neither helps nor stops me. Once I strip his arms free of the soft material, the air strangles in my lungs.
Scars mar every inch of him. Latticed stripes undoubtedly created by sharp blades. Raised, ropy marks, maybe from whips. Circular burns. His skin is a map of pain and brutality, strengthening my urge to vomit.
Swallowing bile, I trace a gentle finger along the puckered flesh and deep, angry furrows.
His Creation of Adam tattoo took one of the biggest hits. The bottom part of Adam hidden beneath his collar has been cleaved away, as if his torturers started to flay him but never finished the job.
“I escaped before they could inflict more damage.” He answers my silent questions in a tone as empty as his eyes.
My heart withers and dies a small death. My hidden agenda perishes, too, leaving only a deep yearning to fix the unfixable. The thought of someone hurting him this badly makes me want to scream and break things. “Dante, please. Let me help you.”
His bitter laugh grates my ears. “You know there’s only one thing I want from you.”
I’m not sure which one of us acts first. He fists my hair and jerks my head back, and I rake my nails down the healed wounds on his chest. Lowering his head, he captures my nipple in his mouth, branding me, and I return the favor, sinking my teeth into his pec and running my tongue along the ridged scar tissue.
Dante raises my arms, and the shackles go back around my wrists, but this time, the intention is a far cry from when Luca first chained me up in this room.
Once I’m secure, I lift my legs to wrap them around his waist, creating an entirely different kind of trap he doesn’t seem to mind.
No foreplay, no kissing, and my heart throbs with a dull pain.
No matter how many times I welcome him into my body, Dante will always hide parts of himself from me.
He denies me the intimacy we once shared, and I feel like I’m dying of thirst while drowning in a well.
Regardless of how much pleasure he delivers, I’m left craving more, and I practically choke on bitterness over what will never be mine.
He hooks his thumbs into the waist of his silk pajama pants, now crusted with blood and gore, and strips them off.
His cock springs free, rigid and swollen with need.
When he sinks into me, his desperate thrust knocks my head against the wall.
He latches onto the space where my neck meets my shoulder and sucks like he’s claiming me in some primitive mating ritual. All I can do is moan in response.
The noise excites him, and he scrapes his teeth over my skin as if he wants to devour me whole.
Each thrust is like a declaration of war, but if this is the price I must pay, I will happily abandon any future right to peace.
He tilts my hips into an angle that allows him to go deeper, and my eyes roll back.
His thumb strums my clit in punishing circles, and I cry out his name. When his other hand slips between my cheeks to circle my other, untouched opening, I arch into him.
Dante needs to possess every inch of me, which means surrendering all of myself to him.
Hate can bring two people together more permanently than love, so long as you’re willing to lose yourself in it, and Dante’s all too eager to do just that. His victim’s blood smears across my face and body, but he doesn’t slow. Instead, he fucks me raw until my voice gives out.
When he pushes his thumb inside that taut ring of muscles, I lose what’s left of my sanity. The sensation is both too much and not enough. My speech becomes garbled, unintelligible, but one thing pierces through the haze of pleasure like the first rays of sun after an endless night.
Love.
My shocked heart nearly stops beating, then gallops like a racehorse. Pressure builds in my chest and behind my eyes.
Despite how much this man hurt me, I love him. I don’t think I ever stopped. Through all these trials, all these versions of him, my feelings never once wavered.
Maybe he reads the truth in my eyes, because he wraps his hand around my neck and squeezes, as if to choke any inconvenient confessions away.
For good measure, he spits into my gaping mouth.
The unexpected filthiness of his action, combined with the thumb stroking my clit, triggers a detonation.
When he releases my throat, light explodes in my vision, and my orgasm tears through me.
“Tesoro.” He climaxes one thrust later, pulsing inside me while burying his face in my neck. As we ride out the waves with his breath hot against my sticky skin, I nearly miss what he mutters.
“Siamo fatti l’uno all’atra.”
I don’t understand enough Italian to catch every word, but I can piece the meaning together well enough.
You and I are meant for each other.
Despite everything—how far we’ve come and how far we’ve fallen—I can’t help but agree.