Chapter 14
DANTE
It’s just physical. That’s what I tell myself when she walks into the study at midnight, papers in hand, pretending she’s here to work.
That’s what I tell myself when my body responds to the sound of the door opening, to the soft click of her heels on hardwood, to how she doesn’t look at me when she sits down.
It’s just physical. Just bodies. Just release.
We’ve fallen into a rhythm. Days of careful distance. Professional conversations in the hallway, necessary interactions at meals, nothing that would make the staff whisper more than they already do. She calls me Dante in front of others now, but there’s a formality to it. A performance.
Nights are different.
Nights, she comes to my study after the compound goes quiet. Nights, we pretend to work until we don’t. Until one of us moves and the other responds and we end up tangled together on my desk, or the leather couch, or wherever the hunger catches us.
It’s just physical.
Except I’ve started noticing things.
How she takes her coffee. Oat milk creamer, two sugars, and she holds the cup with both palms like she’s warming herself even when it’s ninety degrees outside.
How she hums under her breath when she’s concentrating, some melody I don’t recognize, soft and unconscious.
How she tucks her hair behind her left ear when she’s found an anomaly in the numbers. Always the left. A tell she doesn’t know she has.
But my mind is a ledger that never stops recording, and she’s become the entry I can’t stop tracking.
Tonight, she’s not at the desk.
I come in from a late call with Renzo expecting to find her surrounded by papers, pen in hand, that little furrow between her brows.
Instead, the desk is empty. The lamp is off.
For a moment I think she didn’t come. That the pattern has been broken. That she’s decided this arrangement has become too complicated and she’s staying away.
Fuck.
But she’s here. Just not where I expected.
She’s on the leather couch, shoes kicked off, feet tucked beneath her. Her hair is down, loose waves spilling over her shoulder. She’s wearing a soft sweater instead of her usual silk blouse, sleeves pulled over her knuckles.
And she’s reading.
Not ledgers. Not contracts. A worn paperback with a cracked spine, held close to her face like she’s trying to climb inside the pages.
She’s so absorbed she doesn’t hear me enter. Doesn’t notice me standing there, watching her.
There’s a flush creeping up her neck. Her teeth are working her bottom lip. Every few seconds she shifts, pressing her thighs together, and my blood drops south.
My wife reads romance novels.
The kind with shirtless bastards on the covers and pages so worn they fall open to the good parts.
My chest tightens. Not judgment. Something dangerously close to charmed.
I should announce myself. Clear my throat or close the door or walk away to preserve her dignity.
Instead I cross the room in silence.
I’m standing over her before she looks up.
She startles so hard she drops the book. Her stare goes wide, then mortified. The flush on her neck spreads to her cheeks.
“Dante. I didn’t hear you.”
“I noticed.” I hold out my hand. “Give it to me.”
“It’s nothing.” She tries to tuck the book behind her back. “Just a distraction while I waited.”
“Cassia.” One word. Her name. A command.
She hesitates. Then she surrenders the paperback.
The cover is what I expected. A shirtless man with improbable muscles, a woman arched against him, the title in swooping gold script. Claimed by the Duke.
The spine is so cracked it falls open to certain pages on its own. Well-loved pages. Pages she’s read over and over.
I flip to where her thumb was holding the spot.
His hands pinned her wrists above her head as he drove into her, and she cried out his name like a prayer, like a curse, like the only word she knew.
“Don’t.” Her voice is strangled. “Please.”
I look at her. The embarrassment burning in her cheeks. How she can’t meet my focus. My proper wife, my brilliant forensic accountant, reads bodice rippers in secret like contraband.
Heat blooms in my chest.
I sit on the couch beside her. Close enough that our thighs touch.
“Read it to me.”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“The scene you were on.” I put the book back in her grip. “Read it out loud.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“Dante.” She’s breathless, pleading.
“You were enjoying it.” I reach for her, pull her onto my lap so she’s straddling me, the book trapped between our bodies. “Show me what gets my wife wet when I’m not there to do it myself.”
Her inhale catches. Her thighs clench around my hips.
“Read.”
For a long moment she just stares at me. Then, with unsteady hands, she opens the book to the marked page.
“‘His hands pinned her wrists above her head.’” Her voice is a whisper. She swallows. “‘As he drove into her.’”
“Louder.”
Tries again. “‘As he drove into her, and she cried out his name like a prayer, like a curse, like the only word she knew.’”
I harden beneath her. The combination of her voice, the words, the press of her on my lap.
I slide my palms under her sweater, finding warm skin. Jasmine rises off her body, soft and ruinous.
“Keep going.”
“‘She’d never felt so full.’” Her voice wavers as my fingers trace up her spine. “‘So possessed. He was everywhere. Inside her, around her, consuming her.’”
I unhook her bra with one hand. She stumbles over the next line.
“‘Every thrust drove her higher. She was climbing toward a peak she couldn’t name.’”
“Don’t stop.” I cup her breasts, thumbs brushing her nipples. Hard under my touch. “What happens next?”
“I can’t.” She’s squirming now, grinding down against the hard length of me straining through my pants. “Dante, I can’t focus when you’re.”
She loses the sentence. Grinds down harder.
“Try.”
She takes a shuddering breath. Looks back at the page.
“‘His mouth found her throat.’” My mouth finds the pulse point below her jaw. “‘Teeth scraping that sensitive spot.’” I bite down and she gasps. “‘That made her fall apart.’”
“Is that what you want?” I murmur against her skin. “To fall apart?”
“Yes.” The word is nothing more than air.
“Then keep reading.”
She’s trembling so hard the pages rustle.
“‘He reached between them, found that bundle of nerves.’” I mirror the action. My touch slides down her stomach, into her leggings, past the edge of her underwear. When my fingers find her clit, she jerks like a current just ran through her. “‘And circled it while he fucked her.’”
I circle. She moans.
“‘Until she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.’”
I slide two fingers into her pussy. Soaked. Dripping.
Her hips jerk. A whimper slips out.
“Keep going.” I pump in and out. “Tell me how it ends.”
“‘She shattered.’” Her voice breaks. She’s rocking against my touch, fucking herself on my fingers. “‘Screaming his name.’”
I curl deeper, find the spot that makes her lids flutter shut.
“‘As he spilled inside her.’”
“Enough.”
I take the book from her grip. Toss it aside.
Her mouth opens to protest and I swallow the sound with a kiss.
She tastes like need.
I stand, taking her with me, her legs wrapping around my waist. Three steps and her back hits the bookshelves. She gasps as the spines dig into her shoulder blades.
And then she looks at me.
Not the way she looks at me during. Not glazed, not gone. Present. Searching. Like she’s trying to find something in my face I didn’t mean to show.
I go still. Something in my chest splits open. Just a fracture. Just a second.
Then I crush my mouth back to hers, harder than before, and the tenderness drowns under the flood.
“The book got you wet.” I yank her sweater over her head, drag down her bra, bare her breasts to the dim light. “Let’s see if the real thing measures up.”
I kiss down her throat. Take one nipple between my teeth, suck hard while my touch works between her thighs. She’s making sounds, desperate little whimpers, and I remember we’re not alone in this house.
My palm comes up. Covers her mouth.
“Quiet.” My voice is rough against her breast. “Not a sound.”
Her stare goes dark. She nods beneath my palm.
I release her long enough to strip her leggings and underwear down her legs, to free my cock from my pants. Then I’m lifting her again, pressing her against the bookshelves, positioning myself at her entrance.
“Your duke fucked his duchess against a wall.” I say against her ear. “I’m going to fuck my wife against my bookshelves. And you’re going to be silent. Understand?”
She nods, frantic.
I thrust into her in one hard stroke.
Her whole body arches. Books rattle on the shelves. My palm muffles the cry that tries to escape her throat.
Cristo.
“That’s it.” I pull back, drive in again. Her pussy grips me so tight my vision whites at the edges. “Take it. Take my cock like a good girl.”
She’s so wet I can hear it. Obscene sounds filling the space between us as I fuck her against my bookshelves, as her back slides against leather spines and her nails rake my shoulders through my shirt.
I know her body now.
I shift the angle. She clenches around me, gasping. I grind against her clit on every thrust and within seconds she’s shaking, her nails digging into my shoulders.
“Better than the book?” My voice is low, filthy. “Better than your duke?”
She nods, glazed, her breath hot against my palm.
“Your pussy was made for my cock. Not some fictional bastard’s.” I punctuate each word with a thrust. “Mine. Only ever mine.”
Her inner muscles are starting to flutter. She’s close. The tension coils tighter with every stroke.
“Come for me.” The command scrapes out, raw. “Let me feel you.”
Her body detonates.
Silent except for the muffled sound against my palm, her body clenching around me, pulling me deeper. I watch her face. Every flutter of her lashes. Every crease of her brow.
Then I’m following her over, burying myself to the hilt as I come, filling her while her body milks every drop.
We stay like that. Pressed against the bookshelves. Breathing hard.
My hand falls from her mouth.
And then I do what I shouldn’t.
I brush the hair back from her face. Tender. Tuck it behind her ear the way I’ve watched her do a hundred times.
She goes rigid.
The change is instant. One second she’s loose against me, breathing slow. The next she’s pulling back, body tightening, reaching for the armor she’d let slip.
“Cassia.”
“We should.” She’s untangling herself, sliding down to her feet, not meeting my stare. “I should go. It’s late.”
I don’t release her. My grip brackets her hips, holding her against the bookshelf.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Pull away when I’m not hurting you.”
The question lands between us. She absorbs it, and her focus drops to my chest. A flinch she tries to disguise as a blink.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re fine when it’s rough.” I trace my thumb across her cheek, feather-light, and she flinches. “It’s this that makes you run.”
Silence.
My cock is still half-hard against her thigh. Her heartbeat pounds against my chest.
“Some people aren’t built for soft,” she says. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
It means everything.
We both know it.
But she’s slipping away, gathering her clothes, pulling her sweater back over her head.
I let her rebuild the distance. For now.
She reaches for the book where I tossed it. Holds it against her chest like a shield.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asks.
The question we always ask. The pattern we’ve fallen into.
“Same time tomorrow.”
She nods. Doesn’t look at me as she walks toward the door. Barefoot. Hair tangled. The flush still fading from her skin.
She disappears through the door.
I don’t stop her.
The truth settles into my gut like a stone.
She reads about love in secret. Keeps worn paperbacks hidden like contraband.
And she flinches from the real thing.
I want to prove her wrong.
Cazzo.