CHAPTER 12 #2
"I've spent ten years seeing your face in the dark, Fiorella," he rasps, refusing to open his eyes. "I don don't need to look."
"Look at me and see someone who hates him as much as you do."
I press my palm flat against his chest, directly over his heart.
I center it perfectly over the thickest, most jagged edge of the burn scar.
The contrast is insane—my cool, soft skin against this hot, leathery, ruined landscape.
I trace the edge of the keloid with my thumb.
His eyes snap open. His pupils dilate so fast the dark amber gets swallowed by pure black void.
He gasps like I just shoved a knife between his ribs.
"It’s cold. Why is your hand so cold?" he breathes, his heart accelerating under my palm, thudding erratically against my skin.
"Because I've been dead for years, too. I just didn't know it until you took me."
"Puttana..." he curses softly. "You don't know what you're doing."
His hand snaps up, his fingers clamping around my wrist like a vice.
It’s a bruising, punishing grip that digs straight into my delicate bones.
But he doesn't shove me away. He yanks my arm, forcing my palm harder against his scarred chest until it actually hurts.
He leans forward, looming over me, his breath hitching as the devastating grief instantly mutates into a feral, desperate hunger.
His thumb starts stroking the inside of my wrist, rubbing directly over my racing pulse in a slow, highly possessive rhythm.
"You think this makes us even?" he demands, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
"No. Nothing makes it even."
"Then why are you still touching me?"
I lean into his space, completely abandoning whatever self-preservation I have left, until our foreheads touch. My lips brush against his as I speak, a total accident that feels like striking a match in a gas leak. "I'm not his sister anymore."
"Then who are you?"
"Whatever you want me to be. Just make me feel something other than this."
He lets go of my wrist and grabs my waist with both hands, his grip like iron.
He hauls me up off the floor, his strength bordering on violently excessive.
His heavy boots scuff the concrete. He kicks the Beretta out of the way—it clatters into the far corner, entirely useless now.
The buckle of his belt clinks loudly against the floor as he unfastens it with blinding speed.
The air in the bunker evaporates, replaced entirely by this thick, toxic need to self-destruct.
"No more talking," he orders, backing me up until my bare spine slams into the freezing, reinforced steel of the bunker door.
"Please, Angelo. Now."
"I'm going to break you, Fiorella. And you're going to thank me for it."
He crashes his mouth down onto mine. There is absolutely nothing gentle about it.
He kisses me with a bruising, punishing intensity, his tongue aggressively shoving its way past my lips like he’s trying to consume all the oxygen in my lungs.
My head lolls back, the back of my skull smacking against the steel, my long hair catching painfully between the cold metal and my head, but I don't care.
I want him to ruin me. Let him burn the Silvestri name right out of my blood.
"Open for me, puttana," he growls against my mouth, biting down hard on my lower lip.
"Take it," I gasp, tasting my own blood. "Take everything."
I thread both my hands into the thick, dark hair at the base of his neck.
I dig my manicured nails directly into his scalp, yanking his face closer, meeting his unhinged aggression with my own.
He groans into my mouth—a deep, tortured sound of pure, feral want.
I hook one of my legs around his hip, my bare thigh sliding against the rough denim of his jeans, aggressively trying to erase the millimeter of space left between our bodies.
"More," I demand, my chest heaving against his. "Don't stop."
"Cazzo, you're going to be the death of me."
He grabs the lapels of the tactical jacket I’m wearing and rips it off my shoulders, letting it drop to the floor like a discarded skin.
His massive, calloused palms slide immediately under the thin silk of my slip, grabbing my bare hips.
He kneads my flesh with a possessive violence that is absolutely going to leave deep purple bruises by tomorrow morning.
I feel the cold, heavy metal of his watch scratching roughly against my hip bone as he grips me.
"You’re mine," he snarls, his lips trailing down my jaw to my throat. "Not his. Mine."
"Yes. Always."
He slides his hands down to my thighs and lifts me completely off the floor.
I gasp at the sheer physical power of it, instinctively wrapping both my legs tight around his waist. My core presses flush against the hard, thick ridge of his cock straining against his jeans.
He pins me high against the steel door, my toes curling as they dangle in the freezing air, desperately seeking purchase on the smooth metal.
"Look at me when I do this," he orders, his oil-slick eyes burning holes straight through me.
"I'm not looking anywhere else."
He frees himself with one hand. No finesse, no buildup, just raw, desperate utility.
His breathing is a harsh, rhythmic rasp echoing off the concrete.
The sudden wash of cold air hits my wet core before it's replaced by the intense, blistering heat of him positioning himself perfectly at my entrance.
His rough knuckles graze the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, feeling like coarse sandpaper against the silk.
"Tell me you want the monster," he whispers, his voice thick with lust and rage.
"I want you, Angelo. Only you."
He shoves inside me in one sharp, impossibly deep thrust.