CHAPTER 18 #2
"I'm not your plaything," I warned him, though my teeth were chattering too hard to make it sound threatening.
"Tonight, you're just a body that needs to stay warm. Move."
"If you touch me—"
"I have to touch you to keep you alive, you stubborn fuck. Get in."
I crawled onto the mattress, my movements jerky, stiff, and completely devoid of grace.
The second I was within range, Angelo's thick arm snaked around my waist, yanking me down hard against the mattress.
He threw the heavy wool blanket over us, tucking the edges tightly under our bodies to seal in a pocket of air.
The shock of his skin against mine made me gasp loudly. He was a literal furnace. The contrast of his burning heat against my frozen limbs felt like being plunged into boiling water. My body jerked hard in a reflexive panic, trying to scramble away from the sheer intensity of him.
"Gesu, you're burning."
"And you're a block of ice. Stop moving," he barked, his arm tightening around me.
He didn't give me an inch to retreat. My freezing toes brushed entirely by accident against his thick calf.
He didn't flinch away from the cold; he just shifted his heavy leg and threw it over mine, pinning my lower half down to the bed.
"I can't... I'm shaking too hard."
He rolled me onto my side, backing my spine directly into his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, tangling our legs together, forcing continuous skin-to-skin contact from my shoulders all the way down to my ankles.
I was trapped in a cage of pure heat. His breath washed hot and steady against the back of my neck.
"Let go a little," he ordered softly.
"No. You're still shivering."
"Bastardo... you're doing this on purpose."
I kept my fists clenched tight against my chest, my knuckles brushing against the hard muscle of his forearms wrapping around me.
But my biology was a traitor. The heat was too intoxicating.
The suffocating smell of his skin—sharp salt, gun oil, and heavy musk—was overriding my panic.
He wasn't shaking at all. He was an absolute anchor in the dark.
The last rusted wire of my resistance finally snapped.
My muscles gave out. I let my head fall back heavily against his shoulder, my breathing evening out as the violent, painful shivering finally subsided into a deep, dull ache.
I turned slightly in his iron grip, burying my face into the crook of his neck, actively seeking out the hottest pulse point on his body.
Every exhale I took blew warmly across his collarbone.
I felt his grip tighten around my waist, his fingers digging slightly into my skin.
"Better?" he murmured, the vibration of his chest rumbling against my back.
"Yes."
"Don't get used to it, princess."
A heavy, thick silence settled over the shack.
I lay perfectly still, listening to the heavy, rhythmic thud of his pulse right beneath my ear.
The steady drumbeat was a stark reminder that we were actually alive.
I reached up slowly, my index finger finding the small, jagged 'V' shaped scar on the center of his chest. I traced the raised tissue lightly.
"Is this where they shot you?"
"One of the times."
"I'm sorry, Angelo. For all of it."
He didn't answer. He just rested his heavy chin on the crown of my head.
The air trapped under the wool blanket was getting dangerously hot.
I wasn't shivering anymore. My skin was flushed, hypersensitive, and completely awake.
Angelo's large hands, which had been holding me in a strict, clinical grip to share body heat, slowly shifted.
His palm slid down from my waist, drifting with deliberate, agonizing slowness over the curve of my bare hip.
He nuzzled his face into the sensitive skin right behind my ear, his thick stubble grazing my neck like fine, hot sandpaper.
"You're not shivering anymore," he observed, his voice dark and ruined.
"No. I'm... something else."
His hand traveled up the center of my spine, his calloused fingers mapping every single vertebra with a possessive, heavy pressure.
He pulled me flush against him until there wasn't a fraction of a millimeter of space between us.
I felt the thick, hard reality of his arousal pressing bluntly against the small of my back. He wasn't ignoring it anymore.
He gripped the back of my neck, his fingers tangling roughly in my matted, dirty chestnut hair, pulling my head back slightly.
"Look at me, Fiorella."
"I can't see you in the dark."
"You can feel me. That's enough."
I turned fully around in his arms, the rough hair of his chest brushing against my bare breasts.
It sent a sharp, liquid jolt straight to my core.
I reached up, my fingers splaying wide across his chest, tracing the thick, raised ridges of his scars.
My nail dipped instinctively into the hollow of his throat, feeling his pulse hammer against my touch.
"Your skin is like a battlefield," I whispered.
"It's the only home I've ever known."
He groaned, his chest expanding as he sucked in a sharp breath.
He shifted his hips, pressing that solid, demanding heat directly against my bare thigh.
The protector was gone. The predator was wide awake and starving.
He leaned in and bit down on the curve of my shoulder—not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to leave a bruise, a brand.
"Cazzo, you're going to be the death of me," he muttered against my flesh.
"Maybe we're already dead."
Angelo shifted his immense weight, rolling over and hovering above me, completely pinning me to the gritty mattress.
He used his thick knees to push my legs wide apart, claiming the space, his dark eyes catching a sliver of moonlight as he stared down at me.
He grabbed both of my wrists in one massive hand and pinned them above my head, his grip like iron manacles.
"Tell me to stop, Silvestri."
I stared up at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Don't you dare stop."