Chapter 40
Forty
Mercy
Wounds clean, Cisco sets himself to anointing them with a rosemary-scented balm he found in the bathroom. His fingers are warm and so tender across my raw flesh that I feel no pain.
“I know you think this helps,” he grumbles. “But in the long run, it doesn’t.”
“Says you.”
“Says a lot of people who care about you.” He hangs his head and slips into Italian to tell me about the nuns scolding him for mistreating my delicate laundry.
They wanted him to care for my clothes because I deserve it.
He tells me how the orphans look at me when I’m not watching.
How Tawny felt hurt at my outburst earlier because she admires me, and how my friends worry about me … and how he does too.
Every word, every balm-slicked glide of his thumbs sends warmth into my body, heat into my veins, bringing me closer to madness.
He’s staring at the floor as he rambles, so he’s not watching his thumbs climb higher up my thighs.
My skin tightens. My nipples harden. I’m wet, panting, and picking at the only thing my bound hands can reach—my T-shirt.
He’s telling me beautiful things that should make me feel good, but I’m like this. I’m ruining it. What’s wrong with me?
His thumbs reach the apex of my parted thighs, and I suck in a breath. Cisco lifts his head. Instant recognition. Lips part. Pupils dilate.
“You should stop now,” I whisper.
He licks his lips. “Do you want me to?”
I shake my head.
“Do you want me to…” His gaze drops to between my thighs, to where the T-shirt has bunched enough for him to realize that I gave him my last pair of clean panties.
His exhale is so sharp, so fast, that his breath hits my naked pussy.
I clench and whimper at the sensation. If I don’t touch myself, I’m going to implode. Fuck it. I’m already going to Hell. If he doesn’t like it, he shouldn’t have kidnapped me. I slide my hands down, but he’s there, finger in the cotton binding, halting my progress.
“No,” I beg. “No more games. I just need to—”
“I know, piccola,” he croons.
“No, you don’t. You don’t know what this is like.”
His fingers dig into my knees.
“You think this is easy for me?” he grinds out. “That I don’t think of you, too?”
He pulls something from his pocket and drops it on my lap. My panties. At first, I fear that he’s demanding I put them on and leave. But then I realize they’re still unwashed … and tangled in his rosary beads.
Emotion twists his handsome features, and I can’t breathe.
“All I think about is touching you.” He whispers it like a secret. “In the shower, at dinner, at confession. Doing the fucking laundry, Mercy, it’s you.” His lashes flutter, and he groans softly, “It’s always you.”
I can’t describe the feeling when I get like this. Aroused is too small a word. It’s also insatiable, feverish, fucking feral, and desperate. It’s like every nerve in my body is at the surface of my skin. I am about to explode. A deep, dark, and gnawing desire claws at me.
“I need to—”
“What?” Deep, rough. “Tell me.” His lips press reverently to my inner knee. “What do you need, piccola?”
“Let me go back to the abbey. Let me—”
“No.” Fingers grip hard, bruising flesh.
“What?”
“You need to touch yourself, you do it here. Now.” He parts my knees, opening me wider, and stares straight ahead. Waits.
“Cisco…” It’s not just his vows, but another heart that’s on the line. If Jasmine is his—I can’t even finish the thought. “This is crossing a line.”
“We are not fucking.”
“So you’re just going to watch me?”
“Yes.” Lust darkens his eyes. “I want you to see this is not a sin, not … shameful.”
“I know it’s not,” I snap.
He just gives my thigh wounds a meaningful look.
“That’s overreaching,” I grumble. “A stupid reason.”
We both know I’m right. Whatever we’re doing here, there’s no excuse for it.
He grabs the collar around my wrists, lifts his gaze to mine, and drags my hands between my legs.
“Begin,” he orders.
“I’ll do it how I—ah, fuck.” The first swipe of my finger over my clit has me gasping, pleasure soaring, hips bucking.
“Cristo,” he mutters. “You’re dripping.”
“You turn me on, asshole.” The way he looks at me, all starvation and hot male appreciation, has my finger working faster. Faster. “God, we shouldn’t be doing this.”
He licks his lips. “No.”
“But you like it.”
“Yes.”
“You wish it were you touching me.”
“Sì.”
“What if I pretend my fingers are yours—”
“Stop!”
I freeze so abruptly it hurts. A strangled sound comes out of me, and I start again, finger flicking my slicked clit.
“Mercy. I said stop.”
Tears brimming, I meet his gaze. “Why?”
“Because that is not how I would touch you.” His gaze dips to my pussy, and he grows serious. Quiet. “First, I would go slow. I would savor the feel of you.” When I don’t move, he squeezes my knees. “Do it. As I said.” I start circling. Fucking slow. “Sì. Like that. Now dip down, wet yourself.”
His collar grazes my clit as I plunge my middle finger inside my pussy. I can’t get far, and it drives me up the wall, but the friction, the pressure, it’s heaven.
“Bene.”
I go faster, eager, and squeeze my thighs together for friction.
He tugs my legs wide again, growling, “Non così. Stay open for me.”
Then he tells me what to do. He guides my fingers with his words, so steady and sure, so confident that I close my eyes and surrender. It’s him touching me in all the intimate places, him learning the shape of me.
“Tell me how it feels,” he commands.
“Wet.”
“And?”
“Soft. Tight.”
His groan opens my eyes.
Sitting between my legs, he’s both enthralled and tortured at the same time. A beautiful man, undone. One hand still rests on my knee, the other is on his erection, stroking through his cassock.
“Show me,” I demand. “I want to see you touch yourself too.”
Our gazes clash. I hold my breath. Dare him with my eyes, Do it. Don’t make this all about me.
A tattooed hand slides up the seam of his cassock and starts popping buttons at the collar.
He’s not wearing an undershirt, so when the black fabric falls open, it’s just a hard abdomen, olive skin, and more tattoos.
Dark hair trails down from his belly button to his trousers.
The dusky tip of his cock breaches his waistband.
The zipper is loud as he tugs it down, still one-handed. It’s as though if he lets me go, the dream disappears. We wake up.
He watches me watching him, and it’s so hot, so erotic, that I work my clit faster, tense with anticipation.
“Slow,” he scolds me.
The daggers I shoot him bring a crooked smile to his lips. He knows he’s in control here, knows I’m so enthralled with him, and he loves it.
He pulls out his heavy cock, and I moan. The sheer size, the thickness, the veined perfection. The way it darkens strangled in his fist. His arm trembles. He’s waiting for me.
We look at each other, and there’s a moment, a flicker of time, we both know this is wrong. This fucks everything up. Forget about cracks in the seals on the gates of Hell. This will blow it open.
“Wet it,” I rasp. “Your cock. Before you stroke, I want you to wet it.”
He stands abruptly, cassock falling, and he yanks my hips forward.
“What are you doing?” I gasp.
“Wetting.” He glides his shaft through my slick folds, knocking my fingers away. Up and down, over my sensitive clit, slicking himself in my arousal.
“That’s not what I meant,” I moan, but it’s no use. Hot, blissful pleasure starts to build, coiling tight. I can’t focus on anything else.
“Like this?” He grinds his glide into me harder. Up, down. Up, down. He does everything except enter me. “Feels so good. Fuck, I missed this.” He wraps his fist around his shaft, tosses his head back, and strokes himself. His knuckles graze gently over my clit, sparking more pleasure.
“Oh my God, like that.” I rock into him.
Cisco inches closer, pressing the underside of his shaft harder. “More?”
“We shouldn’t.” But I nod.
I could come like this. It’s his face, his beautiful eyes, and the way he’s surrendering to the pleasure. Sweat pebbles on his upper lip, those kissable fucking lips I desperately want to bite.
“You’re so fucking hot,” I moan. “You know that, right?”
The arrogant quirk of his lips makes me growl like an animal and rock my hips into his fist.
“Cazzo,” he grunts, and then mutters a curse at the ceiling, something in Italian about driving him crazy. A sick thrill rolls through me. I love seeing him undone. I want more.
I hike up my T-shirt and rub my wrists against my nipple, but it’s frustrating with the binding. So I bring the collar to my teeth.
His gaze snaps down and hardens. “Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t make me beg.”
He drags my hands back to my cunt, holds me there, and thrusts upward through my hands.
“Yes,” he growls. “Like this.”
My whimper makes him smile.
“You will earn it, piccola. Remember?”
“You’re a bastard.”
He harrumphs, and then he’s not looking at the ceiling anymore.
His mouth is on my breast, sucking my nipple hard.
A zip of bliss shoots to my core. My orgasm hits hard, wrenching a hoarse cry from my lips.
I’m not even touching myself. I’m just stuck between us, his slicked fist and cock grinding over me.
I see stars. Can’t breathe.
Somewhere through the haze, I hear his breath stutter, a curse, and then a deep, drawn-out groan of pleasure I’ll never forget. He spills onto my still throbbing pussy, fucks over it. Never inside. We’re both sticky, shuddering messes. Somehow, this is so much sweeter. There’s nowhere to hide.
Spent, he falls forward, hands planting beside my hips. A breath drags into his lungs, and then his sweaty forehead drops to mine. We stay like that for a long moment, heaving in each other’s air like we’re drowning.
I wait for it, the shame. The guilt. I wait for him to say it first. We fucked up.
In no way, shape, or form can what we did be categorized as innocent.
Cisco grabs my face, crushes his lips to mine, and drives his tongue in deep. He kisses me, inhales me. Big, open-mouthed, wet, and hungry kisses. It’s like we’re starting, not ending. So much emotion, so much raw honesty. Such want.
I can’t breathe.
“I can’t…” I shove him, but he’s still made of marble. “Cisco, please.”
He growls into my mouth, pins my head, and deepens the kiss.
It’s not that he won’t stop, it’s that I want him to keep going. I want to stay.
I twist out of the collar with ease, and then I’m swiping the key from his pocket and wrenching out from beneath his grip.
He stumbles back, alarmed, hair sticking up. A white square is missing from his throat. Black cloth gapes over his tattooed torso. That’s all I notice, and then I’m out the door.