Chapter 12 #2
I go still. My hand covers hers on my wrist. I hold it there.
I watch her take in a steady breath.
Her other hand moves to her throat and I track her movements. “Who hurt you?” I snarl.
She drops her hand. “No. That's not what this is about.” She takes another breath and starts again.
"Back when I was fifteen and one of my father's guards got me alone, as you know.”
I nod, remembering all too well. But where is she going with this?
“He, um." She presses her lips together.
"He put his hands on me in a brutal way.
I tried to fight back but I was much smaller and he wasn't taking no for an answer. I thought for sure that night I was going to be raped and my father was too busy with his business dealings to worry about his nosy daughter.”
She pauses. I want to pull her into my lap and tell her she doesn’t have to say another word, but I can tell there’s something deeper she is sharing here. Something I might not know. I stay silent.
The hand resting over mine tightens. Tears fill the rims of her eyes.
“And then you came through the door." Her voice cracks but she keeps going, her eyes locked on mine, refusing to look away even though I can see what the words are costing her in the way her chin trembles and her nostrils flare with each breath.
"You pulled him off me. You stepped in and protected me then just like you have done now.
But, well actually there is no but. You didn't have to help me.
You had no reason to. But you did. That feeling of being protected never left.
But you didn't just pull him off me and leave.
You kneeled beside me and you didn't touch me because you knew I couldn't be touched at that moment.
You knew what I needed. Instead of putting your hands on me in any way, you said three words that have lived in my heart since that night. "
"You're safe now," I finish. My voice comes out rough. Broken.
"Yes." Tears slide down her cheeks, brushing over the freckles, and she doesn't wipe them away.
She lets them fall. "I fell in love with you that night, Massimo.
Not the way I love you now, but the beginning of it.
The seed. And it grew. It grew for eleven years and I've been measuring every man's hands against yours and every single one came up short. "
My hands go still on her body. Every muscle in my frame locks. The rain hammers the glass and I hear nothing but her breathing and the blood rushing through my ears.
"Every man I've dated was chosen because I knew he'd leave before I had to explain why I freeze when I'm touched. Marco. Maximus. The Ramen Guy. I know you don’t know their names, but every one of them had an expiration date built in because if they stayed too long, I'd have to tell the truth, and the truth is ugly and complicated and I didn't trust a single one of them enough to get that close to me or to care about taking it slow with me. "
She pulls in a shaking breath. The tears are flowing freely now, dripping off her jaw to land in dark spots on the sofa cushion between us.
"I came to your penthouse on my birthday because you're the only man whose touch my body doesn't fight. I stripped the armor for you because I felt I could. And you're the only reason I would ever take it off. I've been in love with you since I was sixteen."
“Armor?”
“The rockabilly. It’s my shield against the world. I felt so violated that night, I never wanted anyone to see the real me again.”
I understand now.
“But you showed me.”
She nods. “You saw the real me that night, the night of my birthday and now.”
The room goes silent except for the rain.
I look at this woman sitting on my sofa with tears on her face and her heart in her hands and I feel eleven years hit me all at once.
She came to my penthouse because of those three words. She gave me her virginity because of those three words. She trusted my hands with her body because my hands were the first ones that didn't take.
"Then it was never a mistake." My voice is raw. "Not even the wrong number. It was fate. Now tell me. Did you intend to text me that night?"
"Honestly? I was three glasses of wine deep on my birthday and I meant to text my ex.
Maximus." She laughs but it comes out shaky.
"His name is one letter off from yours in my contacts and the wine made the decision my brain wouldn't. I think the universe got sick of waiting for me to woman up and did it for me. "
I pull her into me. My arms wrap around her so tight I feel her ribs press against mine, feel her heart slamming against my chest through the thin fabric of her shirt, and her tears soak into my collar, warm and wet against my neck.
Her fingers grip the back of my neck hard enough that her nails press crescents into my skin and we hold each other in the half-dark with the rain hammering against the glass and neither of us speaks because there's nothing left to say that our bodies aren't already saying.
Her mouth finds my neck. Not tender this time. Her teeth graze my skin and her hands pull at my shirt and her hips press against mine with an urgency that burns through the tenderness and replaces it with something raw and honest and hungry.
"I don't want gentle tonight," she whispers against my throat.
Her fingers yank the buttons of my shirt and I hear one pop loose and hit the hardwood with a sharp click that echoes in the quiet room.
"I want to see the real you. You’ve been gentle with me from the start.
I want the version of you that breaks things. "
My blood heats. My hands grip her waist and tighten, my fingers pressing into the soft flesh above her hips. "Sloane."
"I mean it. You hide behind control the same way I hide behind lipstick. I just showed you everything, Massimo. Show me everything back."
I stand. Lift her with me. Set her on her feet and turn her around.
My hand finds the back of her neck, my fingers closing around the warm column of her throat from behind, and I walk her forward until her palms press flat against the cool glass of the window.
The rain streaks down the other side inches from her fingers, the water catching the city lights and casting rippling shadows across her bare arms.
"Hands on the glass." My voice drops into a register I don't use often, low and rough and stripped of every lawyerly cadence. "Don't move them."
She presses her palms flat. Her breath fogs the cold glass in quick bursts and her reflection stares back at her, flushed and wide-eyed and trembling, a ghost of herself suspended against the city lights.
I drag her shorts and panties down her thighs in one rough pull, the fabric catching on her hips before giving way and pooling at her ankles.
She steps out of them and the cool air from the cracked window washes across her bare skin, raising goosebumps from her thighs to the small of her back.
I run my palm over the curve of her ass, slow, feeling the softness and the warmth and the fine tremor running through her muscles.
Fuck. The way she arches into my hand is pure bliss.
"Tell me you want this." My mouth is against her ear, my chest pressed to her back, the heat of my body sealing against her bare skin.
"I want this." Her voice shakes. "I want you rough and honest and I want every inch of my body to feel the damage you left behind come morning."
My hand comes down on her ass. The sharp crack cuts through the quiet apartment, louder than the rain.
She gasps, her fingers pressing harder against the glass, her hips jerking forward.
A pink handprint blooms across her skin and I watch it form, watch the color rise beneath the warm glow of the city lights filtering through the window.
I marvel at how her body processes the sting and she pushes back toward me asking for more.
"Again," she breathes.
My cock swells. I’m painfully aware of the scent of her arousal. It’s all I can do not to fuck her right now, but I want to see this ass crimson with my mark.
I give her what she asks for. My hand connects with her flesh in a sharp, deliberate rhythm, each strike followed by a slow caress that soothes the sting before the next one lands.
She moans against the glass, her breath fogging and clearing and fogging again with each exhale, her back arching deeper with each impact.
The sound of my palm against her skin mixes with the rain against the windows and her gasps fill the space between strikes, raw and unguarded.
"You're soaked." I slide my fingers between her thighs and feel the slick heat coating my fingers, hot and wet, dripping down her inner thigh and onto the hardwood. "This is what honesty feels like. And trust, tesoro."
She pushes back against my hand. "I know.”
Our eyes connect.
“Now stop being polite and fuck me."
Something snaps. The control I've held since the first night she walked through my door cracks open and what comes through is the man underneath, the one who hasn't let himself off the leash in years.