He grits out something unintelligible, shoving another finger alongside his thumb, and thrusts them both so hard the motionpushes me toward the middle of the bed. His knuckles pop when he twists them inside me and makes my vision flood with sparks of blue and white. I go limp beneath the assault. I stop breathing. I stop thinking. I stop fighting.
My injured hand flies down to slam into his shoulder while my lips move of their own accord, issuing insane demands no woman in her right mind would ever ask of a beast.
“More... Mouth...M-more.”
His tongue shoots out, wetting his lips as they contort into something gruesome that might be a smile on a human man. On him, it’s the snarl of a wolf. That last savoring glance of a beast before it sinks its teeth into his prey and rips it apart.
There’s already a scream rising up my throat before he even breaks my grip over his wrist and lowers his head. I feel heat. Wet. Fire. Pain. Friction. Need. A million different sensations clash through my system, overloading my senses and crashing through what little defenses remained during Vinny’s cruel reign. He fucks me harder with his mouth than he ever could with his cock. This is his true weapon of choice: gnashing teeth and raking fingernails; the harsh, flat surface of his tongue; the pistoning force only broad shoulders and a thick neck can deliver.
I never stop crying out. Long after my voice breaks and my throat is rubbed raw, moans still trickle out of me, wrung out with every searching thrust and ravenous suck.Eat out.I heard one of Vinny’s men use that phrase once when he described all the demeaning things he’d never do to please a woman. “I won’t eat a bitch out,” he declared. It’s almost hilarious how that term comes to me now.
Luciferdevoursme, swallowing down every last aching, desolate drop. He takes me to that hazy, dark, quiet place where nothing else matters, and he holds me there, forcing a single malicious realization into my skin and ensuring that I feel the sting. This is what true pleasure is: an after-bite of pain. I won’tever feel it again delivered by anyone else but him. He makes sure I know it. Understand it. Admit it to myself. He holds me down by my waist and forces eye contact from over the ridge of my heaving belly until I do. Until the exact moment his name tears from my lips like the answer to the riddle even he isn’t hateful enough to ask out loud.
Who do you really belong to, Daniela?
Who fought for you?
Bled for you?
Say it. Fucking say it.
“Dan...Dante!”
Only then does he draw his lips back against his gums and let me fall. The force of the release barrels into me and rips me to shreds. I lose minutes, and when I can see again, he’s standing beside the mattress, stroking himself with the wadded-up rag he washed me with. His eyes scan my swollen, throbbing flesh, satisfied by the ravaged ruins of me he left behind. The sight finishes him off, and he comes again, grunting, into the washcloth.
I should feel degraded...I think as he drops the rag and shakes what little bit of his seed it didn’t catch from his fingers. He’s a predator leaving his mark near the carcass of the meal he’s not quite finished consuming yet. When he leaves, walking into the hallway, I glance down, my gaze drifting over my damp curls and spread legs, then down to the floor where his lust taints the carpet and sets the air on fire.
I stare. I can’t take my eyes off that pathetic piece of cloth. I can’t stop myself from running my tongue over my sore, cracked lips and tasting him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Dante
When I kill her,I’ll make it slow. I’ll grind my fingers into her windpipe and feel her vocal cords strain. Maybe I’ll fuck her when I do it, wrapping my hands around her throat right when she begins to come. I’ll cut off that high-pitched whine mid-song. I’ll choke her out before she can say my name.
After all, I have a promise to keep.
The vicious method is one I make to myself as I rinse her taste from my mouth with handfuls of water from the bathroom sink. To completely erase it, I have to use the bar of soap on the counter, grinding the substance into my teeth. I spit her out only to breathe her back in; her scent fucking clings to my skin.
When I meet the gaze of my reflection, I can almost see her there, those hazel eyes wide and demanding. She’s so hungry for the violence she believes only a man like me can give her. Violation. Destruction. Mutilation. She relishes every single mark carved or beaten into her skin; she’ll wear the scars like medals for the benefit of her fiancé. Hell, she’d string herself up in themiddle of the fucking city, bloodied and broken, just to get a rise out of him. Make him suffer. Pay.
The fucker has driven the soul out of her. Even when she cries out my name while being fucked...I’m not the one she’s imagining. My cock isn’t what gets her off. It’s the simple fact that she’s giving away what the bastard can’t have.
And that shouldn’t fucking matter. Mack. His plans. Avenging Parish. Arno and his fucking imaginary gang war.Thatis the shit that matters. I splash a handful of water onto my face as if the sting can drill it into my fucking brain and erase everything else.
And it does. I’m blank. Cold. It’s the same icy cool I used to feel right before I stepped into the cage. I am an animal, entitled to nothing and owned by no one—certainly not some little bitch who got off on another man’s humiliation.
“Focus,” I growl and slam a fist onto the counter hard enough to jar the sore bones and shredded skin. The creature staring back at me from the mirror narrows his eyes in determination. He is done beating around the fucking bush.
The steely mindset steers me back into that room, where I ignore the woman still slumped on the bed, and I reach for the duffel bag Darcy sent. She picked out two shirts for me, but they don’t feel like Mack’s. I don’t sense his stench tainting the cotton, either. They’re worn. Familiar. I finger the frayed edges of one of the sleeves, and the truth hits me like a punch to the stomach.
She saved them—those old clothes worn by a punk who spent most of his free time shooting up or fighting over scraps in the cage. Dino had given him a room above the pit. Even on his nights off, he could still hear the men beating the shit out of each other down below. Five years ago, when everything went to shit, Darcy must have snuck into that little room and rummaged through what little shit the poor bastard had, salvaging three T-shirts.
I slip one over my head, refusing to give in to the rush of fucking nostalgia. The shit still fits, though it’s tight, stretchedtaut over the muscles I’ve built up in prison. Gritting my teeth, I find my jeans and wrench them on.
“Get dressed,” I tell her, making my voice hard. I enter the living room and wait for her, unsurprised when, five minutes later, she appears, creeping into the kitchen to fish her jeans from the floor, and...
She decided against the now bloodstained white blouse, She’s wearing one of my shirts instead. It’s a gray one, tethered to a few old memories that surge forward like the images of a slideshow. It’stheshirt.I don’t know how Darcy got ahold of it—she must have tried washing it, but even bleach couldn’t get out the bloodstains near the bottom hem; they cling to the weathered cotton, shades darker than the rest of the fabric.
