I don’t know what it is. In the days since he’s been gone, in the days since he touched me, since we first met—it’s become something utterly alien and familiar. Maybe itwasduty, at first. Now, as I lie awake, imagining his hands, his mouth on me, I think it’s something simpler. Baser.
Why lie?
My voice leaves my lips broken, desperate. “I want you.”
Santo draws back like I’ve slapped him. His eyes are wide, jaw clenched, hand still on my neck.
That hunger washes over me, a black tide. And I let it.
My fingers find the lacing up the front of my dress. I begin untying—and Santo doesn’t stop me. He watches with narrowed eyes and brow furrowed. He looks thoughtful. A little angry, maybe, but moreintriguedthan anything else.
But I can’t think. Not now that he’s so close. Not now that he’s back, and I don’t know when he’ll leave next. I promised I wouldn’t love him—but I said nothing of wanting him. All is fair in war, isn’t it? This is fair. This is my salvation, and it’s also my desire.
My dress slides from my shoulders, falling in a pool of emerald at my feet. I stand before him in matching green lace, the fine underthings Sabine provided with the gown. I’ve never had any reason to pay mind to what I wear under my clothes. But even putting these things on earlier, I was thinking only of Santo, of what his eyes would see, of what his body would feel.
“Duty,” he repeats, the word a growl.
“I wish it was,” I whisper, and taste the truth of the words.
He studies me, seeming to realize that what I’m saying is true. “I can’t promise to be gentle.”
My thighs tremble. Already my body is prepared, wet for him. With the thought of him. I’ve dreamt of his face, I’ve fallen asleep and woken gasping. I don’t have a name for the hunger he’s implanted in me. I don’t care. Nothing exists anymore, but him, and me, in this room, right now.
“Don’t be,” I finally manage, even though there is fear living beside the desire. Fear he will hurt me. Want that he will. “I won’t break.”
Santo’s eyes blaze. I take a step toward him, closing the space between us. I take his hands and place them on my breasts. “Are you sure, Dani?”
Fear blazes up my spine. I nod.
“There is no going back,” he warns, and his rough voice only makes me want him more.
“Fuck me,” I whisper, and the words have barely left my lips when he’s kissing me.
Hard. His tongue is in my mouth, his rough hands grasping my face. They drop, yanking my bra low, baring my breasts in the firelight. He palms them, sending electricity snapping through every nerve. As his fingers pinch my nipples, I gasp sharply, but he swallows the sound.
Then I’m in his arms, powerful and burning. He pins me to the wall, and my body acts of its own accord. I lock my legs around his hips, threading my fingers through his hair as he crushes his mouth against mine. I can feel him between my legs, rock-hard.I did that, I realize with a pleasurable, dangerous little thrill.No matter what he says, that’s the truth: He wants me too.
He unzips his pants, my fingers fumbling to help him. I pull him free, our tongues still tangled, my breath still caught with his. The heat and hardness of him astonishes me. I don’t have time to admire or anticipate, because he’s already pulling aside the lace of my panties, he’s already thrusting himself inside me.
I gasp, the pain sudden and halting. Santo’s arm around me tightens and he draws back, eyes meeting mine as he slowly, slowly pushes deeper. I grimace, sinking my fingers into his back, not feeling guilty even knowing I’ll leave bruises.
He holds my gaze as I take him in completely. Beneath the burning ache, there’s a sense of something else: something deeply buried, touched and awakened for the first time. As he draws out of me, I taste it again, and when he enters the second time, a low groan works out of me.
I won’t be gentle,he told me. But despite those words and his ferocity, I feel the delicateness of his movements, the way his thumb draws burning circles on the swell of my hip, the way his eyes study my face as though scanning for any glimpse of pain.
But the pain is quickly leaving me, in its place a hot flood of need. “Deeper,” I whisper, and Santo obliges, pressing one of my thighs toward my stomach, opening my legs wide for him. I groan as he enters me again, every inch of him creating delicious, delirious friction. “Yes,” I say weakly. “There.”
My eyes flutter closed as he begins a rhythm, as his teeth brush my neck, sinking slow and deliberate, breaking the skin. I moan, pleasure tangled with pain. It’s coming quickly, that riptide of ecstasy. But the pleasure is deeper than that night in the kitchen, it’s triggered and unfolding faster than I can stop it. My breathing hitches, I hear myself cry out. My body moves like it’s not mine, like it knows Santo’s, like it’s done this a thousand times before. I’m lifting and dropping my hips, clutching his body to mine. I’m moving in his rhythm, we’re with each other, stride for illicit stride.
And then he groans, hand sliding into my hair. He grips a fistful, dragging my head back, a snap of pain breaking through me. His body trembles as he comes, and that riptide snags tight, yanking me under with him. I hear myself crying out, his name caught on my tongue. He holds me tight as the climax rips through me, a burning, delicious flood.
And then we’re both spent and gasping, clinging to one another. Santo’s face is buried in my neck, and as I tremble he holds me. My heart is pricked by something, a warmth or grudging affection. A sense of safety.
Then he’s extricating himself from me, helping me onto my feet. “Go to bed, Dani,” he says, lips against my lips. “Forget this ever happened.”
But I taste his blood, and I catch his wrist gingerly. “Sit,” I say, and like sun breaking through cloud, Santo Amata smiles.
Chapter 10
