I bite on my bottom lip to stop the whimper, but it escapes anyway. A pathetic, needy sound that makes me want to die.
“How do youreallyfeel?” he asks again.
I drag in a breath and fix him with a glare. “Like I’m dying. It hurts everywhere. My skin feels like it’s trying to split from my body. Like if you don’t—”
Like if you don’t fuck me right now, I mightactually die.
I bite down on my tongue hard, choking back the words before they escape my lips.
No. Not with him.
I won’t beg the man who—
Another wave slams into me without warning, and I curl into myself with a strangled cry. My hole spasms violently, clenching on nothing, slick flooding out of me in a humiliating rush.
“Cazzo.” The mattress dips as Enzo sits. His hand touches my forehead, checking for fever, but the contact shoots through me like lightning. I whimper, and he jerks back like I’ve burned him.
“Your heat is worse than normal. You’ve passed out twice already.”
His hand returns, fingers pressing against the pulse point at my throat, then my wrist. I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.
I watch his face twist into a dark frown.
“This isn’t normal.” His eyes flick to meet mine. “You’ve been suppressing your heats. Haven’t you?”
It sounds like an accusation instead of a question.
I look away, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. “None of your business.”
“Look at me.”
I don’t want to. Every instinct I have that isn’t slave to my biology tells me to cling to some pathetic scrap of dignity. But my body doesn’t give a damn what my pride wants. My eyessnap to his before I can stop them, drawn by the raw authority in his voice like a puppet on strings.
I hate myself for it. Hate him even more.
“How long have you been suppressing your heat?”
I press my lips together in an act of defiance.
He leans forward, and his scent washes over me before his hand grabs my jaw in a grip so firm I couldn’t pull away if I tried. Which I don’t because I’m pathetic and desperate, and his touch feels like the only thing keeping me from coming apart.
“How long?” It comes out as a growl this time, low and dangerous, and I feel the vibration of it in my bones.
My throat works around a swallow. “Three years,” I choke out.
The Italian that pours out of him is absolutely blistering. I don’t understand the words, but the meaning is clear enough.
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
Before I can answer, he’s off the bed so fast the mattress lurches beneath me.
“We need to get you to a hospital.” He’s already reaching for his phone. “They can stabilize you with IVs, fluids—your body could go into shock, your organs could—”
“No.” I force the word out through gritted teeth. “No hospitals, please. No records.”
“You could die.”
“Then I die.” I look at him through the haze, and even now, even like this, reduced to a shaking mess of need and slick and desperation, I hate that I notice how beautiful he is. How righthe smells. How badly I want to bury my face in his neck and breathe him in until I suffocate. “It’ll pass. I just need to ride it out. I just need—”
