Dante is in the middle of a conversation with a couple of the guards when we roll through the circular courtyard in front of the house.He opens the back door for me and extends a hand.“Good.I know Mama will feel a lot better knowing you’re here.”
He closes the door, and my heart aches when the car pulls away toward the garage.Maybe I should’ve tried to apologize when I had the chance.
I wish I could go back andnotbe so hateful.
Dante scowls, watching the car.“I was going to thank him for deciding to bring you home instead of waiting,” he murmurs.
“What?What do you mean?”
“I wanted him to be aware of what was happening and to keep his eye out,” he explains with a shrug.“But he offered to bring you home right away to set minds at ease around here.It was the right call.Mama has been worried half to death.”
Yet when he places a hand in the center of my back, steering me toward the stairs, I slip out of his grasp.
Not yet.There’s something I need to settle first.
“I left my backpack in the car.Be right up,” I promise, trotting away.
My heart pounds in time with my footsteps on the way to the garage, where the automatic door lowers now that Alessandro has pulled through.He was the one who wanted to bring me home.It was his idea because he wanted to know I was safe here.I know it, I feel it.He left that part out when he was explaining what happened.I’m not going to fool myself into thinking he’s the knight in shining armor my friends described him as, but there is something good in him.I almost wish there wasn’t, because I wouldn’t have to do what I’m about to do now.
I punch the four-digit code into the keypad to raise the automatic door again.Slowly, a row of cars is revealed, including the one with the man now climbing out from behind the wheel.
Great.Now I can’t move.
This was a mistake, too, wasn’t it?
I can’t get it right with him.
I keep screwing up.
The way he’s looking at me—resentful, bitter—tells me it would have been a better idea to leave him alone.Because I didn’t come in here for my backpack.Not really.
“I…” I can’t talk, that’s what.The door lowers shut behind me, darkening the garage little by little until I can barely make out more than his silhouette.
I’m like a moth to a flame.Something carries me toward him, something more powerful than I am.He might be the devil incarnate for all I know, but he’s never done anything but look out for me.
And he has totally consumed me until the only thing left to do is crash into him and reach out to take hold of his face so I can pull him down and finally find out what he tastes like.
10
ALESSANDRO
Don’t do this.You know it’s wrong.
She is forbidden.A Santoro.Too young.Anyone but her.
I’ve been good for so long.Too long.I have fought every impulse and done the right thing.And goddammit, I’m about to explode.
My willpower has never been weaker by the time Giulia throws herself at me and turns my world on its head.Fuck, she feels good and tastes better.As sweet as I’ve imagined.
But no amount of imagining could come close to what it’s like to hear her soft whimpers, to feel her melt against me as I part her lips with my tongue.That’s all it takes to make her hands slide up to my hair, tugging and twisting, moaning into my mouth as I back her against the side of the car.
So young.Fresh and inexperienced, shaking while I take my time exploring the inside of Giulia’s mouth, stroking her tongue with mine, finding a slow rhythm that makes her tits brush against my chest with every ragged breath.
That’s all it takes to break her down.She started this, but she’s already in the palm of my hand, under my command.Mine to do with as I wish.
She’s too young.
This is wrong.
