The litany should help. Should remind me who he is and who I am and why this, whateverthisis, has to stop.
It doesn’t.
Sleep pulls me under mid-justification, and when I surface his hands are in my hair. Gentle this time.Wantingthis time.
“There you are,tesoro.” His voice is low and warm, wrapping around me like smoke. “I’ve been waiting so long.”
His mouth hovers above mine, close enough that I can taste his breath. The library all over again, except this time he closes the distance.
Jesus.
Heat explodes everywhere as his lips claim mine, soft and demanding all at once, burning me from the inside out. Hishands pull the camisole over my head and I help him, desperate to feel skin against skin.
“So fucking beautiful.” His mouth trails down my throat, across my collarbone, lower. “I’ve thought about this every night. Watching you sleep and imagining you coming apart under my hands.”
His lips close around my nipple and I gasp, arching into him, fingers digging into his shoulders. His teeth graze the sensitive peak, causing pleasure to spark through me like lightning.
“Elio—”
I’m pushing at his shirt, his pants, everything between us. He tears at his own clothes, yanks them off, and then he’s bare. Warm skin and hard muscle and the length of him pressing against my thigh.
“Please.” The word falls from my mouth without permission. “Elio, please?—”
“Tell me what you want, Violet.” His voice sounds filthy and possessive. “Say it.”
“I want you inside me.” No shame. No hesitation. Just need, raw and overwhelming. “I want to feel you. All of you.”
His hand slides between my legs.
“Christ, you’re so wet for me. Soaked.” His fingers stroke, explore, claim. “Is this all for me, tesoro?”
I—
I gasp awake. For real this time.
Heart slamming. Thighs clenched. Nipples hard against silk. And between my legs?—
Wet. Soaked through the silk shorts. My body aching, throbbing, desperate for something that isn’t there.
“No.” I sit up, pressing my hands over my eyes. “No no no.”
But my pulse won’t slow. The dream clings to me, his hands, his mouth, his voice saying my name like a prayer, and my body doesn’t care that none of it was real.
My body wants him anyway.
I stumble into the shower and crank the handle as far as it will go. The spray hits like needles and I sob, pressing my forehead against the tile, letting the cold punish what the heat of that dream created.
Not washing away memories this time. Something else.
I’m mourning. Standing in an ice-cold shower in the middle of the night, and I’m mourning the woman I was before.
Before I started noticing his hands. Before his almost-smiles made my stomach flip. Before the way he says my name became something I like.
Before some part of me stopped wanting to escape.
The tears come hot against my frozen skin.
The worst prison isn’t the locked door.
