I glance toward the door. We can’t do this here. This is crazy.
His mouth finds me, and I stop thinking entirely.
He devours me. There’s no other word for it. His tongue strokes through my folds, circles my clit, dips inside me, and I’m writhing on the table, my hands fisted in his golden hair, trying to pull him closer, trying to push him away, trying to do anything except fly apart completely.
“So sweet,” he groans against me. “Fuck, Mina, you taste so good. I could eat this pussy for hours.”
My hips buck up against his face, and he pins me down with one strong arm, holding me in place while he takes exactly what he wants.
“I’ve thought about this,” he says between strokes of his tongue. “Every day for five years. Worshipping you. Making you come on my tongue.”
I’m close. So close. The orgasm is right there, cresting in a white-hot wave.
This time, he doesn’t stop.
His lips close around my clit and when he sucks, I shatter.
The orgasm rips through me like wildfire. Like nothing I’ve felt in five years. I’m shaking and crying out, and my thighs are clamping around his head, but he just keeps going, licking me through it, drawing out every last tremor until I’m limp and boneless on the table.
He rises, looming over me, bracing his hands on either side of my head. His lips are wet and shining, and the look in his eyes is pure predator.
“How can I prove myself to you?”
I stare up at him, still trembling and reeling. “That you’ve changed?”
“I haven’t changed. I’ll never change.” He leans closer, his mouth hovering above mine. “How can I convince you that you should love me anyway?”
The post-orgasm haze should make me soft. Pliant. It should make me say whatever he wants to hear.
“You know what makes love so precious?” I pant. This is important, and I have to say this now. I struggle to form thoughts through the pink haze in my head. “It makes you vulnerable. It hurts. My god, it’s agony sometimes. But you can’t deal with that, Cristiano. You try to be so strong that you crush the thing you’re trying to hold on to.”
“I beg for your touch.” His jaw tightens. “For your affection. To be with you for even a few minutes. Is that not vulnerable enough for you?”
“That’s not love.”
His eyes narrow. “Watching you walk away from me. That is love? Lying awake night after night worrying that without me you’re hurting, you’re suffering, you’re in danger. That is love? No, Mina. That is weakness, and weakness gets people killed.”
“Love is giving part of yourself to someone without the fear of getting nothing back.” I hold his gaze, even though it hurts, even though I can still taste him on my lips. “Until you can dothat, Cristiano, you’ll never have me. Not really. You’ll just have a woman in a cage who’s too tired to fight anymore.”
He doesn’t say it, but I can read his words in the darkness in his eyes.
At least I would have you.
He’s never going to change. That lovesick boy who took his impulses too far, and that teenager with a motorcycle full of hormones and manipulation has turned into a man who still believes love is something you take, not something you give.
There’s studied calculation in his eyes as they flicker over me. My flushed skin, my heaving chest, my bare legs still spread on either side of his hips. I can feel him weighing the options.
Tighten his grip on me, snatch me up, and carry me away right this second?
Or wait for a better time to spring the trap?
Rosa’s kidsare tearing around my apartment like tiny tornadoes while Leon chases after them, all three of them shrieking with delight. Rosa is packing snacks into a bag for the park, and I’m standing at the kitchen counter trying to look like a woman who didn’t have an earth-shattering orgasm on a break room table yesterday.
I’m failing.
Every time I close my eyes, I feel Cristiano’s fingers inside me. His mouth on me. The way he looked at me afterward, like a predator deciding when to strike.
I haven’t changed. I’ll never change.
