Page 30 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

Ragged breaths escaped his heaving chest as he turned on the shower and forced me under the brutal downpour of freezing water. I spluttered, panicking and choking as I tried to fight the water filling my lungs. When black dots sparked across my vision and my lungs burned, he yanked me out of the water and slammed me back against the wall. I coughed and wheezed, which only seemed to tighten his grip. I forced my eyes open and stared into his black pits of hell.

All the fight left me when all I saw was heartbreaking emptiness. The man I’d come to know over the past week was gone. I withdrew into myself. My throat closed. I couldn’t have begged even if I’d wanted to.

Something in his eyes flickered with recognition at my sudden stillness. His eyebrows tightened as he breathed hard. He glanced down at his hand, wrapped around my throat, and let go as if he’d only just realised it was there.

I sucked in a painful breath as relief spread through me, but it was short-lived, given the horror on his face. He stumbled back, then sank to his knees, shaking his head, and roared. I jumped against the tiles, fear and adrenaline spiking until I realised he wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at himself. He started slamming his hand into the side of his head, whacking himself so hard I thought he’d knock himself out.

I lunged forward and grabbed his forearm, trying to pull against his strength to stop him. He pushed me away, shouting for me to get away from him, but I could tell it was no longer out of rage but out of guilt. I grabbed his face and held him steady. The suffering and brokenness in his eyes made my heart fracture more than the bottomless pit had before.

He closed them, hiding from me as he braced his arms on either side of my head against the tiles, our foreheads the only point of contact, and breathed. Deep, rough breaths. I waited, shivering beneath the wet, cold tracksuit that weighed me down, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

When he was more in control, he opened his eyes and stared into mine. He moved back, scooting along the floor tiles.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

My lips trembled when I saw how deeply he meant it, as if the very thought of it would destroy him.

“But I will. I can’t control this thing inside me. He made me like this!” he yelled, slamming his fist against his chest. “That’s why you have to stay away from me.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. My body was still in survival mode, yet my anxiety and fear were quickly giving way to heartbreak. Not for me, but for him. He didn’t want to be a monster. He didn’t want to kill on impulse. They forced him to become one. He couldn’t even trust himself. And it was the cruellest thing I’d ever seen.

We stared at each other across the bathroom, both panting with our backs to opposite walls. As mad as it sounded, all I wanted to do was hug him. I’d been in this man’s company for nearly a week, and the way he existed in two skins at once: human and savage, controlled and catastrophic, was equally fascinating and deeply devastating. On the one hand, he was a mysterious, gorgeous man who had shown me fleeting glimpses of warmth and softness. But beneath it, threading through muscles and bones, there was something so sinister and lethal. Something that couldn’t be wholly restrained by his conscience.

Tears pricked behind my eyes as I saw him in a whole new light. I’d been watching him for days, but only now did I understand why his body never truly relaxed. His jaw always tightened between puffs on his cigarettes, and his shoulders never fully dropped, as if he were always prepped for combat. His muscles were strained and taut, even when he wasn’t doing his gruelling workouts. He was a man trying to contain his darkness.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I removed the sodden hoodie and joggers, never breaking eye contact with him. His chest heaved as his dark gaze travelled over my naked body, dragging him out of his despair and back into the room.

The indescribable hunger between us surged like a tidal wave, heating my veins as we stared into each other’s eyes. For the first time, he was truly letting me see him. The anger, the pain, and the vulnerability. He needed me to quieten it. It was in his eyes. Yet he’d never say it. Never speak the words. Instead, he was waiting for me to hate him or run from him, to see him for who he was and decide I couldn’t handle it.

I lifted my chin to prove him wrong. Then I slowly spread my legs. The flecks of fire in his obsidian eyes blazed brighter as he licked his bottom lip, trembling to hold himself back.

“I don’t want to stay away from you,” I whispered, clearing my throat as the anxiety faded into red-hot desire. “Do you want to stay away from me?”

A beat passed. The tension snapped.

He scrambled across the bathroom floor and grabbed my legs, yanking me to him. I slid across the tiles onto my back before he buried his head between my thighs and devoured me like a starved animal. My hands clawed through his hair, and my lips parted around a long moan as his tongue flicked at my clit, and he pushed a finger inside me.

Cazzo. There was a heaven in hell.

I lifted my head from the tiles to watch him, and when our eyes met, it only heightened the sensations. The pain and rage were gone. All that remained was intensity and so much desire.

He eased another finger inside me, and I gasped loudly at the pressure and fullness, causing him to growl against my clit. He was hitting spots that sent so much pleasure through every nerve in my body; it felt almost overwhelming. But that summed him up. He was almost too much, but I had a feeling I’d still never have enough.

He shoved his fingers into my mouth when I came, which only seemed to make me come harder and longer. And then he released me, throwing himself back against the wall in a sitting position. We stayed in a loaded silence for a few minutes, both of us questioning everything that was happening between us.

His brows tensed with pure confusion as I got onto my hands and knees and crawled towards him.

“Don’t,” he groaned, dropping his head back against the tiled wall without making any other attempt to stop me. I climbed onto his lap and tentatively wrapped my arms around his neck. His body was rigid beneath me, his heart pounding as he fought the urge to shove me off him. His broken voice whispered, “What are you doin’ to me, Little Monster?”

I knew he was asking something deeper, but I still smiled and replied, “It’s called a hug.”

“I nearly killed you, and you’re huggin’ me? Anyone ever told you that you’ve got shitty survival instincts?”

“I’d say my survival instincts are perfectly adequate, seeing as I’m still alive.”

He fell silent as those words sank in. He’d been so fixated on what he’d nearly done that he hadn’t realised he’d stopped himself. Again.

“They may have made you this way,” I whispered, resting my head on his shoulder as he stared blankly ahead at the wall, listening. “But you have the power to fight it. I just watched you do it.”