by Mariano, Sam
“Dante,” she finally whispers. An attempt at a warning, but I ignore it. She doesn’t get to warn me.
I run just the tip of my index finger along her pussy lips. She fucking loves that. Even now, even silent and rebellious, I hear her sharp inhale. I can’t see her eyes from back here, but I remember the way they flutter closed as she enjoys that brief moment before I sink my finger inside her. When I do, she gasps, and I wish she wasn’t turned away from me so I could’ve caught it in my mouth.
As I gently stroke her pussy, I snake my other hand down between our bodies to grab her bare ass. Another little sharp breath when I squeeze her ass. I push my dick between her cheeks and she grabs her pillow, probably holding on in case I take her ass.
I’m not going to do that, though. I haven’t prepared her and I don’t want to hurt her. Plus, the only place I want to spill my cum tonight is deep inside her pussy.
Since she’s already halfway there clutching onto the pillow, I withdraw my finger from her pussy and push her the rest of the way onto her stomach.
“Dante,” she says again, her voice higher, more panicked.
“Shh,” I say, running a hand down the curve of her back as I climb onto my knees behind her. Since I don’t trust her to keep her troublesome mouth shut, I push her face into the pillows. She struggles to push her head back up, tries to swat my hand away, but I only push her down harder until she stops fighting. Once she submits, I let her go, giving her head a tender rub before releasing her so I can use my hands for more useful tasks. Lifting her hips and positioning her, I tell her, “On your knees and forearms.”
“Fuck you,” she spits back.
I lift an eyebrow and smack her ass for her insolence. I don’t need her compliance, it will just be more work without it. I’m not afraid of a little work. Since she’s being difficult, I hold her where I want her, grasping my cock with my other hand and guiding it between her legs.
For all her bullshit resistance, she’s drenched. Just the first inch inside her wet heat is incredible, but when I drive deep into her tight little pussy, the pleasure is so fucking intense, everything else disappears. Almost everything. I hear her gasp as I slide deep inside her, feel her body respond when I pull back and thrust into her again. A moan slips out of her as I pick up the pace, as I shove a little harder, as I remind her what she’s been missing since she left.
What I’ve been missing, too. I may have had encounters with various women in her absence, but none of them felt like her. Being inside her again is a relief, like finally falling into your own bed after a long stretch of traveling and spending every empty night alone in a hotel with a shitty mattress. Now I’m home, and nothing else matters.
She’s supporting her own weight on her knees now, so I run a hand up her back and grab a fistful of her hair. I give it a tug as I thrust my hips forward and pound into her. Her breathing is heavier now and she clutches onto the pillow and the bedsheet for dear life.
When I imagined the first time I fucked her again, I pictured a marathon. I pictured position changes, her body slick with sweat, begging me to come by the end of it. I pictured denying her even while I plunged into her body, refusing her pleasure until she couldn’t take anymore.
In reality, I just want to fucking mark her. I want to come all over that pussy so she knows if she ever so much as thinks about giving it to someone else again, these are the consequences. I’ll kill every last one of them and mark her all over again. She’s never getting rid of my mark. Never.
“Dante, Dante, Dante,” she whimpers helplessly, bringing me back to the moment.
She must be close. Armed with that information and ready to come myself, I tilt her hips while I thrust, stopping when I can tell by the strangled sounds she makes I have her in the right place. Then I pound into her hard and fast, so hard she can barely hang on, until she’s whimpering and whining so much, you can’t tell if she’s being fucked or beaten. Fuck, that’s my favorite part.
“Come for me, beautiful. I’m waiting for you to finish me off.”
Her mind might be stuck on rebellion, but her body knows who its master is. With a sharp, strangled cry, Colette comes hard, her pussy squeezing me once, twice, three times. I groan as her body continues to convulse around my dick, as I thrust furiously into that tight, throbbing haven, then I lose control and come apart, growling and yanking her hair tight in my fist as I drive forward and explode deep inside her pussy. She cries out again but I’m too lost in my own pleasure to pay attention. It takes a minute before I can think straight again, then I realize how hard I’m fisting her hair. I release her immediately and she rubs the back of her head.
I pull out of her body and sigh, sinking against the bed beside her. “Sorry, I got a little carried away there.”
She’s still breathing hard as she comes back down from her orgasm, but after a few seconds, my brow furrows in confusion. It sounds like she’s getting more worked up, not calmer. The pace of her breathing should be coming back down to normal, but instead, she’s breathing so heavily it’s the only sound in the room.
“Colette?” I question, grabbing her shoulder and rolling her onto her side so I can see her.
What I thought was her continued heavy breathing is in fact her struggling to breathe. I shoot up, trying to make sense of the panic on her face. My blood runs cold and I turn her all the way over onto her back, climbing on my knees and looking down at her. “Colette, what’s wrong?”
It takes her a minute, but she finally manages to get out between heaving breaths, “Can’t breathe.”
Can’t breathe? Why can’t she fucking breathe? I don’t know what to do, but as I hold onto her shoulders and watch her struggling to do something so simple, I note she’s trembling like she’s cold or terrified. I know she’s not either—there’s a light sheen of sweat on her forehead from fucking, and I may have been a little rougher at the end than I meant to be, but that was nothing she couldn’t handle. Certainly nothing that would terrify her.
I don’t know what to do, so I sit back and pull her into my arms. She struggles at first, but it’s not me she’s fighting, it’s the panic.
Keeping my tone calm and authoritative, I tighten my hold on her, imprisoning her in the safety of my arms. “You’re fine, Colette. I’ve got you. Breathe. Focus and breathe.”
It doesn’t work right away and I have no fucking idea what to do, but I never let that show. I keep calm, keep my voice commanding, keep offering direction and reminding her body to do the things it should do naturally while I rub her back and try to calm her.
Finally, I think she’s calming down. She’s not gasping for air like she’s drowning. She’s still off-kilter, but it seems to be tapering off until she suddenly breaks away from me and makes a break for the bathroom.
I spring off the bed to follow her, but hesitate when I hear her emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet.
A feeling I’m not at all used to burrows into my gut—fear. I don’t know what exactly is happening to her, but I know it’s bad. Easing the door open, I step inside. Colette is hunched over the toilet, sobbing. I walk past her and grab a towel. Returning to her side, I touch her shoulder to get her attention. She looks up to take it, murmuring a low, rough, “Thank you,” but all I can focus on is her face. Red with the strain of wrenching up whatever feelings just overtook her, her face splotchy from tears.
I don’t know what else to do, so I kneel down and sit on the ground beside her while she uses the towel to clean up her face. Her whole body still trembles, whether from the force of throwing up everything in her system, or from whatever the fuck had her trembling in the bed, I’m not sure. Whatever the reason, she’s shaking, and I fucking hate it.
“Are you cold?” I ask her.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs.
I don’t know what kind of answer that is, but I stand up and go to get her robe, just in case. She’s still on the floor when I come back, so I bend down and drape the bathrobe around he
r shoulders like a cloak to keep her warm.
“Come on, get off the floor. The floor’s cold,” I tell her, offering my hand.
She takes another swipe at her mouth with the towel, then looks at my hand but shakes her head. “I’m gross right now, don’t touch me.”
“You could never be gross,” I tell her, grabbing her hand and helping her off the floor.
Since she feels gross, though, I haul her over to the shower. I keep hold of her hand with one of mine and lean in to turn on the shower. I know she likes scalding hot showers, but I start it just a little hotter than warm so it doesn’t shock her system when she steps inside. I look back at her, expecting her to get in the shower, but she looks lost and drained. I don’t even know if she’s capable of showering by herself, so I peel the robe back off her shoulders, drape it across the nearby chair, then put my hand at the small of her back and usher her into the shower.
Colette is like an articulated statue as I go through the motions of cleaning her up and washing her hair. She doesn’t even put up a fake resistance when I pull her back against me in the shower and caress her breasts as I soap them up. I drag the soapy washcloth down her abdomen, then between her legs, running it and my hand over her pussy. She sighs and leans her tired head against my shoulder, but again, doesn’t resist.
Last time I made her come she flipped the fuck out, so I don’t do it again. I play with her a little, but only to relax her, not to build up the tension. I knead her shoulders and try to rub some of the tension out of her lower back, then once she’s clean and relaxed, I turn off the water and we get out.
She’s finally capable of caring for herself enough to dry off once we get out, but she’s still not speaking and I’m not either. We don’t need to talk. Some of our best communicating is done in silence, but I don’t like what I’m hearing tonight.
Once we’re tucked back under the blankets, Colette in her bathrobe snuggled up close to me, I can’t help asking the one question I can’t get out of my mind.
“Colette, was that my fault?”
Her big blue eyes have the power to fell me with one accusing glare right now, her sharp tongue could wound me with a single syllable. I didn’t understand when she told me she needed the Valium because I’ve never seen anything like this happen to her before, but if it never happened to her before and now it is, maybe it wasn’t the lawyer or the world that did this to her.
Maybe it was me.
All she has to do is confirm it and she’ll win this round, she’ll deliver guilt I haven’t accepted until now, but she doesn’t. There’s no accusation in her gaze, only exhaustion and a touch of sadness. I’m vulnerable to a verbal lashing, but she doesn’t say a word to wound me. Instead, she wraps her arms around me and buries her face in my chest, letting me know she doesn’t want to fight, she doesn’t want to talk, she just needs to be held.
I hold her so tight none of her demons would dare escape, but I can’t outrun the knowledge that Colette never had demons—not until I gave them to her.
15
Dante
It’s a long night and I don’t sleep well. Every time Colette so much as shifts in my arms, I wake up to check on her. At least she seems to sleep soundly, despite all the movement. Come morning, I ease out of bed, careful not to wake her, and get started on my day. I had a few things planned today work-wise, but every time I think about leaving Colette here by herself, I consider delegating those tasks to someone else and just staying home.
Well, she won’t be entirely by herself, but Sonja’s not the best company. I’ll warn her to be nice to Colette before I leave, to make sure she makes her some breakfast and doesn’t hassle her, but I still don’t feel right about leaving. I never left Colette alone when she was sick, I kept her company and took care of her. Not that she’s actually sick, I guess, but whatever the fuck she is, it’s my job to fix it.
Much as I hate to leave, there’s a meeting I can’t miss this morning regarding our conflict with the Castellanos family. Even Adrian is going to be there to fill us in on some stuff, and he doesn’t work for us anymore.
So, I have to go to my brother’s house.
Ordinarily these meetings don’t take much longer than they absolutely have to, but today when I sit down with a cup of coffee at the dining room table, it’s not just the usual men gathered around it. Vince brought his fucking girlfriend over, and inexplicably she’s sitting at the table like she belongs there. I saw her in the kitchen a few minutes ago, but I assumed she was here to visit Meg, not sitting in on our meeting.
“What is this?” I ask, nodding at the cute blonde seated beside my younger cousin. “We get a new recruit no one told me about?”
Vince slides me an unamused look. “Yeah, right. Mia needs to go grocery shopping. Figured I might as well bring her here for breakfast since Maria always makes too much and the fridge is empty at home.”
How fucking annoying. Normally I wouldn’t be such an asshole about it. Personally, I don’t know what it’s like to have to budget to buy groceries, but I do know since Vince and Mia moved out of Mateo’s house—and out from under his thumb—he cut them off financially, except for the paychecks Vince earns doing work for us like any other associate who needs to work his way up. It’s not much, and I’m sure Mia doesn’t make much helping out at our family bakery either, so they probably don’t have grocery money. That’s the part Vince isn’t saying, since obviously it would embarrass him to admit in front of Mateo that he’s failing to provide for his woman.
Today I don’t give a fuck about their financial woes though, I only care about getting back home as quick as I can to check on Colette. Hell, I’ll slide Mia a fifty myself and tell her to go shopping if she’ll just leave so we can get down to business.
Now that Vince is finished critiquing Mia’s shopping skills, she turns back to Mateo to resume their conversation rather than eat her fucking food.
Mateo is seated at the head of the table like always, his dark eyes trained on the babbling blonde seated to his left. Now that I know we’re just waiting for her to finish eating, every moment she spends talking to him instead of shoveling food into her mouth annoys me as much as it seems to annoy Vince.
And boy, does he look annoyed. Of course he’s annoyed. The little fucking genius brought Mia around Mateo on purpose. He should’ve left her at home to starve because now even once she leaves us here to do business, the kid’s gonna have a chip on his shoulder. Mateo will probably bait him, and even if Mateo doesn’t, someone else will rib him about it and he’ll get all pissy. This whole thing is going to devolve into a pissing contest before we ever even start talking about Castellanos.
Fucking fantastic.
Shit like this is exactly why I didn’t want to meet at the mansion when Mateo summoned me here, but he didn’t feel like going out. So, here we all sit, assembled around the dining room table, but with a plus one no one told me about who completely fucking blocks any business we might have wanted to discuss.
Basically, this is an enormous waste of my time.
It’s a waste of his time, too, but Mateo idly stirs his coffee, nodding his head at Vince’s girlfriend, not seeming to mind at all. There are a few reasons this is ridiculous. One: Mateo doesn’t need to stir coffee because he takes it black. But Vince’s idiot girlfriend wanted to help Maria out in the kitchen since there are so many of us this morning, and she put cream in it. He should’ve made her dump the coffee and get him a new cup—he certainly would’ve if Maria had fucked up his coffee—but he just stirs it like he’s actually going to drink it. Two: this girl is actually trying to convince him—a fucking crime king—to donate money to some do-gooder organization whose interests align firmly against our own. Three: Mateo is not customarily amused by morons. I would say maybe he’s less bothered by them when they have nice tits and a low-cut top, but that has not historically been the case.
“So anyway, I figured you probably already donate money to charitable organizations for your legit
imate business interests, right? For the tax breaks or whatever?” she’s saying now.
His lips curve up just slightly and he gives a faint nod—almost encouraging, if I didn’t know any better.
Mia shrugs, taking a sip of her orange juice. “That’s what I figured. And, yeah, I understand you guys aren’t Boy Scouts, but there are worse criminals out there—there are people who do stuff like this. I mean… that’s truly horrible. Anyone who could do something like this to human beings just to make money…” She trails off, glancing at the table like it’s just too dark for her to wrap her head around.
This is fucking hilarious. I cannot believe she is asking the monster himself to help protect the victims. I nearly smile at how fucking stupid she is. I expect Mateo to be privately amused, too—he doesn’t give a fraction of a fuck what people think about him, but I figure it will amuse him that this little nobody is unwittingly telling him right to his face that he’s the worst kind of monster her innocent little mind can conjure.
But there’s no glimmer of amusement in his eyes. The hint of smile is gone. I don’t expect him to whip out his poker face to mask amusement—that’s not really his style.
Discomfort moves through me, but the idea behind it is too ridiculous to consider. There’s no way he cares what this girl thinks about him. That’s too absurd to even consider.
Brightening slightly, Mia concludes, “So, yeah, that’s my pitch. If you’re looking for a good cause, you should definitely give your blood money to this one. You should check out that book, too—I’m not even a big reader and I couldn’t stop turning the pages.”
“I will certainly look it up,” he assures her.
She nods and smiles pleasantly, finishing off her orange juice. “Well, I’m going to go see if Meg’s awake yet.”
Mateo’s brows furrow and he nods at her plate. “You haven’t finished your breakfast.”
“I wasn’t that hungry,” she insists, pushing back her chair and rising. I doubt that’s true, but I get the feeling she knows she’s intruding now. Rather than continue to hold us up, she just won’t eat anymore.
