"And you belong to me." The possessive instinct flares, stronger than the panic.
"I am my own person, Dante Costa."
"Not anymore."
I reach up and cover her small hand with my larger one. My fingers swallow hers. The oversized gold watch on my wrist glints in the darkness.
I press her palm harder against my chest. Let her feel the steady thumping beneath my ribs.
Let her know exactly what she has claimed.
Because the terrifying truth is no longer hidden in the shadows of the abandoned hotel. The tactical detachment didn't just crack. It shattered.
I’ve become a slave to this obsession, and I will burn the world before I let her leave my sight.
The rest of the night passes in a tense, vibrating silence. She eventually returns to the bed, taking the velvet drape with her. I resume my post by the door.
The physical ache of my arousal has settled into a permanent fixture in my groin. The agonizing restraint is a tightrope I walk with every breath.
I replay the tease against the wall over and over in my mind. The wetness of her slick pussy against my thumb. The hard clench of her climax. The way she screamed my name.
It wasn't enough. It was barely a drop of water in a desert.
When the sun finally breaks over the horizon, painting the dusty fourteenth floor in streaks of pale, bruised purple, I know the truth.
The next time I touch her, there will be no restraint.
I will tear the black lace to shreds. I will lose myself inside her. I will stretch her walls and claim her until she begs me to stop. And then I will keep going.
I watch the dawn light hit the messy tangle of her dark hair on the bare mattress.
The guard is dead. The monster is awake.
And the monster is hungry.
5
Gemma
His muscle pinsme to the bare mattress. Dante’s scent of oil and rain is a grounding force. The panic attack that just ripped through him—the one that put a terrifying, blank stare into his dark eyes and dragged him back to the night he lost everything—is over. I anchored him. My hand flat against his chest brought him back. Now, the vulnerability in his expression is hardening. His clinical distance has shattered. What replaces it is so raw and territorial, it makes my body hum against the sheets.
He came back. I dragged him back.
His frame shifts between my thighs. We are stranded on the fourteenth floor of the Grand Continental. The air in this abandoned tomb is freezing, smelling of rotting velvet, old money, and decades of neglect. The gilded mirrors on the far wall are clouded with dust, reflecting the shadows of this ruined penthouse. I do not care about the cold. I do not care about the dust. Heat radiates off Dante in waves, searing right through the velvet drape still wrapped around my shoulders. He draped it over me hours ago—a small, deliberate act of possession that cost him nothing and meant everything.
I push my palms against his chest, right over the small, jagged scar near his collarbone. "Are you going to stare at me all night, big guy, or are you going to finish what you started against that wall?"
A rough, territorial sound vibrates deep in his throat. The noise is pure animal. My sass usually keeps men on their toes, keeps them at a distance so I can run my business and my life exactly how I want. My food truck,La Diosa, was my entire world until the Bellanti family turned it into a bullet-riddled pile of scrap metal hours ago. I should be crying in a corner. I should be terrified of the mafia hitmen hunting us. Instead, all I want is for this terrifying, tattooed man to wreck me.
"You don't know what you're asking for, Gemma," Dante rasps. His voice is gravel and dark promises. The oversized gold watch on his wrist catches the dim moonlight filtering through the filthy windows.
"I know exactly what I'm asking for." I arch my back, deliberately rubbing my hips against the rigid, agonizingly bulge trapped in his denim jeans. "I'm not a delicate flower, Dante. I survived the South Side. I survived my livelihood getting blown up. I can survive you."
"Nobody survives me." Dante grips the hem of his shirt that I am wearing. His knuckles brush the bare skin of my thighs. The contrast is jarring. He is all calluses, scars, and violence. I am soft curves and defiance. He drags the cotton up my body in one smooth, ruthless motion, pulling it over my head and tossing it into the shadows. The cold air bites my bare skin for exactly one second before his scorching body covers mine.
His dark eyes drag over my breasts, my waist, my thighs. The hunger in his stare is absolute. There is no hesitation. There is nopolite restraint. Dante looks at me like I am the only meal he has been offered in a decade. He worships my curves with his gaze before his hands even touch me.
"Mine," he mutters, the word vibrating against the shell of my ear. "You smell like orange and spice. You smell like life. Everything else in my world is dead, Gemma. Everything except you."
