His grip finds my waist. Fingers spread wide, pulling me into him. The hard ridge of him against me makes my breath stutter.
“Feel what you do to me.” A growl against my ear. “Every night, Cassia. Every goddamn night.”
He claims my mouth again. More demanding. My nipples ache against thin cotton, and when he shifts against me, the friction tears a gasp from my chest.
His thigh presses between mine. The pressure sends a shockwave radiating outward. My hips rise to meet him.
“More.” The word slips out before I can catch it.
“Greedy.” But the way he says it sounds like praise.
“Cassia.” Raw. Like saying it costs him something. “Look at me.”
I open my eyes. Find his inches away. Dark and burning and undone.
“Tell me to stop.” He says it like a prayer. Like he’s begging me to save him from himself.
“No.”
His control snaps.
His touch slides up my thigh. Beneath the hem of my nightgown. Calluses catching on smooth skin. My whole body coils tight, waiting, wanting.
He traces circles on bare skin. Spiraling higher with each pass.
“You’re shaking.” His voice drops low. Awed.
“Don’t stop.”
He skims the edge of lace.
“Tell me you want this.”
“I want this.” The words come out broken. “I want you.”
His grip tightens on my hip. His breathing fractures.
He returns to my neck. My spine lifts off the bed. I drag him closer, nails catching flesh, and a sound climbs out of my throat that I don’t recognize.
“That’s it.” His voice is wrecked. “Let me hear you.”
My fingers twist into the sheets, into his skin, into anything I can hold.
“Dante.” His name is the only word left in my vocabulary.
“I’m here.” Rough against my throat. “I’ve got you.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, the girl who counts everything tries to surface. Tries to measure what I’m losing.
I stop counting.
10
DANTE
I’m lost in her.
My mouth on her neck, her body arching beneath me, and somewhere in the last few minutes I stopped being Dante Santoro, Don of the Santoro family, and became something far more dangerous.
