“Well, I… I didn’t expect that.”
He smirked and turned the shower off, keeping one hand on his cock. “You expected something from my dick, Lamb?”
I shook my head and felt the blush rise to my cheeks. “No. Of course not. But I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It must have hurt. Why do it?”
“I like to perfect what I do, Lilah.” He stepped out of the shower and moved toward me. “That includes fucking women.”
I gulped at his words and how he said them while he slowly pumped his length once. I focused only on his face then, not taking time to scan his body at all.
“I’m really sorry,” I mumbled. “I thought I heard a bang and that you might be hurt. I’ll go.”
I was almost out the door when I heard his voice come low and feral. “You walk out that door now, I’m going to have to chase you, Lamb. And I will catch you.”
“What?”
“Sit your ass on that counter and watch like you want to.”
Maybe it was a dream I could wake up from. I knew I would die of embarrassment later. But it would be much later. Because right now, instead of hightailing it out of there to lick my embarrassed wounds, my body listened.
I bit my lip and did just what he said, keeping my eyes on him while I pushed myself up onto the counter. I’d always done what I was told, so he had that advantage over me right then and there. Dante was the wolf. I was the lamb.
He was the predator; I was the prey. I wanted to submit to him, and he knew it.
Or maybe I knew that Dante and I were going to combust one way or the other, that we could run as fast as we wanted in opposite directions for years and still find ourselves face to face someday.
My breath hitched as he moved between my thighs. It was then my gaze skittered up and down his body again, taking in bumps and bruises with all of his tattoos. I zeroed in on a gash near his collarbone, naked with beads of water sliding down into the blood.
“Jesus, you’re hurt,” I murmured. “You need stitches or glue for that, Dante.”
“I know. Just give me a minute.” He leaned in to smell my neck, and then his forehead dropped to it as he whispered, “After nights at work, I have to get rid of the adrenaline.”
I nodded, not sure what to say but my hands made their own way to his back where I rubbed softly, trying to soothe him.
“You being here… it’s messing with my head. I tortured a man tonight and came back to you asleep in my bed. You. The most innocent thing in my damn world, and I needed a damn release,” he whispered.
It was Dante’s turn to confess his demons, and I’d known they’d been lurking. They had to be. He was too perfect, too charming, too put together to not have something clawing at him to get out.
“It’s okay,” I told him as I massaged him.
He hummed at the pressure from my fingers and stroked his cock right next to my pussy. It was wrong that I rolled my hips on the counter, that one of his hands went into my panties and tested how wet I was for him already.
“It’s not okay,” he said. “You’re struggling with losing our baby and I wasn’t there for you then. Now, I’m still not sure I can be. I’m not who you thought I was. I’m an Armanelli.”
I bit my lip as my pussy responded to his words, the danger in them, the desire I suddenly had to be taken by him, knowing he could cause destruction. My body had always wanted him when he was the hometown Army hero, but I wanted the gritty, forbidden part of him too, the one everyone would shun… because it was the part I’d always needed to connect to. “You’re still you.”
He growled, pushing his cock directly into the spot of my panties that he’d been rubbing. It was soaked with my arousal, and I saw how his dick swelled like it was close to where it needed to be.
“Yeah, I’m me with blood on my body and hands, Lilah. Can you handle that? I know.” He placed his left hand on the mirror behind me so that he could lean in and stare at the gash right in front of me. It was about an inch wide, just large enough to potentially be a stab wound.
“That trapezius muscle is going to hurt for a long time.” The wound was right in it. “Did someone do this? What happened?”
“I did a lot worse to them. And it’s classified, Lamb. Or I’d tell you.” He stared down at me, waiting for me to move, to leave him, to say what he did wasn’t right.
I did none of those things. Instead, I held his shoulder still and tried to ignore the sparks flying around between us. “I’m glad to hear it. I’m guessing you’re not going to a hospital.”
“No.” He shook his head slow.
“I can’t talk you into it?”