A raw, vulnerable laugh left me. “Like you’d do something to help me. I might be young, but I’m not an idiot.”
“I know you’re not. Far from it, but you’re not telling me the truth. You’re not letting me in.”
“Why should I? We’re enemies, remember? I betrayed you, crossed you. Your brother wanted me dead. How can I trust you?” I asked calmly, though my heart was pounding in my chest. Those final words felt like a lie. We didn’t feel like enemies. We never had.
“But you could trust Tony from trivia night, right?” Antonio let out a bitter laugh. “You’ve fucked with my head so completely, I’m jealous of myself,” he muttered.
I tried to get a grip on my oscillating emotions. I longed for that night we met, and I found someone I could laugh and relax with as much as I longed for this guilt to move from my chest.
Before I could stop myself, I reached out and fisted a hand in his shirt.“Didn’t you promise to punish me? To even the score between us?”
He stilled, and my entire body roared into painful awareness at how close he was. His smell, the warmth of his skin, and his hard body pressed against my side set me on fire. At that reckless, impulsive movement, I wanted nothing more than to burn in his hands.
“Why don’t you do it? All that big talk and—”
His mouth descended on mine and stole my accusing, goading words. He wasn’t gentle, not at all. I welcomed his brutal touch and matched him, inch for inch. I’d been burning with guilt for two months, and now I was going to exorcise that ghost with the man who had turned my life upside down and revealed it for its pathetic reality without even knowing it. Antonio Luciano might have been furious at me for fucking up his job, but he had no idea how hard he’d fucked up my life. He’d made me want things I had no business wanting.
His kiss turned gentle, and I bit his lip, drawing blood. He pulled back and stared down at me with hungry dark eyes.
“Don’t be gentle with me. I don’t deserve it. Punish me, like you promised,” I whispered, my throat tight with need and my skin hot and tight.
“Despite what my reputation would lead you to believe, Chiara, I don’t want to hurt you,” he muttered against my skin, pulling me firmly into his lap. “Not in a way you wouldn’t beg for more of.”
“Show me,” I gritted, holding back a groan as his hand fell to my thigh.
He growled something I couldn’t quite make out in my ear, and then his hand was on the hem of my dress. “Say trivia is if it gets too much for you,” he told me roughly as his hand yanked up my knee-length skirt and delved into my panties.
His reference to the night we met didn’t go unnoticed. That night, we’d both been the best versions of ourselves, maybe the people we could have been if we’d had different parents. It mattered to him as much as it had to me. The loneliness I’d carried with me my entire life shifted. It was like finding a companion in the darkness. It was an odd feeling, but one I already knew I needed. Like a drug, Antonio had become vital to my survival, and these two months apart had been agony because I’d tried to deny it. I had no idea he felt the same. In a blink of an eye, my entire world shifted.
His fingers slid along my wet folds and pressed inside, and I couldn’t think anymore. He had me between his strong thighs and used his knees to nudge my legs further apart. The car windows were darkly tinted, nearly black, and the privacy screen was firmly up. We were alone and invisible. His fingers sank inside me without warning, and I cried out. Even one of his digits felt thick to my untested core, and when his thumb circled my clit, the only part of me I’d dared to explore before, I moaned loudly.
Antonio’s hand clamped around my mouth, and his hot breath scorched my ear. “No one hears your pleasure but me, Chiara,” he said, his voice full of want and possessiveness. “Nod if you understand.”
I nodded frantically, and when he removed his hand, I sucked in a deep breath. His other hand hadn’t stopped moving against me, his thick middle finger rubbing the front wall of my pussy, while his thumb circled me. I moved against him, building a rhythm, grinding my ass against the hardness that lay up my back, wide and long, even through our clothes. I was building toward something I’d never had at someone else’s hands, and there was no stopping it. I grew frantic as I got closer and closer, reaching for it with my entire body as Antonio spoke in my ear, and his hand stopped.
“Not so fast, tesora. You wanted to be punished. Here it is,” he said quietly.
My ruined orgasm felt like a physical ache. I’d been so close, and now my body writhed against nothing, desperate to finish.
“You bastard,” I swore at him, bringing my hand up to finish the job.
He gripped my wrist and stopped me.“You asked for it. Now, do you want to come?”
I nodded frantically.
His hand returned to me and started the same maddening motion of finger fucking me while working my clit. He had huge, dexterous hands. I rose again, faster than before, my hands tightened on his thighs, and I clenched my teeth, so close to coming I could taste it.
Antonio pulled his hand away, the elastic of my panties snapped into place, and I cried out with frustration and disappointment.
“I don’t think you’ve served your sentence yet,” he murmured, making me want to scream with frustration.
When my flesh had stopped twitching, and I was no longer a hair’s breadth away from coming, he returned his hand to me. “We have precisely three minutes before we get home. Come before then, or not at all,” he said roughly.
His finger burrowed back inside me and circled my clit. I was so wet, the squelching sound of his movements filled the car.
I fucked his hand, uncaring of how it looked or the useless, senseless words I babbled. I cried pleas of pleasure against his hand, scratched and clawed at his arm, and rose and rose.
I came just as we pulled to a stop.