She raised her arms and I slid the t-shirt over her head before undoing the drawstring of her pants. She lifted her hips slow, those hazel eyes on me the whole time. Then she murmured, “Thank you.”
“Any time, Lamb. Now, get some sleep.”
I would have stared at her the rest of the night had I not gotten a call.
17
Watch Him Watch You
Delilah
I don’t know how long I was asleep in his room before I came to. ER shifts drained me, and dropping the bomb of the century depleted any of the energy and emotion I had left.
The weight I’d carried had been lifted, and I’d fallen into my first deep rest in years.
Now, Dante knew.
He knew why we weren’t compatible, why I was broken, why I wasn’t as perfect as everyone made me out to be.
I stirred in his bed, half thinking I might find him lying beside me. When I cracked one eye open, though, I found the room dark, so I checked my phone.
It was ten at night already; he’d let me sleep all day. I glanced around the bedroom and heard the shower running.
Heat crept through my body, even though I knew we were past that. Dante had held me as a friend, desperate and broken in his arms, just hours before. The moments came rushing back like a tidal wave, trying to push me down and drag me out to sea.
Some would probably say I was mourning something I never had, but what they didn’t understand about the miscarriage was that my brain had started planning even if I didn’t know whether I’d keep the baby or not. I still dreamt about them. I’d researched the baby’s growth and stressed over her or him. My future shifted as I pictured my life with them in my arms.
Then something in my body I couldn’t control ripped it away. Maybe I’d done something wrong … but whatever it was, I couldn't get my baby back.
Dante hadn’t looked at me like I was crazy. He’d held me, told me he wanted to protect me, that I was like family to him.
The word family crushed my heart, though, because to him that meant I was the kid sister, I was another person he wanted to protect. But I reminded myself that’s all we could be, close family friends. My mental health was too fragile, and he was too much of everything I wanted.
If I lost something like that again, I wouldn’t survive.
Even so, hearing the water on the opposite side of one door, knowing he was washing himself, picturing the soap sliding over each of his muscles and down his smooth skin, my body reacted. It always did when it came to him, especially after he’d let me sleep all day. He’d taken care of me. I knew I was safe here with him.
I sat up in bed, willing myself to leave without looking around. Yet, I was a product of a big household that was extremely nosy. My mom and dad read our diaries, they taught us to look inside everything, and we pretty much dug through each other’s business like there was gold at the bottom of it.
I didn’t have to even scan much of the room to see what I saw, though. His clothes were bundled in the corner, full of mud and a dark red stain that could only be blood.
As I tiptoed over to his clothing, I heard a crash in the bathroom and a groan. It didn’t take me more than a second to run to that door. What if he was hurt? What if he’d gone and done something and was gravely injured? He was an Armanelli doing undercover work.
My mind took me to that typical scene in a James Bond movie. I was the girl who was going to help our country’s spy survive.
I swung open the door, practically crying out, “Dante, are you o—”
As my eyes whipped to the shower stall, my question died on my lips. I saw a white towel stained pink and red and a needle that was definitely intended to sew something shut. I was a nurse. I knew medical grade materials when I saw them.
None of it mattered when my eyes found Dante, though. I stared at the god of a man in the shower. One muscular arm was braced against the tile, tattoos wrapping around it and mingling with the large veins on his skin. I knew his gaze was on me, but he didn’t move or attempt to hide himself.
Instead, he stood there in all his glory, muscles taut as he held his huge rock-solid cock in his fisted hand.
The tip glinted under the light, and my eyes bulged when I saw dark metal glistening from beneath water droplets. Visible on either side of the tip of his cock were three balls of steel. They looked just big enough to rub the walls of my pussy exactly the way I’d want.
Those hadn’t been there years ago.
I couldn’t look away. I mean, I told myself to. I willed myself to back out of that bathroom, but my mind short-circuited as I stared at him. Every part of him was better than I remembered, better than what I’d dreamed about for over half a decade.