The music in the spa’s room changed to a darker instrumental. “Is this … from Bridgerton?”
“It’s the music I play when I work. Keeps me and my victims focused.”
“Focused on what?” I whispered.
“On whatever I want. What I want them to tell me. They say if you play music, your mind can only process a certain number of things. You surrender to the ones you need to focus on. Ready to surrender to what I want you to?”
The music built, but I felt a million and ten things just looking at him there in those slacks. Like I wanted him but couldn’t have him and needed him all the same. I took a shaky breath, “We should go back to the room.”
“You should tell me what it is I do.” He moved back to hover over me and placed both his hands on my shoulders. Then he slid them up to hold my cheeks in his hands. We stared at one another, his green eyes pulling me in, losing me in that deep forest of his.
“You do the opposite of me, Dante. You hurt while I heal. I enjoy healing, but how can you possibly enjoy coming home wound up like this or enjoy …” My words drifted off because it wasn’t that I was scared of what he did exactly.
I was scared that we couldn’t fit together.
That I would lose him.
He may hurt others, but he always, always healed me.
22
Wax Play
Dante
“Inflicting pain on another human being?” I asked Delilah because I needed her to finish what she’d started. We needed to rid ourselves of whatever was infecting her views of this relationship.
She recoiled at the idea, and my instinct was already on high alert. I wanted to tower over her, make her cower in the corner, and make her beg for mercy from me.
I would have done it with anyone else.
I was bred to acquire information. I was the predator to her prey.
I leaned forward, and she sucked in a breath like she was about to lean back, like she wanted to run. Retreat looked good on her.
“That I enjoy seeing someone squirm in fear?” I asked. “That I like to earn a scream or a gasp or a moan?”
Her breath came faster, and I saw the goose bumps scattered across her soft skin. When those wide eyes dilated at my last word, I knew we were on the same page, even if she didn’t yet.
Still, she cleared her throat, trying to appear unaffected. “Yes, how is that possible? I can’t … I can’t imagine it.”
“Well, you’d better start, Lilah, because I’ve wanted to drag every one of those sounds out of you. I intend to earn them. One by one.”
“You think we can go that far? We’ve had fun, but you think I’m made for this? For you?” She shook her head. It was the fear talking, the fact that we’d been childhood friends and she didn’t want to change the course of our relationship. “Izzy is the wild one, not me.”
I quirked my head. “Would you classify a rabbit as wild? Or the hawk that hunts it? Do you think that a rabbit zigzagging through the forest, away from a predator, is any less than the animal that chases it?”
She stuttered. “A bu-bunny?”
“A lamb. A mouse. Prey is as wild as its predator, Lilah. You’re as wild as me, and you want this as much as I do.”
She shook her head, hazel eyes wide as saucers. She pushed my hands off her and got up from the table. She grabbed her clothes, and her hand was on the handle of the door to go change when I slammed my palm above her head, holding the door closed.
She yelped and spun around, clothes clutched to her chest. All I saw was the flesh above her hand moving up and down, the swell of her breasts rapidly pulling in those breaths.
“Safe word, Lilah. Use it.”
Her stare was suddenly determined, and the little fist at her chest squeezed tight as she tilted her head and uttered the only word I needed to hear. “No.”
Fuck.
The wolf in me let loose and snatched the clothing from her hands and body viciously. Then my grasp was back around her neck, shoving her hard into the door even as she tried to open it.
“You want to run from me naked, woman? I’d punish you painfully for that,” I growled in her ear before biting it hard.
My hand on her neck tilted her jaw so I could ravage her shoulders, the swell of those breasts, every unmarked part of her body.
I wanted me everywhere on her. “The next man that has his hands on you loses those hands, Lamb. Got it?”
She shook her head, eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to keep me out. Yet she held on to my head like she’d crumble if she let go. “This won’t last. We can’t. We just can’t.”