Page 16 of Fractured Devotion

Not wanting to miss an opportunity, I eased my back into a vacant room and waited in the doorway. As soon as she stepped past me, I reached out and tugged her against my chest.

“Shh, don’t scream,” I murmured, my hand over her mouth. We stumbled into the room, and I kicked the door shut.

In a surprising twist, she used her momentum to bring us both to the ground. She moved quickly, positioning herself on top of me. Our eyes locked, and her shock was palpable.

“How?” she gasped, staring as if I were a phantom from her past.

“Carmela?” The name escaped me in a whisper, my fingers instinctively seeking the familiar line of her jaw.

Her hand snapped up, capturing my wrist. “You can’t be here. You can’t be alive.”

“I’m here… I’m alive, baby.” I insisted, and in one fluid movement, I switched our positions, pinning her beneath me. Her eyes, wide with disbelief, met mine as I held her steady. “I’m real, Carmela,” I said, pressing my erection into her core to prove my point.

“Let me up.” She bucked against me. “I can’t do this… you… I…” She closed her eyes.

“I’m not moving. Not until you tell me why you stayed away.”

In a move that proved she was no longer the woman I remembered, she had me on my back again.

“I thought you were dead.”

“If you’d come home—or hell called—you’d have learned I was very much alive, at least physically.”

She squeezed her eyes shut again. Her thighs clenched around my waist. Her lids lifted, and she held my gaze. It was like she was at war with herself—part of her wanted to remember her life before… and the other part wished I wasn’t lying beneath her on the ground.

“This isn’t the reunion I pictured,” I mumbled.

The intensity of the moment shattered as if struck by a cold, unseen force, snapping Carmela out of the shared trance. With a surge of adrenaline, she untangled herself from me and rose to her feet. I followed suit, my hand outstretched, yearning to bridge the gap between us, but she halted me with a firm gesture.

“No… don’t,” she implored, her voice quivering as her hand trembled in the air between us. “Don’t touch me.” Her words, a whispered barrier, held me frozen in place.

“Please, Carmela.” The plea tumbled from my lips. “Every night, every silent plea to the heavens was for this—for another opportunity to feel the warmth of your skin… to hold you… hell, to kiss you.”

“I’m not the same girl, Alex. I’ve done things…” Her hand clenched at her temple, the very picture of torment. “You were supposed to be dead.” Each word was punctuated by the fall of another tear, her anguish palpable in the room.

“I don’t give a fuck, Carmela. You did what you needed to do to stay alive.” I took a step toward her. “There’s nothing you can say that will make me stop loving you.”

Her face contorted into a sneer. “I’ve fucked men to get information, Alex. Allowed them to use my body just to lead me here—to this very moment.” Her words stung a sharp pang that made me recoil, a movement that didn’t go unnoticed. “Yeah… now you get it, don’t you? I’m exactly what they made me… a whore.”

“God damn it, Carmela.”

She shook her head and backed herself toward the door. “I love you—I’ll always love you—but I’m tainted and ruined. Had I known…” She swallowed, a mask of indifference falling over her features. “I’m with Andrei Sloski now. I can’t be the woman you need or want anymore.”

Stepping into her space, I pressed her against the wooden barrier. After months of wrestling with her absence, contending with the void where she used to be, here she stood—so real, so close. Her words unleashed a storm of suppressed rage within me. She seemed to brandish her words like daggers, aiming for my weaknesses, and with each utterance, she found her mark.

Emotions clashed within me—desire mingled with fear, relief tangled with the remnants of grief. All of it surged forward, propelling me as I pressed her more firmly against the door than I’d intended. My fingers wrapped around her throat, tight enough that I could feel her pulse beneath my fingers. I leaned in close, my lips hovering at her ear.

“Is that what you like? To be treated like a whore? Or maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel me buried between your legs.”

My hands went to her ass and lifted her from the ground. Carmela’s legs wrapped around my hips, giving me access to press my painfully hard dick against her center. She gasped as I rubbed my cock against her pussy. I hated that I was treating her like the whore she claimed she was, but I was lost to the rage boiling in my veins.

“Do you love Andrei?” I whispered against her lips.

“I told you I did whatever it took to get what I want.”

“And you want Lipovsky dead so much, so you’d sell your soul to the devil?”

“I have no soul,” she hissed as I pressed into her again.

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