Page 23 of Reckless Sinner

“They’re not racing,” I murmured. “They’re marinating.”

Delaney snorted with tired laughter. I wondered if she snorted like that at parties on her father’s arm or if she only gave a demure, adorable little giggle.

“Seriously, Dante.” Her voice was soft and supportive. “Was it… was I… not good enough? Do we need to do it differently?”

I almost sat up in shock—and would have if it wouldn’t have meant dislodging Delaney. “No, you were perfect. I loved it.” I paused, still threading my fingers through her soft, silky hair. “It’s just that…”

Ever since my mother had died, I’d had no one to confide in. I had never been sure if she had understood my desire to leave the mafia world, but she’d supported me either way. She’d never judged me or gotten angry like my father and brothers. After she’d died I had found myself without any friend, any family member, any lover to whom I could share my fears about myself, my nature, who I was and who I wanted to be.

Could I trust Delaney? Could I open up to her about this?

“You’re scared that you loved it,” Delany said, her voice quiet.

I stared down at her. How had she known? How could she read me so well?

Delaney flushed, not with the pleasure and exertion of sex, but with embarrassment. “I just know how I feel and I feel… the same way. How do you tell a partner you want them to be rough with you? To…conqueryou? People think there’s something wrong with you. That you hate yourself or want to hurt yourself, or something. That you don’t respect or value yourself.”

She sighed, her warm breath feathering across my skin. “But for me it’s… it’s just so nice not to have tothinkfor once. I don’t have to worry if I’m doing anything right or that I’m not good enough. And it’s… honest control. It’s not people trying to control you and use you with smiles and manipulation and pretending to make small talk. It’s plain and in the open.”

She went quiet for a moment, then . . . “I thought there was something wrong with me for a long time, but eventually I just… accepted it. And I won’t apologize or feel bad for that being what I want from my sex life.”

I considered this as I stared up at the ceiling. “Then you’re more honest with yourself then I am,” I admitted.

Delaney’s fingers stroked lightly, reassuringly, down my chest.

“I’m not my father,” I said firmly. “I’m not going to be a part of the mafia if I can help it. I’ve done what I can to put distance between myself and that life. So to give into this… even if it’s just in the bedroom… that control, that desire to dominate, it makes me fear that maybe I am like him.”

Delaney sat up and stared down at me. “Wanting to be dominant in the bedroom doesn’t mean you’re going to start putting people in cement shoes and throwing them into the river.”

I chuckled. “It’s more…” I gathered my thoughts. “Everything feels like a gateway drug. If I’m not in control of myself completely, if I slip up and let myself give into that part of me… what else might I agree to? What else might emerge?”

“Look at it this way.” Delaney sat back against the pillows of my bed. “What your family does isn’t what most people would consider to be good or right. But they don’t try to hide what or who they are. They’re honest about their intentions. But a lot of lawyers and politicians, businessmen… they cause just as much pain and do just as many awful things as the mafia, but they pretend that it’s all okay and that they’re good people who are making the world a better place.

“Just because someone operates inside the law doesn’t mean they’re a good person. Sometimes it even means they have enough power to change the law to their favor. And just because someone operates outside the law doesn’t mean they’re worse. I don’t think your family is a pack of saints. But I don’t think you need to fear being like the mafia, or your roots. I think that being honest in who you are is what matters and that our world here has just as many snakes in the grass as your world where you’re from.”

By the time she finished speaking, her voice carried such a weighted tone of bitterness that I almost didn’t recognize her voice at all. I had no idea there was this side to Delaney. There was something lurking in her underneath the surface, I knew that much, but nothing like this. This spoke of a deep and long-standing resentment.

A thousand questions whirled through my mind. I wanted to know what had happened to her to shape her worldview, to make her so angry. Delaney hadn’t struck me as someone who was capable of this kind of anger.

Maybe she herself didn’t even realize how much rage she held.

I wasn’t sure how to ask her these things, though. Not right now. It occurred to me that Delaney knew so much about me—my personal history splashed out like front-page news in the legal world—but I didn’t know nearly as much about her.

Perhaps I should rectify that.

“You have a lot of faith in me,” I said. “And we barely know each other.”

Delaney tossed her hair, managing to look entirely sophisticated despite being naked and deliciously disheveled. “I know you like Jane Austen and history, what more do I need to know about you?”

I snorted again with laughter. Did other people know that Delaney could be funny? Did they see that side of her? Did she let them?

Delaney smiled at me, apparently delighted that she could make me laugh. I thought back to what she’d said earlier, about liking sex where the other person dominated her and ‘conquered’ her. How she had felt…good. Like she couldn’t fail.

Hmm.

“You know more about me than a lot of people,” I admitted.

“No, you’re right, I don’t know more than most friends would.”

---