Page 30 of Tortured Hearts
I can’t breathe. The jagged, angry lines blur as the walls close in.
“Doc.”
I spin around to see Gianni standing at the top ofthe small staircase. Even with his face half-covered by shadows and my vision distorted, I know it’s him. My gut reaction is to run into his arms, but I only take one step before my stomach plummets. “Why aren’t you in Providence?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, only heavy silence greets me. He stares. I stare. His palm presses leisurely against the wall, and mine curls tightly by my side.
Suspicion wraps a tight coil around my fear. “Say something.”
“It’s a long story.” He descends the stairs, moving with lethal calmness until he’s standing in front of me. I shiver as he drags his stoic gaze down my body. “You’re hurt.”
I glance down to see a scratch running down my arm caked in dried blood. I don’t bother being concerned. A few missing layers of skin is the least of my worries. “Maybe that’s because I survived nearly being burned alive only to be chloroformed and dumped in a basement.”
His eyes darken, and I catch a glimmer of something that stutters my heart. Conflict? Regret? Before I can label it, it’s gone, and he’s on me, his hands digging into my hair as he crashes his lips to mine. I fall into the kiss willingly and helplessly, cupping his cheeks before slamming back into reality.
Pressing my palms against his chest, I push him away, then swing, landing a satisfying slap across his face. “You lied to meagain.” Gianni doesn’t recoil. He simply stands there, his gaze never leaving me. “Did you know I was in danger?” I hurl one heated accusation after another, anger winning out over self-preservation. “Are you the reason I’m here?”
“Yes.” A one-word confirmation is all he offers before drawing me into a demanding kiss. Once again, I relent. My head knows I should resist, but my heart doesn’t listen. It grasps onto the familiarity of his scent, that heady blend of burnt pine and desire that seeps into my veins and blots out all thedanger.
I’m not safe.He’snot safe.
But something about being in his arms makes even obvious wrongs feel right. It’s a craving. A blindness. A desperation that turns a person inside out, robbing them of all rational thought. Instead of fighting it, I sink into it, meeting every lash of his tongue.
He walks me backward and presses me against the wall, drowning me as he draws me into his fiery control. I close my eyes, my heart slamming against my chest as he drags his lips down my throat, his teeth grazing my skin. “Tell me to stop.”
I can’t. My mind is too busy imploding from the feel of his hand sliding down my hip toward my thigh.
He pulls his lips away from my throat, the hand at the back of my neck moving forward to grip my jaw. “Answer me.”
I stare into his hooded eyes. “No.”
The damp air between us thickens. I know what I’m doing, and so does he. This is the crux of who we are—submission and defiance. It’s why we fit so well together. We’re two opposite ends of the spectrum that lock in the middle, like yin and yang.
There’s a pause, then the line I’ve been pushing against severs as the hand on my thigh dives under my dress.
My eyes roll back in my head. “Shit…”
Gianni slides his finger through my folds and thrusts it inside with a second, and my body goes into overdrive. But it’s when he curls them toward my front wall that he claims all control. When the orgasm hits, it’s so powerful my body feels like it’s being tossed from cliff to cliff, then dragged down a canyon.
“Last chance, Doc.” I feel his hand working between us at his pants, his hard cock pressing against me. “The moment I’m inside you, I’m breaking both of us apart.”
I don’t stop him. This is what I want. It absorbs all the chaos, stoking a fire that incinerates all the fear. “Finish what you started, Johnny Malone.”
Those two words are his breaking point. Hitching my leg around his waist, he yanks my panties to the side and drives into me so violently I slam my head back into the wall. Self-preservation screams at me to close my eyes, but I don’t. I look for the cold hate the confused part of me expects to see. Only, there is none. What I find is far more dangerous … a word that scares me way more than prison walls.
I don’t know if he sees it on my face, but something snaps in Gianni. His grip tightens, and he fucks me like the world’s ending. My body shakes as he pushes me down another spiral. “Who…?”Slam.“Do you…?”Slam.“Belong to…?”Slam.
There’s only one answer. “The Devil.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I come. My walls contract, squeezing his cock. Gianni curses, thrusting harder and harder until his body stiffens, and he erupts inside me. And like every time before, the moment it’s over, both our walls come crashing down.
He says nothing, his lips flattening as he pulls out of me. Avoiding his eyes, I smooth my dress while pretending I don’t have cum running down my thighs. The tension from before returns with a vengeance, the distance between us widening as he steps back and tucks himself back into his pants.
That’s when I’m shoved back into reality and my concrete prison. As always, we’re two steps forward and five steps back. Unfortunately, sex isn’t a fix-all. It doesn’t change where I am and how I got here.
He couldn’t have done this. I couldn’t have been this willfully ignorant.
I brush a shaking hand over my swollen lips, the awkwardness setting in. “Tell me you’re not responsible for me being here, Gianni.” My stomach knots as I hold up my wrist branded with the mark of my mother’s killer. “Tell me you’re not responsible forthis.”
