Page 131 of Corrupted Deception

I watched, feeling just a little like a creepy voyeur, as the dark-haired girl yanked Caio’s open shirt down his arms, leaving his torso bare. I couldn’t see much with their bodies pressed together, but from what I could see, he looked pretty damned built to me.

He still had his mouth on her neck, and he started to work his way downward, pulling her dress down with him as he went, kissing across her clavicles, along the upper swells of her breasts, pushed up high thanks to a bra that rivaled the nice things my corset did for my girls.

At the same time, he’d slid his hands to the backs of her thighs, sliding her dress higher as he worked his way up to her ass.

“Daniela!” a voice called out, back from the direction they’d come.

The two of them froze, then broke apart, and the woman moved frantically, fixing her clothes in a hurry.

When Caio reached for her hand, she shook her head.

“I have to go, please,” she said, once again in Spanish.

The moment he let her go, she ran off, leaving him standing there, running his hands through his hair, the moonlight spilling through the open gap in the canopy above and playing across his ripped body.

He looked up, like he could feel me watching him, and our gazes met.

His eyes grazed over me, from my bare shoulders, down the long line of my strapless dress, to my bare toes. When he looked back up, I could see the fire in his eyes even from a distance.

He’s all yours. Go for it. Just fuck him, a voice screamed in my head.It’ll feel so good, wipe away all this anxiety, all thismelancholy, right from the first hard thrust.

Just do it.

There was another voice murmuring in my head, so quiet, whispering about logic and consequences, but I could barely make it out. It gave me nothing to grab onto, no distraction from the voice screaming all the things it had screamed so many times before.

Just fuck. Come. Scream.

The whispering beneath it stopped. But that sneaky little voice got smarter. Very smart.

It held up an image, like a neon sign flashing in my brain. It was Cielo’s face. His blue eyes sparked up with cold fire. The way the corners of his lips twitched when he was fighting a smile. The way they curved when he was looking at me, smiling at me.Loving me.

“I trustyou,” he’d said.

Trust.

Love.

Faith.

I blinked and held onto those words, to the image of the man I didn’t want to betray. Not now. Not ever.

Maybe that quiet voice hadn’t gotten smarter; perhaps there’d just never been a picture to throw up before, no one that had mattered more than all the cheap thrills in the world put together.

I turned on my heels and headed back the way I’d come, searching for him. And I found him alone, off to the side of the dance floor. He was looking at me, eyes appraising. I took a deep breath and crossed the distance between us.

When I stopped right in front of him, he took my arm and kept going, leading us away from the crowd again until the music was just blurry notes in the distance. When he stopped, he looked at me, silent, like he was waiting patiently.

“I’m coming to you,” I blurted out, remembering what he’d told me.

He smiled. “Sì, I know.”

“You do?” Was I that obvious?

“I thought we could try something new, something both of us will find terrifying—one hell of an adrenaline rush,” he said, ignoring my question.

“Okay…” I replied tentatively.

“Marry me?” he asked. There wasn’t a hint of humor in his tone. This didn’t feel like a joke.

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