Page 106 of Corrupted Deception

“I didn’t. Aurelio looked into you when we were in school together—on my father’s orders—and then… after.”

“After?”

He nodded. “He never told me, not until the other day.”

The thought of someone spying on me all this time felt like tiny pinpricks down the back of my neck. It made me want to swat them away, and maybe take a swing at Aurelio Carbone too.

Cielo slid his hands along my thighs, then back to my knees.

“Don’t be angry,tempesta,” he said with a flicker of a grin. “He knew I loved you, but he also knew I wasn’t what was best for you—not then.”

“You loved me?” I tried not to scoff—I really did.

He nodded, plain and simple, like I’d asked him if the sky was blue.

Cielo had loved me?Dear lord.

I couldn’t help but wonder what I would have done back then if I’d known that, whether I still would have left. Or would I have gone running to him instead?

All the years I would have missed out on with my father, all the ways he’d helped me, all the memories we’d made together… just erased?

Maybe everything happens for a reason, some ridiculously naïve voice whispered, but I silenced it fast. If everything that happened in this world was all part of some grand plan, then fate really was a sick and twisted bitch.

And either way, none of it changed what was in front of me right now.

“I appreciate this,” I said, motioning to the phone.

It was sweet he wanted to support me, not judge me for my condition.

“But I listened to my mom promise to be different, to change, to get clean.” I could still hear her voice in my head, her teary apologies, her fake promises. “Just like I want to promise to control it now, promise never to stray, never to slip. But Mom never kept her promises. When the urge hit, she was back to shooting up. It was drugs that controlled her; for me, it’s impulses. The end result will be the same, Cielo. Failure. Betrayal.”

He was tracing idle circles along the insides of my knees, and he glanced down at his hands for a moment, watching the path his fingers took, then he looked back up.

“You’re not your mother, Charlotte. And I’ve watched you rein it in. Until Aurelio told me the truth, I’d had no idea you were so fucking strong, but you are.” He slid his hands up the outsides of my thighs to my waist.

“So, I have no doubt, you’ll stay strong. You’ll come to me when you’re having a hard time with it, and we’ll… fuck in the air, mid-skydive or in a cage surrounded by sharks—whatever gets you off. I don’t mind pushing you to your limits one bit.” He smiled devilishly as his fingers curled into my flesh. “Only for your sake, of course.”

“That’s very generous of you,” I said sarcastically.

He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a giver.”

I laughed, but then sobered quickly. Because his words were so tempting, so easy to grab onto.

But he shook his head before I could speak.

“Your father trusted you—there’s no way he would have worked with a loose cannon.”

He slid one hand up higher, all the way up to my chin, tilting my head up higher until our gazes met.

“And I trust you, Charlotte,” he said, and I could feel the weight, the significance in those words. “But that doesn’t matter, not if you don’t trust yourself.”

His words hung heavy in the air between us. He wasn’t wrong. The old adage ‘you can’t love someone else until you love yourself’ ran through my head. It was true for trust too. Self-doubt would always worm its way in like a virus, growing and breeding and spreading outward. Maybe Mom had never been able to control herself because she didn’t believe she could.

“So, think about it,tempesta,” he said, but the tone of his voice had changed, thicker and huskier now. “In the meantime, I’m not going anywhere. Nowhere but inside you. Right now,” he said as he let go of me to shove his boxers down, letting his cock spring free..”

“Is that so?” I said coolly, even as my mouth watered.

He didn’t even bother getting rid of my panties, just shoved them out of his way and lined up his cock.

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