Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)
Fractured Freedom: Chapter 13

Dante

She’d been so wrapped up in a name that, for a second, she couldn’t see who I was, who I’d been and who I’d always be to her.

Armanelli.

That name had been bound to come out during all this anyway, and she needed to know who she was dealing with. Still, the way she looked at me when she found out my true last name, like I could hurt her, like I was capable of that shit.

It had me storming back into her room to put us in our rightful places. And when her shirt came off, I knew I wasn’t leaving until I had my hands where they belonged.

“See, Little Lamb. I know what you need because I know you and you know me.” I pinched her nipple, and she practically purred as she ground her pussy against me.

“I don’t know anything.” She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut but kept rocking her body back and forth as if she couldn’t get the release she wanted.

My hand slid up her thigh as her breaths came faster. “What do you need to know?”

“I don’t know, Dante. This isn’t the time,” she ground out, and her eyes shot open to glare at me. Gold and green and brown and beautiful, all mixed with fire.

“You’re beautiful when you’re angry, Lamb.” I slid my thumb so slowly it must have been painful over her slit, pushing just hard enough that her panties caused some friction.

Through clenched teeth, she said, “Stop playing with me, Dante. This is basically—”

“Torture?” I nodded, keeping my eyes on the way her face blushed, how the swell of her tits was now stained with the same pinkish hue. “I’m aware. There’s a ton of ways to torture a human.”

“And that’s what you intend to do?”

Her hands gripped my wrist, but I freed myself to take two small stones I’d put on ice near her bedside. I maneuvered one so it was between my thumb and forefinger, the other between my middle finger and pointer. When I moved my other hand to her clit and pushed one rock against her slit, she hissed. “I intend to make you see that my torture for you is seduction, my punishment is pleasure, and you’ll only fear how much your body can take.”

She moaned as her hips rocked over the stone, trying for more leverage, but my hand was big enough to rub her clit and hold her pelvis in place. This little lamb was mine.

“Look at your arousal, shining so fucking pretty on this stone through your panties and shorts. You ride everything like this, Lamb?” I asked her. “You make it so wet, it could slide into you for you to warm it up.”

“Oh, God. Please do it. Please.” She begged because she knew I was right. I knew her pussy wanted anything in it at this point.

Lilah had always been greedy when it came to her sexuality with me. We’d been greedy with each other, and it was only right that I reminded her of it before she brought another guy into the mix.

Damn, the idea that another man would even get remotely close to my little lamb had me wanting to turn into a wolf—a wolf that would protect its prey.

I slid her shorts and panties to the side so I could tease her entrance and feel how wet she was. I dipped my head just enough to breathe in her pussy. “Smells as good as I remember, Lamb.”

She whimpered, “This can’t be happening.”

“It is. You knew it would too. You still look at me with that same fire in your eyes. I’m not going to forget that look, even if it’s from a lifetime ago.”

“I just want …” She drifted off, too lost in her pleasure to finish her sentence.

I needed to hear it, though. Her begging was my addiction, one that roared back to life the moment she started. “Lilah, words.”

“I just want to get off, Dante. Please just let me get off. You know how to do it, you know what I need.”

Smiling, I placed one rock at her ass, and she gasped at the cool feeling against her virgin hole. “Still protective of some places, I see.”

Without giving her time to tell me any different, I placed the other cool rock at her glistening, pink entrance, and she bucked in response.

“Careful,” I growled. “I need you relaxed. So put those hands on your pretty tits for me, baby. Roll your nipples between your fingers. Just like that. Good girl. Such a good little lamb.”

I swear her clit pulsed at my praise. Then I slid the rock inside her fast. I wanted the temperature so cold that her pussy tightened instantly around it. With just the right amount of her arousal coating it, I got the exact response I wanted. She contracted around that rock and my finger like she needed it to breathe her last breath.

“Dante, holy shit,” she mewled as she arched off the bed. Her hands worked her breasts while I scissored my fingers inside her. “I’m going to come,” she panted, and I was pleased to see her nipples standing erect, her head thrown back, and her hair messed up around her face like she’d lost all her inhibitions.

This was the Delilah I’d fucking yearned for over the years.

This was the one I knew still existed because we didn’t get to turn off the passion between us, even if something else got in the way.

I knew my cock couldn’t take much more of seeing her like this before it would seek out its rightful place. So I pinched her clit in rhythm with her riding my hand.

“I can’t … This is …” Delilah couldn’t articulate what she needed. It was how I wanted her. I wanted her to realize I was the only man who could push her to the brink.

Right when she was about to hit her orgasm, I stopped everything to command, “Eyes on the stranger who knows your body better than you know yourself.”

They whipped open and sliced through me, fury and pleasure and desire and need all in one gaze. “Don’t you dare stop, Dante.”

“One breath.” I pushed my thumb hard into her clit, and she hissed.

“Two breaths.” I lowered my head to lick it better, and she moaned. “Count for me, Lilah.”

“Three,” she whispered as I took a bite of her thigh.

“Four,” she whimpered as I slid a third finger into her.

“Five.” I barely heard her as I sucked her clit and then let my tongue explore down to her center.

“Six and seven is heaven, Lamb,” I murmured as I stared up at her and pushed the rock into her G-spot.

She screamed out heaven over and over as she orgasmed like it was her first time ever getting there.

Delilah Hardy coming around my hand literally could have kept a dying soldier alive. That girl rode an orgasm right, like she’d studied it, and she was fucking valedictorian of it too. The way she let her whole body feel it, the way her pussy pulled me in, the way her hips moved like water, trying to lap up the damn world.

She might have been screaming heaven like I’d delivered her there, but she didn’t know she was heaven.

She was my heaven wrapped up in a tiny lamb.

I slid the rock out and removed the one near her ass as she came down from her high.

“What are you doing? Leaving?” Her voice came out a murmur, like she wasn’t sure what planet she was on but was too groggy to work it out.

“You’re relaxed enough to sleep, and you seem to know I’m not going to torture you in a way you won’t like now.”

“So, you just did all this to change my mind about you?” Her brow furrowed, like she couldn’t understand that I’d do basically anything for her.

I guess I’d have to show her. “You said you were reading about temperature play today, right?”

Her eyes narrowed and then widened as her mouth formed an O.

“When you practice what you read, you get a real good understanding of it, huh?”

“You can’t just do that to me and then leave. We didn’t…You didn’t—’ She peered down at my hard cock. It was more than visible under the sweatpants since it practically pulsed to get into her.

I hated that she thought she needed to return the favor, like her getting off from me wasn’t enough. I sighed. “Your list said explore men, Lilah.”

“Okay?” She dragged out the word.

“I slide home into you, you’ll only be exploring one for the rest of your life. I won’t share you.”

“You can’t be serious. You know I’m trying to be casual here. We can’t … We don’t even know each other anymore.”

I dragged my eyes down to her pussy, which was still glistening. “Seems I know you well enough.”

She slammed her legs shut and pulled a sheet tight around her body as she tsked at me. I noted how quickly she built her walls back up. I wasn’t used to exercising much patience with a woman. Normally I could force what I wanted out of most people. It was my job to do so.

Instead, I gathered all the rocks off her nightstand back into my bag, ready to go back to my room.

“I can clean those,” she murmured as she pushed her wavy hair out of her face, attempting to appear like she wasn’t thoroughly satiated.

When she started to sit up, the rope around my control pulled taut. I glared at her. “Move from that bed and I’ll fuck you back down onto it, Little Lamb. I try not to be the wolf around you, but there’s only so much restraint in me.”

“Dante,” she chastised.

I took one small rock that’d been deep inside her and put it in my mouth, sucked the taste off it, and moaned as I stared at her before dropping it back into the bag. “You still taste like I remember. Like you’re mine, Little Lamb. But let’s have some fun. Go back to work. Bring your date over here. See what happens. If you want three weeks of casually crossing things off your list while I’m here, you get them. But I can guarantee you will beg me to be at the end of that list. Your body already wants that.”

Her eyes flared as she tied the sheet around herself and scoffed at me. “You don’t know that, Dante.”

I chuckled. “How many men got you off at that college you went to, huh?” I narrowed my gaze.

Her tits rose and fell faster under the fabric. “This is not a conversation I’m having with you.” She slammed her hand down on the bed, and her anger told me all I needed to know.

“Is the answer zero?” I asked.

“I had fun with lots of guys,” she said, and her hand twitched to fix her hair.

“That’s a lie. Something else happened on that campus, but it wasn’t that.” She froze at my assessment, and the fight left her. Damn, I wanted to pry that information from her, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to back away. “I’m not going to ask what, Lilah. We’ll be good enough friends one day that you’ll tell me. I promise you that.”

Her lips rolled between her teeth, and she glanced away from me. “Yes, well, as this is the start of our friendship, you’ll have to understand that sometimes I need to be free to go out and have fun here, to go through my list.”

That damn stupid list.

I wanted to tear it apart or cross number five off myself.

My jaw worked up and down, and my voice was strained as I said, “You have my number?”

“Of course. We’ll be at a restaurant down the street. I end my shift at nine, so we’ll be back here soon after.”

“We’ll?”

“Maybe just me.” She sighed and slumped. “Maybe not.”

“Be careful with your choices, Delilah,” I warned. Fuck, if I didn’t leave, I was going to rip that sheet off her. Still, I needed to touch her one last time. I stalked up to her, and my fingers trailed up her arm as she held her sheet in place. Goosebumps popped up everywhere on her skin, and when I reached her shoulder, I dragged one finger—slow, deliberate, powerful—along her collarbone. She sucked in a breath as I wrapped my hand around her neck and squeezed. “You’re so small. Someone could break you before they decide to eat you alive.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “And what would be so bad about being eaten, Dante?”

I growled at her boldness and my cock twitched. She was baiting me when she knew damn well I wouldn’t let her go after I had her. “Make sure you’re careful with what’s ultimately going to be mine.”

I didn’t give her a chance to respond. I spun and swiped my key through the slot to go through our adjoining door.

I let it slam shut.

For now, I’d leash the wolf.

But not for long.