Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)
Fractured Freedom: Chapter 22

Dante

“Inflicting pain on another human being?” I asked Delilah because I needed her to finish what she’d started. We needed to rid ourselves of whatever was infecting her views of this relationship.

She recoiled at the idea, and my instinct was already on high alert. I wanted to tower over her, make her cower in the corner, and make her beg for mercy from me.

I would have done it with anyone else.

I was bred to acquire information. I was the predator to her prey.

I leaned forward, and she sucked in a breath like she was about to lean back, like she wanted to run. Retreat looked good on her.

“That I enjoy seeing someone squirm in fear?” I asked. “That I like to earn a scream or a gasp or a moan?”

Her breath came faster, and I saw the goose bumps scattered across her soft skin. When those wide eyes dilated at my last word, I knew we were on the same page, even if she didn’t yet.

Still, she cleared her throat, trying to appear unaffected. “Yes, how is that possible? I can’t … I can’t imagine it.”

“Well, you’d better start, Lilah, because I’ve wanted to drag every one of those sounds out of you. I intend to earn them. One by one.”

“You think we can go that far? We’ve had fun, but you think I’m made for this? For you?” She shook her head. It was the fear talking, the fact that we’d been childhood friends and she didn’t want to change the course of our relationship. “Izzy is the wild one, not me.”

I quirked my head. “Would you classify a rabbit as wild? Or the hawk that hunts it? Do you think that a rabbit zigzagging through the forest, away from a predator, is any less than the animal that chases it?”

She stuttered. “A bu-bunny?”

“A lamb. A mouse. Prey is as wild as its predator, Lilah. You’re as wild as me, and you want this as much as I do.”

She shook her head, hazel eyes wide as saucers. She pushed my hands off her and got up from the table. She grabbed her clothes, and her hand was on the handle of the door to go change when I slammed my palm above her head, holding the door closed.

She yelped and spun around, clothes clutched to her chest. All I saw was the flesh above her hand moving up and down, the swell of her breasts rapidly pulling in those breaths.

“Safe word, Lilah. Use it.”

Her stare was suddenly determined, and the little fist at her chest squeezed tight as she tilted her head and uttered the only word I needed to hear. “No.”

Fuck.

The wolf in me let loose and snatched the clothing from her hands and body viciously. Then my grasp was back around her neck, shoving her hard into the door even as she tried to open it.

“You want to run from me naked, woman? I’d punish you painfully for that,” I growled in her ear before biting it hard.

My hand on her neck tilted her jaw so I could ravage her shoulders, the swell of those breasts, every unmarked part of her body.

I wanted me everywhere on her. “The next man that has his hands on you loses those hands, Lamb. Got it?”

She shook her head, eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to keep me out. Yet she held on to my head like she’d crumble if she let go. “This won’t last. We can’t. We just can’t.”

“We’ll last forever. You’ll be mine forever. No massages. No other men. Nothing. This body is mine.” I picked her up, wrapped her legs around my waist, pulled her close so I could keep her. Keep her forever. That’s all I wanted. I pinned her against the door, our bodies molded to one another by force.

My hands dug into her hips as I sucked hard on that sensitive part of her neck, breathed in her scent, and tried my very best to hold on to the person I couldn’t lose again, even if she couldn’t figure out how to stay.

Because I felt it.

I felt her slipping.

Our unhappily ever after crept in, and I didn’t know how to fix it. She was right. I was a man of destruction, but she knew me as one of healing, and I didn’t know how to heal us when we weren’t even broken yet.

Her heart actively worked to shut me out even as her body let me in. She searched for the what-ifs and the darkness and the pain in her mind to wedge between us, and I couldn’t control it except when I had her like this.

And this only lasted so long.

I spun her and laid her back on the massage table. Her dark waves cascaded over her shoulder and over the table’s edge as she turned her head to look at me. I let myself take her in for just a moment as she lay there breathing heavily. Took in the way that skin stained pink for me when I touched her, the way she bent her knees and her hands went between her legs as she bit her lip, like she couldn’t stop herself from touching the sensitive parts of her body while she waited for me to do it. Her muscles moved fluidly to a secret rhythm that mesmerized me. The spectrum of color in those hazel eyes hypnotized me, and I found myself grabbing the candle from behind me and moving to stand right above her, holding it out over her stomach.

I opened my mouth to remind her.

She beat me to it. “I know the safe word, Dante.”

“If I lose you, Lilah, you know I’m going to make sure you remember me,” I said before I poured the hot wax from a foot above her stomach, knowing it wouldn’t burn too much from that height. Still, I wanted her to remember, wanted her to experiment with her pain and let me redden her unmarked skin so I could replace the pain with pleasure.

A tear escaped and trickled down her face as she nodded, and I tried my best not to fall to my knees and beg her forgiveness.

Instead, the gasp that came from her as I slid my finger up her pussy at the same moment the wax hit her stomach made my cock so hard I knew I’d need to be inside her soon. “That sound is mine. Will always be mine, Lilah.”

She nodded as we watched the wax harden, and her hips rolled against my fingers.

I tilted the candle again, dripping a path of wax up to her breasts, over them, around her nipples. “The next sound is going to be you screaming.”

“I don’t scream in public places, Dante,” she whispered.

“You’re about to, Little Lamb. Spread your legs like a good girl.” She whimpered like she couldn’t do it, like she was above it, but her body submitted to me immediately. “Such a pretty little lamb. And look at that pretty pink pussy. The color I see in all my dreams. Fuck, you deserve everything I’m about to give you. Always have, always will. You’re my good girl, my very best girl … Mine.”

And then the wax was teetering over the edge of the candle and falling fast onto her clit.

The sound from her was pain and pleasure mixed together, loud enough for the whole hotel to hear as I curled my fingers into her G-spot. Her pussy pulsed around me, and her orgasm dripped from my fingers to my wrist and down my forearm.

“This is only the start of me taking those sounds from you,” I told her as her body relaxed.

The image of her on that table should have been in a damn museum, the Museum of Perfection, and access would only belong to me. I would buy the whole building, too, so I could stare at that art for eternity.

I unbuckled my slacks and nudged my cock’s barbell against the wax on her clit.

“Oh, Jesus, it’s too much, Dante.”

“Never am I too much for you,” I told her, but I was on the brink; it was all too much for me too.

We were giving into each other’s lust for one another instead of fighting for the love.

Thinking I might not always have her made me want to brand the shit out of her, made me want to hear my name on her lips over and over. I flipped her so her stomach was against the table and pushed her flat. Then I thrust into her, hard, fast, and raw.

My control had snapped at this point. I grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked it toward me. Her body arched as I fucked her, her ass reverberating with my motion. My other hand snaked up to her tits, pinching the nipples covered in hardened wax and rolling them until it fell away so she felt only my fingers on her skin.

“Dante … I’m scared,” she panted as she met me thrust for thrust.

I smacked her ass to correct her. “You’re strong, Lilah. Not scared. You better overcome your fear of me. We got this. I got you.”

She bit her lip, and then her gaze shot up. I saw her reflection in a decorative mirror, those hazel eyes vivid, determined, but sparkling with unshed tears of fear.

“Seven, baby. Keep those eyes on me.”

“Seven to heaven.” She took a deep breath, and I escaped into the rainbow of gold and sage and misty gray of her hazel eyes as we breathed together. Seven breaths. Seven moments. We breathed each other in. Then we let each other go. I fucked her like it was the last time, hoping it would be one of the first.

We got to heaven together.

But who knew it would be just seven days before I experienced the hell that was losing her.

She fell asleep in my arms as I carried her across the hotel to her room. In the damn spa’s sheet.

Everyone was getting a raise when I left here.

Which had to be soon.

Our bubble, the one I’d kept her pretty much captive in, was about to pop. Our glass house was about to shatter; the freedom, even if it was fractured, that I’d given her was about to become complete lockdown.

I let her sleep for a couple hours and took a call from Cade that afternoon.

“If Izzy’s out, why isn’t she here yet?” I almost yelled into the phone at Cade.

“You know I’m just watching security cameras. I’m guessing her guy got her out.”

“What guy?”

“Iago, man. He’s here. That means Albanian families are definitely involved. Bastian’s pissed.”

Bastian was the head of the Armanelli family. It meant things were getting out of hand and that we needed to end this now or a war would rain down on us all.

“Iago’s been dealing with Izzy for a year or so in Miami. He knows her. If he’s here, he wants this shit to go off without a hitch. She told me, once she’s out, she’ll try to get to your hotel under the radar. She’ll call Delilah, right? Because that wouldn’t raise a red flag. Make sure Lilah has her phone, that you guys—”

“I’m not a fucking idiot, Cade. You sound nervous. She’s been doing this shit for years. We got this. We got her. They’re not going to—”

“I’m missing something underground on the dark web. If something happens to Izzy—”

“Izzy?” I said, completely shocked. “What the fuck do you care if something happens to her? You’ve been calling her an addict since the day you met her.”

“She is one,” he growled. “If something happens to her, I’m going to have to hear about it from my brother, okay? His wife likes Izzy. They met, so now I’ll be on the hook if—”

Cade, the crazy hacker of a brother to the head of the mob. He didn’t give a shit about anything, not even Bastian being pissed. “You don’t care if you’re on the hook for anything, Cade.”

“This I do. I’m not having her blood on my hands, even if I hate her.”

Fair enough. None of us wanted blood on our hands anymore. Bastian had started a new reign. We were done with the bullshit our fathers had done before. We wanted a clean family, legal business, and a government we worked with, not against.

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

I hung up on him and told myself that same thing over and over again the next day. We were waiting now. Waiting like sitting ducks until we heard from Izzy.

I didn’t tell Delilah. She seemed happy, back to how she was before the last couple of days. We didn’t mention the spa or anything we’d talked about there, but we enjoyed one another’s company. I catalogued the day like I was heading to fucking jail the next, like I was being shipped overseas and I’d lose her all over again.

I knew our train wasn’t heading in the right direction. It was veering, careening off course, away from a happily ever after into a fiery explosion down below.

It was my job to read people’s emotions. I had to know what was pushing them and what wasn’t in order to replace their weaknesses and strengths.

In my line of work, I’d perfected it, but in my personal life, it was the opposite.

In those seven days after the spa, I saw her retreat into the darkness of whatever shell she thought she needed to hide inside, and I couldn’t fix her. Her light disappeared, and whatever she was thinking dragged her down, drowned her in her sadness. It felt like not even I could breathe around her.

“Want to talk about it, Little Lamb?” I asked as I gave her a massage that night, knowing she’d still turn over and let me fuck her into satiation until the sun came up. Her body still wanted me, even if her mind was far away.

She let me work her muscles and shrugged like she couldn’t do much else. No words or smiles came to reassure me that she was okay.

“My momma used to tell me I couldn’t make everyone happy. Did you know that?”

“You made plenty of us happy all the time,” she mumbled. “I just sometimes can’t be happy, no matter how much I try.”

I should have taken it as an indicator of something more serious, I should have been more on the ball, but her phone rang, and we both stared at it as an odd number flashed on the screen.

“Izzy?” I asked, and Lilah lunged for the phone like she’d been waiting for the call her whole life.

“Hello?” Lilah waited, and her eyes narrowed. “You’re here? Our room numbers?” She shoved me off her and moved faster than I’d seen her do all week. She threw on the bra she claimed was a crop top and slipped back into her black shorts. “Sure, we’re on the twentieth floor, rooms 2001 and 2002.”

She stared at the phone for one beat, and I stared at my lamb, ready to bolt and formulating a plan to smooth out the situation that was about to ensue.

Her hands wrung together. “Let’s just say I was grabbing food here.”

I glanced around my room. Her things were everywhere. Her makeup on my bathroom counter, her toothbrush at the sink, her clothes over the chair. Two pairs of her shoes were right by the door. And my stuff was all over hers. We’d spread out so much there was no way of hiding it. “Why would I lie, Lilah?”

“Because it will complicate things and I don’t want her to—”

“Fly off the rails? I can assure you Izzy has been clean for years. This won’t cause a setback.”

“It’s not what I want,” she blurted out.

“What isn’t what you want?”

“This.” She motioned between us. “I can’t give you what you want. So I don’t want this.”

“What is it that you can’t give me?” I whispered. Her words cut my organs, like she was trying to rip me apart fast and clean but doing a bad job.

“Oh my God! Everything. I’m lost. I’m scared of whatever we have. And what if it’s real? What if we really have it, the love and the life, and then we want a kid, Dante? I can’t give you a kid. Or a family.” Her hand flew over her mouth as though she couldn’t believe what she’d said. “I know. We’ve only been sleeping together for two weeks. This is probably just casual—”

“It’s not,” I answered for her. “This is forever. It always was, Lilah.”

“And that’s why it can’t be. If it’s forever, our genes don’t work in me, or no genes do, I don’t know.” Tears formed in her pretty eyes. “We can’t talk about this right now. I can’t beat whatever happened in that miscarriage, Dante. This is done. Leave it. Don’t even tell her.”

“Little Lamb.” She was ready to dart, and I could only whisper the words and hope she wouldn’t. “I don’t want children if it’s not with you. We either have them or we don’t.”

“No.” She almost yelped the word and then pointed her finger at me. “You’re not suffering because I’m suffering. You have a way out.”

“I don’t want one.” I shrugged because she had to understand what she was saying was nonsense. “I don’t want ‘a way out’ from you ever. I could have told you that the first time you tricked me into taking your virginity, the time I carried you home with your broken ankle. Hell, the time I asked what you needed for your first period in my car. I wasn’t going anywhere without you. I’m still not. I’ll wait forever for a baby with you, or we’ll be happy without one.”

“What if you’re not happy, though? What if I can’t be happy? What if I’m depressed all the time?” Tears streamed from her eyes.

“We got a million tools in the toolbox for that. I’ve perfected a few things in my lifetime, Lamb. I’m not afraid to perfect making you happy and aiding you in your mental health.”

“I don’t want you to have to fix me. I don’t want to be broken all the time. Do you enjoy putting me back together?” she shrieked like I was insane.

I was when it came to her.

“I do. I enjoy every part of you. Even the dark parts. Even the ones you’re scared of. I might tear people apart, but I enjoy putting you back together, Lamb. I want to do that for the rest of my life.”

She shook her head. “You’ll change your mind.”

The knock on my door sounded and her eyes widened. Then she wiped her face while swearing and moving toward the door all at the same time.