Page 52 of The Beast Who Broke Me
It’s a lonely existence. Even lonelier, somehow, than it felt being imprisoned down in the basement. Having more space and false freedom up here just makes things worse.
Especially because my mind drifts inevitably back to Damiano Orsini. To his mouth in the dark. To his back turned to me in the bed.
To his compassion, which he tries so desperately to hide.
That night, I retire early to Damiano’s bedroom with a book from the library. I don’t want another face-off when he gets home.
I wish I could say I took his room to teach him a lesson. The truth is simpler: I feelsafein here. It smells like him, and against all reason, I associate that scent with safety.
But all my good intentions are blown to smithereens when the man himself walks into the room without even knocking.
He looks at me sitting there in his bed—and I really wish I’d moved to the middle of it instead of habitually taking one side—and sneers.
“What are you doing?” I demand, trying to hide my fluster by slamming the book shut. “I told you?—”
He ignores me completely, heading to his walk-in, where he begins to push through hangers.
“Dami,” I say. He ignores me. “Dami. Come here.”
He can’t ignore a direct command. He stomps back into the bedroom and glares at me. “What?”
His hands have Band-Aids on them. Rosa must have patched him up when he got home.
“I’ve reconsidered. The bed is big enough for both of us,” I say. “And I feel safer knowing that protection is close at hand.”
He says nothing for a moment. Then: “Is that an order?”
“It’s an offer.”
“I got no desire to sleep beside a snake.”
That urge to needle him just won’t die. “Then consider it an order. And hurry up so I can turn the light out.”
He doesn’t hurry, but he does undress, all the way down, and I try to watch without reaction, but it’s impossible. The tattoos shifting across his muscles. The brutal build of his body. The dark hair trailing down his stomach…
He gets into bed and turns his back to me. I reach over and turn off the lamp.
The darkness settles around us. I hear him breathing, slow, controlled, the breath of a man who is very much awake. The sheets rustle when either of us shifts. His body heat radiates across the space between us, close enough to feel but not close enough to touch.
I lie there listening to him not sleep and I think about Sammy’s art. The shimmering figure wrapped around itself, my own face reflected in the broken mirrors behind it. I think about Rosa saying that wanting and doing are two different things.
And I think about the lie I told. A leash built from smoke to control the man lying next to me, who came down to the basement last night and put his mouth on me with a tenderness that contradicted everything he’s ever said.
I reach out. My fingers find his shoulder blade, and he spins over in bed—a sudden whirl of anger that makes me flinch away.
“Is this supposed to be revenge?” he snarls. “Is this supposed to show me how it felt to be treated like a whore?”
“Like I said, this is just an offer.”
His hand closes around my throat, just holding. It’s a question.
I answer it by arching into him.
“This won’t change anything,” he says roughly, rolling onto me.
“No,” I agree, already wrapping around him. “Nothing at all.”
CHAPTER 19
