Page 55 of Ruthless

“Why not?” Planting my fists on my hips, I toyed with the idea of tickling him to reclaim my phone, but I already knew the attempt would end in failure. The damn man’s practically carved from stone. “I think it’s cute.”

Even if Dante has always been more of a wolf, I liked “cub.”

He scowled. “I’m not a ‘cub.’ I’m a grown-ass man.”

Snickering, I pressed my body to his and gripped him through his pants. “Yes, you definitely are. So how do I say ‘grown-ass cub’ then?”

“Cucciolone.”

His whisper lands like a pebble in a pond of memory, a depressing echo of his old playful correction of my Italian. Spoken in a sandpaper-like rasp, it breaks my heart in an entirely new way.

I reach for him, but he stops me before I get too close, the same as he’s done so many times in the recent past.

“Talk to me.” My throat feels like sandpaper too.

Dante’s unsteady hand reforms a fist. As I watch, breathless and aching for him, he uses that fist to draw lazy loops over my breasts and stomach. He expands the circle to my belly button as nausea roils in my gut.

“They cut me,il mio dolce tesoro. Carved me open and left me bleeding and starving in my own filth. The things I did just to keep breathing…” He releases a desperate, ragged noise. “All so I could come back toyou.”

I flinch. This time, when I reach for the hem of his shirt, he lets me. I still don’t understand what happened or why, but Ican tell he suffered. I’m desperate to see the full extent of the damage for myself.

Carefully, I unbutton his shirt. Standing like a robot, he neither helps nor stops me. Once I strip his arms free of the soft material, the air strangles in my lungs.

Scars mar every inch of him. Latticed stripes undoubtedly created by sharp blades. Raised, ropy marks, maybe from whips. Circular burns. His skin is a map of pain and brutality, strengthening my urge to vomit.

Swallowing bile, I trace a gentle finger along the puckered flesh and deep, angry furrows.

HisCreation of Adamtattoo took one of the biggest hits. The bottom part of Adam hidden beneath his collar has been cleaved away, as if his torturers started to flay him but never finished the job.

“I escaped before they could inflict more damage.” He answers my silent questions in a tone as empty as his eyes.

My heart withers and dies a small death. My hidden agenda perishes, too, leaving only a deep yearning to fix the unfixable. The thought of someone hurting him this badly makes me want to scream and break things. “Dante, please. Let me help you.”

His bitter laugh grates my ears. “You know there’s only one thing I want from you.”

I’m not sure which one of us acts first. He fists my hair and jerks my head back, and I rake my nails down the healed wounds on his chest. Lowering his head, he captures my nipple in his mouth, branding me, and I return the favor, sinking my teeth into his pec and running my tongue along the ridged scar tissue.

Dante raises my arms, and the shackles go back around my wrists, but this time, the intention is a far cry from when Luca first chained me up in this room. Once I’m secure, I lift my legs to wrap them around his waist, creating an entirely differentkind of trap he doesn’t seem to mind. No foreplay, no kissing, and my heart throbs with a dull pain.

No matter how many times I welcome him into my body, Dante will always hide parts of himself from me. He denies me the intimacy we once shared, and I feel like I’m dying of thirst while drowning in a well. Regardless of how much pleasure he delivers, I’m left craving more, and I practically choke on bitterness over what will never be mine.

He hooks his thumbs into the waist of his silk pajama pants, now crusted with blood and gore, and strips them off. His cock springs free, rigid and swollen with need. When he sinks into me, his desperate thrust knocks my head against the wall. He latches onto the space where my neck meets my shoulder and sucks like he’s claiming me in some primitive mating ritual. All I can do is moan in response.

The noise excites him, and he scrapes his teeth over my skin as if he wants to devour me whole. Each thrust is like a declaration of war, but if this is the price I must pay, I will happily abandon any future right to peace. He tilts my hips into an angle that allows him to go deeper, and my eyes roll back.

His thumb strums my clit in punishing circles, and I cry out his name. When his other hand slips between my cheeks to circle my other, untouched opening, I arch into him.

Dante needs to possess every inch of me, which means surrendering all of myself to him.

Hate can bring two people together more permanently than love, so long as you’re willing to lose yourself in it, and Dante’s all too eager to do just that. His victim’s blood smears across my face and body, but he doesn’t slow. Instead, he fucks me raw until my voice gives out.

When he pushes his thumb inside that taut ring of muscles, I lose what’s left of my sanity. The sensation is both too much and not enough. My speech becomes garbled, unintelligible, but onething pierces through the haze of pleasure like the first rays of sun after an endless night.

Love.

My shocked heart nearly stops beating, then gallops like a racehorse. Pressure builds in my chest and behind my eyes.

Despite how much this man hurt me, I love him. I don’t think I ever stopped. Through all these trials, all these versions of him, my feelings never once wavered.