Page 44 of Lord of Obsession

Dario's chuckle is a dark wisp of smoke on the salted breeze. "Ending well was never the point, Rafael. This is about stripping away the lies we tell ourselves. About excavating the ugly, glorious truth buried beneath the surface."

He reaches for me again, but I evade his grasp, a half-stumbled step that brings me perilously close to the water's edge. The receding tide has left a gleaming expanse of close-packed sand in its wake, pocked with craters from the impact of errant wave caps.

The anticipation churning in my gut feels equally volatile, a seething maelstrom of conflicting desires. To run, to fight,to sink into the dark temptation that Dario embodies. Each breath I take is saturated with brine and dwindling restraint, the salt heavy on my tongue.

"You talk about truth," I grit out, holding fast to the fraying threads of my composure. "But all you deal in is destruction. Ruin. You seek to unmake everything I've built, without a thought for the wreckage left behind."

Dario advances with a predator's grace, his steps deliberate and inexorable as the tide. In the midnight gloom, his edges blur, rendering him more elemental than human. A living shadow, a siren’s song made flesh.

"Wreckage can be a new foundation," he counters, every word a silken barb piercing skin and psyche alike. "In the ashes of who you pretend to be, we'll unearth something real."

He's close now, too close, the heat of him engulfing me like a rogue wave intent on dragging me under. I taste ozone and danger, the oncoming storm a mirror for the tempest raging inside me.

"I can't just abandon everything," I rasp, but the protest rings hollow even to my own ears. How can I claim loyalty to a life built ona brittle latticework of self-delusion? The man I've fought so hard to become is little more than a mirage, the wavering after-image of a castle constructed on shifting sands.

Dario senses my weakness, pressing his advantage with ruthless precision. His fingers close around my wrist, each point of contact a firebrand searing through the fabric of my shirt.

"You've been abandoning yourself for years," he murmurs, the low rumble of his voice vibrating through my bones, piercing me in ways I didn’t know would still hurt. "Denying the essential core of who and what you are. It's time to cut the strings, Rafael. It’s time to stop playing the good little puppet."

His grip tightens, a wordless command and a tether in one. Above us, the clouds fracture, allowing a sliver of moonlight to pierce the gloom. In that fleeting illumination, Dario's gaze gleams fever-bright, a promise and a challenge etched in quicksilver.

I feel the moment my resolve splinters, a barricade of pride and stubbornness and years of painstaking suppression crumbling to dust. It's a release akin to bleeding, painful and necessary in equal measure. The roar of thedistant storm rises to fever pitch, drowning the last whispers of denial.

There's a savage sort of symmetry in succumbing here, poised on the edge of civilization and the untamed wild. A place outside of time, outside the rigid constraints of the life I've so carefully curated. Here, with salt on my lips and darkness pressing close, the lines I've drawn for myself blur into irrelevance.

I meet Dario's hungry gaze through lowered lashes, my pulse a war drum urging me toward sweet, ruinous surrender. Or maybe it’s exactly what I need. The pull between us ratchets to an unbearable pitch, the very air seeming to crackle with pent-up charge.

In the end, there's no conscious choice. Only inevitability, a gravity too powerful to resist. I surge forward, closing the final bit of distance between us, and claim Dario's mouth in a searing kiss that shatters the last of my resistance.

In that collision of lips and teeth and unleashed want, I embrace the darkness within.

The kiss consumes me, a blaze of pent-up hunger and dark desire. Dario's lips move against mine with searing demand, his tongue exploring deeply to stake its claim. I meet himwith equal ferocity, all teeth and desperation as the last tethers of my control snap like brittle twine.

We tumble to the sand in a graceless tangle of limbs, the coarse grains abrading my skin through the thin fabric of my shirt. Dario's weight presses me into the shifting surface, heavy and inescapable as the pull he exerts on my soul. His hands are everywhere at once, tugging at buttons and brushing over flushed skin with a reverence that borders on obsession.

I arch into the touch, my own fingers scrabbling for purchase against the unyielding wall of his chest. The need to mark him, to embed myself beneath his skin with equal permanence, rises sharp and fierce in my chest. I latch onto the juncture where neck meets shoulder, biting down hard enough to taste copper on my tongue.

Dario's resulting growl vibrates through me, unleashing a flood of visceral satisfaction. In this suspended moment, lust twined inextricably with a far more insidious hunger, I allow myself to revel in the darkness that has always lurked beneath the surface of my carefully maintained facade.

The ocean licks at our twined bodies, frigid water a startling counterpoint to the heat building between us. Salt spray mists my face as Dario wrenches away just far enough to strip me of my shirt, baring my skin to the elements and his rapacious gaze alike. I watch, transfixed, as he sheds his own clothing with precision, each flex of muscle and glide of ink-shadowed skin a revelation.

Naked and gleaming in the patchy light filtering through the clouds, he is a vision torn from mythology, wild and untamed. The sight steals the breath from my lungs, even as it causes my blood to surge with renewed urgency.

Dario's smirk sharpens into a blade as he lowers himself over me once more, the scalding press of his flesh against mine an exquisite torment. His lips find my ear, teeth tugging at the sensitive lobe before he whispers, "No more lies, Rafael. No more barriers. Tonight, I'm going to strip you bare in every way imaginable."

A shudder ripples through me at the dark promise woven through the words. Dario nips a path down the column of my throat, each sting of pain chased by the soothing swipe ofhis tongue. My head falls back, fingertips digging into the shifting sand as I offer myself up for his pleasure.

He takes full advantage, mapping the planes of my chest with lips and teeth and clever fingers that seek out every sensitive spot with unerring accuracy. When he reaches my navel, his tongue darts into the shallow crevice, and I can't bite back the pleading moan that spills past my lips. He drinks down the sound with a hum of approval, the vibration against my over-sensitized skin sending sparks dancing along my nerve endings.

"Dario, please..." I hardly recognize my own voice, throaty and ravaged.

His chuckle slithers through me, dark and seductive. "Begging already, Valenti? We've barely begun."

But even as he teases, his hands are moving with renewed purpose, skating over the jut of my hip bones to tangle in the fastenings of my slacks. The rasp of the zipper parting is obscenely loud, nearly eclipsed by the crash of the incoming tide and the ragged cadence of my breathing.

Cool air washes over my bared thighs, thesensation quickly chased by the scorching press of Dario's palms. He kneels between my parted legs, and in the instant before he bends his head to lay claim to his prize, our eyes meet, and the intensity in his gaze sears me to the marrow.

"Watch me," he commands, voice rough with unholy need. "Don't look away for a second. I want to see the moment when you finally let go completely."

---