Page 116 of Dominance

“I-I can’t.” His shoulders slump, deflating. “Even now, Ican’t…”

“Yes. you can.” I take a step forward, resigned to my fate. “I’m not scared anymore. Not of him. Not of you.”

“But I am. You scare the fuck out of me, Gloria. Because of how much I want totrustyou. How much I need to trust you. But one moment to the next, you change, turning a face I barely recognize—” he fumbles, scrambling for the right words, almost frantic. “All for what? Forwho?”

“Her name is Anna. She’s fifteen. She’s my little sister.” Even now, the words stab like a betrayal through my own heart.

Adriano’s eyes widen, his mouth drops open.

“That’s who I am. A sister. Her protector. And I will do whatever it takes to protect her, even if it means staining my soul beyond repair. I already have.”

“That’s not true. I’ve seen who you really are. And I’ve prayed every fucking day that that side of you is real. The side of you that brings out the best in me. That lights the fire in my fucking soul! The woman that I gave myself to the other night completely,” he gasps out, agony burning in every word. “She iseverything, Gloria. That woman…I would doanythingfor that woman.”

Just when I thought my world was falling apart…

“Why?”

“Because Iloveyou, Gloria.”

He shatters my entire existence.

23

ADRIANO

Iwant to tear my ribcage open.

Reach inside and grasp my broken, rotten heart, and throw it as far from me as I can. Burn it. Stomp on it.

Anything would be better than the earth-shattering pain of seeing Gloria’s face, seeing her crumple before me. Crushed under my words.

Crushed under my world.

I just had to know, didn’t I?

I had to see who she really was.

Even if it destroyed both of us in the process.

Yet in that surreal, awful moment, I unleashed everything, opened myself to her, to the truth. And I see the sun break through the clouds, a single beam of spectacular, blazing glory as her eyes light up, only a fraction.

And we’re rushing one another, crashing into each other’s arms, our lips colliding.

The weight of that kiss blasts the burden from my shoulders. Frees me, if only for an instant, from the chains of my prison, my sentence stayed.

Our abandon loses all sense of time. There’s only Gloria.

Her lips. Her body wrapped in my arms.

Until it’s not enough.

As if I could ever get enough of her.

Her hands clutch at me, at my shirt, tearing the buttons, popping a few to the floor. My own hands match her need for need, ripping her jacket back over her shoulders, tugging it down to the floor. Her loose tank top is next, my shirt slinging free of my arms in the process, launched into oblivion, along with every care for anything I could ever have outside this room.

A pause.

A breath.

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