Page 79 of Where Dark Hearts Devour
Trilby
I press my back against the pillar and hold my breath. The only sound I can hear is the beating of my pulse as blood pumps through my temples, and it’s getting faster.
This is what foreplay must feel like.
For almost a month I’ve been moving around Cristiano, testing the boundaries, seeing how far I can push it before one of us snaps. I’ve felt the burn of electricity whenever he’s entered the room and wondered what would happen if his fingers coasted just a little bit higher than my wrist or my arm. What if they stilled across my breast? What if they lingered on my hips? What if they went to places forbidden to anyone but the man I’ve been ordered to marry?
The thought makes my bones weak and my core smolder.
I strain to hear the soft click of an Italian leather shoe or the rustle of designer cotton, but nothing comes. I slowly breathe out and press my palms to the cool concrete.
In the distance something scurries along the edge of the garage, and every hair on my body bristles. What was I thinking when I leveled this challenge?
It’s simple. I wasn’t thinking. I was taunting.
I was doing everything I could think of to provoke him, to push his buttons, because I can’t keep up this act anymore. Something has to give.
Someone has to givein, and I’ll be damned if it’s me.
The tension between us is so taut it’s about to snap, and neither of us can afford for it to snap in full view of Savero, or my family, or even the friends I keep at the wrong end of town.
I don’t know what the snap will look like. All I know is I can’t take this tension anymore. It needs to break; to leach out into the air. The pressure needs to release, otherwise I’m going to explode.
My virginity feels like a chain around my neck. A broken hymen and a high-five. That can’t be all this comes down to. This moment, this anticipation, is so much more. I feel as if this is what I’ve waited my whole life for, not a tick in the box that supposedly determines my worth and my value as a woman.
Every cell in my body sings for Cristiano. I’m crying out for him to touch me, to feel me, to hear the song my body’s performing for his ears only, before it’s obliterated by a false sense of duty.
I breathe in again slowly and turn my head to the right. Nothing. Not even the dart of a shadow.
I lean over a little, careful not to overbalance. My fingers grip onto the concrete as I brush my cheek along the smooth pillar, then I turn my body until my front is flat against it.
The cool wall is soothing against the heat of my chest and my stomach. I bring my hands up to steady myself and lean toward the edge of the pillar a little more.
He’s nowhere to be seen. Everywhere is silent.
Then the hairs on the back of my neck shiver under a hot breath.
“Caught you.”
His whisper drips with promise, and my eyelids flutter shut.
A shudder rolls down my spine as he closes in on me.
“Now, what am I going to do with you?”
I don’t miss the dark teasing behind his tone. It warms my pelvis and turns my stomach to liquid. I want to turn my head, but I can feel his heat right there, tantalizingly close.
His breath strokes my nape, and his lips press softly against my hair.
The suspense, the not knowing what he’ll do, has me teetering right on the edge of sanity. If he doesn’t do something to ease this unbearable tension, I’m going to lose it.
My heart is in my throat, every sense on high alert. Then I feel his fingers pushing between mine, his hot flesh pressing my hands into the cool concrete.
Slowly, he works his fingers beneath mine, curling them into my palms, andfinally, his body pushes up against my back.
A satisfied sigh leaves my body, along with a soft moan. He’s pressing his erection into the small of my back and holding it there, like a warning.
A low, desperate growl rolls through his chest. “This is what you’ve done to me. I’ve been walking around with a fucking hard-on since you strutted into that damn bar. My cock has never been so fucking needy. It won’t settle for anything less than you. I can’t even sleep when you’re in the next room. I can’tbreathe.”
