Page 93 of Where Wild Hearts Dance
Contessa
A knock at the door makes my lids pop open. “Who is it?”
“It’s me.”Bambi.
I push myself up to my elbows and try to ignore the crap scattered all over my bedroom floor. “Come in.”
The door opens and her brows shoot up. “You’re not packed yet?”
“We’re not leaving for a couple of hours,” I say with a sigh.
Her eyes are wide as they roam the dumping ground that is the floor. “I fear you might need longer than that. Do you want some help?”
I lay back down with a thump and close my eyes. How has it come to this? My little sister offering to help me get my act together for a stayin a luxury hotel in the Hamptons? I should have been ready hours ago but all I’ve managed to do is shower.
I know what’s putting me off—it’s the thought of seeing Bernadi when I get there. Unfortunately, it’s inevitable—he’s Cristiano’s best man.
Shame floods through my ribcage at the thought I’ve worked hard every day to banish, though it still creeps back beneath my skin when I drop my guard.
I haven’t told a soul about the day in the nightclub basement, because I’m so ashamed at how I feel about it. Despite the terror his cold gaze and sharp tone provoked in me, I knew deep down he wouldn’t truly hurt me. But the most shameful thing about it was, Benito was right. I liked it. I liked being tied up and at his mercy. I liked him ‘punishing’ me with his tongue. I loved his dirty words and the way insanity seemed to infuse his conviction and blind him to everything but my body, my pleas. The only truth either of us were able to confront in that deep dark room was the undeniable chemistry that crackled and combusted beneath every touch.
The sound of his murmurs still fills my ears, the vibration of his anger as his fingers coasted up my skin still touches my nerves. My helplessness as I trembled beneath them still empties my lungs.
Even as I lie here on my bed, delaying the inevitable, I’m short of breath.
Then the sound of a suitcase being slid out of the closet makes me jump. “Do you know when Trilby’s getting there?” Bambi asks.
My throat is dry and scratchy when I swallow. “No idea. I haven’t seen her in a while.” Three weeks to be exact.
“Aren’t you guys pretty close now? At one point I thought you’d actually moved into the Di Santo residence.” I hear a zipper and the suitcase cover hits my leg.
I huff out a sigh and sit up. There’s no getting away from it. I have to pack. “Yeah, I guess. I’ve just been busy.”
“When’s the recital? It’s got to be soon. Feels like you’ve been rehearsing for years.”
Just the thought of my upcoming show fills me with the kind of dread that stops someone eating for several days. And that’s without the underlying anxiety I’m experiencing because my dancing has taken a total nosedive since Benito had me tied up in the basement of his club. “A week after the wedding.”
“So this should be the perfect distraction,” Bambi says, with a happy lilt.
I reply with a faint smile that fades the second she looks away.
Since I fled Arena three weeks ago, my life has become unrecognizably dull. I go to the studio. I don’t hang around. I come straight home. I eat. I stare at the ceiling. I sleep.
I haven’t looked out of the studio window once; I haven’t glanced up the stairs to the apartment above; I’ve avoided Cristiano’s house completely. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen anything of Bernadi. He’sthere, on the back of my lids, when I go to sleep, when I dream at night, when I wake up, when I dance. His jet black hair, his scarred left cheek and those dark bronze eyes thatglistenwhen I come undone. He’s there in all of it, making me warm and weak. Embodying the beautiful things he said to me while I curled around his body in the hotel bed.
But he’s nothing but an empty promise wrapped in a dark suit.
All it took was one unvalidated suggestion I might have corresponded with my old best friend and he jumped to the conclusion I was betraying him. He didn’t give me any benefit of the doubt—he immediately accused me of lying, and no declarations of truth would change his assumption. It wasn’t even me who got him to see sense—it was Cristiano.
The hurt in his eyes when I ran away tugs at my weakened bones, but I can’t return to a man who doesn’t trust me. And Benito doesn’t trust me as far as he can spit. And after the way he treated me, as though I was heartless betrayal personified, I don’t trusthim—with my body, my mind, or my heart.
I wished I still hated him—things were much easier then—but in the last few weeks he’s molded me into someone I barely recognize. I was closer than I’ve ever been with my older sister; I was dancing better than I’d ever done before. I’d begun to feel more comfortable in my own skin—at ease with my wildness. And my darkness—or so I thought.
I’ve never felt more dark than I did when Benito hadmy wrists and ankles bound together as he slid his full length into me on the cold concrete floor. Ilovedit.
I hate that I loved it.
Itscaresme that I loved it.
