Her mouth parts in shock.
“You’re a dick,” she spits, sitting up.Her hair is a wild mess around her flushed face.
I give her a wink.“You weren’t complaining when it was inside you.”
She grabs the closest thing off the counter—a vase that cost me a fucking fortune in Florence—and throws it at my head.
I duck and it shatters against the wall.
I laugh and turn.“That’s all you got?”
She’s wild-eyed, lips kiss-bruised and red.A goddess in the middle of a meltdown.
“You’re a smug, cocky, motherfucker!”she yells, voice cracking at the edges.
I pause at the doorway, glance at her, and let a wide grin spread across my face.“And yet, you came screaming my name.”
I step into the hallway, still hard for her.Every nerve in my body pulses with leftover heat, my cock aching from what we just did and what I want to do again.
The scent of her clings to my skin and is now imprinted on me.But I don’t go back.
I let the silence linger.
Let her sit amidst the wreckage of what we just did.
Let her legs tremble as she stares at the ceiling, while every muscle in her body recalls the way I split her open and made her come undone.
Because if I don’t play it that way, if I don’t shove the steel back over my ribs and smother the fire clawing underneath, I’ll lose every bit of control I have left.I fuck and forget.That’s the deal.That’s how I survive.
No exceptions.
Chapter Five
Isabella
Myeyessnapopento a ray of sunlight that spears through the curtains.
Pain hits me before I even remember.My hips feel bruised from how tightly he gripped me.And the ache between my legs.It’s not a whisper of him.It’s a fucking brand.
I close my eyes and let it hit me.
He didn’t fuck me slowly or build it up to anything sweet.He took what he wanted, through every filthy word he muttered between gritted teeth that still echoes in my mind.I let him.No worse than that, I wanted it.I clawed at him and begged for it, even when I pretended I wasn’t.I felt every thrust in my bones.I feel them still.
I roll onto my side and freeze.
His side of the bed is empty—the kind that shows he didn’t just slip out for water.He’s been gone long enough for the sheets to forget him.Long enough for me to realize how fucking stupid I am for noticing.
What did I really expect?That Lorenzo De Luca would stay?
That he’d kiss my shoulder, wrap an arm around me, pull me into his chest, and whisper things into my ear that didn’t sound like war because I mattered to him.
He’s not a man who stays or a man who comforts.He’s a calculated weapon in an Armani suit.My supposed husband.We don’t make love, we fuck, we burn.And last night, we burned the whole damn room down together.
I push up on shaky elbows and hiss as pain shoots up my spine.I don’t even want to look in the mirror.I already know what I’ll see—bruises shaped like his hands, a mouth swollen from his kiss, and my inner thighs in red and purple.Proof that he was there and I let him ruin me.
But the worst part is...I loved every second of it.
My fingers trace the bite mark on my collarbone as I breathe through the twist in my gut.Shame’s a fucking bitch.It sits beside pleasure and doesn’t flinch.Because what does that make me?A girl who gets off on the roughness.Who craves the control he takes without asking.Who fucking liked being broken open and filled again and again until I forgot who I was.