Page 61 of Bitter Poetry

It breaks me. She breaks me. It’s like somebody just tossed me over a cliff, and my body is lying on the rocks, all twisted and bleeding.

“I’m sorry.” The words are pushed past my raw throat and barely adequate to encapsulate what I feel.

Her face softens, and she shakes her head. “It’s not your fault.”

“I’m still fucking sorry.”

Her chest heaves at my sharp tone. I can feel her pulse thudding underneath my fingers. I should let her go. Step away. Leave this fucking room before I do something stupid.

Only I can’t. My brain has been hijacked, and I’m not in control of this anymore.

Christian, this was a really bad idea.

Her hand reaches to cup my cheek, her eyes tracking the passage. “I’m sorry he did this to you, too.”

I’d almost forgotten about what happened to me. I can’t even feel my aching ribs with all the adrenaline pounding through me.

“That’s not your fault,” I echo her words.

I want to know what he took… What he took that belonged to me. I lean in—my lips against her temple. I’m shaking. Not even when those bastards had me up against the wall, making me bleed, did I feel this helpless. “Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me what the fuck he did,” I snarl.

“Why?” she says. “What good will it do? It’s not like either of us can do anything about it… I’m still a virgin.”

My chest compresses painfully.

“He didn’t take that,” she whispers. “Don’t let him take that.”

Her words send me spinning. What she’s telling me and what she doesn’t, leaving me to infer. She doesn’t want to say it. But in my gut, I already know. If someone were to put a gun in my hand, I’d walk straight into the reception and shoot the bastard in the head, consequences be damned.

“Please, Dante. Please give me this. I should have thrown your necklace away. I know I should. I tried to. It was the right thing to do if I want to survive. Only I couldn’t. I told him my mother gave it to me. That it was special to me. I used Mama’s name. I would have said anything. Anything at all to keep it. Because it came from you.”

I’m gone. There isn’t a rational thought left in my mind as my lips slam down over hers. Her arms wrap around my neck, pulling me in closer as she opens to the kiss.

Did he kiss her?

Or did he just take his pleasure?

A low growl escapes me as I wrench my lips from hers. I’m panting. I should bring this madness to a stop. She deserves so much better than this. If she were mine, I’d have spread her outon a bed and shown her so much pleasure she’d forget other men exist.

But I’m a man on the edge. We don’t have the time or the luxury of being gentle or slow.

The truth? I don’t have it in me either way.

CARMELA

“Dante, what?—”

He doesn’t let me finish. Fisting my arm, he shoves me up against the door. My heart jumps. His face is a savage mask, and his eyes are so empty they remind me of Christian’s.

My pussy clenches and a whimper of pure need escapes my lips, swallowed as his mouth slants over mine again. The kiss is electric short-circuiting the commonsense part of my brain. His tongue sweeps inside, tasting me.

I taste him back, arching up, begging him silently for more.

“I’m going to hell,” he growls against my lips before he sucks sharp kisses down my throat. There is danger here, more of it than my shattered soul can process.