His question hung in the air, raw and broken. "What are you doing to me?"
I looked at the man on the floor before me. The soldier was gone. The monster was gone. All that was left was a man being torn apart.
I didn't answer with words. Words were lies.
Slowly, I lifted the hand he was gripping. I turned it over and gently, reverently, pressed my lips to his bruised and bloodied knuckles. A kiss of forgiveness. Of acceptance.
A tremor ran through his entire body. I knelt in front of him, eye to eye.
"I'm seeing you," I whispered.
That was the final blow. A choked, guttural sound was torn from his throat, and he surged forward, his forehead coming to rest against mine. "Izzy," he breathed, my name a prayer against my skin.
This time, I was the one who made the choice. I leaned in and closed the final inch between us.
The kiss was slow for a single, shattering second. Then it ignited. A wildfire. His mouth was on mine, hard, demanding, a battle of tongues and teeth.
He broke away, breathing hard. Without a word, he stood, pulling me up with him and scooping me into his arms. He carried me like a prize he had just won in a war.
He carried me down the pitch-black hallway to his own room.
He kicked the door open and dropped me onto the center of his bed. I landed with a soft bounce on the mattress. The room was almost completely dark, the storm clouds outside swallowing the moon. The only light was a faint, silvery sliver coming from the edge of the window, barely enough to turn the furniture into vague, dark shapes. I couldn't see his face, only the outline of him—a broad, intimidating shadow standing over me.
I heard the sound of fabric tearing as he ripped the buttons from his shirt. He threw it somewhere into the darkness. I saw his silhouette move, a darker shape against the black, but the details were lost. I couldn't see the scars. I couldn't see the skin. I could only feel the air change as he came closer.
He came down on the bed, crawling over me, caging me with his body. The heat rolling off him was a physical presence. He ripped the towel away, and the cool air was a shock against my bare skin. I was completely exposed to him.
His mouth was on me then. Not my lips. My throat. A hot, wet path down my neck, over my collarbone. His stubble was a delicious, rough friction against my sensitive skin. He bit the soft skin just above my breast, hard enough to make me cry out, a sound that was half pain, half pure, unadulterated pleasure.
My hands were frantic, needing to feel what my eyes could not. I raked my nails down his back, mapping the hard muscles, the tense ridges of his spine. He growled his approval into my skin. He moved lower, his mouth and hands a relentless, expert torment in the blackness. He brought me to the edge of a cliff, his name a ragged scream on my lips, but he pulled back, denying me.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice a low growl from the shadows above me.
I opened my eyes, but I could only make out the dark shape of his head, the faint glint of his eyes.
"You're sure?" he asked, a final warning.
"Don't you dare stop," I panted, my voice a broken thing.
A cruel, possessive smirk I couldn't see but could feel in the shift of his body. He entered me with a single, brutal, soul-shattering thrust that drove the air from my lungs and pinned me to the mattress. He filled me completely. He was everywhere.
He didn't move. He just stayed there, deep inside me. "That's it," he groaned, his forehead resting against mine in the dark. "Take all of it."
Then he began to move.
It was a savage, punishing rhythm, a claiming. In the darkness, every sensation was magnified a thousand times. I couldn't see, so I could only feel: the possessive grip of his hands on my hips, the hard muscle of his chest crushing my breasts, the way our bodies slapped together in the dark. My world dissolved into a blur of tangled limbs, slick skin, and the sound of our ragged gasps.
"Dante," I screamed into the darkness, as the pleasure built into an unbearable, white-hot point.
He answered with a final, deep thrust that shattered me. My world exploded. I cried out, my body convulsing around him. He followed me over the edge, a harsh, guttural roar ripped from his chest as he emptied all of his rage, his loneliness, and his brutal, possessive need into me.
After, we lay tangled in his sheets, our bodies slick with sweat, the only sound our harsh, ragged breathing in the pitch-black room.
He pulled me against his side, my head finding its natural place on his chest. My hand rested there, feeling the frantic, slowing beat of his heart under my palm.
He was awake. I could feel the tension returning to his body as the reality of what he'd done settled on him. He shifted, his arm tightening around me, pulling me impossibly closer until there was no space left between us. It was a final, desperate act of possession.
He leaned down, and I could feel the warmth of his breath as he pressed a long, hard kiss to the crown of my head.
And then he whispered a single word into the darkness. A promise and a curse.
"Mine."