Chapter 25: Twisted Fantasies
The first thing Dante felt was warmth, and the slow, torturous pull of a wet mouth sliding down his cock. He groaned, the sound ripped from sleep-raw throat, his hands immediately finding her hair in the tangled sheets. Dawn bled a weak grey light through the blinds, etching the curve of her spine as she worked him.
She took him deep, then pulled back until just the head rested on her tongue, her breath hot on his sensitive skin. Again. And again. A maddening, perfect rhythm.
“You just gonna keep teasing me?” His voice was gravel, his fingers tightening in her hair. “That’s how you wanna play it?”
She released him with a soft, wet pop, looking up the line of his body, her lips gleaming. “Will there be some kind of punishment if I keep doing it?”
A slow, predatory smile spread across Dante’s face. “Maybe.”
That was all the encouragement she needed. She took him back into her mouth, deeper this time, swallowing him until his hips jerked off the mattress. She used her tongue, flat and firm along the throbbing vein underneath, then swirled the tip around the crown, collecting the salty pre-cum that already beaded there. He watched, mesmerized, as her head bobbed, her cheeks hollowing, the obscenely wet sounds of her sucking filling the quiet room. His groans fed her, made her redouble her efforts, one hand cupping and gently squeezing his balls. He was fully, painfully hard in minutes, his knuckles white where he gripped the sheet.
When she finally climbed astride him, settling her weight on his thighs, he let out a shaky breath. She was slick, her arousal evident. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, and rubbed her soaked slit along the length of his shaft, coating him in her heat. Once, twice—a third, slow grind that made his eyes roll back.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, the words punched out of him. “You’re so fucking wet.”
She held his gaze, a challenge in her dark eyes, and then she notched him at her entrance. She took him in, inch by agonizing inch, her internal muscles fluttering, stretching to accommodate his girth. He felt every millimetre of that slow, sinking descent, the breathtaking tightness, the scalding heat. She seated herself fully, gasping, her head falling back.
Then she began to move.
She rode him with a learned, exquisite precision that hadn’t been there in the frantic steam of Jericho’s bathroom. This was deliberate. Calculated. She would rise almost all the way off, a slow, torturous withdrawal, until just the tip remained inside, then sink back down in a fluid, rolling motion that made him see stars. She’d circle her hips, grinding against his pubic bone, hitting a spot that made her breath catch. Then she’d speed up, a quick, piston-like rhythm that had the bedframe tapping a faint, frantic tattoo against the wall. She read his body like a map, slowing when his control frayed, speeding when he tried to reclaim it.
“You’re trying to kill me,” he gritted out after a particularly long, slow undulation.
She smiled, sweat beading on her upper lip. “No. I’m enjoying that you can’t do much in this position.”
He stilled beneath her, the icy blue of his eyes sharpening. “You sure about that?”
“I’m sure about that,” she said, confidence dripping from every word.
She wanted the aggression. She wanted the animal he kept leashed. She began to tease him again, lifting almost off him, hovering, denying him the friction he craved.
It worked.
His hands, which had been resting on her thighs, shot to her hips. His grip was iron, the dark rose on his knuckles stark against her skin. He slammed her down onto him, driving his own hips up to meet her, a brutal, deep stroke that knocked a sharp cry from her lungs.
“Fuck!” she gasped.
He did. He took over, pounding up into her from below, his abs flexing with each powerful thrust. The wet, squelching sounds of her cunt taking him filled the room, a vulgar counterpoint to the slap of skin on skin. Her moans climbed higher, broken, desperate things. She loved it. The loss of control, the sheer force of him. She matched him, meeting each drive, her nails scraping down his chest.
After a while, a long, sweat-slicked while, she pushed off him. Without a word, she turned, presenting the perfect, swaying curve of her ass to him before lowering herself back onto his rigid length in a reverse cowgirl. He groaned, his hands going to her hips immediately. This angle was deeper, somehow more invasive. She started the same masterful dance, controlling the pace, the depth.
But now he could watch. Watch his cock disappear into her, glistening with their combined wetness. Watch the muscles of her back tense and release. She leaned forward, bracing on his shins, and began to throw her ass back onto him with a rhythm that was pure filth. A twerk, a violent, clenching snap of her hips that jolted through his entire body.
“Christ,” he hissed.
He loved it. He let her do it a few more times, that incredible, bouncing roll, each impact a wet slap. Then his hand fisted in her hair, yanking her upper body back toward him, arching her spine. The new angle made her scream. His other hand palmed her ass, kneading the firm flesh before drawing it back and delivering a sharp, stinging slap. The sound cracked through the room. A red handprint bloomed on her skin. She moaned, pushing back for more.
He gave it to her. Another slap. Then his hand slid around her throat, not squeezing, just holding, a brand of ownership. He used the leverage to pull her onto him harder, faster. The room dissolved into a haze of sensation: the sweat dripping down his sternum, the choked, pleading sounds she made, the relentless, squelching rhythm of their joining. The smell of sex was thick, primal.
He snaked his hand around from her throat, down over her trembling abdomen, his fingers finding her swollen clit. She was dripping, a mess of slickness. He rubbed tight, quick circles.
“Come on,” he grunted into her ear, his thrusts becoming erratic, brutal. “Come for me. Now.”
She shattered. Her cunt clamped around him in a series of violent, fluttering spasms, her body bowing as a raw, ragged scream was torn from her. He felt her cream around him, the hot rush of it. He didn’t stop. He rode her through it, fucking her through the contractions, his own release a looming thunderhead he stubbornly held back.
He slowed, but didn’t withdraw, keeping her impaled as she shuddered and went boneless against his chest. He held her there, his breath loud in her ear, for long minutes. He kissed the sweat-damp column of her neck. Then he began to move again, a slow, deep, reclaiming rhythm.
“Again,” he commanded, his fingers back on her clit, which was oversensitive, throbbing.
“Dante, I can’t—”
“You can.” He pinched the nub gently, then rolled it. “You will.”
And she did. It was a slower, deeper crest this time, a rolling wave of pleasure that built from where he was lodged inside her. She came with a broken sob, her walls milking him shamelessly. That was it. The vise on his control snapped.
His hips stuttered. A guttural, animal sound was ripped from his chest, a sound he never made. He buried himself to the hilt, his fingers bruising her hips as he held her down and pumped his release into her in hot, pulsing jets. He emptied himself completely, collapsing back against the headboard, pulling her with him, both of them spent, gasping, fused together.
The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the faint, wet drip of their combined mess onto the sheets below.
The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the faint, wet drip of their combined mess onto the sheets below. Dante’s hand, still possessively splayed across her stomach, felt the frantic flutter of her heartbeat gradually slow. The scent of them was overwhelming—salt, sex, and the faint, clean smell of her shampoo buried beneath it all.
“Fuck,” he finally rasped, the word a surrender into the sweaty hollow of her neck.
She made a weak, affirmative noise, her limbs leaden. The silence stretched, punctuated only by the distant groan of plumbing in the building’s walls. He shifted beneath her, his softening cock slipping from her with a wet, intimate sound that made her flinch. The absence felt profound, a sudden chill where there had been consuming heat.
He didn’t let her go. His arms, corded with muscle and etched with ink, tightened around her, rolling them onto their sides in the ruined sheets. He kept her back flush against his chest, his nose buried in her hair. They lay there, sticky and spent, for a long time. The grey dawn light had matured into a pale, indifferent morning.
“I think you broke me,” she mumbled, her voice hoarse from screaming.
A low chuckle vibrated through his chest into her back. “You asked for it.”
“I did.” She paused. “Wouldn’t say no to it again.”
He was quiet for a beat. His hand slid down from her stomach, through the coarse tangle of her pubic hair, his fingers finding her swollen lips. He traced them, a slow, idle pass that made her shudder. She was exquisitely sensitive, overstimulated, a live wire. He pressed two fingers inside, just to the first knuckle, feeling the hot, slick evidence of his own spend mixed with her arousal.
“Already?” he murmured, his voice thick with a new, waking interest.
“Don’t sound so smug.” She pushed her hips back against him, and felt the answering, hardening pressure of his erection against her ass. “Jesus, already?”
He withdrew his fingers, bringing them to her mouth. “Taste it.”
She turned her head, meeting his icy, demanding gaze. She opened her mouth, letting him slide his fingers across her tongue. The taste was musky, profoundly intimate, a flavorscape of him and her. She sucked them clean, watching his eyes darken. “Mine,” she said, the word garbled around his fingers.
He pulled them out with a pop. “Prove it.”
He manhandled her onto her stomach with a roughness that belied the tenderness of the last hour. The sheets were damp and cool beneath her flushed skin. He hauled her hips up, his palm a brand on the small of her back. She heard him spit, a crude, wet sound, then felt the broad, blunt head of his cock nudge at her entrance, still loose and wet from before.
He didn’t ask. He just pushed, a single, relentless invasion that stole the air from her lungs. It was a different kind of fullness, deeper, more claiming. He set a punishing pace immediately, each drive a brutal piston stroke that jolted her forward. The wet slap of his balls against her clit was constant, obscene.
“This what you wanted?” he grunted, one hand fisting in her hair, pulling her head back. “This filthy, morning-after fuck?”
“Yes,” she gasped into the mattress.
“Say it.”
“I wanted this filthy fuck!” she shouted, the words muffled by cotton.
He fucked her like he was exorcising something, each thrust a hammer blow. The bed slammed against the wall with a rhythmic, complaining thud. She came quickly, a sharp, surprising crest that washed over her, her cries stifled by the bedding. He didn’t pause, didn’t falter. He rode out her clenching spasms, his rhythm growing more erratic, his breath hot and ragged on her shoulder.
His release this time was silent, a tense, full-body shudder that locked him deep inside her. He collapsed over her, his weight immense and welcome, their sweat mingling. He stayed there, buried, for a long minute, before rolling off.
They didn’t speak. The silence returned, but it was different now—charged, comfortable. He reached for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, lighting one and taking a deep drag. The smoke curled, a grey ghost in the morning light. He passed it to her. She took it, her hand trembling slightly.
She took it, her hand trembling slightly. The smoke hit her lungs, a harsh contrast to the saturated exhaustion in her muscles. They lay in silence, the cigarette passing back and forth until it was a stub he crushed in the ashtray with a final hiss.
Sleep took them roughly, a collapse into a void without dreams.
A different kind of warmth woke him. The slow, insistent pressure of a mouth, a tongue tracing the length of his softening cock, coaxing it back to life in the milky pre-dawn light. He didn’t open his eyes. He just let a groan rumble from his chest and sank his hands into her hair.
“Again?” he muttered, his voice thick with sleep.
Her answer was to take him deeper, her throat working around him. She used her hands, one cupping his balls, the other stroking the base in time with her sucking. She was slower this time, more exploratory, tracing the thick vein with the tip of her tongue before swallowing him down until her nose pressed into the coarse hair at his root. He arched into the wet heat, a shudder moving through him.
“Fuck, yes. Just like that.”
She worked him until he was fully, achingly hard, until pre-cum leaked steadily onto her tongue. Then she released him with a slick sound and climbed over his hips. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her hair a messy curtain. She positioned him at her entrance, still soaked and swollen from the night, and sank down in one excruciatingly slow, continuous motion.
He watched her face. The parted lips, the fluttering eyelids. She began to move, and it was different. It was art.
She established a slow, grinding rhythm, rotating her hips in a tight circle that made him curse. She’d rise up until he was almost out, then drop down sharply, taking him all at once. She’d lean forward, changing the angle, brushing her nipples against his chest, then sit back up, her hands braced on his thighs, driving herself down onto him with focused intensity. She watched his reactions, the twitch in his jaw, the tightening of his abdomen. She sped up when his breathing hitched, slowed to a torturous roll when his hands gripped her hips too hard.
“You’re gonna kill me,” he breathed, sweat beading on his temples.
“You’ll die happy,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss him, her tongue claiming his mouth as her cunt claimed his cock.
She rode him like that for what felt like an age, a masterful exercise in controlled abandonment. The room filled with the sound of her slick flesh meeting his, their ragged breaths, the creak of the bed. She came once, a quiet, shuddering climax that clenched around him, and she didn’t stop, working herself through it and building again.
Then she lifted off, turned her back to him, and guided him inside from behind. Reverse cowgirl. The view was devastating. His hands went to her hips as she began the same deliberate torture. Up, almost off, a slow descent. Then faster, her ass slapping against him. She threw her head back, and he watched the muscles in her back cord with effort.
She started to move in a way that was less like riding and more like she was fucking him. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shins, and threw her hips back in a sharp, bouncing rhythm. Twerking on his cock, each jolt driving him deeper, milking him. The obscene, wet noise of it was louder from this angle.
“God damn,” he grunted, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her ass.
She did it again. And again. A filthy, perfect piston motion. His control frayed. One hand snaked into her hair, fisting it, pulling her spine into a deeper arch. The other hand smacked her ass, a sharp crack that echoed. She yelped, then moaned, pushing back for more.
“You like that?” he growled, delivering another slap, watching the red bloom on her skin.
“Yes!”
His hand left her hair and wrapped around her throat, not squeezing hard, just holding, a collar of possession. He used the leverage to pull her onto him harder, meeting her thrusts with his own upward drives. The pace became frantic, brutal. The bed slammed against the wall. She was screaming, a continuous, shattered sound of pleasure as he rubbed her clit with his other hand.
“Come,” he commanded, his voice ragged. “Come all over this fucking dick.”
She shattered, her cunt clamping around him in violent, fluttering waves, her body convulsing. He fucked her through it, prolonging her climax, his own an imminent detonation. When her contractions began to subside, he pulled out abruptly.
“Turn over.”
She was limp, compliant. He flipped her onto her hands and knees. He drove into her from behind, one final, desperate claiming. Three strokes, four, his balls slapping against her. With a raw, guttural shout he buried himself and came, pulsing jet after hot jet deep inside her. He collapsed over her, both of them panting, dripping, utterly spent.
After a long moment, he slipped out. A hot trickle trailed down her inner thigh. He traced it with a finger.
“Shower,” he said, his voice rough. “Now.”
The water was scalding. They stood under the spray, foreheads pressed together, steam billowing around them. She soaped his chest, her fingers tracing the scars, the ink. He washed her hair, his touch surprisingly gentle. Then his hands were on her again, sliding over her hips.
He turned her, pressing her against the cold, wet tile. He lifted her, her legs hooking over his forearms, and entered her in one deep, relentless thrust. The angle was devastating. He fucked her with a slow, deep intensity that felt even more intimate than the frenzy before. There were no words, just the slap of wet skin, the groan of the pipes, his strained breaths against her neck.
He came inside her again, a long, shuddering release, his forehead damp against the tile beside her head. They stayed like that until the water ran cold.
They stayed like that until the water ran cold.
The shock of it was a bucket of reality. Dante stepped back first, letting her slide down the tile until her feet found the slick porcelain. He turned off the faucet with a hard twist. The silence was sudden, heavy, broken only by their breathing and the erratic drip from the showerhead.
“Fuck, that’s cold,” she gasped, hugging herself.
He didn’t answer. He pushed the foggy glass door open and grabbed a towel, roughly drying himself before tossing it to her. It was damp and carried his smell. She watched him walk, naked and utterly unselfconscious, into the bedroom. The muscles in his back shifted with each step, the scars and ink a topography of violence she was only beginning to map.
She followed, drying her hair. The apartment was stifling after the chill of the shower. Sunlight now cut harsh lines across the floor, illuminating dust motes and the wreckage of the night: an overturned whiskey bottle, their clothes in a trail from the door.
Dante was at the small kitchen counter, pouring two fingers of amber liquid into a chipped glass. He didn’t offer her one. He drank it in one swallow, his throat working. He set the glass down with a definitive click.
“You should go.”
The words weren’t harsh, but they were absolute. They landed in the quiet room like stones.
She stopped drying her hair, the towel held to her chest. “What?”
“You heard me.” He finally looked at her. His icy eyes were clear, distant. The colonel was back, the man who commanded battalions. The man who had just fucked her raw against a wall was gone, sealed away. “It’s getting late.”
“It’s nine in the morning,” she said, a laugh catching in her throat. It sounded brittle.
“And I have things to do.”
He turned his back to her, opening the refrigerator. The dismissal was complete. She stood there, water tracing a path down her spine. The heat of him was still inside her, a physical memory. The soreness between her legs felt like a claim, but his tone made it feel like a vacancy.
“Right.” The word was flat. She dropped the towel and began gathering her clothes. Her underwear was torn at the seam. She pulled on her jeans, the denim stiff and uncomfortable against her sensitive skin. She couldn’t find her other sock.
He didn’t help. He stood at the counter, drinking a glass of water, staring out the window at the brick wall of the adjacent building. The silence was a living thing, crowding the space between them.
“Last night,” she started, buttoning her shirt. Her fingers fumbled. “In Jericho’s bathroom. And this morning. It was—”
“It was what it was,” he interrupted, cutting her off. He didn’t turn around. “Don’t make it a novel.”
Anger, sharp and sudden, cut through the confusion. She yanked her shirt down. “I wasn’t. I was just going to say it was intense. But you’re clearly an expert at the fucking retreat, so forget it.”
He turned then, leaning back against the counter. A faint, unamused smirk touched his mouth. “The ‘fucking retreat’?”
“You get what you want, then the shutters come down. It’s pretty transparent, Dante.”
He pushed off the counter and walked toward her. He moved with that predator’s grace, stopping just inside her personal space. He smelled of soap and cold water and that indefinable, metallic edge that was just him. He didn’t touch her.
“What do you want? A debrief? A cuddle? You got something different than what you asked for?” His voice was low, a quiet challenge.
“I’m not asking for anything.”
“Good.”
He reached past her, picking her discarded bra off the floor from where it hung on the bedpost. He held it out to her. His knuckles, the dark rose, were right there. She took the lace from him, their fingers brushing. A static shock jumped between them, or maybe it was just her nerves.
“You’re an asshole,” she said, shoving the bra into her pocket.
“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”
She found her sock under the bed, next to the empty whiskey glass from two nights ago. The sight of it, a relic from a different kind of tension, felt like a lifetime had passed. She stood up, ready to leave, to let the door slam shut on this.
His hand shot out, not to stop her, but to grasp her chin. His grip was firm, forcing her to look up at him. His eyes searched her face, not for softness, but for data. For a crack.
“You wanted the animal,” he said, his thumb stroking her lower lip, a cruel parody of tenderness. “You got him. He doesn’t make breakfast. He doesn’t make small talk. He fucks, he finishes, he moves on. That’s the deal.”
“I didn’t realize I was signing a contract.”
“You were. The second you walked into that shitty bathroom.” He released her chin. “Now you know the terms.”
He walked away, back to the kitchen. The conversation was over. She stood by the door, her hand on the knob. The urge to leave was a physical pull. The urge to walk back across the room and slap that cold look off his face was another.
She did neither.
She turned the knob and opened the door. The hallway air was cooler, smelling of disinfectant and old carpet.
“The terms suck,” she said, not looking back.
She heard the soft clink of his glass on the counter behind her.
“They always do,” he said.
She stepped into the hall and pulled the door shut. It closed with a solid, final sound. She leaned against the wall, listening. She heard nothing from inside. No footsteps, no more clinking glass. Just silence.
She pushed off the wall and walked toward the stairwell, each step a minor agony that reminded her of everything that had happened. The soreness was a brand. His words were a colder one.
Inside the apartment, Dante stared at the closed door. He picked up the glass and threw it, hard. It exploded against the wall opposite, leaving a spiderweb of whiskey and shards. The violence of the act was sound and fury, signifying nothing. It didn’t change the silence. It didn’t change the scent of her on his skin. He looked at the mess, then at his own hands. The rose on his knuckles was just ink. It couldn’t feel anything.