by Penelope Sky
Bones rose to his feet abruptly, over six feet of power. He moved toward me, his bare feet hitting the hardwood floor beneath. With broad shoulders and a narrow waist, he was a perfect triangle. His biceps were bigger than my head. He could probably crush a whole watermelon between his two palms.
My lips stopped moving when he loomed over me like that, full of hostility.
He regarded me coldly, his head slightly turned. “I’ll make you forget he ever existed.” He grabbed the back of my neck and looked into my face, possessing me aggressively just the way he used to. He controlled my entire body, holding on to my hair to keep me rigid. He had the power to control my breathing, to even control my heartbeat.
“You already have.”
His eyes narrowed but softened at the same time. “Boys don’t count. They never count.” He finally released me and turned his back to me to walk into the kitchen. All the muscles of his back shifted under the skin as he carried himself.
“I didn’t sleep with him.”
He stopped walking but didn’t turn around.
“I didn’t even kiss him…”
His arms hung by his sides, and his breathing increased slightly. Just when enough silence passed that it felt like an eternity, he moved forward again—dismissing the conversation like it never happened to begin with.
He dug his large fingers into my ass cheeks, moving my lower body and tilting my hips to take in his length exactly the way he liked. He sat upright against his wooden headboard, his intense eyes focused on my lips. He watched me move forward and back, my tits shaking with the movements. He clenched his jaw and breathed deeply, his fingers squeezing my ass every time I took all of his length.
His eyes moved up to mine again, a hostile look of love on his face. Sometimes when he looked at me, it was an expression that stretched between love and hate. But that was the way he expressed himself. His feelings for me were so profound, but they hovered between the two extremes.
I was careful not to touch his shoulder, to only grip his right one and hold on to his chest when I needed something for balance. But I couldn’t stop myself from riding him every chance I got, making up for all the nights I slept alone. I didn’t just want sex. I wanted him, and I wasn’t ashamed to feel that way. Bones gave me such good sex. Whether it was his size, his confidence, or just the way he looked at me, I didn’t know. No other man could make me feel the way he did.
He pressed his face close to mine and groaned from deep in his throat, his large dick throbbing inside me. He’d already made me come from grinding his pelvic bone against my clit, from giving me that predatory look that made me turn into prey. Now he was going to make me come again, to make good on his word to make me forget Antonio ever existed.
Even though he’d already accomplished that.
His hand moved to my lower back, and he pressed against me, getting me to grind against him harder. He teased me with his lips, brushing his hard jaw against me, turning me on with a kiss he never gave me. “In ten seconds, you’re going to come all over me, baby. Because I said so.”
I kept riding his length, pushing myself down until I was sitting on his balls. I pressed my hands against his chest, my hips starting to buck harder because his dick felt so good. His authoritative confidence turned me on, the way he commanded me with such ease. He was a man of few words because he made every single word count.
His gaze bored into mine, his pretty eyes a contradiction to the ferocity in his gaze. “Nine.”
My nipples hardened when the countdown began. Knowing there would be an explosion in so little time made my body prepare for it. Bones was so confident that he could make it happen, and that confidence made me melt right on top of him.
“Eight.” He squeezed my right cheek before he gave it a hard slap.
I shivered at the hit, my body shifting forward.
“Seven.” He gripped my right tit, squeezing it hard before he flicked his thumb over my nipple. “Six.” He dragged his fingers down the valley of my breasts, picking up the sweat my body produced, and slowly glided them down to my belly button. “Five.”
My pussy was already starting to tighten.
He kept his eyes on me, not needing to watch his movements. “Four.” His fingers reached my clit, rubbing it gently the second he felt my wet folds.
I shivered, my nails clawing into his chest. My hips didn’t move as fast because there was overwhelming stimulation in so many places.
He pressed his face close to mine as his fingers kept working my clit. “Three.” His soft lips were on mine, and he kissed me, controlling my mouth while his fingers played me like a violin. He breathed into my lungs and then pulled my bottom lip between his teeth. He gave a slight nibble before he released them. “Two.”
“Griffin—”
“I haven’t said one yet.” He circled my clit hard, his fingers getting wet from my opening. His lips were nearly on mine, but he didn’t kiss me. He looked into my eyes, watching me come apart just the way he orchestrated.
My nails cut into him deeper because I could feel the explosion knocking on the gates. I hadn’t felt this full in months, hadn’t had his enormous cock inside me like this in a lifetime. It was the womanliest sensation I’d ever felt—to have this man buried within me. He loved me, loved me with just his look. He didn’t say it often because he didn’t need to. He showed me every day just the way he was showing me now. He didn’t care about Antonio or any other man I spent time with. They were nothing compared to him—and he knew it. “One…”
“No.” I stopped rocking, so he guided me up and down while his fingers rubbed me harder. “I control the clock, not you.”
“Griffin…” My plea died in my mouth, the rest escaping as a whisper.
He kissed me again, this time giving me his tongue. His mouth took over mine, conquering it like a king seizing a new country. He had all of me, and he knew it. I was the puppet, and he was the master. His tongue pulled away, and he breathed into me, his kiss turning idle.
I knew his permission was coming…it was almost there.
“One.”
“Thank god.” Obediently, my cunt clenched around him as the inferno began. I was burned by his fire and turned into hot ash. The sensation heightened my release, made me feel instead of think. Screams, moans, and incoherent words flew out of my mouth. It was the most euphoric high he’d ever given me. It was spiritual, carnal. “You’re one hell of a man…” I pressed my forehead against his with my eyes closed, sweat dripping down my back and in between my cheeks. It was so good, and as it passed, the memory of the sensation was still profoundly vivid.
When I opened my eyes again, I found him staring at me.
Staring at me with a whole new expression. It was different from any I’d ever seen, more aggressive than all the others combined. “I’m your man.”
I lay in bed, lost in a dream with Bones beside me. It was sometime in the middle of the night, when the city was asleep under the stars. The summer heat couldn’t penetrate these walls because Bones liked it cold as ice in the apartment.
I dreamed that nothing had changed, that I was alone in my new apartment in Florence. I slept in my bed alone, the sheets frozen without Bones beside me. All the anguish from his disappearance acted as an anchor on my chest, weighing me down to the bottom of the ocean. It felt so real, like I’d lost him again. Hot tears burned up my throat, and my eyes smoldered with emotion.
My hand reached out across the bed, searching for the man of steel beside me. My hand hit the rock-hard block that I recognized as his chest. My eyes opened, and I saw him beside me, exactly where I left him.
Panic still burned through my veins, as if seeing him and touching him weren’t enough. The memories of my lonely nights were still vivid. Touching him, feeling him, making love to him wasn’t enough to wipe my memories away.
I gulped in a huge breath of air and finally fed my lungs oxygen.
Bones stirred at my touch then propped himself up on his elbow,
his silhouette outlined like hard stone. He looked down at me, his expression visible in the darkness. Despite his sleepiness, he didn’t appear frustrated by the disturbance. “Baby, I’m here.” He moved my hand over his heart, allowing me to feel that profound thump deep inside his chest, the cadence of his life.
I felt the heartbeat against my palm, felt the strength circulate through his body. “How did you…?”
“Because I have the same nightmare every night.” He brought my palm to his lips and kissed the center, where my web of lines started. “That’s when I pull you closer, so I know this is real.”
I moved closer to him and hooked my leg over his waist, feeling his hot skin against my thigh. My arm circled his muscular torso, and instead of hugging a teddy bear, it seemed like I was hugging a large piece of rock. My face rested against his sternum, where I could still feel his heartbeat.
He got comfortable beside me and ran his fingers through my hair. For a monster, he could touch me so delicately. He knew how to restrain his strength so he could caress me instead of injure me. He had the softest touch I’d ever known—and the softest kiss.
I couldn’t go back to sleep, not when the dream still haunted me. When he left, I found myself in a dark pit I never thought I could crawl out of. The memory of that feeling reminded me how bad it was…not that I’d forgotten. I never wanted to feel that way again. I didn’t want to be alone like that, to wonder what he was doing and if he was thinking about me. Sleep eluded me, so I lay against him, telling myself that the nightmare was over for good.
Bones didn’t go back to sleep either. His breaths never deepened, and his hand continued to move through my hair.
I positioned myself so I could face him, my head on the pillow beside his.
His hand moved down my chest and to my stomach, where he palmed my belly with his large fingers. He could span my entire stomach with just his hand, his fingers touching both my rib cage and my hip.
I’d always been a petite woman, but I felt tiny in comparison to him. He could kill me with one hand, could crush me with those powerful fingers. I watched the light from outside reflect in his eyes as he stared at me. At this time of night, his eyes didn’t look blue. They looked black instead. His jaw was hard as ever, casting a shadow even though it was dark in the room. The hair along his jaw was starting to grow thicker since he hadn’t shaved since we’d arrived at the apartment. Most of our time had been spent in bed, our bodies getting reacquainted with one another. None of my family members had called me, and I was grateful because I didn’t feel like talking to them right now.
My hand moved up his shoulder to the edge of the gauze that covered his wound. “How is it?”
His callused fingertips continued to rub against my soft skin. “Fine.” He hardly moved his mouth when he spoke, his words always clipped and to the point. He’d never said much before, but now he said even less. Just being together was enough conversation for him.
He’d been shot before, but he’d never been as crippled as he was after this attack. The bullet must have hit him a different way this time, caused enough damage to make him pass out from the loss of blood. “Even if it weren’t fine, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?”
His expression didn’t change.
“I’ll take that as a no.” My hand moved back to his chest, where I explored the muscles of his abdomen and torso. I stared at his masculine jawline, the way it was chiseled like the different layers of the Grand Canyon. There were so many small details I’d missed about him, from the look of his jaw to the feel of his powerful muscles under my fingertips. I’d missed his big heart, his coldness, and most of all, I missed the way he could stare at me like that. Minutes would pass without a single blink, and he would still seem just as interested in me as he was an hour ago. Only a powerful man could hold eye contact with someone like that without bowing down from the hostility. He’d never been afraid of anyone, not even my father and uncle. “I’ve never been so low in my life.” My eyes shifted away from his, unable to look at him as I spoke. “I’ve never known that kind of sorrow. Those three months were just…unbearable. I hardly slept. I hardly ate. I spent the first few weeks crying more than I ever have in my life. It was such a dark time for me. Anytime something bad has happened to me, I’ve always been resilient. I never shed a single tear. But this time, it was too much for me. I didn’t speak to my father for a long time. I couldn’t stand even looking at him. I was distant from everyone. Even when they tried to check on me, I didn’t want to see them. My artwork changed. It wasn’t full of vibrant colors and glorious landscapes. It was full of you, cast in dark shadows. I lost who I was…because I didn’t know who I was without you.” I’d always found solace when I looked into his powerful gaze, but now I wasn’t sure if I could look him in the eye. I’d confessed my deepest depression, and a part of me was ashamed it was so bad. I’d been raised to be a strong woman, had always considered myself to be one, but when I lost the love of my life…I lost myself too. When he said nothing in return, I lifted my gaze to look at him again.
His hand slid up my neck then cupped my cheek. “When I found out about the hit, I didn’t tell your father as a ploy to get you back. I didn’t join the fight because I thought it would lead to redemption in your father’s eyes. Max told me it wasn’t my problem, that the Barsettis had insulted me too many times and destroyed my life. They didn’t deserve my help. They took away the one thing that mattered to me. If I let them die, then I would have a better chance of getting you back since they’d be out of the way.”
I didn’t even want to think about that outcome. The idea of losing all the people I loved destroyed me. My family was everything to me, and without them, I wouldn’t even know what it meant to be a Barsetti.
“But I didn’t think about any of those things. Your family meant everything to you, even more than I did. If you lost them, you would never be the same. You would never recover from the despair. It would consume you, diminish your light forever, and turn you into a different person. That was all I cared about, not whether they lived or died. Your family had never been anything but cruel to me, but that was irrelevant at the time. I stepped in for you—and for no other reason.”
I felt the distant ache in my chest, the warning of impending tears.
“The past three months are a blur to me. I spent most of it drunk or working. I’d always been a depressed man, but I took it to a whole new level.”
I was relieved he didn’t talk about the women he brought here, the meaningless fucks that made him feel even more empty.
“My bitterness rose as my intoxication increased. I hated your family in a whole new way, the way they judged me for the same sins they committed. I understood they were trying to protect the one innocent person in their family, but I thought it was bullshit all the same. But when I knew they were all going to die…I had to do something. Because no matter how much time had passed, it didn’t change my feelings for you. The alcohol and the depression couldn’t wipe away the holy memory I had of you. You were the one good thing in my life, the one thing that turned me from a monster into a man. I took a bullet for your father—but I really took it for you.”
Tears leaked from my eyes and fell directly onto the pillow. All that time apart had been torture for both of us, and also needless. We should have been together in the first place. We should always have been together.
“The pain you felt…I felt it too.” He spoke of a horrible past but with no emotional response. He said it simply, not with the bitterness he previously described. “My life had been empty before, but it never felt hollow. Once you were gone, I didn’t know how to go back to that way of living. I only killed for money, but that didn’t give me any enjoyment anymore. Everything became meaningless.” His thumb wiped away a tear, letting it soak into his callused skin. The day he left, he’d battled his own tears. And when I was back in his arms, he showed the same emotion I’d probably never see again. This emotional behemoth had been moved to tears o
nly twice—and probably never before that. “Your father said he would do anything for me, give me anything I asked for. There was only one thing I wanted.” He wiped away the other tear. “You know exactly what that was. But what you don’t understand is how I meant it.”
“Then how did you mean it?” I whispered.
His fingers moved under my chin, keeping my eyes directed on him. “That you’re mine.”
“I am yours… I’ve always wanted to be yours.”
“No. You aren’t my baby, my woman. You’re my personal property. You’re a gift given to me from my enemy. That means I’ll never let you go. You have no voice or choice in the matter. If you ever want to leave me, you can’t. If you ever fall in love with someone else, I’ll kill him. You’re my property, baby. That’s the price you’ll pay for the sacrifice I made.” Like the monster he used to be, he claimed me as a prize and vowed he would never let me go. I was his prisoner all over his again, just as I was when we tried futilely not to fall in love. “My words aren’t romantic. They’re barbaric. But I don’t care. That’s the price your family has to pay for what they’ve done to me, for how much they’ve made me suffer. And baby, if that disappoints you, I really don’t care.” His hand moved to my neck, his fingers gently squeezing me.
If a man had said something like that to me a year ago, I would have slapped him across the face. But with Bones, I loved him for exactly who he was, even when he was being brutal. “I don’t want to go anywhere, Griffin. So I’ll gladly be your prisoner…this time.”
His fingers gently squeezed me again. “I’m glad we have an understanding. You’re sexy when you fight, but you’re sexier when you give in to me.”
“I’m not giving in to you,” I said. “Not when it’s exactly what I want.”