[Fontaines 01.0] The Sweet Taste of Sin Page 13

  He smiles. “I don’t believe in napkins.” He brings my hand higher, closer to his mouth—but slowly, as if daring me to stop him.

  I don’t. His eyes remain on mine as his tongue comes out and licks my finger. Sensation shoots up my arm—cold, then hot, then a shivery place somewhere in between. His velvety lips close over my skin, and meanwhile, he never looks away from me.

  When he finally releases me, I can’t think of anything to say except, “You still have some on your finger, too.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting him to do, but my stomach flip-flops when he holds his hand out to me. I take it in mine, folding my fingers around his heated skin, trying not to notice the pattern of calluses on his palm, marks formed from years of scribbling out scripts with a pen.

  And in spite of my intentions going into this tasting, I can’t help but bring his hand to my lips. Can’t help tasting his finger as he tasted mine. Can’t help slipping the tip of it into my mouth to clean off every last bit of frosting. His skin is salty beneath the sweetness of the buttercream, and the taste of him causes heat to rush between my legs. His eyes have darkened considerably. His mouth hangs partially open as if he means to say something—or attack me the moment my lips are free. The hunger in his gaze is plain, and this time, it’s not my baking that he’s responding to.

  His free hand comes out and grabs my side, pulling me closer. Only when our hips are pressed together does he drag his hand out of my mouth, obviously ready to make a different use of my lips. But when his face dips toward mine, the panic sets in. I twist out of his grasp, retreating to a safe distance before turning back to look at him.

  “We have business to finish,” I say.

  He takes a step toward me. “Yes, we do.”

  “I mean the cake,” I say desperately—even though my body wants nothing more than to sink into his arms, to taste his lips like I just tasted his finger.

  “Use whatever flavors you like.”

  “The only reason we’re even having this tasting is because you insisted—”

  “Is that the only reason?”

  My eyes fall closed for a moment. “Don’t do this, Dante.”

  “Why not?” I hear him step closer. “I told you, Ash. I can read everything on your face. And in case you’ve forgotten, I was there when we kissed the other night.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, opening my eyes. He’s too close to me again, but I stay where I am. “It doesn’t matter what I feel. Or even what I want. I’m not putting myself through this again.”

  He frowns. “I know things didn’t end well between us last time, but—”

  “That’s an understatement,” I snap. “You broke my heart, Dante. And I see no evidence that you’ve changed enough not to do it again.”

  His whole face has tightened. “May I remind you, Ashlyn, that you were the one who broke up with me?”

  “Because you’d pulled away. Because you thought it was okay to take another woman to your events—”

  “I explained that to you, Ash.”

  “And you’re still defending that bullshit excuse, which means you haven’t changed. I’m an idiot if I willingly walk back into that.”

  “You’re an idiot if you walk away from this.”

  I shake my head, growing angrier with every word that comes out of his mouth. “You’ve had three years, Dante. If you really felt this way, why are you only saying so now?”

  “You weren’t exactly happy with me when you left.”

  “I’m not exactly happy with you now.”

  “I convinced myself that maybe it was better to let you go.”

  “Obviously you didn’t do a very good job of it if you’re here now.”

  “You’re right.”

  That admission stuns me for a moment, but I find my voice again quickly.

  “We are better off apart,” I say. “We’re too different. I’ll never belong in your world, Dante. And you’ll never pass in mine.”

  “Now you are the one spouting bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit! We don’t exist in a bubble.”

  “But that’s not what broke us up. That’s not what you’re still angry about.” He’s so close now our toes are nearly touching. “Lay it on me, Ash. Let it out. Scream at me if you have to. I can take it.” He doesn’t look angry now—in fact, quite the opposite. There’s a softness in his eyes, a tenderness. An apology.

  For some reason, this kindness and understanding only makes me angrier.

  “It’s not enough,” I snap. “It will never be enough. No amount of screaming will fix this.” I suck in a ragged breath. “I loved you. I loved you so much it hurt. So much it still hurts.” And now there are tears in my eyes, but I don’t know how to stop them. “It’s not fair that you can still do this to me. It’s not fair. Why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Why couldn’t you just let me get on with my life?” I want to shove him away from me. But when my hands come up against his chest, they can’t move—and then his hands are on my wrists, and his face is coming down toward mine, and before I realize what’s happening, he’s kissing me.

  And I lose the battle with myself.

  A sound rises in my throat that’s half sob and half moan, but I can’t fight this anymore. I don’t want to fight it. Dante drops my wrists and loops his arms around me, pulling me against his chest, and his hands are everywhere—cradling my lower back, gliding up my spine, threading through my hair—and always pulling me closer. Deeper. His lips devour mine, and when I try to catch my breath his mouth moves around my face, kissing up my tears, erasing them with his lips and tongue. Taking all of my pain, all of my hurt, all of my anger. Everything I’ve built up over these past three years is pouring out of me as desire, as need. I’m dizzy with it.

  His mouth dances over my cheeks. My eyelids. My jaw. My throat. And I kiss him just as fiercely wherever I can reach—his neck, his ear, his temple.

  “You made me crazy,” he says against my throat. “You still do. It never stopped.” He spins me around and presses my back against the table, then buries his face against my neck again. “There’s no going back.”

  My fingers grip his hair. He grabs me by the ass and lifts me onto the edge of the workstation, then pushes me back against the cool metal.

  “There’s no going back,” he says again, looking down at me. His eyes are two burning embers. His hair falls down across his temples and ears, and for a moment I’m back at that first night, looking up at him and knowing he’s about to change me forever. There’s no going back.

  He leans down and brushes his lips against mine. I tilt my head up into his kiss. This feels natural, kissing him again. It feels right—like this is what my body was made to do. Like I’ve been denied a basic necessity of life.

  Like the first time, his gentleness doesn’t last long. If he’s feeling half of the longing that I am, it’s a wonder he restrains himself for as long as he does. His mouth grows rougher, more urgent, his tongue sliding between the seam of my lips. His hands catch my wrists and hold them back against the table. My left wrist is still a little tender and it throbs beneath his touch, but I welcome the sensation. His hips press against my legs, forcing me to spread my thighs apart, and I’ll submit to anything if it allows me to get closer to him. My throat burns with emotion, but I can no longer say what it is that causes the tears to leak down my cheeks—nor do I care. The moment they leave my eyes, Dante’s lips are there, sweeping them away. Cleaning up years of strangled feelings that are suddenly overflowing.

  I want to wrap my hands around him, to hold him close to me. But he still has me by the wrists, so I settle for hooking my legs around his hips. There’s a twinge of pain in my still-recovering ankle, but I ignore it. Dante growls and grinds against me, then stills.

  “I’m going to take you,” he says roughly against my cheek. “Tell me now if you don’t want this, because I don’t trust myself to stop again.”

  My heart is beating so fast that it hurts. A littl
e voice in my head tells me I should stop this, that I should do the smart thing and walk away while I still have some of my dignity, but I shove those thoughts back down.

  “I’ve waited three years for this,” I hear myself say. “If we stopped I think I’d fall apart.”

  I hardly get the last word out before his mouth attacks mine, and then the time for talking is over. Dante releases my wrists and begins to pull at my clothes. His fingers claw at my apron, tugging the straps this way and that before he realizes he needs to go for the knot tied at my lower back. In an instant, his arms slip beneath me, lifting me back up into a sitting position. He crushes me against his chest and kisses me while his hands undo the messy bow at the back of my waist.

  I, meanwhile, am prepared to take advantage of this position. I quickly undo the buttons of his shirt, and while my hands work I tighten my legs around his hips and slide against him, rubbing myself right against the hardness in his pants. I may not be especially sexually experienced, but I know Dante’s body well. And I know how our bodies work together, move together, blend together. I remember some of the things that made him groan as vividly as I remember the things he did that made me tremble and cry out. And I’m suddenly overcome by the desire to try them again, to see if I still have that power over him.

  My lips pull away from his. He’s gotten the knot on my apron undone, but he gets distracted as he tries to take it off, his fingers wandering to the strip of bare skin that’s showing between my shirt and jeans. I move my lips along his jaw toward his hair, and when I reach his ear I suck the lobe between my teeth, biting down on the tender skin.

  This time, the sound he makes isn’t a growl—it’s something infinitely more feral. His fingers dig into my back, and though I gasp at the sharp pain, I don’t pull away. No, gentleness was never our way. Dante once said it was because we felt too deeply to hold back, that we didn’t know how else to deal with the overflow of energy between us. And he’s right. I’ve never been good at handling my emotions. And Dante… Dante might seem to be controlled, might seem to be the thoughtful, reserved one next to his brothers, but beneath the surface there’s a storm of emotions that matches my own.

  His shirt is finally open. I tear it off his shoulders, and as I do I let my mouth fall to the side of his neck. My teeth nibble and nip at his skin, and his body goes rigid against me, like a rubber band ready to snap. The next time my teeth graze him, he practically tears my apron off of me. Then my shirt. His nimble fingers undo my bra as he pushes me down onto my back again, and I shiver as the cool metal of the table hits my spine—then again when I see the way he’s looking down at my bare breasts.

  It’s been too long since he’s handled my naked breasts. My nipples have hardened even before he touches them, and when he finally does, I whimper and arch against his hands, surprised by how sensitive they are beneath his eager fingers.

  Dante knows what I want, and he wastes no time in teasing. Instantly, his mouth is on me, making a rough path across my breast, finally taking the bud of my nipple between his lips. He doesn’t taunt me with kisses or delicate flicks of his tongue—no, he bites, sucks, tortures me into a sweet frenzy with his lips and teeth. I buck beneath him, digging my fingers into his scalp, torn between begging him to relieve me and urging him onward. My mind is fuzzy, my body so hot and sensitive that I feel everything a hundred times more acutely than I should. He’s driving me past the breaking point, and yet I don’t want him to stop. Can’t bear for him to stop.

  It’s not right. Not right that he can still do this to me. Not right that after all of my sensible decisions, all of my self-preservation, he can erase everything like this. Make me feel these things again. Make my body ache and sing and tremble and yearn. I thought I could escape him once. But I was wrong. It’s not right.

  I shut my eyes, surrendering to all of the emotions I don’t want to feel, all of the sensations that are out of my control. I hate him. I hate him for doing this to me.

  But I also want him, so badly that I can feel the tears building up in my eyes again, feel the knot in my stomach twisting and turning even as I cling to him, silently begging him for more.

  He undoes my jeans as his mouth moves to my other nipple. Then his hands move to my hips and slide down my thighs until he can pull my legs away from his waist. I make a sound of protest, but he compensates by giving me an especially passionate nip with his teeth, and I relent. This allows him to pull my jeans and underwear down my legs, leaving me completely naked beneath him. No sooner have my jeans hit the floor than he’s undoing his own fly and pushing his pants down his legs.

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen him naked. So long since I’ve admired the hard planes of his chest, or followed the dark trail of hair from his belly button down to his groin, or marveled at the hard, thick length of him. But neither of us seems to want to waste time on studying each other’s bodies. We’re both slaves to a larger need, a deeper hunger. He leans down fully against me, capturing my mouth again, and the feel of his full weight against me, of his rigid arousal pressed between my legs, is so sweet and sinful and terrifying all at once that I don’t know what to do. My fingers tighten in his hair, but he seems to have other plans. He grabs my wrists again and traps them once more against the table, leaving me at his mercy. And then he pulls back just enough to look down at my face.

  “You’re still crying,” he says, his voice hoarse.

  I shake my head from side to side, half-mad with all of the emotions and sensations rushing through me. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t… I don’t know what I’m doing.” What I’m feeling. I only know one thing—that we can’t stop this now. There’s no going back. “Please don’t stop. Please. Please…”

  Indecision flickers in his eyes. His desire battles with concern for whatever it is he sees in my face.

  “Please don’t stop,” I beg again. “Please, Dante.”

  When I say his name, his desire wins. I see it flood his eyes, turn them dark and bright at once. And in that moment, his decision is made. Before I can even take a breath, he buries himself in me.

  As soon as he’s inside of me, the world changes. My body changes. My heart can’t seem to keep up with itself anymore. I know it shouldn’t be like this—that he’s just a man, and this is just sex—but I suddenly feel like I’m falling, diving into a storm and giving myself up completely.

  And at the same time, I feel like I’m finally whole again.

  I hate him. The words flood my brain as he begins to move, filling me and retreating, joining our bodies in the way they were meant to be joined. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not with him. Not for me. I was supposed to be past this. To be stronger. To be free of him.

  Instead I’m losing myself, drowning a little more with every stroke of his body, hating him a little more with every ragged breath. He’s not supposed to have this power over me.

  His hands release my wrists and creep up until they’re flat against mine, palm to palm. His fingers twine through mine, and though I hate myself for it, I find myself gripping him back, hanging desperately on. My legs have once more found their way around his hips, and I rise to meet his thrusts, trying to appease the ache that has settled in my lower belly.

  I want him. I want him as much now as I ever did—maybe even more than I ever did. My body missed this—missed him—in a way that I can’t even put into words.

  His face is buried in my hair now, his breath hot against my ear.

  “I’m never letting you go, Ash,” he rasps. “Never again.”

  God, why does he have to say things like that? Why does he have to pretend that all of our problems are over, that we aren’t the same people we were back then? That having sex solves everything?

  At the same time, his words fill me with a feeling so wonderful and overwhelming that my entire body responds, opening further to him. Something swells in my chest even as the knot in my stomach twists again. And I don’t know what to do with any of these emotions.

>   His shoulder is right in front of my face, strong and corded with muscle like the rest of him. I lift my chin and catch his skin beneath my teeth, biting down on him with much more force than I used on his ear or neck.

  He responds with a noise deep in his throat, and suddenly his thrusts take on a new energy, a rhythm that threatens to tear me apart. I ride the pulsing flood with him, my body meeting his with every stroke, my lips and teeth hanging onto his shoulder. I want to dig my fingers into his back, to hold him as hard as I can against me, but he still has his hands twined through mine, so I just keep biting him. If I’m causing him any pain, he doesn’t seem to mind—in fact, it only seems to make him wilder.

  My climax comes so quickly that I don’t have time to prepare myself, don’t even realize what’s happening until I’m already over the edge. I cry out, releasing him, and he makes a sound I know deep down as my body contracts, an echo of my complete surrender. Within seconds he finds his own release, and I’m filled with a flood of warmth.

  My head falls back against the table. Dante relaxes on top of me, all of the tension flowing out of his body. But he doesn’t withdraw from me, doesn’t release his grip on my hands. His breath is hot against my ear, his body sticky with sweat against my heated skin. I never want him to move.

  I needed this. Wanted this. Craved it in my very soul. And at the same time, I feel like I’ve lost something, feel like I’ve betrayed the woman who spent the last few years trying to be stronger, trying to build something from the ashes he left behind. Instead, the weak, emotional girl won this battle.

  “Ash,” Dante sighs against the side of my neck. He says it with a tenderness that makes my throat hurt, but I can only think of three words, over and over again:

  I hate you.

  I hate you.

  I hate you.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  He moves first, rolling off of me and onto his side. But he keeps one of his arms around me, letting his fingers trail across the skin of my belly. Part of me longs to lean into him, to keep the connection between us, and the other part wants to get far away from this—from him—as fast as possible.