“She overdosed.” He said it without any inflection at all, almost as if reciting the weather. “In hindsight, I don’t think it was on purpose, but the drugs fucked her up, and she kept chasing that escape.”
Oh, Dante.
Rose’s throat threatened to close. She inhaled slowly, doing her best not to picture him at fourteen with a dead mother and nowhere to go. He didn’t have the market cornered on fucked-up childhoods, but she still couldn’t help the sympathy that flowed through her. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault. Not hers either.” Another shrug, though a line of tension had appeared in his shoulders. “Lorenzo will pay for his sins before too long, even if it won’t be my hand that finally ends him.”
“Dante…”
“It’s fine.” He moved to the stove. “I didn’t tell you so you’d pity me.”
She didn’t pity him. Not exactly. But Rose’s heart hurt at the thought of losing her mother so early. Mama was such a larger-than-life part of growing up, she couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have a gaping hole in place of all those warm memories. Even when they clashed when Rose was a teenager, her mother had always been a safe space for her.
Rose cleared her throat. “So, she taught you to make this.”
“Si. I think we made four batches that day before she was satisfied.” He finally looked back at her. “Don’t argue with me about the couch tonight, amata. We’ll share a bed.”
She should say no. It was the right call to make. But Rose found herself nodding slowly. “Okay. I’ll share the bed with you.”
She hoped like hell she hadn’t just made a huge mistake.
Chapter 13
Three days later, Rose hadn’t made any progress. She didn’t know the code to the exterior door. She hadn’t found a single window to open or a phone to call home.
She had however, watched approximately twelve movies with Dante and eaten enough Italian food to put herself into a food coma. And they talked. Sometimes, it was her threatening him and him taking it as foreplay. Sometimes, he’d manage to coax little tidbits from her about her sisters. And sometimes, the times she craved more than she had a right to, he’d share tidbits about his life and history. About those years with his mother when she was alive. About some of the wild shit he’d gotten up to with his cousin Matteo when they were teenagers.
Some of the stories she’d heard before. The new context of knowing the truth of him gave her a framework that made a lot more sense why Dante and Matteo had never ended up in jail for some of the shit they’d gotten into.
And in between all that, they had sex. So much sex that her body felt permanently, deliciously sore.
She’d started to lose touch with reality. It felt like they were in a different world, like nothing existed beyond these four walls. A dangerous thought, but Rose could feel it sinking in each time she came around Dante’s cock. Every time he put a plate in front her with a forbidding look on his face as if her forgetting to eat when she was stressed was a personal affront to him.
She shifted between the sheets, feeling lazy and relaxed… At least until Dante moved behind her and his mouth trailed down her spine. He loved to wake her up like this, kissing and stroking until he coaxed her from sleep.
“Dante,” she sighed.
“I like it when you say my name like that.” He palmed her ass as he licked the small of her back. He set his teeth against the upper curve and chuckled when she jumped. “So fucking bitable.”
She huffed out a laugh. “You keep doing that. I’m going to be wearing your teeth marks for days.”
“Good.” Another careful bite. “Lift your hips.”
“Wait.”
He hesitated. “Si? You have something on your mind?”
Didn’t she always? Right now, it was guilt that the only thing she wanted was for him to continue his path and eat her pussy from behind until she came all over his face. But this had to stop, and it had to stop now. “Dante, you have to let me go,” she whispered.
“No.”
Rose started to push herself up, but he planted a hand in the middle of her back and kept her facedown on the mattress. “No,” he repeated. “You know the condition on us leaving this cabin. Until you’re ready to say yes to me, I’m more than happy to stay here with you and see how many different ways I can make you come.”
Until she was ready to say yes to him, to marry him.
She cursed, her relaxed mood popping like a soap bubble. “I’m marrying Romeo. I don’t know how to get it through your head that it’s happening. Sex is sex, and no matter what I do with you, it changes nothing.”