Since he was home, I didn’t even try to fall back asleep. I’d been trying to turn off my brain all night, but it hadn’t worked. The way I was feeling in the aftermath of our aborted family dinner that evening, I needed Dante to set my mind at ease. I needed him to quiet the reasonable doubts that had been echoing around in my head since he dropped me off at the house.
My heart kicked up when I heard the shower turn off. A few minutes later the bathroom door opened, and before Dante shut the light off, I caught a glimpse of him.
Dante is a beautiful man and his exterior more or less matches his insides—dark and hard, but exhilarating when he gets close enough. He didn’t bother to put clothes on after he got out of the shower, so my gaze traveled all over his muscular physique, then settled on the hard cock standing at attention.
My insides melted a little at the sight of it. Dante caught my eye, seeing I was awake, but we only held eye contact for a split second before he turned off the light in the bathroom and crossed to the bed.
My heart hammered as he approached—my side, not his. Without a word, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and hauled me off the bed. I inhaled sharply, dropping to my knees in front of him and looking up, a bit uncertain.
“It’s not going to suck itself, is it?” he asked carefully.
My eyes narrowed and I huffed at his insolence, but nonetheless took his angry cock in my hand and began stroking him. I eased forward, taking him inch by inch into my mouth. I worked him for a few minutes just the way he liked, but despite getting exactly what he wanted even though he was being a bit of an asshole, Dante got bored. Restless. I could feel it in him and I didn’t think it had a thing to do with sex; that was just how it was manifesting. Morelli men are good at a lot of things, but communication is rarely one of them.
Fucking is on the list of proficiencies, so next thing I knew, Dante was lifting me up and throwing me down on the bed. I twisted, trying to get out of my pajama bottoms while he climbed on top of me and cursed at me.
“Why are you wearing these fucking things?” he demanded, dragging them off and tossing them behind him.
“I didn’t know when or if you were coming home tonight. I thought I’d just be sleeping.”
He wasted no more words once my pussy was unobstructed. He fucked me hard, like he was exorcising demons of his own or punishing me for wrongdoing. After the evening we’d had, it could’ve been either. It could have been both.
Usually I had no problem taking it when he gave it to me like that, but it was harder that night. I had images of Beth’s rumpled bed and dead body in my mind, memories of Dante’s face when he essentially told me his brother was right to murder a girlfriend they assumed was unfaithful. I needed reassurance that nothing like that could ever happen to me, that Dante loved me more than that, but I didn’t get it. Instead, I got sex that felt like a punishment, lacking in warmth and fueled by anger. Cleaning up a murder was probably nothing Dante hadn’t done before, but walking in on me with Mateo was, and I had a strong feeling that was to blame for his extra roughness.
When he finished with me, I was weak and boneless, sprawled on my stomach with my limbs tossed every which way. While I tried to catch my breath, Dante pulled out of my body and shifted onto the bed beside me, but he didn’t even reach out to pull me into his arms. I turned my head to face him, watching as he stared up at the ceiling, lost in his own thoughts.
“Are we okay?” I asked, tentatively.
He turned his head and his virulent gaze met mine. “Should we not be?”
“You’re not still upset about me hugging Mateo, are you?” I asked, more specifically. “I was only being nice.”
His lips curved up faintly and he returned to staring at the ceiling. “Nice is overrated.”
That was not reassuring. “Will you at least tell me more about Beth’s death?”
“You don’t need to know about that,” he informed me. “She’s gone, that’s all you need to know.”
I knew that was the usual way of business matters, but surely there was some exception for something so personal? “She was my friend, Dante.”
His gaze still on the ceiling, his tone verging on bored despite the callousness of his words, he told me, “She was a self-absorbed, trifling whore with no loyalty to anyone but herself. You don’t need friends like that.”