Fractured Freedom: A Brother’s Best Friend Second Chance Romance (Tarnished Empire)

Delilah

I slumped onto the kitchen’s little barstool and tried to move all the puzzle pieces of my life around. After about ten minutes, I sighed. They didn’t fit the way they were supposed to anymore, and I knew our lives were creating a whole new picture.

Even if I wanted to go after him, I needed a second to comprehend all the omissions, all the lies.

One breath, or maybe seven, and I could focus again.

One. He was the mob.

Two. He was still Dante.

Three. He’d gotten me out of jail.

Four. His name wasn’t what I’d thought it was, and I’d screamed that name countless times with my vibrator.

Five—

“I got some stones.” His deep voice from behind me made me jump.

“Dante!” When I spun to find him standing in that adjoining doorway again, my jaw dropped, and I tried my best not to look like I was salivating. He stood there like the Dante I remembered, in sweatpants and a T-shirt that fit snugly over his massive chest. His biceps bulged against the fabric, and I licked my lips as my gaze trailed down the veins of his arm to where he held a dark bag.

“I was going to read and go to sleep,” I said.

“No, you weren’t. You were going to be mad and stew. You need to relax. So let’s try something else.” He lifted some stones and then oil out of the bag to place on the nightstand. “A massage.”

“Um, I don’t like massages.” I clammed up immediately, my shoulders tensing and my back going ramrod straight. The idea of someone’s hands on me like that made my skin crawl.

“Who doesn’t like a massage, Lilah?”

“Me. I never relax. I feel like a stranger is poking and prodding me in all the wrong ways.”

“Well, I’m not a stranger, Lilah,” he said quietly, a look of something like determination on his face.

No. He was worse than a stranger. I’d only breathed to four, but that four was a good reminder of why this man could not give me a massage. He was the guy I’d lusted over far too many times to have him rubbing me in a non-sexual way. Then he was the guy I’d cried over because I’d lost something he never even knew was partially his. Now, he was someone I didn’t even know.

“Sometimes, you look at me with such sadness, Little Lamb.” He moved the stones into a line on my nightstand like I’d agreed to this. When I didn’t respond because I knew I couldn’t, he blew out a breath. “Lie on the bed and tell me why you can’t stand the sight of me. You had that sad look long before you knew my real last name.”

“You’re not giving me a massage, Dante.” I threw up my hands and paced the tile between the kitchen and TV.

“Delilah, I don’t issue commands for people not to follow them.” There was that voice again, the one that sounded so different from the boy I knew and grew up with. Here, he was dark, ruthless, unrelenting.

And it made me stop pacing immediately. I froze and stared at him as I chewed on my lip. “I’m not sure I know who you are at all. You’ve omitted the truth about your name, about my room, about everything. Maybe you are a stranger, Dante Armanelli.”

“I can be if you want me to,” he said, holding my gaze like he was asking permission. There was some line there, one we’d never crossed, and maybe I wanted to toe it, see if it burned me to be on that edge. There was a part of Dante I’d never seen, and even after all these years, I wanted to be greedy with him.

Even more, I wanted us to coexist here, and I wanted to be able to stand on my own without getting lost in this man. That might have meant seeing what I could handle with him, seeing what I was capable of.

Or maybe I was indulging in not doing what was expected. I wasn’t quite sure. Still, after a beat, I slumped onto the bed, sighing out, “Fine.”

“Shirt off,” he commanded.

I couldn’t help my eyes widening. “Seriously?”

“I’m giving you a massage. That requires oil. You want it on your clothes?”

I rolled my eyes. “Turn around, then.”

He lifted a brow as if I was being ridiculous. “We’re not past that? I’ve already seen you naked.”

He was practically saying he wasn’t attracted to me, I swear. He smirked like this was all so easy for him, and that made a dimple pop in his beautiful cheek. I had to stop myself from literally getting up and licking it. The fact that my body reacted to him that quickly—but he didn’t react at all—had me wanting to show him otherwise. If he was past it, I suddenly wanted him to prove it.

I narrowed my eyes, and just as he was about to turn around, I pulled my shirt over my head.

It was his turn to look shocked. “Fuuuuck,” he dragged out and stared down at me. His pupils dilated, and I felt the wave of his hunger as he licked his lips.

“Dante.” I leaned back as I placed my hands behind me on the bed and let my breasts hang out on display within my red lace bra. I was so happy I’d bought some lingerie before I’d come to Puerto Rico. “I can put the shirt back on if you aren’t past seeing me without one.”

He cleared his throat, and I saw his Adam’s apple bob once before his intense gaze was back on mine. “Lie down, tease.”

“Me?” I giggled as I turned to lie on the bed and face the TV. “I didn’t even want my shirt off. I thought it would be weird.”

“Sure,” he grumbled like he regretted his decision. He walked past me to grab my ice bucket and fill it with ice from my fridge in the kitchen area.

“What do you need that for?” I pondered out loud.

“It’ll cool the rocks.” He didn’t elaborate much as he walked back to the nightstand.

“Okay. Well, are you going to turn the TV on or something while we do this?”

“No.” The rummaging behind me had me glancing over my shoulder. He had poured some sort of oil that smelled like peppermint onto his hands and was rubbing them together, slowly, methodically, rhythmically.

I was doomed.

“Head down and relax,” he murmured. “This is to get some of your stress out. You can’t do that with the television on.”

“TV always makes me relax.”

“Sure, but it doesn’t make you work through whatever issues you’re having.”

Suddenly both of his big hands were on my back, rubbing warm oil into it, and all I could respond with was a hiss. Dante’s skin on mine was like gasoline to fire. I sparked and blew up every time. My whole body tightened under him. My nipples, my pussy, my ass, everything. I would be surprised if he couldn’t feel my skin going taunt.

“They aren’t issues,” I grit out. “They are real life concerns. You’re not who you said you were. After all these years … Does my family know?”

“You think they all know and kept it only from you?” he inquired.

“You know, I’m the older sister—even if it’s only by three minutes—but everyone still treats me like …”

“Like a baby and their prized possession?” He chuckled. “Because you are that. You’ve made all of them proud.”

“Not sure why. I’m an adult, not a baby, and we all have good jobs.”

“You’re the one who didn’t do much wrong.”

“True. I worked hard to become a nurse.”

He hummed, and I felt it right down to my toes. “I know. You always tried hard at school.”

His hands slowly dragged all the way up my back, fingers feeling each vertebra and pushing into the divots of my spine like he knew exactly which points needed his pressure. I moaned when he got to my neck, and I didn’t know whether to relax into his kneading or jerk off the bed. My body warred with itself, desiring more but knowing I couldn’t give much of anything.

“I should have tried harder,” I said, “and we both know it.” The fact that I hadn’t become a doctor was always a point of contention with my parents, and I’m sure my mother shared it with Dante’s mom.

They didn’t know, though, that I had just been trying to stay afloat. Getting good grades had been harder than ever before. I’d been drowning in self-loathing, and my therapist kept saying I had to give myself time to heal, to relax, and to be less than perfect.

“Try harder for who?” he pried as he kneaded at a knot. “You seem happy being a nurse. What good is a job if you’re not happy?”

Dante always tapped into the journey of being human and made it sound so simple. “Maybe I like being a nurse and maybe I like the idea of climbing to the top and being a doctor. I just wasn’t sure I was good enough to do it,” I confessed. It was something I never said out loud but the words tumbled out like I’d been holding them in for a long time.

“You can be whatever you want, Lilah.”

He said it with enough conviction that my throat clogged before I replied, “Sometimes, I wish we’d continued to talk through my college years.”

“Are you admitting that your issues with me stopped you from reaching out?” He asked the question barely above a whisper, and I contemplated acting like I hadn’t heard him.

Instead, I opted for lying. “I don’t have issues with you, Dante.”

“Is that so?” He pushed his thumb into a tight spot on my neck and then rolled a stone into it.

“Jesus!” I tensed under the pressure and tried to move away from him touching that spot. He didn’t let up. Instead, his body pushed harder into mine, making it so I couldn’t wiggle away.

“Relax,” he commanded, the rock still pushing into that area, but I tried to listen to him and let out a breath. As I did, he dug in harder, and I hissed at feeling my muscles being worked out of a knot they’d probably been in for months. I practically orgasmed from the feeling. Somehow, it was painful pleasure; the line you walk between agony and pure bliss.

“Dante, that feels amazing,” I moaned as he continued working. “I should be embarrassed by the sounds you’re pulling out of me.”

He rolled the stone over me again, and I gasped and wheezed. This time, his hands were lower on my back, and I knew I couldn’t ignore what I was starting to feel. My pussy had been wet from the start, and now I knew for a fact I would end up orgasming and making a fool of myself if we kept this up. I knew it was wrong, that he didn’t want me that way, but my body still reacted to him like we’d slept together, like it was desperate for him, and like I’d masturbated to thoughts of him more than once.

My body didn’t lie.

I willed myself to bring my hands up toward my shoulders so that I could try to lift myself from the bed. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Da–”

He shoved me back down. “Delilah, you need this. Your muscles are rigid. You’ll go crazy with the amount of anxiety and pain you’re bottling up here.”

“I bottle a lot up.” Most specifically, my sexual desire for him. “That’s beside the point. I can go to a masseuse.”

“They won’t do it right.” He sounded irritated.

I hummed. His hands were like magic, and they hadn’t stopped. “They’ll do it just fine. Plus, this is bordering on the limit of what my body can take.”

He chuckled. “Really? I seem to remember your body taking a lot more than you thought it was truly capable of.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked over my shoulder at him. “If that’s a joke about that night—”

“What night? The one where I fucked you over and over again?”

“When did you start thinking it was okay to bring this up all the time?”

“Since the moment it happened. You just never give me a chance. You haven’t been to a block party or a Christmas that I’ve been to in years, Lilah. And if I see you, you’re hiding some turmoil I can’t understand.”

I counted up all the times I’d gone home, and most of them had been around holidays. “I don’t think it’s been that long, and I’m not in turmoil around you.”

“You think lying to a guy who pulls lies from people for a living is a good idea when I’m on top of you with my hands near your neck?”

He wrapped one hand around the column of my neck, and the other worked a shoulder muscle. My core was responding like I couldn’t believe. I knew my panties were drenched at that point, and I was having a hard time not rolling my hips into the bed to try to relieve some of the desire that had built up. He worked my shoulder until I melted like butter in a hot pan.

Instead of responding, I tried my best to focus on anything else.

We let the traffic outside and the waves from the nearby ocean fill the air. They were the only things that could be heard other than Dante’s hands rubbing over my back.

I wondered if silence made him antsy or if it was something he used in his work. As a nurse, we were told to get used to it, to utilize it as a tool when we needed a patient to communicate.

Humans, by nature, didn’t function well without communication, and I think as we evolved, our attention spans got worse. So silence acts as a tool to pry information and communication from even the quietest person.

Were we both so stubborn and well-trained in that quiet technique that neither of us would break?

I hoped so until I felt Dante’s breath near my ear as he chuckled. “You’re better at this than I thought you’d be.”

“Better at what?” I grabbed for the change in subject instantly.

“Avoiding the elephant in the room.”

“What elephant?”

His thumb dug into another tender spot he’d been working on. I swear he used it to his advantage to punish me for me not cooperating. I hissed, but he kept on. “The elephant that kept you from me all these years, from the moment you sent me that Dear John email. This elephant is going to keep bothering us like this little knot in your back here until we work out the kinks. You and I both know that.”

“Sometimes those knots are pretty big, Dante.”

He’d talked of my pain, but it was a devastation that had rooted itself deep within me and made me cold to the world for a long time. I’m sure he felt my muscles bunch under his hands as I thought about it. Devastation had a way of seeping out and showing itself, even if you didn’t want it to.

“Sometimes it’s best to let them work themselves out over time,” I said.

“Right.” Suddenly his hands left my back and landed on either side of me as he lifted himself up and over my body to straddle me. His legs encased my hips, and the pressure when his hands returned to my back was a whole new level. “Guess we’re going to have to approach this a new way. Settle in for something a little more intense.”

His hands rolled the stones over kinks in a more aggressive way, slowly but with angles that dug in and under those knots. I wiggled beneath him as I tensed at the pain that felt so good.

Every knot he undid, I moaned in relaxation.

“You still don’t know what your body needs the way I do, Lamb,” he whispered behind me.

I almost cried as another knot unraveled. How could he work every part of my body right? How did he know the spots that needed help?

Something in me shifted, and after the last few days of having him near me, I couldn’t really blame my body for wanting him the way it did. I tried my best not to roll my hips under him, but the next knot that released caused a reaction in me I couldn’t stop. I ground my pussy down into the bed, and with him straddling me, I knew he’d felt it.

“Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you know exactly what you need now. Tell me,” he rasped out into my ear, and my eyes shot open to stare over my shoulder into his.

I bit my lip, not sure of what to say, not sure we could cross that line. Was that what he was asking? Did I care?

This was supposed to be the place I jumped in, where I went for it without hesitation.

I couldn’t say the words, but a whimper and a nod were all he needed from me.

He dragged a finger down my jawline and then pulled my lip from my mouth. “Use your words, Lamb. You’re more experienced than last time we were here, right?”

I gulped in a shaky breath, my heart pounding so loud, I’m sure we both heard it. “Yes.”

He growled at my confession, like he hadn’t really wanted me to admit it. “Then tell me. What do you want me to do? You need a massage on your back or …” He lifted himself from me and then flipped me over, parting my legs for his body to be in between them. His hand dragged across my belly and up to my chest. “Or is it here? So experienced that you know what you need now?”

I gasped as he gripped one breast and rolled it around. The lace against my nipple had me wanting to cry out, but I wanted things harder, faster, rougher. I gripped his wrist and pushed his palm into my chest as I arched into it.

I knew what I wanted and here, with his hands on me in Puerto Rico, I was going to take it.