The Bastard’s Betrayal by Katee Robert

Chapter 12

Rose didn’t know what she was doing. If Dante didn’t want to kiss her, she should leave it alone. The more distance between them, the better. Except she couldn’t stop. This was nothing like she expected, this man becoming a wave that swept her away entirely. Her body still sang from what he’d done with his mouth, and now his strong body pressed her back into the couch even as he plundered her mouth.

It felt the same but different. Her body knew his, knew the dips and planes, knew that he loved it when she whimpered and rubbed herself against him, too desperate to worry about her pride. But this was so much more intense than it had ever been between them.

Her desire was a bonfire flaring hotter with each touch, each word. It didn’t matter that she’d just come harder than she could have dreamed. She wanted more. She needed more.

Slow down.

Fuck that. She didn’t want to. Somewhere in the depths of her mind, that little voice continued to call out warnings, but she was too far gone. Rose gripped Dante’s ass and arched up, rubbing herself along his length even as she encouraged him to thrust against her. More, more, more. She shoved down his shorts, working the slick fabric down his hips with her legs and hands.

And then there was nothing between them at all.

Dante hitched one of her legs higher and changed his movement, dragging his length over her slowly. His kiss changed, too. The burst of frenetic energy shifted to him dominating her mouth in a way he’d never done before. He claimed her with that kiss.

And she? She didn’t have to stay partially in her head in that moment. She didn’t have to worry about toning down her responses or being too rough.

She could lie with her words, but she couldn’t lie in this moment.

He pressed her into the couch, thrusting harder in response to her digging her nails into his ass. Rose moaned against his tongue and kissed him back just as fiercely. He tasted of her desire and just pure Dante, and the mix went straight to her head.

She arched against him, rubbing her breasts against his bare chest. God, there was too much stimulation. It felt too good. She couldn’t think. All her planning and manipulating and bullshit, and it went right out the window the second she got naked with this man. This was supposed to be for a purpose, but she couldn’t focus on anything but getting him inside her.

Rose rolled her hips, and he moved back just enough that his cock notched at her entrance. They both froze. Dante nipped her bottom lip and kissed along her jaw to the sensitive spot beneath her ear. “Tell me to stop.”

She had to. She had to right now. This was more than playing with fire. She was in the middle of the inferno. That should terrify her. It did terrify her but…

A part of her wanted to do it anyways.

Rose closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to think, but all she could see, smell, feel was Dante. “We can’t.”

“I know.”

He wasn’t even arguing with her. Why did she hesitate? She could not risk pregnancy, not with this man. “We really can’t.”

Dante cursed softly in Italian against her throat. “Un giorno matterò un bambino nella tua pancia, amata.” He lifted himself up enough to meet her gaze. “But not yet.”

“Dante—”

He moved back to kneel between her thighs and grabbed a condom off the table. “Have you changed your mind?”

About what? About risking too much? About having sex?

She shook her head slowly. “No.” It was the only answer. It had to be the only answer.

He rolled on the condom and gave himself a stroke, almost as if testing it. “Hold yourself open for me, amata.”

It never occurred for her to do anything but obey. She reached down and parted her pussy, holding her breath as he braced a hand by her head and guided his cock back to her entrance. This time, there was no reason to hesitate, no reason to stop. She half expected Dante to go slow. He had in the past; he was big enough that they had to be careful, and when they’d dated, he’d always been so careful to ease her into that first stroke, no matter how much foreplay they’d indulged in.

He didn’t go slow this time. Of course, he didn’t. This was Dante, not Jackson. He pushed into her as if he knew her body could take it, as if he expected it. Except…the devastating concentration on his face was the same. The cock currently splitting her in two was the same. Even after three months, her body knew his, knew the moves of this dance between them.

Is he telling the truth? Was some of it true?

His dark gaze tracked up her body with a possessiveness she should argue against, but she couldn’t find the breath or the words. Italian poured from his mouth, but she didn’t have the capacity to wonder what the fuck he was saying to her with that look on his face because he slammed the last few inches and stole everything but her need for more.

Dante kissed her again as he moved inside her. Not strokes, exactly, but pulses that had her writhing against him. It felt good, really good, but it was nowhere near enough. She tried to get leverage to move against him, but he had her pinned with his body weight and cock.

She broke the kiss enough to demand, “More.”

“All you have to do is ask, Rosa. I’ll give you anything. Everything.” He moved back again, depriving her of the delicious contact of his chest to hers, but instantly made up for it when he jerked her hips up with him.

“You want more? I’ll give you more.” Dante guided her legs over his arms, still maintaining the incline, and then he started fucking her properly. Long, seeking strokes that had him rubbing against her G-spot. The moment he found exactly the right angle and rhythm to have her eyes damn near rolling back in her head, he kept it up, driving her closer and closer to orgasm.

“Touch yourself, amata.”

She didn’t hesitate. She hadn’t hesitated since this all began. She just snaked her hand down her stomach and stroked her clit. Pleasure coiled so tightly through her, so strongly, it was almost pain. “Dante.”

“Say it again.”

She shouldn’t. She’d already yielded so much. This particular command felt even more personal than the others. It didn’t matter. He hit that spot deep inside her even as she stroked her clit, and her orgasm took her under. She cried out his name as she came around his cock.

Dante barely waited for her wave to crest before he covered her with his body and fucked her like salvation lay on the other side of his orgasm. She was so sensitized, she came again with a gasp that he kissed away. He ground into her, his expression nearly furious as he orgasmed. “Mine, Rosa.” Then he collapsed on top of her.

Holy shit. She stared at the ceiling as her heart fought to slow back to a normal pace and her body went loose and pliant from the echoes of pleasure. It had always been good with him, but this was on another level entirely. She shivered at the thought of what else he had up his sleeve when it came to sex. This whole experience was like fucking a stranger who already had your body memorized. There was no need to fumble through a first encounter because they had so much history. And yet this wasn’t the same as fucking Jackson. Not even a little bit.

She smacked his shoulder lightly. “I can’t believe you held out on me.”

He caught her mouth in a brief kiss. “I’m not the only one who held out.”

He…wasn’t wrong. “Dante…”

“I love it when you say my name like that, all sated and lazy.” He kissed her again and reached between them to hold the condom in place as he eased out of her.

She watched him walk out of the living room. A few seconds later, the water ran in the bathroom. Rose should get up, should move, should do something. Her body wouldn’t obey her sluggish mental commands, though. The best she could do was turn on her side and grab a fallen pillow from the ground to prop under her head.

Dante didn’t stay away for long. He reappeared still completely naked and eyed her. “Are you about to have regrets and cry about how this was a mistake?”

Just like that, reality slapped her in the face. What the fuck was she doing? Waiting for cuddles? Comparing having sex with Dante against their history and trying to look for evidence that he wasn’t lying when he said it was real for him, too?

She sure as hell couldn’t think about the arts festival or what he’d said. They were engaged in emotional warfare, and she was losing.

Thatgot her moving. “I don’t cry over bullshit like fucking someone I shouldn’t.” She’d chosen this every step of the way. She could tell herself she hadn’t had another option, but it wasn’t the truth and they both knew it. Rose might lie to Dante, and happily, but she wouldn’t lie to herself.

She’d loved fucking him.

She wanted to do it again.

She…missed him.

It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. All the orgasms in the world didn’t change who Dante was or what he’d done. Or what happened next. He would die, and she would return to New York to marry Romeo Capparelli like some kind of fucked-up tragedy. In the past three months of planning and strategy meetings, Rose hadn’t paused long enough to mourn the loss her marriage represented. She wasn’t the type to worry overmuch about a love match, not when she had so many other priorities to focus on. Who cared that she needed to marry a stranger if it meant her family and their people remained safe?

She didn’t love Dante—she didn’t even know him, not really—but she couldn’t deny they shared a spark that was entirely absent between her and Romeo. She was destined for a cold marriage to someone that was truly a stranger. It was her duty, and she’d do it.

She just didn’t expect to mourn the loss of a future she’d barely let herself consider.

Dante gave her a surprisingly happy grin. “In that case, why don’t I make us something to eat, and you can put a movie on?”

The words were familiar. How many times after they’d had sex had he put forth the same offer? Dante was brilliant in the kitchen, even on what had appeared to be a low budget. He’d cook for her, slowly seducing her again with delicious smells and then amazing food. After they ate, they’d cuddle together while watching whatever random movie she’d picked from his various streaming channels. The movie never mattered, because they never made it through the whole thing before having sex again.

Her chest ached with a sudden longing that made her dizzy. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“You said I’m the liar, but what the fuck are you?” Rose pushed to her feet and ran her fingers through her hair. Her body still ached with the aftermath of pleasure, a bell chiming to a tune only Dante could match. “You don’t get to manipulate me using my history with Jackson.” She had to keep them separate. She had to. Because if she had the intimacy she shared with Jackson and the brutal truths and intense sex she had with Dante… That combination scared her right down her to her bruised heart.

Dante gave her a long look. “It wasn’t all a lie.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It wasn’t,” he insisted. “Do you really think my assignment was to date you for months? To cook for you? To watch hundreds of movies and bicker about the different characters and plot choices? To tag along to all those weird ass festivals and events you managed to find?”

He had been overly invested in the morally gray characters, but so were millions of people. There was a reason those types did so well. And the festivals? It had become something of an inside joke between them, and she’d enjoyed searching out the weirdest ones within drivable distance to take him to, just to see the look of vague horror on his face and hear his low, snarky comments as they explored. It was like a secret just for the two of them.

She couldn’t have known… No. I am not going down this rabbit hole again. She shook her head. “You were playing me.”

“I lied about my identity. I edited some of my past. That’s it.”

She couldn’t deal with that, couldn’t handle what he was saying. If it wasn’t entirely a lie—Rose shook her head again, harder this time. It didn’t matter. It didn’t fucking matter. No matter what her traitorous heart tried to interject, Dante Verducci was a monster and the enemy. She couldn’t afford to forget that. “If we’re done here?”

“Rose.” Even though she very much didn’t want to look at him, she couldn’t resist the pull in his voice. Dante waited for her to meet his gaze to continue. “The faster you figure it out, the better for everyone. You and me? We’ll never be done.”

* * *

Dante gaveher space the rest of the day—after insisting that she eat something and cooking breakfast for her—but it wasn’t as if there was much space to be had in this cabin. Every time she turned around, he was there, finishing his workout in the gym, reading in the living room, showering in the bathroom. She wasn’t even certain he was doing it on purpose. The cabin just wasn’t big enough to avoid him completely.

Rose finally gave up and changed into some workout clothing and ran a few miles on the treadmill in the gym in an attempt to keep herself from climbing the walls.

She had to focus on getting free, but all she could do was go ’round and ’round again comparing Jackson and Dante. He might not have had to date her, but she shot him. Apparently that had only made her more interesting to him.

The man was unhinged.

She stopped at five miles, not wanting to overdo it. Even so, it had been weeks since she kept up a regular fitness schedule, and her legs were shaking as she stepped off the treadmill. “Damn it.” She really wouldn’t stand a chance if she somehow got free. She’d wager Dante’s stamina outdid hers, so he’d just run her into the ground if she somehow managed to get through the door.

That didn’t stop her from checking the high windows in the gym to see if they opened.

They didn’t.

She walked back to the door and braced herself. Dante might have allowed her distance for the last few hours, but it wouldn’t last. He’d brought her here for a reason, and that reason did not involve her avoiding him for days on end.

More than that, she couldn’t afford to avoid him for days on end. Not if she wanted to get home before the powder keg of a situation exploded and got someone killed.

She stepped out of the gym and inhaled sharply at the delicious scent that assaulted her. Dante stood at the kitchen island, wearing only a pair of lounge pants, and chopping vegetables. Behind him, a pot of water boiled, and he had some kind of tomato-based sauce simmering next to it. She took in the other ingredients, so familiar from how many times he’d cooked the meal for her before.

Spaghetti with rosa carbonara.

Her favorite.

“My mother taught me how to make this. Did I ever tell you that?”

She froze, her feet seeming to grow roots on the spot. Dante had never talked much about his mother. She knew the woman had raised him alone, away from the family, and that she’d died when he was a teenager, which was when his uncle took him in. But though he’d been full of stories of his asshole uncle or his chaotic cousin, he rarely shared anything about the woman who birthed him. “Oh?” Rose finally managed.

“Si.” He tossed the vegetables into a bowl of romaine lettuce and turned to lean against the counter. “She didn’t have many good days, but that was one of them. I think I was thirteen, or somewhere close to it.”

She should walk away from this conversation. Nothing good could come of it. “I couldn’t find any information about your mother. It’s as if she never existed.” She’d looked, of course. After she realized Dante played her, she’d spent far too long following the perverse need to know everything she could find about him. The paper trail only started when he was fourteen. Other than his mother being Lorenzo Verducci’s little sister, nothing else was known about his life before that point. The mystery bothered her.

“Lorenzo isn’t forgiving of those who step out of line.” He shrugged. “She got pregnant and wouldn’t name the father and wouldn’t let him marry her off to one of his men to cover it up. So, he threw her out.”

It wasn’t an uncommon story, especially among some of the other families. Even the Romanovs weren’t above reproach when it came to that sort of thing, though Papa would cut off his own hand before he cut off one of his daughters from their family. “Why did you go back?”

“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.