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

Delilah

I don’t know how long I was asleep in his room before I came to. ER shifts drained me, and dropping the bomb of the century depleted any of the energy and emotion I had left.

The weight I’d carried had been lifted, and I’d fallen into my first deep rest in years.

Now, Dante knew.

He knew why we weren’t compatible, why I was broken, why I wasn’t as perfect as everyone made me out to be.

I stirred in his bed, half thinking I might find him lying beside me. When I cracked one eye open, though, I found the room dark, so I checked my phone.

It was ten at night already; he’d let me sleep all day. I glanced around the bedroom and heard the shower running.

Heat crept through my body, even though I knew we were past that. Dante had held me as a friend, desperate and broken in his arms, just hours before. The moments came rushing back like a tidal wave, trying to push me down and drag me out to sea.

Some would probably say I was mourning something I never had, but what they didn’t understand about the miscarriage was that my brain had started planning even if I didn’t know whether I’d keep the baby or not. I still dreamt about them. I’d researched the baby’s growth and stressed over her or him. My future shifted as I pictured my life with them in my arms.

Then something in my body I couldn’t control ripped it away. Maybe I’d done something wrong … but whatever it was, I couldn’t get my baby back.

Dante hadn’t looked at me like I was crazy. He’d held me, told me he wanted to protect me, that I was like family to him.

The word family crushed my heart, though, because to him that meant I was the kid sister, I was another person he wanted to protect. But I reminded myself that’s all we could be, close family friends. My mental health was too fragile, and he was too much of everything I wanted.

If I lost something like that again, I wouldn’t survive.

Even so, hearing the water on the opposite side of one door, knowing he was washing himself, picturing the soap sliding over each of his muscles and down his smooth skin, my body reacted. It always did when it came to him, especially after he’d let me sleep all day. He’d taken care of me. I knew I was safe here with him.

I sat up in bed, willing myself to leave without looking around. Yet, I was a product of a big household that was extremely nosy. My mom and dad read our diaries, they taught us to look inside everything, and we pretty much dug through each other’s business like there was gold at the bottom of it.

I didn’t have to even scan much of the room to see what I saw, though. His clothes were bundled in the corner, full of mud and a dark red stain that could only be blood.

As I tiptoed over to his clothing, I heard a crash in the bathroom and a groan. It didn’t take me more than a second to run to that door. What if he was hurt? What if he’d gone and done something and was gravely injured? He was an Armanelli doing undercover work.

My mind took me to that typical scene in a James Bond movie. I was the girl who was going to help our country’s spy survive.

I swung open the door, practically crying out, “Dante, are you o—”

As my eyes whipped to the shower stall, my question died on my lips. I saw a white towel stained pink and red and a needle that was definitely intended to sew something shut. I was a nurse. I knew medical grade materials when I saw them.

None of it mattered when my eyes found Dante, though. I stared at the god of a man in the shower. One muscular arm was braced against the tile, tattoos wrapping around it and mingling with the large veins on his skin. I knew his gaze was on me, but he didn’t move or attempt to hide himself.

Instead, he stood there in all his glory, muscles taut as he held his huge rock-solid cock in his fisted hand.

The tip glinted under the light, and my eyes bulged when I saw dark metal glistening from beneath water droplets. Visible on either side of the tip of his cock were three balls of steel. They looked just big enough to rub the walls of my pussy exactly the way I’d want.

Those hadn’t been there years ago.

I couldn’t look away. I mean, I told myself to. I willed myself to back out of that bathroom, but my mind short-circuited as I stared at him. Every part of him was better than I remembered, better than what I’d dreamed about for over half a decade.

That cock—how the head swelled in his hand, how it looked as solid and hard as the metal pierced through it—it was the same but different. Familiar and brand new.

My whole body shivered as I tried to form an apology and pull my gaze from what I knew was the best dick I’d ever had with added tools. “I heard a crash … I thought you were hurt. I’m so sorry for barging in.” I started to back away, but his stare pinned me where I stood.

“Lilah, if you’re going to apologize, might be a good idea to take your eyes off my cock.”

I nodded without really listening because I was still staring, but the words registered, and my gaze snapped up fast. “I’m sorry. It’s just that … well …”

“Lamb, I’m in the middle of something here. You going to join in or say what you need to say and leave?”

“You weren’t pierced before,” I blurted. Why I had to make that announcement, I didn’t know.

“And?”

“Well, I … I didn’t expect that.”

He smirked and turned the shower off, keeping one hand on his cock. “You expected something from my dick, Lamb?”

I shook my head and felt the blush rise to my cheeks. “No. Of course not. But I don’t know.” I shrugged. “It must have hurt. Why do it?”

“I like to perfect what I do, Lilah.” He stepped out of the shower and moved toward me. “That includes fucking women.”

I gulped at his words and how he said them while he slowly pumped his length once. I focused only on his face then, not taking time to scan his body at all.

“I’m really sorry,” I mumbled. “I thought I heard a bang and that you might be hurt. I’ll go.”

I was almost out the door when I heard his voice come low and feral. “You walk out that door now, I’m going to have to chase you, Lamb. And I will catch you.”

“What?”

“Sit your ass on that counter and watch like you want to.”

Maybe it was a dream I could wake up from. I knew I would die of embarrassment later. But it would be much later. Because right now, instead of hightailing it out of there to lick my embarrassed wounds, my body listened.

I bit my lip and did just what he said, keeping my eyes on him while I pushed myself up onto the counter. I’d always done what I was told, so he had that advantage over me right then and there. Dante was the wolf. I was the lamb.

He was the predator; I was the prey. I wanted to submit to him, and he knew it.

Or maybe I knew that Dante and I were going to combust one way or the other, that we could run as fast as we wanted in opposite directions for years and still find ourselves face to face someday.

My breath hitched as he moved between my thighs. It was then my gaze skittered up and down his body again, taking in bumps and bruises with all of his tattoos. I zeroed in on a gash near his collarbone, naked with beads of water sliding down into the blood.

“Jesus, you’re hurt,” I murmured. “You need stitches or glue for that, Dante.”

“I know. Just give me a minute.” He leaned in to smell my neck, and then his forehead dropped to it as he whispered, “After nights at work, I have to get rid of the adrenaline.”

I nodded, not sure what to say but my hands made their own way to his back where I rubbed softly, trying to soothe him.

“You being here … it’s messing with my head. I tortured a man tonight and came back to you asleep in my bed. You. The most innocent thing in my damn world, and I needed a damn release,” he whispered.

It was Dante’s turn to confess his demons, and I’d known they’d been lurking. They had to be. He was too perfect, too charming, too put together to not have something clawing at him to get out.

“It’s okay,” I told him as I massaged him.

He hummed at the pressure from my fingers and stroked his cock right next to my pussy. It was wrong that I rolled my hips on the counter, that one of his hands went into my panties and tested how wet I was for him already.

“It’s not okay,” he said. “You’re struggling with losing our baby and I wasn’t there for you then. Now, I’m still not sure I can be. I’m not who you thought I was. I’m an Armanelli.”

I bit my lip as my pussy responded to his words, the danger in them, the desire I suddenly had to be taken by him, knowing he could cause destruction. My body had always wanted him when he was the hometown Army hero, but I wanted the gritty, forbidden part of him too, the one everyone would shun … because it was the part I’d always needed to connect to. “You’re still you.”

He growled, pushing his cock directly into the spot of my panties that he’d been rubbing. It was soaked with my arousal, and I saw how his dick swelled like it was close to where it needed to be.

“Yeah, I’m me with blood on my body and hands, Lilah. Can you handle that? I know.” He placed his left hand on the mirror behind me so that he could lean in and stare at the gash right in front of me. It was about an inch wide, just large enough to potentially be a stab wound.

“That trapezius muscle is going to hurt for a long time.” The wound was right in it. “Did someone do this? What happened?”

“I did a lot worse to them. And it’s classified, Lamb. Or I’d tell you.” He stared down at me, waiting for me to move, to leave him, to say what he did wasn’t right.

I did none of those things. Instead, I held his shoulder still and tried to ignore the sparks flying around between us. “I’m glad to hear it. I’m guessing you’re not going to a hospital.”

“No.” He shook his head slow.

“I can’t talk you into it?”

One side of his mouth pulled up. “No.”

I sighed. “Then, let me clean you up.”

“You going to take care of me, Lilah?”

“Someone has to,” I grumbled.

He searched my face for something, maybe fear or disgust. None of the things he would find there. I just wanted him, more than I ever had before.

His jaw worked up and down, up and down. “You’re staying?”

I studied him then. This man had blood coming from his body, scars marking him, and pain seeping from his gaze on me. When I scanned over his chest again to make sure there weren’t any other wounds, my eyes landed on one of his tattoos: a small lamb in a pasture.

I gasped and instantly traced it with my fingers. “A lamb, Dante?”

He pointed to a wolf on the side, on his rib, looking on at that lamb eating grass. “And the wolf that watches it.”

I bit my lip. With all the other art, I’d never seen it before. Yet, now that I had, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Is that for us?”

“No one else it would be for.” He shrugged and pulled at a strand of my hair. “Now, I got to get myself cleaned up so you should go—’

“I’m staying.” I nodded once, determination in my gaze. I wasn’t leaving him now, probably not ever if he had me tattooed on his chest the way he did.

“Then, needle’s there, Lamb.” He pointed to the counter next to me before returning his hand to his cock. My pussy clenched at the sight. “Stitch me up while I fuck my hand to you doing it.”

My throat went dry listening to his words come out dirty, low, and raw. It was like he was daring me, trying to push my limits, trying to spook me to see if I’d go.

I gulped and grabbed the needle. “It’ll look bad if you move.”

In response, he bit my neck and I hissed. “Do as you’re told, Lamb. I want to feel you work.”

He pumped his cock slowly. I felt his eyes on me as I wiped alcohol over my hands, tied the knot of the sterile thread, and pushed the edges of the cut together to create a line I would sew together. “This might hurt a little.”

He hummed. “I intend to mix pleasure with pain.”

I bit my lip and focused on his injury. “It should only take six or seven stitches.”

He smiled at me with a sparkle in his eye as he said, “Let’s make it seven, huh?”

I shrugged and tried not to feel the butterflies in my stomach as I dabbed alcohol on the wound, smirking when he hissed. “Try to focus on your pleasure, Dante, and keep still.”

He narrowed his eyes at my cheeky comment, and just as I put the first stitch through, he sucked on my neck and his hand left the mirror to slide under my panties.

“Jesus, Dante.” I hissed, but he was working us both now, stroking his cock and my pussy at the same time. And my hand started to shake with how turned on I was getting.

“Be a good nurse, Lilah. I know you studied hard to be one.”

I whimpered and announced, “One stitch done. Six more to go. You should have done this before the shower. You were losing blood and could have—”

His thumb put pressure on my clit, and instantly I bucked, my hand jerking the thread of the needle, pulling his skin. He hissed and then smiled at me like he enjoyed making me lose my concentration even at the expense of his comfort.

“I’m going to fuck up, Dante.” I glared at him.

He chuckled. “Delilah, you only swear when you’re mad. You told me when I picked you up it was all the time.” He licked my neck.

“Two stitches done. And honestly, that’s what we’re talking about right now?”

He slid another finger into me and scissored them back and forth to the slow rhythm of him pumping his cock. “I like knowing everything about you. You made it seem like I didn’t.”

“I can’t … can we just focus here?”

“Oh, I’m focused, Lamb.”

I pushed another two stitches through, harder than I should have. He enjoyed me writhing underneath him while I tried to do the job I’d gone four years to school for, which was to make a patient comfortable even while they were in pain.

The scruff of his face brushed against my ear as he nipped it and whispered, “I like the pain, Lilah. Make sure you make your mark with those stitches. I want to know they’re yours and will be on me forever.”

“I take pride in my work, Dante,” I told him through clenched teeth, trying my best not to drop the needle and jump on his dick. “I probably won’t even leave a scar.”

His teeth bit down hard on my neck this time, and he slid his fingers out of me fast so that he could slap my clit. I was on my seventh stitch, and I almost jumped off the counter with my gasp. His chest slammed into mine as he wrapped one arm around my waist and devoured my lips. He sucked my tongue into his mouth like he was starved for it, like suddenly I was all he needed to live. “Tie it so I can get to heaven, Lilah. If I don’t fuck you now, I’m going to turn into an animal.”

I fumbled over my knot. It should have been so easy, but I couldn’t focus on anything except his cock near my pussy, my body against his, his mouth skimming over my skin and down my collarbone toward my breasts.

Then he smirked at me. “Done?”

I bit my lip, knowing that this was us crossing the line. “If we do this, Dante—”

“I know. You still want to Eat Pray Love.” He swore under his breath. “I thought about this throughout the day and, damn, I want to, but I can’t give you what you want, Lilah,” he murmured, his forehead on mine.

I nodded into him, like I agreed, like my heart didn’t fracture at his words, like just him shutting down the idea of us shouldn’t hurt. But it did. It smashed hope that had somehow leaked in past the walls I’d built up. And even with the pieces of my hopeful heart shattered on the ground, I pursued the stupid road we were going down.

It was my hand that slid between us and pushed my panties to the side. “I’m still clean and on birth control.”

“Shit, I don’t think it’d matter to me at this point,” he ground out like he was waiting for me to give him the go-ahead.

“Make me see stars in heaven, Dante Armanelli.”

He didn’t even hesitate. His cock was already at my entrance, and he thrust in deep, the cool metal of his piercing rubbing the soft flesh of my walls as his gaze, the color of evergreens deep in a forest, jumped to my neck. He caught my every movement and I hated that he probably knew what they all meant. His hands gripped my hips as I arched, his dick pulsed into just the right spot within me, and I clung to him for every ounce of ecstasy I could get.

“Don’t you get that you’re the heaven, Lamb? You’re the heaven.” He whispered it in my ear over and over as he thrust in and out. The metal on his cock was too much, the feel of him in me after all these years was like finally being full after being empty, finally being found after being lost, finally being healed after being broken.

Our pieces, whatever we thought was ruined, somehow fit together to make something beautiful.

I felt my pussy tightening, and as his hand rolled over my nipple, he murmured, “You better look at the man who makes you come, Lilah.”

Staring into his vivid eyes, I lost myself and screamed his name over and over as his cock pumped hard into me.

Keeping my legs around him, I took every last second of us connected, trying to savor and hold on to the moment, because I knew when he bent to kiss me that it was a goodbye to this part of us. I knew he didn’t think our relationship was going any further.

To him, we’d met the animal urge and now we needed to walk away, be responsible, be what everyone always wanted us to be.

I hated the thought.

His muscles went taut, and I ran my hands over his abs, his biceps, and his back as he thrust one last time, emptying himself into me.

We stared at one another, panting heavily. Then my forehead fell to his shoulder as he slowly withdrew from me.

“Jesus,” I breathed out as I felt each of his piercings against my sensitive flesh. “Those could be dangerously addictive.”

He hummed. “Only with the right guy.” Then he glanced up and winked at me. His cock slid the rest of the way out of me, and he stood there, completely exposed, my arousal glistening on him and his seeping out of me.

I moved to close my legs, but his hand shot out to hold them open there on the counter.

“You right here are a fucking fantasy, Lamb. Don’t move. I get the honor of cleaning my mess off you.”

I stared down at myself as he grabbed a white hand towel from the shelf near the mirror and tested the water before he put the cloth under it. My breasts felt heavy and swollen from what we’d done; his hands had rubbed them so hard that the red marks would be staying for a few hours. My body glistened with a sheen of sweat, and my pussy was bare and open for anyone to see the milky evidence he’d left behind.

He stepped between my legs and looked down too as he licked his lips. “I swear I belong in you forever. Nothing looks this good unless it’s meant to be.”

“I don’t think I could fathom losing someone I care about more than once, Dante,” I whispered because I needed him to know he meant something, that this meant something, and that I was scared to have it mean more than it already did.

He sighed. Then he placed the warm towel on my thighs and slid it up to my core. I shivered at the feeling of being treasured enough that he would clean me up. He always had treasured me, but it wasn’t something I’d ever expected from him.

I kept my stare on him and saw something change in his eyes as he looked at me. “What?”

“You’re broken because of something I can’t fix, Lamb.”

I sighed. “I’m fixing it myself. I’m the only one who can. It might take some therapy and a lot more than a list, but it’s a start, right?”

He nodded, his forehead falling to mine as he threw the now dirtied towel into a basket. “Maybe I’m just as broken with my need for you.”

I stared into his eyes and tried my best not to look desperate. “My body aches for you constantly, Dante.”

“Yet, we’re not compatible.” He glanced over at his wound. “Both of us know we’re not compatible. Damn, I mean, my life isn’t the one you want. I can tell you that right now.”

“Is it the one you want, though?”

“It’s the one I have.” His jaw worked up and down. “I killed a man tonight.”

I gasped at his confession, and he nodded as he let it settle around us.

“I’d do it again if I had to. You know me as your protector. But I’m also the one who can cause your destruction.”

“I don’t believe that.” I shook my head, but he was shutting down inside. He was pulling away. And suddenly I was scared to lose him, to lose anything we had between us.

He put his lips to mine with gentle nips and a soft touch. He was tucking back the Armanelli in him and giving me the Dante I’d always known.

“You need to go to bed,” he grumbled.

I didn’t fight him on it.

I went willingly, trying to sift through all my emotions, trying to make sense of us.

On my way out, he murmured, “Lilah, I’ll still cross that list off with you. If you have any time off in the next couple days, I’ll take you through Old San Juan. You’ll find everything you love there.”

Dante Armanelli, what a man he was, giving me everything I wanted but nothing I needed.