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“Are you done?” he snarls through clenched teeth.

His huge frame towers over me, caging me against the wall. His scent swirls in my nostrils. His heat ignites my skin, and my nerve endings begin to tingle. The pulse in my neck jackhammers against his hand as I stare up into his eyes.

“What?”

His face lowers another inch.

“Are. You. Done.”

“With what?” I croak breathlessly.

“Talking,” he murmurs, his eyes dipping to my lips before sliding back to my eyes. “Are you done fucking talking.”

My pulse begins to gallop.

“Why?” I whisper.

“Because I don’t want to talk anymore, little nightmare,” he says.

Then his mouth slams to mine, dragging a soft, broken whimper from my throat as my entire body melts into his.

22

BELLA

It’s a thousand buried impulses suddenly erupting to the surface. A million sparks landing and igniting the world in a firestorm.

It’s everything that started with an accidental kiss at the altar and smoldered and flickered until it built into the choked, gasped release at The Seven Bells.

Every lingering look.

Every threat.

Every insult.

Every moment that one of us stared at the other a second too long and pretended they hadn't.

It all detonates.

Suddenly, there is no Bella and Damiano anymore.

There’s just this.

His hand squeezing my throat. My fingers clawing at him. His mouth crashing into mine like the whole world just caught fire with us inside it.

I moan into his lips as his tongue slides into my mouth, swirling and dancing with mine as his huge frame crushes me to the wall. This is no gentle exploration. This isn’t us “finding our way” or “discovering each other”.

This is chaos and carnage and gasoline explosions.

Buttons scatter across the blood-streaked floor as I rip his shirt open. I bite his lip, eliciting a pulse-skipping growl from his throat.

His big hands yank down the top of my dress, freeing my tits as he groans into my mouth. I whimper and rock my hips against his as he roughly grabs my breasts, his fingers tugging and twisting my piercings and tearing a ragged sound of sweet agony from my throat.

His blood-slicked hands slide down my body, grabbing my waist and grinding his hips into me. I can feel his thickness pulsing against my stomach through his pants, viciously electrifying my core.

Holy fuck, he feels big.

Really, really big.