Chapter 23CANDI

Chapter 23

CANDI

I don't know why Angelo's fingers on me feel so different than my own, but everything I usually feel when I pleasure myself is magnified by about a hundred.

It's all so different.

Intense.

The whole soulmate idea is feeling less and less like a ridiculous fairytale.

I've never experienced the kind of overwhelming, instant attraction I had for Angelo that first night. And there's the sense of security I feel when he's around, not to mention how I crave his hands on me when even the accidental touch of other men makes my skin crawl.

Cookie, the budding scientist in our family, would probably say there's some kind of biology at play here.

All I know is, right now my body is on fire and it's all down to Angelo.

His thumb presses deeper inside me stretching my sensitive flesh. "You're so slick for me."

I don't know what that keening sound is that comes out of my throat, but it's a new one for me.

"Fuck, yes, amate . Tell me about your pleasure." Angelo abandons the towel he's using to dry me, letting it fall to the floor in a crumpled pile as he slides his other thumb right over my clitoris.

A thousand needles of prickling pleasure radiate out from the nerve-rich nub. My whimper might embarrass me if I wasn't so turned on.

"Feels so good," I moan.

His thumb swirls around my engorged clitoris and I shudder with ecstasy.

"Fuck," he breathes out.

"That's the idea," I try to joke, but my voice breaks on idea as he shifts his hand.

Suddenly, two fingers are inside me and both his thumbs rub up and down on either side of my pleasure nub. "You're going to come for me again."

The bliss arcing along my nerve endings says he's right. Past experience says it's unlikely.

No matter how turned on I am by thoughts of this man – and he's the only one to inspire sexual desire after I come – I can never bring myself to a second climax. I've given up in cranky frustration more than a few times since my inner sex goddess started fixating on Angelo.

"I've watched you try to come again and give up," he says, his lips against my neck.

That should freak me out, not turn me on more. "Stalker."

"Your stalker."

"Yeah, if you start stalking someone else, I'll take one of your knives and cut off your dick," I promise him. "I might have to drug you first, but I'll do it."

Rational? No.

True? Yes.

He growls and grabs the base of his erection. "Fuck, you're going to make me come."

"We're both messed up." But I can't work up any more self-disgust than I can abhorrence of him.

"We are what we are." He kisses me under my ear, sending a shiver through me. "And what we are is perfect for each other."

"I'm not a sociopath." Life might have twisted my outlook a little, but I definitely have a conscience.

I feel guilty every time mom goes to bed in pain from working too long on her computer so that I can work four nights a week and still take classes at the community college.

I worry about the other dancers who take clients into the backrooms because I don't trust men and I care about my friends.

But none of that makes my threat any less true.

"You're possessive." He gently bites my earlobe. "I like it."

Shivering from the feel of his teeth on my ear, I sway forward. Angelo shifts one arm around me, holding me against him as his fingers continue to send shards of bliss through my ladybits.

I wait with my anticipation in overdrive to see what comes next. I'm sure I should be doing something. Anything, but my limbs feel separated from my body as Angelo pushes pleasure into me with knowing fingers.

All I can do is watch and feel as his head moves down my chest. I expect him to take one of my nipples into his mouth. I've watched porn. That's the next step, right?

Only it's not.

When his mouth connects to my skin next, it's right between my breasts. His kiss, soft and reverent, sends butterfly wings fluttering inside my tummy. More friends come to join the first wave when he presses his lips against the top slope of each of my boobs, kissing them.

He does it over and over, open mouthed, the tip of his tongue flicking out to lick me until every inch of the girls are covered in his DNA.

"I knew you would taste sweet, my delicious Candi." He nips the underside of my breast.

A moan of pure want snakes out of me. For once, the joke about my name doesn't irritate me. I want to be sweet for him, but that admission is staying inside my head, where it belongs.

I'm not some sappy romantic.

What's left of rational thought takes flight when Angelo's lips latch around one of my nipples. At the same time his arm shifts and his middle finger slides between my butt cheeks.

My gasp turns into another wordless sound of need when his fingertip plays across my sphincter as his other fingers push deep inside my vagina.

The finger rubbing over that other hole is unexpected, but what really shocks me, is how good it feels. Who knew there were so many nerve endings there? Pleasure flutters along every one of them to my core.

He sucks, barely biting down on my nipple and presses just the tip of his finger past my tight ring of muscle as he thrusts in and out of my slick vagina while his thumb rubs over my clitoris.

My head tips back in a wordless scream as the second climax I doubted I could have contracts every muscle in my body in ecstasy.

Angelo draws out the pleasure, stimulating my nipple with his tongue, not his teeth and gentling the movements of his fingers. It's just enough to keep the ecstasy shimmering through in a series of aftershocks that would knock down my apartment building if they happened in Queens.

When my body goes limp, he catches me before I can fall and lifts me into his arms.

Intensifying my need to have Angelo inside me.

He carries me into the bedroom, rips the bedding back and lays me down on the bed. His handsome face is hard with lust, but his eyes look at me with wonder.

Like I'm the most amazing thing he's ever seen.

"Angelo… " I sigh, wanting to give him the same pleasure he gave me, but too spent to lift myself off the bed.

"What do you need, amate ?"

"I want…" I sigh again, luxuriating in the fluffy pillow my head rests on and the feel of the soft sheets under me.

"Tell me."

"You. I want you inside me, but I don't know if I'll come again. I'm not even sure I can do much more than lie here." I'm a limp noodle.

His smile is wicked. "Relax, piccola gatta . I'll do all the work."

"Good." It's probably for the best anyway.

My experience with all this is nil.

"You trust me," he breathes, like it's some kind of miracle.

I wouldn't be here if I didn't. "You already knew that."

"I knew that here." He raps the side of his head with his knuckles. "But now it's settled here." He rubs his chest in a circle with his fist.

Yeah, we're both having all sorts of emotional revelations tonight. But he's a lot more willing to tell me about them than I am willing to return the favor.

Talking is overrated anyway.

I expect him to come down over me and do the deed, but of course he does something else. Picking up my leg at the ankle, he brings my foot to his mouth and starts doing what he promised to in the shower.

Even knowing we just stepped out of the shower, the fact he's licking the instep of my foot blows my mind.

It tickles, but it also sends waves of sluggish desire straight to my center. His mouth moves up the inside of my leg, kissing and nibbling as he goes. Stopping just above my knee, he sucks on my skin there, the sensation sharp and intense.

Ripples of delight radiate out from his mouth on my skin.

I don't know how long he does his vampire imitation, but when he lifts his head, he makes a noise of deep satisfaction. "I want to mark you everywhere. "

Maneuvering up onto my elbows, I look down my body to see a red mark on my leg. "You gave me a hickey?"

"I prefer the term love bite."

People have preferred terms for stuff like this? Or maybe it's just Angelo? "Okay."

Regardless of what he wants to call it, I have an unexpected reaction to seeing his mark on my skin.

A sense of rightness washes over me. I sort of love knowing that tomorrow there will be something I can look at on my body that is proof of what's happening right now.

This connection between us is primal and my reaction to him marking my skin with love bites is just as primitive.

A long way from done, Angelo licks a path up the inside of my thigh. His hot tongue and soft bites sends arrows of ecstasy directly to the bullseye that is my still pulsing clitoris.

Pushing my thighs wide, he fixes his hot gaze on my most intimate flesh.

"You have such a pretty pussy. Puffy lips I fantasize about when you dance in your G-string, now on display just for me."

"Only for you." There's a reason the privacy panels on my G-strings are lined and made with fabrics that don't indent at my slit.

Other dancers wear thinner, clingy G-strings for the opposite effect.

"Only for me." He brushes one fingertip along my outer labia, barely touching me. "I want to take pictures so I can have a painting done."

A roll of laughter takes us both by surprise, but I shake my head. "No way are you going to take a picture." I pause and consider that. "Well, maybe a picture would be okay, but I am not letting you have some kind of portrait done of my ladybits."

"We'll see."

"Yes, we will." How is he going to be okay with something like that being done? "What are you going to do, kill the artist after it's finished?"

Angelo's level of possessiveness is definitely on the unhinged end of the spectrum.

He cocks his head, like he's thinking about it.

"No, just no."

"I'll do what I did for the portrait of your eyes and the mosaic of your silhouette in the shower. I hired artists in Eastern Europe with the understanding they would destroy all source material upon completion of the artwork."

I gulp. "Why Eastern Europe?"

"It should be far enough away."

"For what?"

"For me to feel the need to kill them." He inhales deeply. "Your juices smell so good."

"I'm glad…not that I smell good down there, though that's good too…" I ramble when I never ramble. Only with this man. "I mean I'm glad you wanted to figure out a way not to kill people you hired to do you a service."

"It would be a waste of talent and when I'm ready to commission more likenesses of you, I would have to find someone just as good."

Self-interest for the win. "Now you want to have someone paint a picture of me down there? Where would you hang it?"

"My gun room. No one else has access," he says immediately, indicating this isn't the first time he's had this thought. "I'll have the artist who did your eyes. She caught your essence perfectly and is working on a series of your smiles now."

He looks up at the ceiling and my gaze follows his. He wasn't joking when he said my eyes were above the bed. There's a tryptic of paintings, all about two feet high by six feet wide.

Each painting shows a segment of my face up to my eyebrows and down to the top of the bridge of my nose.

My eyes.

In the top painting, it's clear I'm smiling. In the middle one my eyes are thoughtful. And in the bottom one I look angry. Those are the three emotions he chose to look at when he went to bed at night?

"Why one of me angry?"

"Because you're beautiful when you're pissed off."

"Says every romance hero ever."

"You read romance?" he asks.

"It's something to read." And sometimes getting lost in a fictional world is the only way to deal with the real one. "Mrs. Kowalski down the hall gives my mom a grocery bag of them once a month when she's done reading them."

Why are we talking about my reading habits right now? Oh, yeah. Because of the tryptic. The resemblance is unbelievable. It's so close it's like looking in a mirror.

The giant images of my eyes looking back at me are a little disconcerting, even more so the thought that Angelo lays in bed at night and looks up at me looking down on him. No wonder he felt like we were dating for the last year.

He's been totally obsessed with me. What happens when that obsession burns itself out?

What if I catch feelings and my sociopath is actually a psychopath and unable to return them despite his belief that his obsession is love.

"What does that look mean?" His finger slides inside of me.

"You don't expect me to answer when you're doing that." He can't.

"I could stop." He withdraws his finger. "Tell me."

"Go back to fingering me and I will," I bargain.

His grin tells me I fell right into his neatly laid trap.

"Do you really need to know my every thought?" I ask.

"Yes."

"You take the obsession and stalking thing to whole new level, don't you?"

His fingers push back inside me and he presses upward against something that makes me see stars. The good kind.

"Wha…what if I don't want to tell you?" I ask.

"Then don't tell me."

Is it really that easy? "Will you stop touching me if I don't?"

"Even I don't have that much self-control."

Something loosens that had gone tight inside me. "Good, because I don't want to be manipulated with sex."

"I will never do anything you don't want me to."

"So, you just assumed I wanted you to stalk me?" I ask with disbelief.

"You never said you didn't." His fingers slowly piston in and out of me, sparking what should be an impossible renewal of sexual need.

How? How does he make my body sing for him like this?

"If I asked you to stop watching me, would you?" I gasp out, turned on but needing an answer to this question.

He doesn't answer at first while a war rages in the depths of his gray eyes.

Finally, he nods with a jerky movement of his head.

Considering his level of obsession, his answer should surprise me, but it doesn't. His promise never to hurt me means protecting me even from himself and I believe that promise.

"What happens when you develop a new obsession?" Not wanting to see his expression when I ask that, I let my torso fall back to the bed only to be confronted once again with my own eyes staring back at me.

He'll have to get a new bathroom ceiling for one.

"I am thirty-three years old, amate . You are the only person I have ever been obsessed by. I need you when I don't need anyone. Watching you sleep quiets the buzz in my head."

I don't ask what that buzzing is about. I'm not sure I want to know.

"No more heavy thoughts," I decide. "I'm about to have penetrative sex for the first time, I say we focus on that."

Because only time will prove the longevity of his obsession. The only question is: do I jump in with both feet, or try to stay safely on the shore?