Chapter 24

Savina~

I was back at the window, my mind racing again, and it was enough to make my head hurt. Aurelio had made good on all his promises last night, and I'd lost track of the hour by the time that he'd finally finished with me. Honestly, with as tired and sore as I felt, I should still be asleep, but we'd left the drapes open after he screwed me up against the window, so the sun's morning rays had woken me, snapping me back into reality brutally.

Not surprisingly, when I'd woken up, the sheets on Aurelio's side had already gone cold, letting me know that he'd been up for some time already. However, Aurelio hadn't slept much when we'd dated three years ago, so I hadn't panicked, and it had given me time to wake up, go to the restroom, then think about my next move. Thanks to the burner phone that Aurelio had left for me, I'd also been able to call the office with some lie about feeling under the weather, and since no one enjoyed getting sick, the office manager had insisted that I stay home until I felt better. He had also cancelled my meetings for me.

So, I was back at the window, dressed in Aurelio's button-up from last night, wondering how I was going to get out of here. While lots of women had enough sense not to believe anything that a man said during sex, Aurelio wasn't that kind of man. All night long, he'd made it clear that I was never going back to my previous life, and he'd meant it. However, that wasn't going to work for me.

"Are you hungry?"

I turned at the sound of Aurelio's voice, and my entire body trembled with need as he stood in the doorway, dressed in only a pair of grey sweats. I had no idea how I'd found the will to walk away from him three years ago, and this time wasn't going to be much easier.

"I need to go back, Aurelio."

His entire body froze.

His black eyes also lit with a dangerous fire.

"What?"

"I need to go back," I repeated. "I…I can't stay here."

"Why the fuck not?" he practically growled as he stalked towards me.

"Aurelio, we can't just pick up from where we left off," I told him, willing him to understand. "I have so much that I need to figure out, and-"

"What's there to fucking figure out?" he snapped.

I wrapped my arms around my waist to keep myself from reaching for him. "I have a mess to clean up, and-"

He was in my face before I could finish my sentence. "What the fuck did you just say to me?"

It really was hard to concentrate when he was looming over me like he was, his face hard, his eyes swirling with all kinds of emotions that I wasn't equipped to deal with just yet. In a perfect world, I'd let Aurelio bundle me up in bubble wrap, protecting me from all the evil out there, but we didn't live in a perfect world, and I knew myself well enough to know that there was only one way that I was going to be able to heal from these past two years, if at all.

"Don't stand there and act like you don't understand the concept of revenge, Aurelio," I told him. "Your entire life, you've done nothing but get revenge on people. Whether for yourself, for Nero, the Sartoris, or anyone else that you decided might deserve it."

"I'm not dismissing your need for revenge, Savina," he spat back. "What I'm dismissing is you thinking that it's going to be you that's going to get it." He stepped closer to me, and there was no way to escape the masculine scent of him, something that used to drive me crazy and still did. "You're out of your fucking mind if you think that I'm going to ever let you get within spitting distance of Ashton Oliver ever again, Savina."

"I'm not scared of him," I repeated.

"I don't give a fuck!" Aurelio roared in my face.

I stepped back until I was pressed up against the window again. "If you take away my chance to stare him in the face while I get my revenge, then I'm always going to be his victim, Aurelio," I said, trying to make him understand something that we both knew that he'd never be able to. "You might kill him, but he'll die thinking that he got the best of me. He'll die thinking that I couldn't save myself. You'll get all the credit, and he'll die thinking that he was able to take all those pieces of me with him to his grave." My arms tightened around my waist. "I want him to know the truth when he dies. I want him to know that it was the power of my love for you that had controlled me, not him. Never him."

Aurelio shook his head as he refused to listen to me. "You're not a victim, Savina-"

"He thinks that I am," I said, interrupting him. "Ashton thinks that I'm his victim, and it's important to me that he finally sees that I'm not; that I've never been. Without that video, I would have killed him a long time ago, Aurelio. Or at the very least, I would have pressed charges against him that first time."

His black eyes shined with renewed anger. "Do you have any idea what you're asking of me?"

"Do you have any idea what you're asking of me?" I shot back, though unfair. I could identify with Aurelio's need for vengeance, but he'd never be able to identify with what I was feeling right now, or what I'd be feeling for the rest of my life, to tell the truth.

He stepped back as he ran his fingers through his dark hair, and I knew that I was going to have to betray him again to get my revenge on Ashton. There was no way in hell that a man like Aurelio Provenza was going to let me avenge myself. He wasn't made that way, and I knew that. I knew what this conversation was costing him, and I also knew that if I pushed him into forcing him to let me go, it'd change him forever, and I didn't want that. Aurelio was perfect just the way that he was, and I didn't want to be responsible for damaging him in a way that he wouldn't be able to come back from. After all, I knew that feeling better than most.

When he looked back down at me, he looked like he was going insane with this thing between us. "I can't do it, Savina," he said, always honest. "Ask me for anything else, and it's yours. However, I can't do this. I can't let you-"

"Hey," I said, stepping back towards him, protecting him again because I didn't know how not to. "Let's…let's table this for right now." He looked like he knew what I was doing, but he still didn't stop me from lying to his face anyway. "Honestly, right now, my first priority is clothes."

Aurelio's dark eyes scanned the length of my body, his shirt feeling like silky lingerie all of a sudden, both of us very aware that I had nothing on underneath. Even though I knew that my clothes had been washed and dried already, I liked being wrapped in Aurelio's familiar scent.

"How sore are you?" he asked, letting me manipulate him into putting our fight on hold.

"Very," I admitted.

His hands reached for me, and I went to him willingly. It was the least that I could do, knowing that I was going to deceive him again the first chance that I got. The trick was going to be getting in and out before Aurelio could go after me. No matter what, I hadn't forgotten where I lived, and I knew that Declan O'Brien wasn't the kind of man to care about numbers. He'd let the Sartoris kill them all off before he'd allow someone else to invade his territory.

Aurelio slid his left hand in between my thighs, and my feet stepped apart to give him the access that he needed to perform his own brand of manipulation. When one finger entered my pussy, I winced because it couldn't be helped. I really was sore, and it felt like every muscle in my body had been put to work last night. Granted, that wasn't a complaint, but I was really feeling it today.

With his black eyes glowing down at me, he said, "I can kiss it and make it better, baby."

"What about breakfast?" I asked, my body already betraying me as my arousal began to coat his finger.

"To hell with breakfast," he growled, his voice low and raspy. "I can make a fresh breakfast when we're done."

"Aurelio…" I moaned as a second finger joined the first one.

"Let me eat your pussy, baby," he offered, his other arm already wrapping around me before lifting me like I weighed nothing. "I want the taste of your cunt on my tongue for the rest of the day."

When he placed me on the bed, I didn't bother with any more protests. Without any shame, I let my legs drop open, showing him everything, and when he dropped to his knees at the edge of the bed, my hands automatically slid into his thick hair, my body already arching underneath that first swipe of his tongue.

"Oh, God…" I whimpered, letting Aurelio's tongue take me back to paradise.

"This is what I want for breakfast every morning," he said between those delicious strokes. "In fact, I want this as my appetizer before every fucking meal, baby."

Tears began to sting the back of my eyes because I knew that this was temporary. He was going to hate me once he found me gone again, and there wasn't anything that I could do to stop it from happening. While I loved Aurelio with all my heart and always had, if I didn't face Ashton, then I was going to lose myself completely. I already had to live with the fact that I'd been too stupid to question the video, so letting Ashton go to his grave feeling like a winner was something that I couldn't ever allow.