Isabella's POV
The silence in the car was a living thing, thick with fury and the humiliating echo of his words. We both know you liked it. My skin still burned where his lips had been, a brand I could feel all the way back to the mansion. I stared out the window, seeing nothing, my mind a riot of shame and treacherous, lingering heat.
The moment the Rolls passed through the gates, the fragile civility shattered.
"You had no right," I seethed as we ascended the grand staircase, my voice echoing in the marble foyer. "No right to touch me like that, to use me like some… public billboard for your ego!"
He didn't answer, just strode ahead, his shoulders a tense line under his coat. He threw open the door to our bedroom and finally turned, his eyes black storms in the dim afternoon light filtering through the windows.
"What rights do I need?" His voice was low, vibrating with a fury that matched mine. "You are my wife. That man was a ghost trying to haunt a house he was evicted from. I made the property lines clear."
"I am not your property!"
"You are mine!" The roar tore from him, raw and primal. He advanced, and I backed into the room, the door swinging shut behind us. "Every breath in your lungs is mine! Every beat of the heart that raced when I kissed you is mine! You can lie to yourself, Isabella, but your body doesn't lie. It knows its owner."
The words were a violation, but they were also the truth that had been torturing me since the café. I couldn't escape the truth while trapped in the sealed confines of the car.
"You're a monster," I whispered, the insult weak, defeated.
"Yes," he agreed, stopping just inches from me, his heat enveloping me. "I am. I'm the monster who would level cities to keep you there. I'm the beast who can't think straight when another man breathes your name. And you…" His gaze dropped to my lips, still tender from his assault. "You kissed me back."
It wasn't an accusation. It was a revelation. A challenge.
The air between us, always charged, now crackled with a voltage that stole my breath. All the arguments, the hatred, the fear, the confusing moments of tenderness, the library confessions, the jealous rage—it all coalesced into a single, unbearable point of tension. A magnetic pull that was stronger than my will, stronger than my hate.
I saw the same realization in his eyes. A more elemental fire had consumed the fight. His gaze was no longer angry. I was hungry. Desperate.
He reached for me, but it wasn't the possessive grab from the café. His hand cupped my cheek, his thumb stroking my jawline, a touch so startlingly gentle after the violence of his words that a sob caught in my throat.
"Isabella," he breathed, my name a prayer and a curse.
That was my breaking point.
I didn't think. I acted.
I surged forward, grabbed the lapels of his coat, and crushed my mouth to his.
Dante's POV
Her kiss was an explosion.
It wasn't submission. It was conquest. An act of furious, desperate passion that met my own inferno and fed it. The shock of it—her initiative, the sheer force of her need—robbed me of all thought. The world narrowed to the feel of her lips, fierce and demanding against mine, to the taste of her—coffee, anger, and something sweetly, uniquely her.
I groaned into her mouth, a sound of pure surrender. My arms banded around her, dragging her flush against mine. The sensation of her body aligning with mine overshadowed the sharp bite of pain from the careful stitches in my shoulder. She exuded softness and strength, trembling with unwavering determination. Her fingers speared into my hair, holding me to her as if she feared I'd pull away.
The fire wasn't what the brand claimed in the café. This was a wildfire. This was her choosing, in this moment, to burn with me.
I kissed her back with everything I had—all the obsession, the frustration, and the terrifying, dawning tenderness. I poured it into the slide of my tongue against hers and into the pressure of my hands on her back, mapping the delicate wings of her shoulder blades through her sweater. She responded in kind, her nails scraping my scalp, a muffled sound of raw want vibrating from her throat into my mouth.
It was chaos. It was perfection. It was the only thing that had made sense since the moment I'd seen her in her father's pathetic apartment.
I walked her back until her legs hit the edge of the bed. I followed her down, bracing myself over her, never breaking the kiss. The world was her taste, her scent, and the feel of her beneath me. The world was what I'd craved, what I'd fought for, and what I'd bled for. Not just her body, but this—her passion, her fire—given to me freely in a moment of shared, devastating need.
Isabella's POV
Reality crashed back in a drowning wave.
I was on my back, on the bed I'd refused to sleep in. Dante's weight was a delicious, terrifying anchor. His mouth was doing things to mine that unraveled my sanity. My body was arching into his of its own volition, seeking more.
And it was wrong. It was a betrayal of everything. Of Marco's shattered face. My own vows of hatred. The woman who valued freedom above all else, now willingly shackling herself with desire for her jailer.
I am choosing this. Right now, I am choosing him.
The panic was immediate and violent.
I tore my mouth from his with a ragged gasp. "Stop."
He stilled instantly, his body rigid above me. His breathing was harsh; his eyes, when they met mine, were dilated black pools of stunned, unfulfilled hunger.
"Isabella…" His voice was rough, pleading.
I pushed against his chest, and he rolled off me, sitting on the edge of the bed, running a shaking hand through his hair. I scrambled to the far side, putting the vast expanse of the mattress between us, my breath coming in desperate hitches.
The room was silent except for the sound of our ragged breathing. The air was heavy with the scent of him, of us, of what had just almost happened.
"I can't do this," I whispered, wrapping my arms around myself, feeling exposed, ruined.
He didn't look at me. He stared at the wall, his profile stark. "Yes, you can," he said, his voice low but shockingly certain. He finally turned his head, his gaze capturing mine across the bed. It held no anger, no demand. Only deep, devastating knowledge. "And you want to."
He stood up, the movement fluid but tense. He looked at me for one more long moment—a woman coming apart at the seams, sitting on his bed—then he turned and walked to the door.
He paused with his hand on the knob, his back to me. The space between us felt like a canyon, but it also felt charged with the ghost of our kiss.
"I'll be in my office," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "You have the room."
He left, closing the door softly behind him.
I was alone. The silence was absolute. My lips were swollen. My body hummed with an ache that was entirely new. The taste of him was still on my tongue.
I brought my fingers to my lips, trembling.
He was right.
I had wanted to.
And that changed everything.