CHAPTER 16

Lia’s POV

I woke up gasping.

My eyes flew open and I stared up at the ceiling, my chest heaving, my whole body trembling. For a few disoriented seconds I didn't know where I was. The dream clung to me like a second skin, still so vivid and real that I could almost feel those hands on my body.

Then reality came rushing back.

I was in my room. In the villa. On the island. Alone in bed with the afternoon sun streaming through the windows.

And I was so incredibly, impossibly turned on that it hurt.

My body was on fire. My skin felt too tight, too hot, hypersensitive to even the brush of the sheets against me. My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. And between my legs—

Oh god.

I was soaked. Completely drenched. I could feel it without even checking, the wetness seeping through my underwear, making my thighs stick together.

I pressed my hands over my face and let out a shaky breath that was almost a whimper.

What the hell was wrong with me?

I'd just had a vivid, explicit, absolutely filthy dream about my boyfriend's father and brother. About both of them. At the same time. Touching me. Claiming me. Taking me apart with their hands while I lay there helpless and desperate and begging for more.

The shame hit me like a physical blow.

This wasn't okay. This was so far from okay that I didn't even have words for it. I was in a relationship. A bad relationship, yes—a relationship that was actively destroying me piece by piece—but still. I was with Rob. And I was lying here in his family's house having sexual fantasies about his father and his brother.

Maybe Rob was right.

Maybe I really was a slut.

The word echoed in my head, sharp and cutting and familiar. He'd been saying it for so long now—in different ways, in different contexts—that part of me had started to believe it. Started to think maybe there really was something fundamentally wrong with me. Something broken. Something dirty.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push the thoughts away. Trying to make my body calm down, make the aching need between my legs go away through sheer force of will.

It didn't work.

Images from the dream kept flashing behind my eyelids. Victor's hand on my throat. Dante's fingers inside me. The way they'd looked at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered. Like they wanted to consume me whole.

My body throbbed with want.

My hand moved before I fully registered what I was doing.

Down over my stomach. Lower. Slipping beneath the waistband of my underwear.

I touched myself and gasped at how wet I was. My fingers came away slick and I felt my face burn with embarrassment even though I was completely alone.

I should stop. I should get up and take a cold shower and forget any of this happened.

But I didn't.

My fingers found my clit and rubbed in slow, tentative circles. Pleasure sparked through me immediately, sharp and intense, and I bit my lip to keep from making a sound.

I rubbed faster. Let the images from the dream fill my head again even though I knew I shouldn't. Victor's blue eyes dark with hunger. Dante's deep voice saying my name. Those hands on my body, rough and possessive and completely confident.

My other hand came up to cover my mouth as a moan threatened to escape.

I pushed one finger inside myself, then two, trying to recreate what I'd felt in the dream. That fullness. That pressure. That sense of being completely claimed.

My hips lifted off the bed, grinding against my own hand. My breathing came faster, harsher, little gasping sounds I couldn't quite control even with my hand pressed over my mouth.

The pleasure built quickly, spiraling up and up and up. My thighs started to shake. My whole body tensed, pulling tight like a bowstring.

In my head, I heard Victor's voice again: Let go.

And I did.

The orgasm crashed through me hard and sudden, making my back arch up off the bed. White light exploded behind my closed eyelids. I bit down on my palm to muffle the cry that tried to tear out of my throat as wave after wave of intense pleasure rolled through my body.

It seemed to go on forever, each pulse leaving me more wrung out than the last, until finally it began to fade. The tension drained out of my muscles all at once, leaving me boneless and trembling and gasping for air.

I lay there in the aftermath, my hand still between my legs, my underwear ruined, my whole body warm and loose and satisfied in a way it hadn't been in longer than I could remember.

Then the shame came flooding back.

Worse this time. So much worse.

I'd just masturbated while thinking about my boyfriend's father and brother. I'd gotten off to fantasies of them touching me. I'd come harder from imagining their hands on me than I had in an entire year of actual sex with Rob.

What did that make me?

I pulled my hand away and wiped it on the sheets, my face burning with humiliation. Then I rolled onto my side and curled into myself, pulling my knees up to my chest.

The satisfied warmth in my body was already fading, replaced by a cold, sick feeling in my stomach.

I was a terrible person. Rob was right about me. I was exactly what he said I was.

Tears pricked at my eyes but I refused to let them fall. I'd cried enough over the past two days. I was done crying.

Instead I just lay there, staring at nothing, feeling the bruises on my arm throb with dull pain and hating myself a little bit more with every passing second.

As if to make matters worse—as if the universe had decided I hadn't been humiliated enough for one day—there was a knock at my door.