Forbidden Obsession (Book 1)

Chapter 4-Dante.

My eyes close, and roses bloom in the dark, black ink on pale skin. f**k. I realize sleep isn’t coming for me tonight. The clock says 2:14 a.m, but I’m wide awake, still staring at the ceiling, still tasting blood and bourbon behind my teeth. Sleep generally doesn’t come easy in this house, not when the room next door belongs to her. I roll onto my side, one arm propping my head, eyes unfocused on the thin f*****g wall that separates us, and I hear…something.

At first, I think it’s the pipes—an old villa, the usual creaks. Then it comes again.

Thud, thud-thud, a rhythm.

The bedframe nudges the wall, soft and repetitive. A low moan, faint but there. Her.

My body clamps shut, my jaw locks so hard I expect to crack a tooth. Another moan—higher now, drawn out, breathless. There's a slap, a gasp, then a little laugh, and the sound I can’t mistake, the desperate exhale of someone unraveling under another’s hands.

I sit up like I’ve been punched. My palms ball into fists over the sheets, and I stare at the wall as if I could stare the noise into silence. Her bed presses up against the wall, and she is right there, whispering his name, laughing under him, taking what he gives and giving it back tenfold. That little hitch in her breath—the one she makes when she keeps too much wild in her—I'd recognize it in a hurricane. And he gets to hear it, he gets to make it, he gets to make her sound like that, while I’m out here pretending I don’t care. My heart thuds, not fast but heavy. Every beat hammers mine, mine, mine. But she isn’t mine, never was, probably never will be. Does he murmur something filthy and soft that makes her laugh in the dark? Did he go slow, tender, the way someone worships what they can’t own, or fast and rude, the way punishment becomes pleasure? Does she pull his hair now, the same way she was pulling mine as a kid, lips lifting in mischief?

My mind fills with images again that I hate and can’t stop seeing. I shove my hand through my hair, dig into the back of my neck in a desperate attempt to anchor myself. My skin is on fire, a feral thing wakes beneath my ribs—want, and disgust braided together until I don’t know which is stronger.

Worship the lace. She said it like a joke, but this is f*****g torture.

I stand, pace once, twice. My feet drag me toward the wall, but I stop and back away. I grab the pack from the nightstand, thumb the lighter with a snap, and light a cigarette. I draw smoke deep until my eyes water, until the burn steadies me. The moaning softens, slows, and the rhythm eases.

They are finishing. He makes her cum... I know it the way a hunter knows the blood trail. I have dreamt this scene nights I wouldn’t admit to, and now it lives a room over.

My stomach rolls, and my hands shake. I don’t know if I want to go find him and tear his face off, or fall to my knees in the dark and beg her to tell me it wasn’t like I imagined. I hate her for this, I want her because of this. I hate that I want her.

Shit, my head is a f*****g mess. Everything in me wants to punish the man in that room, but everything in me also wants to be the man in that room. God, I despise both of them for what they make me feel.

Tonight will etch itself under my skin longer than any bullet I’ve taken. The sound of her losing herself to someone else will burn behind my ribs, a heat I can’t smother. I crush the cigarette in the ashtray and stand in the dark, listening until the house falls quiet again, but the ache doesn’t stop.