BILLIONAIRE's ADDICTION

CHAPTER FIVE

Dante's Pov

As I ravaged Lily Rivera's soft, pliant mouth with the fury that had been steadily kindling within me, part of me felt like I was losing my tenuous grasp on control.

The predator I usually kept leashed was rapidly fraying its bonds, driven into a ravenous frenzy by her audacious displays of defiance and the napalm of her scathing words dousing me.

Heat, raw and molten, surged through my veins as our bodies strained together with escalating desperation.

My tongue plundered the searing recesses of her mouth while her nails raked against the back of my neck, torn between pulling me closer or ripping me away.

When her hips instinctively ground themselves against me with a strangled whimper, the beast within let loose a feral growl.

My hands seized her lithe form, lifting and depositing her onto the edge of my desk in one rough sweep.

Lily gasped as our heated liplock broke momentarily.

Her heavy-lidded green eyes, dark with naked desire, bored into me with an intriguing blend of shock, need, and just a hint of trepidation.

As well she should feel - she was utterly at my mercy now.

"C-Castellano...we can't...this is-"

"Wrong?" I cut off her breathless protests with a low, guttural chuckle. "Inappropriate? Unethical?" Each question was punctuated by me shredding away another button of her blouse to expose more of that alluring olive skin inch by tantalizing inch.

"Oh, it's all of those delicious transgressions and so much more," I purred, allowing my molten gaze to leisurely roam the newly exposed curves of her torso.

Her chest heaved with quickening breaths as my wandering hands found the zipper at the back of her pencil skirt.

With one rasping tug, the restricting fabric parted to reveal her shapely legs, clad only in sheer stockings and a scrap of lacy undergarments.

"You have no idea what you're doing to me," I growled, dragging Lily's trim form flush against my body as potent desire clawed through me.

Though she registered little more than a whimper at my ravenous attempts, I could see the flames of desire in her emerald gaze.

Good. I wanted her to feel the full breadth of this carnality she had awakened deep in my core.

To know the feral beast she had been prudent enough to fear lurked restrained just beneath the surface for so long.

Now...it had finally been unchained.

"That was one hell of a play you tried to run back there," I purred against the fever of her skin while my mouth trailed liquid heat along the line of her jaw. "Thinking your self-righteous grandstanding on ethics and criminal misdeeds would erode my authority? Quite the gambit, Ms. Rivera."

My name rolling from Lily's lips in a pleading whimper was like a match to viscerally-stoked kindling before I seized her mouth again in a consuming clash of teeth and tongues.

When we finally parted, twin shudders of shaken desire coursing through us, I held her fiery gaze with a chilling promise glinting in my eyes.

"I don't take well to having my kingdom threatened. Or my power questioned in such a brazen manner. Especially not by some naive child playing whistle-blower."

I punctuated my vow by sinking my teeth into the swell of her breast until she cried out a strangled keen of both pain and wanton pleasure against my lips.

My free hand delved purposefully beneath the final scrap of fabric barring her femininity, eliciting a ragged whimper as my dextrous digits found their mark.

I toyed with her mercilessly, exerting the same steely control over her shattering ecstasies as I did over every domain of my existence.

"You breathe only because I allow it," I reminded her through gritted teeth while expertly wringing escalating tremors of rapture from her body. "Hope and security are mere fictions I can extinguish with but a thought, if I feel so roused."

Lily's head thrashed wildly against the desktop thrall to my ministrations, her every gasp and plea for release only fueling the towering inferno of my dominance over her.

I drank in the sight of her beautiful torment, so delicious in its writhing surrender to me.

When she finally shattered with a hoarse, keening cry muffled against my heaving chest, I knew she understood the true depth of my reach.

That what I commanded, I could just as arbitrarily revoke on a whim.

With my savagery temporarily sated for the moment, I permitted her to sag limply against me, boneless and awash in the afterglow as my fingers cruelly stroked the sheen of sweat along her brow.

My thoughts began drifting then to the more...substantial potential threats I would need to redirect my energies toward containing.

Starting with a certain bitter, unhinged former mentor hell-bent on torching the empire I'd so painstakingly built.

"That's it, give yourself over to me completely," I husked in a tone that allowed no refusal as Lily's lidded eyes strained back into focus. "Because I'll not suffer even the faintest vestige of resistance from this point on. When I command your obedience, your submission, you will accede without hesitation."

Slowly, reluctantly, she inclined her head in mute acknowledgment of my dominion.

I knew the battle was far from over between us, however.

The wellspring of her willful defiance still flickered in those captivating green pools, awaiting any slim opportunity to reignite.

But I also knew how to subdue even the most tenacious insubordinates.

With each unraveling of their facades and iron-clad convictions, the more pliant and exquisitely controlled they became.

Lily Rivera was no different.

If anything, she had stoked the flames of the undying predator that dwelled within me to obsessive new heights.

Already I anticipated the thrill of her imminent capitulation, followed by the exhilarating hunt for my next conquest to subjugate.

Leaning down until my lips caressed the fragile shell of her ear, I murmured with grave finality.

"This is only the beginning, Ms. Rivera. You'll come to find my hunger is...most insatiable."

I felt her tremble at the implications reverberating through the grave timbre of my promise.

Yes, she understood that to oppose me further would only invite more of my brutally possessive subjugation, no matter how she fought.

But the truest revelation this bright, fiery woman had yet to grasp.

Once you tempt the viper into striking, it will never cease chasing its prey until one of them lay broken and consumed.

And in my case? That merciless serpent lived within me, coiled and perpetually awaiting its next hapless victim.