Between Loyalty and You

Chapter 8 (Sofia's POV)

I waited until the second full day of the extended stay to play dirty.

Dante had spent those forty-eight hours treating the penthouse like a fortress and me like a problem that required constant containment. Extra men on the floor. Regular check-ins that never lasted longer than three minutes. Orders delivered in the same flat tone he used with his soldiers. He looked at me only when necessary, and even then his eyes stayed carefully blank. The kitchen confrontation might as well have never happened.

So I used the laptop one of the staff had left for me, opened a private browser window, and placed an order under a name that wouldn’t raise flags. Sheer black lace. Thin straps. Pieces designed to look like they would tear under the right hands. Overnight shipping to the penthouse address. I confirmed the delivery window for late afternoon and closed the laptop with a satisfaction that felt almost vicious.

If he wanted to keep pretending the air between us wasn’t combustible, I would give him something impossible to ignore.

The package arrived at 4:17 p.m.

I heard the commotion before I saw it—raised voices in the hallway, the heavy sound of boots, the sharp bark of Dante’s tone cutting through everything else. I stepped out of the bedroom just as two of his men came through the front entrance carrying a plain brown box like it might explode. Dante stood in the center of the living room, gun already in hand, expression carved from ice.

“No one ordered anything,” he was saying. “The floor is locked down. Who cleared this delivery?”

“It came through the private service entrance, boss. Manifest looked clean. We scanned it—”

“Scan it again. Then open it. Slowly.”

I stayed in the mouth of the hallway, pulse climbing, as one of the men set the box on the low table and produced a folding knife. The blade slid under the tape. The flaps opened. Tissue paper. Then black lace.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Dante stared down into the box for a long second. His men stared too, suddenly unsure where to put their eyes. I saw the exact moment understanding replaced the threat assessment on his face. The gun lowered. His jaw flexed so hard I thought the bone might crack.

“Out,” he said.

The men didn’t move fast enough.

“Get the f**k out of my home. Stay on the floor below. If I need you, you’ll know. Go.”

They left without a word, the elevator doors closing on their carefully blank expressions. The second the penthouse was empty, Dante turned the full force of his attention on me.

I walked into the living room like I hadn’t just caused a security scare over lingerie. My bare feet were silent on the marble. I was still wearing one of his shirts—I had gone back to them the moment my father’s bag was stored in the closet—and nothing underneath. The hem hit mid-thigh.

He pointed at the open box.

“Why,” he said, voice low and controlled in the way that always meant the opposite, “do you need this?”

I stopped on the other side of the table. The tissue paper had shifted enough that a sheer black bralette and matching thong were clearly visible, along with a delicate lace bodysuit that left almost nothing to the imagination. The kind of things meant to be taken off with teeth.

“I got bored,” I answered.

“Bored.”

“You’ve spent two days looking through me like I’m furniture. I decided to give you something worth looking at.”

He dragged a hand down his face, then braced both palms on the table, leaning over the box like it personally offended him. The muscles in his forearms stood out. When he spoke again his voice was quieter, rougher.

“You ordered this knowing every package that comes to this floor gets treated like a potential threat. Knowing my men would open it. Knowing I would think someone was sending a message.”

“I ordered it knowing you would open it,” I corrected. “The rest was a bonus.”

His eyes lifted to mine. The gray was almost black.

“Come here.”

I didn’t move fast enough. He came around the table instead, closing the distance in three long strides. One hand wrapped around my upper arm—careful of the still-healing ribs, but firm—and guided me until the backs of my thighs hit the edge of the couch. The open box sat between us like evidence.

“You want to play games with the way I want you,” he said. “You want to push until I stop thinking about dead men and compromised estates and the fact that your father trusted me with the only thing he has left.”

“I want you to stop pretending you don’t already think about it every time you walk past my door.”

His free hand reached into the box and lifted the sheer bralette. The black lace looked fragile between his fingers. He held it up between us, the delicate cups dangling.

“You were going to put this on,” he said. “Walk around my home in something I could see straight through. Make sure I knew exactly what I wasn’t allowed to touch.”

“Yes.”

The word hung there, simple and defiant.

He dropped the bralette back into the box. Then both of his hands settled on my waist, sliding under the hem of the shirt until they met bare skin. No underwear. His palms were hot. He felt the exact second my breath caught.

“You’re still bruised,” he muttered, thumbs tracing the yellow-green edges along my side. “Still healing. And you’re ordering lingerie like this is a seduction instead of a security nightmare.”

“It’s both.”

Something dark and hungry moved behind his eyes. He pushed the shirt higher, slow, until it bunched under my breasts. The cool air of the living room tightened my n*****s. He looked down at what he had uncovered—the soft weight of my breasts, the faint remaining marks, the way my stomach tensed under his hands—and exhaled through his nose like a man losing an argument with himself.

“Put it on.”

The order surprised me.

“What?”

“The lingerie. The one you bought to torture me with. Put it on. Now.”

I held his gaze for a second longer, then reached into the box and took the bralette and thong. He didn’t step back. He watched every movement as I slipped the shirt off my shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Standing naked in the middle of his living room while he remained fully dressed felt more intimate than anything we had done so far. I stepped into the thong first. The lace was a thin, barely-there strip that sat high on my hips. Then the bralette. The sheer cups did nothing to hide the color of my n*****s or the way they had already peaked.

When I finished, I stood in front of him in nothing but black lace that left almost every inch of me visible.

Dante’s hands curled into fists at his sides.

“Turn around.”

I did. Slowly. I felt his eyes on the bare curve of my ass, the thin string of the thong, the way the bralette straps crossed between my shoulder blades. When I faced him again his expression had gone tight with the same anger that had snapped him open the night he put his mouth on me.

“This is what you wanted,” he said. “To stand here and show me exactly how little it would take.”

“Yes.”

He stepped in. One hand slid into my hair, tilting my head back. The other settled low on my bare stomach, fingers spreading just above the waistband of the thong. His mouth hovered over mine, close enough that I felt every word.

“You are going to be the reason I stop being careful,” he said. “And when that happens, Sofia, there will be no more games. No more almost. I will take everything you keep offering, and I will not be gentle about it.”

My pulse was a hard, relentless drum between my legs. “Then stop being careful.”

For a second I thought he would. His hand on my stomach flexed, sliding lower until his fingers brushed the sheer lace over my c**t. The contact was light, deliberate, and enough to make my knees weaken. He felt how wet the thin fabric already was. A low sound left his chest.

Then he pulled both hands away and stepped back like the contact had cost him something vital.

“Go put real clothes on,” he said, voice rough. “The men are still on the floor below. If anyone else sees you like this, I’ll have to answer questions I’m not prepared to answer.”

“Dante—”

“Clothes, Sofia. Now.”

I held his gaze a moment longer, letting him look his fill at the lingerie he had ordered me to put on, before I bent and picked up the discarded shirt. I didn’t put it on. I carried it with me toward the bedroom, the sheer lace still the only thing covering me, and felt the weight of his eyes on my back the entire way.

At the doorway I paused and looked over my shoulder.

He was still standing in the same place, the open box of remaining lace on the table beside him, hands clenched at his sides, the hard outline of his c**k clearly visible against his trousers.

“I’m not putting real clothes on,” I said quietly. “Not tonight.”

I closed the bedroom door before he could answer.

The package had done exactly what I wanted.

It had forced him to look.

And from the way he had touched me—possessive, barely restrained, already halfway gone—I knew the careful distance he had been maintaining was starting to collapse under its own weight.

I just had to keep pushing until it finally broke.