Stolen: Dante’s Vow by Natasha Knight
Dante
When I open my eyes, I’m alone.
I turn to the window. It’s dark outside and I wonder how long I’ve been asleep. I move, wince at the pain at my shoulder. Two bullets will do that to you. Matthaeus has bandaged it up, but I can see the pink smear of blood. Lower on my arm is the healing scar from where the soldier’s bullet grazed me just days ago. On my chest is the entry wound of the one that saved Cristiano’s life. On my side and stomach are various lines and scars where the doctors did their best to stitch me back together after the explosion. It’s not pretty to look at. Worse to touch.
But I did it. I killed Petrov.
One down, two to go. For starters.
I need to get back to the club and end his sons. I don’t even care at this point which of them touched her. They’ll both die.
I lay back down because something else comes back to me then. Last night. The fever. The drugs that should have kept the nightmares at bay but only seemed to enhance their clarity. Like I was living it all again. The explosion. The pain. The thought that my brother was dying. That I was dying.
And then something else.
Her.
Mara beside me in my bed.
Mara beneath me in my bed.
I swallow hard, breathe in a tight breath.
A fever dream. That’s all that was. It’s all it can be. A fucking fever dream.
But even as I think it, I know it’s not. I fucking know. I bring my hand to my nose, and I smell the faint scent of her.
Fuck! What did I do? What the fuck did I do?
I sit up, drag my hands through my hair.
What did I fucking do?
The door creaks. “How do you feel?” It’s Matthaeus.
I turn, draw a deep breath in.
“Dante?”
“Like shit. I feel like shit. Where is she?”
He looks at me for a beat too long before answering. “I put her in another bedroom. She’s sleeping.”
I wonder if he knows. I nod. “Good.” She shouldn’t be in here with me. Not in my room. And certainly not in my bed.
“Do you know who got you out?” he asks.
“No.” I get up, walk toward the bathroom. “I need a shower.”
“Petrov’s dead.”
I look back at him. “You don’t say.”
“Viktor has a bounty on your head.”
“Good for him.” I can’t think straight right now. In fact, all I can think about is her. About what I did. About how I lay my broken, ugly body on top of hers. How small and vulnerable she felt beneath me. All I can imagine is her skin on my skin. My hand inside her panties. Inside her.
And I remember how she looked when she came.
“Fuck.” I scratch the scruff on my chin, walk into the bathroom and attempt to close the door. “Can you put the fucking doorknobs back on the fucking doors?”
“What’s your problem?”
I stop but don’t turn around. “I need a minute.”
“Just fucking say so then.” He walks out of the room. I switch on the shower, strip off my jeans and briefs and take off the eye patch before stepping beneath the warm flow. I decide I’m not going to acknowledge the part of me that wanted one more draw of her scent before I wash my hands.
But all that does is serve to remind me of her face. Her body. Her mouth.
Her moan.
And I find myself gripping my cock hard, jerking myself off in the fucking shower as I try to banish thoughts of her.
I wanted to fuck her. To bury myself inside her. And I can’t think of anything more fucked up than that.
She was kidnapped. Trafficked. Kept as a prisoner and used in ways I’m sure she’d rather forget. What the fuck is wrong with me that all I can think about is how her mouth tasted. How she opened for me. Came for me.
How my cock would feel inside her.
“Shit.”
I stop. Switch the water to ice cold. That takes care of my erection. Too bad I can’t wash out the inside of my head.
After making myself stand under the icy flow for a full minute I turn off the water and grab a towel. I dry my face and wrap it around my hips, then pull the patch on before I have to look at myself without it.
I stand at the mirror for a minute taking in my reflection. I scrub my jaw. I should shave. I’ve got more than a couple days of growth, but I can’t be bothered right now. I go into the bedroom, dry off and get dressed in jeans and a black, long-sleeved T-shirt. I push the sleeves up, look at my scraped hand and arm from when that fucker tossed me out of the SUV.
That thought in mind, I stalk out of the bedroom and into the living room, relieved when I don’t see her. I need to figure that part out, but I can’t think about it right now. Can’t think about her right now because all I want to do is think about her. Imagine her like she was last night. Remember it.
No more than that.
I want to fucking relive it.
“Is there coffee?” I ask when I find Matthaeus watching me. Does he know? There’s not much he misses.
“Same place it always is.”
I grumble a curse, pour myself a mug and sit on the armchair in the living room. “Where are the guys?”
“Sleeping.”
“Which bedroom did you give her?” They’re all taken if the men stayed the night.
“Mine. You think I’d put her in with one of the men?”
“She’s sleeping in your bed?” The thought makes some primal, irrational caveman-like part of me furious.
“Not that they’d touch her, because they’re not animals.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Because I’m the only animal here.
“And yes, she’s in my bed. To sleep. Alone.” He picks up his mug of coffee but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “I’m not stupid you know. Or blind.”
I pause at that and take care not to break eye contact. How much does he know?
“So, she just went to sleep in your bed?” I ask as memory returns. How she looked when I first realized what I was doing. Choking her. And then…after.
“Not quite,” Matthaeus says as if he’d given me time to process. He sips his coffee, all seeing eyes on me.
I raise my eyebrows and sip mine. “What does that mean?”
“She got upset. I made her a cup of tea.”
“You…ah fuck.” I know Matthaeus’s tea. It’s not tea at all.
“I had to. She’s…” he shakes his head as he glances away, searching for the words. “She’s very protective of you, Dante.”
Now it’s me who doesn’t have the words. But then my gaze catches on the card on the table. The one that makes my heart stop momentarily.
“Where did you get that?” I’d found a similar one in David’s things when we were looking for Scarlett. Never did learn much about what it was and forgot about it eventually. But seeing it now brings it right back.
“Your pocket,” Matthaeus says.
I pick it up, turn it over. This one has a phone number in the same gold lettering as the front. I put my mug down, pick up my phone which is on the coffee table—I had left it here last night—and dial.
Matthaeus shakes his head but doesn’t interrupt.
“You get home in one piece?” comes the same voice as the man who walked me out of Red’s last night. The man who probably did save my life.
“No thanks to you. What the fuck is going on?”
“All thanks to me, actually. Even if you did fuck me royally.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m the man who needed Petrov alive.”
“Why?”
“Because you and me, Dante Grigori, we have a common goal. We both want Felix Pérez. And you just killed the man who would draw him out of the hole he’s hiding in.”