Stolen: Dante’s Vow by Natasha Knight
Mara
Dante doesn’t come home until after four in the morning. I’ve drifted off to a restless sleep when the crunching of gravel beneath tires wakes me. I push the blanket off, get up and go to the window. By the time I get there he’s inside.
I wait for him but when the clock just keeps ticking and twenty minutes have passed, I pull a robe on over my naked body and walk quietly down the stairs.
I can hear a couple of soldiers in the kitchen, but the study is quiet. The strip of light underneath the door and the sound of music tell me he’s probably inside, so I knock. I don’t get an answer and I wonder if he can hear me, so I push the door open and peek my head in. Dante is sitting in near darkness behind the large oak desk. The only light comes from the dim lamp on his desk. It casts a shadow over half of his face as he lifts it from whatever it is he’s looking at. When he sees it’s me he doesn’t say anything. Just sits back and watches me slip inside and close the door behind me.
I walk around the desk. He picks up the glass of whiskey and swallows what’s left inside. I notice the bottle is nearly empty and can smell the whiskey on him.
“You drink too much,” I tell him as I undo the belt of my robe.
He pushes his seat back a little and takes me in, the robe split open. I watch as his dark gaze slides over me, pausing at the slit of my sex before returning to my eyes.
“You should be in bed,” he says, licking his lips as he leans his head back and watches me kneel between his spread legs. When I reach for his belt, he doesn’t stop me. I undo the buckle, then the button and zipper of his jeans.
“Mara,” he groans but it’s half-hearted.
I take him out and he is already getting hard. I stroke the smooth skin of his cock and bring my tongue to the very tip, lick the salty drop there.
He sucks in a breath and closes his hand over the back of my head. “Fuck.”
I dip my head down to take him into my mouth, hearing the rumble of a moan inside his chest. I wonder if he needs this as much as I do. This closeness. Wonder if he needs me as much as I need him.
“Stop,” he says half-heartedly, fingers caressing the back of my head, doing the opposite of what he’s saying.
I turn my gaze up. Slide my mouth over him.
He watches me, something sad in his eyes as he closes his fingers in my hair, his cock growing thicker, harder. I taste him, the first salty drops as he guides himself deeper.
I curl my hands around his thighs and relax my throat as he takes control. He’s slow at first, watching me as he guides me over him. But as the urgency grows, his fingers pull at my hair and his breathing changes. The muscles of his thighs tense beneath my hands as he begins to fuck my face. He’s slow at first until he can’t anymore. He rises to stand, bracing one hand on the edge of the desk as he leans over me, gripping a handful of my hair, keeping me still as he watches me take him. Watches me catch my breath every time he draws out. Watches me swallow his cock as he pushes deeper and deeper, thrusting faster. But all the while I can see he’s fighting with himself. This urgency, this desire to take. To fuck. To own. Fighting this thing. Fighting us. When I choke at the next thrust, he curses as he pulls out, abruptly releasing me.
“You should go,” he says, his voice gravelly, thick, not sounding like him. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I can do it,” I say, thinking he stopped because he thought he was hurting me. When I try to take him into my mouth again, he grips my hair again, pulling my head back. He looks down at me with that tortured look on his face. “Let me try again. Please,” I say.
His eyebrows furrow. It’s as though in his head he’s in another world. He drags me up to my feet. I stumble, reaching out for his chest to steady myself and there’s that look again, that broken thing deep inside him surfacing. A thing that can’t be fixed.
“Fuck, Mara,” he says, and he pulls me to him, kissing me hard. “Fuck.”
Before I can ask what it is, what’s going on, he shifts his grip to lift me up. He sets me on the edge of the desk and opens the robe to look at me. I set my feet on the armrests of the chair behind him and his gaze drops between my spread legs.
“I’m yours,” I say. I am. I’m only his. Only ever been his. I don’t understand why he’s resisting the pull between us.
He drops his head, shakes it, then moments later kisses the space between my breasts before licking one nipple, taking it between his teeth and sucking.
I cry out, wrapping my hands around the back of his head, feeling every sensation like a live electrical wire starting at my center and spreading out inside me. I want to come. I need to come.
“Please,” I gasp when he draws back, my nipple hardening in the sudden cool of the room with his warm mouth gone. He gives me one glance before taking the other nipple, my breath catching as he brings his mouth to mine and presses his cock against me.
“One more time,” he says, cupping the back of my head with one hand as he lays me down gently on the desk. “Just once more.”
Once more? I don’t understand but before I can ask, before I can say anything, he’s inside me, stretching me, gaze locked on me. His thrusts are barely controlled, and I wrap my legs around him, arching my back, wanting to get closer, closer, needing to.
“Christ. Fuck.” He takes hold of one thigh and bends my knee back, shifting my position a little. I moan because, like this, I feel him deeper inside me.
“I’m going to come,” I manage, my eyes closing as he leans down to kiss me, both hands on my face now as if he’s imploring me to open my eyes, to look at him. And when I do, what I see breaks my heart. Even as my body bucks beneath his, and ecstasy washes over me, my heart splinters as it does. As I hear his words, understand their meaning. “I love you!” I cry out, desperate.
He leans his head against mine, stopping for a moment, sweat slick between us. He holds me tight, mutters a curse, and resumes his thrusts more powerful than before as he groans his release, emptying inside me.
And I think this is it. I know it is. The last of him. The last of us.
I close my eyes and wrap my arms tight around him, feeling the agony after the ecstasy. I cling to him as he shudders with his release, his weight heavy on me, his breathing hard. He’s spent. Like he’s given me all he can give me.
He straightens and I feel cold as I sit up. He tucks himself into his jeans, buttons them. Doesn’t bother with the zipper or his belt. His gaze is heavy as I sit up and he closes the robe around me, tying it.
“Dante?” I want to ask what’s happened, but I’m afraid. I don’t want to hear. To know. I’ll hold on to this illusion as long as I can. Because for all that’s happened to me, I’m not sure I’ve felt my heart break quite like this.
“You should go to your bed,” he says, voice taut, tone sharp. He walks away with the bottle of whiskey in one hand.
I don’t miss the wording. “Come with me.”
He doesn’t answer. Just sits down on the couch where the light barely reaches him, leaving his face in shadows. But even then, I know he’s watching me.
“You drink too much,” I tell him again.
I slip off the desk, feel the warm wetness between my thighs. Something drops off the desk and I turn to pick it up. That’s when I see what he was looking at. It’s a folder full of photographs. I bend to pick up the few that have slipped to the floor, sitting on his chair to look at them. I spread them out over the desk. The photos are torn and they’re all of one man. I know him. And I don’t like him. It’s his uncle.
“What were you doing?” It’s as though he’s taken every photo his uncle was posed in and torn him out. I don’t know where the other halves are.
“Nothing.”
“Not nothing. These are all ripped.”
He drinks straight from the bottle.
“Dante?”
“You need to go, Mara.”
But I am not ready to hear that. Because I know what he means. “What are these? What were you doing?” I ask instead.
It takes him a long time to say something. So long that I’m not sure he will speak at all. Then he finally does. “He’s not my uncle.”
“What do you mean?”
He shakes his head. “You’re not safe with me. You’ll never be safe with me. You know that, right?”
I close my eyes, shake my head. He can’t do this. “Tell me about your uncle.”
He takes a deep breath in and when he exhales it’s a sigh. “You want to know why all this happened? Why my family was massacred? Why you were kidnapped and…” he trails off, looks away shaking his head. “Why what happened to you happened?”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
“Because you know, when you said a while back that the Dante you knew wouldn’t have let what happened to you happen—”
“I was just—”
“No, you were right. You were actually more right than you could have known. But I was never that Dante. The hero. Because what happened to you, and to everyone else, happened because of me.” He swallows three big gulps. “It all happened because I was born. And it’s not finished. It will never be finished.”
I stay where I am, glance at the torn-up photos then back to him.
“He’s not my uncle. Well, wasn’t. He’s not alive anymore. I took care of that.”
“What?”
“He raped my mother. Got her pregnant.” He raises his arms into the air and in this strange half-light, a joker-like grin warps his features making him look strange and not like himself, not my Dante. “And ta-da! I was born. A bastard. A rape-child. A hate-child.”
“I don’t believe…your mother loved you.”
“She did. The hate…it was for David. You see, my mother rejected him but kept his secret from my father. Or at least the man I grew up thinking was my father. If she hadn’t, they’d probably still be alive. I may be dead, but they’d be alive. You’d have had a normal life. Grown up on the island, gone to school. Probably be at some university maybe, with Lizzy, dating boys your age and just living like a twenty-year-old should live. Not like this. Not in hiding from criminals. Not having lived as a sex slave to those bastards. Used and sold. And certainly not fucking someone like me. Because I am one of those monsters, Mara. It’s in my blood. You knew it at the start. You know it in your heart. And as long as you’re with me, you’re not safe.”
I can’t quite absorb his words, his meaning. I get up, go to him. I don’t sit beside him but kneel on the floor at his feet and lay my head on his lap.
“What happened tonight?” I ask. “What changed?”
He closes his hand over the back of my head, and I hear him swallow two glugs of whiskey.
“You’re not a monster,” I tell him when he doesn’t answer.
“Yes, I am.”
“And I’m only safe with you.”
“No, sweetheart,” he says, the expression on his face as he looks down at me, as he pets my hair, so sad and broken. “I wish it were true but no, you’re not.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Even if your uncle…your…” I trail off.
“Father. The word you’re searching for is father.”
“No,” I say, straightening, setting my hands on his thighs, and looking up at him now. “You’re Lizzie’s brother. Your father was her father, the man who raised you and loved you. Your uncle was the monster. Not you.”
He snorts, brings that bottle back to his mouth, so I reach for it.
“It’s enough, you’ve had too much already.”
“Let go, sweetheart. I’ll say when it’s enough.” He gets to his feet, easily shrugs me off and drinks as if to make a point.
I stand and when I try to take the bottle from him, he grabs my wrist.
“I said let go. Go up to your bed—”
“My bed? Not yours? Not ours?”
“There is no ours.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s better for you. Safer.”
I shake my head, try to tug free so I can get the bottle. “I’m not going without you.”
“Yes, you are. And this thing between us, it stops. Now.”
“No.” I try to grab the bottle with my other hand, but he tugs me roughly away and forces me to sit on the couch.
“St. James is right,” he says.
St. James. The man from the photograph. “Right about what?”
“You don’t want to leave, suit yourself. I’ll leave. But this is finished. I should never have started it in the first place. That’s on me.” He drinks the last of the whiskey, sets the bottle down and starts to walk away. “But I’ll be damned if I steal one more thing from you.”
“I want this. You can’t steal what I freely give!” I’m on my feet and grabbing his wrist to stop him. He spins, has me by both arms and slams me against the wall. My head spins and it takes my vision a moment to steady. His grip is harder than it’s ever been before. I forget how strong he is. But then he lets go and I wish he’d hold onto me. I don’t even care if he bruises me. I can’t be without him. Doesn’t he know that?
“See. This is what I mean. Exactly what I mean,” he says. “I can only ever hurt you.”
He’s drunk. That’s what this is. It’s the alcohol talking. “It’s not finished. We’re not finished. I’m yours, Dante. And you’re mine. It’s our destiny. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know anything?”
“Destiny.” He shakes his head, laughs outright.
I slam my fists into his chest. “Yes, destiny!”
He grabs my wrists. “You’re young. And somehow have held on to your innocence. I won’t steal that from you either.” He releases my wrists and takes a step back. “Haven’t you had enough of monsters to last you a lifetime?”
“You’re not a monster. Not my monster. It’s what you said. You said—”
“That was before. This, what’s happened between us, it’s wrong. I can’t be with you. I should never have started it. You should be with someone safe. Someone like Noah. Not a cold-blooded killer.”
“You’re not that!” My voice breaks and my eyes mist.
“I am, sweetheart. I am exactly that.” He cups my face with one hand, fingers warm. His expression softens. “And you know it.”
I lean into his touch. “I don’t want anyone else,” I say.
He shakes his head and walks toward the door. I find myself slumping, leaning my weight against the wall.
“I want you,” I say so quietly I’m not sure he hears.
“Tomorrow, you and Noah are gone. Charlie’s arranging a safe place for you until we can get everything worked out.”
“What?” I’m not sure I’m hearing right, not over the shattering of my heart.
“You’ll have a new identity. Start a new life. Then you’ll be free, Mara. Truly free to have a life.”
“Dante—”
“A life without me.”