Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

DANTE

A lyssa groans and tries to roll away from me in bed, but I hold her firmly to me. She moans softly, snuggling into my chest, and then gasps.

When she sits up and turns around, I plaster a grin on my face.

“Good morning, tesoro.”

Clutching her heart, she levels her breathing. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Mm,” I stretch and watch her eyes drink in the blanket that slides down my torso as I do so, “did I?”

“How did you get in here?” she asks, promptly rolling her eyes as she realizes this is a family property. “Never mind.”

“Did you not ask me to return and tell me you missed me? Or was that your alter ego?”

Smiling, she lies back beside me, looking up at the ceiling, dancing with the rising sun beyond the townhouse. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

I grab the blanket and act as if I’m going to leave. “I can go…”

Her hand stops me, landing on my arm like a weight. Like an anvil dropped on me from above.

“Stay. Well, as long as you can. I know you have to work today, as do I.” She closes her eyes against the idea, and I ponder an idea, mulling it over in my head before blurting it out.

Things with her feel great, but I don’t want to ruin anything.

She’s as delicate as a flower that hasn’t gotten enough water, and the slightest wind in the wrong direction could make her petals fall off.

“We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,” I tell her, cuddling up to her side and nipping her ear.

She preens, her body pressing into mine as if she’s the cat, and I’m the rays of afternoon sun beaming in the window for her to lounge in. “We don’t?” she breathes.

I break from her ear. “We don’t. We can take the day for ourselves. Let them handle everything.”

“A day for ourselves,” she echoes raspily as I skim the shell of her ear with my tongue.

“We deserve it.”

“Mm,” she agrees, turning her face into mine. Her lips hover over mine before I gently press forward and initiate a kiss.

She returns it tenfold, her moan giving me more of a buzz than the first sip of coffee in the morning.

“Well,” I mutter, pulling back from the lips I could kiss all day long, “you’d best go get dressed.”

“What? Why? I thought…”

I cover her lips with my finger, revelling in the softness of them against my calloused skin as I draw her bottom lip down with my fingertip.

“I told you we could take the day. I didn’t say we’d be in bed all day long. Go on, get dressed. I’m taking you out.”

I watch as worry fills her eyes, anxiety crawling back through her body that—a moment ago—was lax and putty in my hands.

Without thinking, I reach up and wrap my tattooed hand around her throat, gripping tightly and tugging her to me.

“Don’t do that. I’m taking you to breakfast, not the church to walk down the aisle,” I growl against her lips.

She moans, arching into my hand. “Yes, sir,” she whispers, trying her damnedest to lean forward to kiss me.

“Ah, ah, reward when you’ve listened. Get dressed.”

She crawls out of the bed a little wobbly once I release her. “What should I wear?” she asks.

Sneaky little minx wants to know where I’m taking her.

“Something appropriate enough to be seen in,” I reply smugly, raising my arm behind my head and relishing how her eyes flare, and her tongue licks across her lips.

She turns and saunters off toward the bathroom, and I check my phone messages and emails before doing the same, taking the bag of clothes I brought with me.

We move through the motions of showering and dressing, and I’m making coffee once Alyssa finally emerges, looking as if taking the morning off has revived her completely.

My mind is still stuck on how she reacted when I grabbed her throat and told her to drop the fear. No part of me takes issue with having to do so over and over until she knows she’s mine.

“What?” she asks, looking down at her dark blue sun dress. “Did I get makeup on my dress?”

I slide a mug of coffee toward her. “No, tesoro. You look perfect.”

She smiles, a slight tinge of red filling her cheeks.

Part of me hopes this continues, this version of her where she’s actively trying to step out of her comfort zone and let things between us progress. The other part of me knows we’ve already had regression so many times that I know to expect it.

We both stand on opposite sides of the bar that separates the kitchen from the dining room, drinking our coffee in comfortable silence and just existing.

I don’t know if she realizes how rare it is to have something as simple and comfortable as we do, but telling her will send her into a tailspin of emotions she’s not yet ready to deal with. So, I’ll let her remain unaware until it’s time for her to realize these kinds of things for herself.

“Ready?” I ask her when she sets her mug into the sink behind me.

She nods, placing her hands on either side of mine. “You?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She takes my mug and places it in the sink. It’s the simplest gesture, but it means something more to me.

I grab the keys to the Maserati, my little menace’s favorite, and grab the door for her.

Once we’re on the elevator, I press the button to lead us to the parking garage below the building and then step back towards the back wall where Alyssa stands stoically.

When I drop my hand, she slips hers into mine, and I nearly look down at where I can feel the connection, like the tingles of a limb that’s fallen asleep. I don’t, however. I keep my eyes front as I rub my thumb over the top of her hand absently, leading her out when the elevator opens.

She’s trying, and goddamnit, it means more than anything in the world.

I open the door for her to exit onto Hudson St., helping her up onto the walk as I shut the door behind her.

She looks up at Maman before us. “Oh, how pretty,” she says, a smile lighting her voice.

“If you think the outside is great, wait until you see the inside,” I tell her, grabbing her hand in mine now that we’ve broken through that barrier.

It seems silly to see hand holding as a barrier when I know what her throat constricting around my cock piercings feels like, but here we are.

We walk in the open door to the cafe, and Alyssa gasps, eyes looking up at the ceiling and wandering down the veiny branches that wind down the walls.

The entire cafe is a forest getaway. Somewhere, you can imagine you’re no longer in the city but in a quiet, secret spot that no one knows about.

My plan today is to sweep her off her feet, bringing her here being only one-third of that plan. I’m hoping she’ll let her guard down enough to let me learn more about her.

To look at her, I think she’s relaxed and in a space to do just that.

We’re seated, and I order mimosas and various brunch foods. Alyssa seems completely fine with my doing so.

“So,” I say, sipping my mimosa for strength, “Tell me about you.”

She chokes on her drink, spitting some back into the glass. “What?”

I wave my hand through the air. “Tell me about you.”

“Dante, you’ve had your…”

I cut my eyes at her. “I know you carnally, yes. It doesn’t mean I know you otherwise.”

She swallows. “Is this a date?”

I lock my eyes on hers. “If I say yes?”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “I’d say this was the best date I’ve ever been on.”

I can’t help but sit a bit straighter in my chair and put my chin up in the air with pride.

“Alright, well, I’m twenty-nine. I work for your boss’s wife, or should I say your boss’s boss?”

I snicker, picking up a piece of bacon off a platter the waitress brings us. “Either work, really.”

She smiles brightly, and I don’t feel any fear or hesitation.

“I’ve always bounced from job to job, never staying anywhere long. I’m a tumbleweed in a way, I guess,” she says.

“Do you have any passions? Any hobbies?” I ask her.

“Not hobbies, per se. I used to love going to pottery studios, though—the ones where you can make and paint things. I don’t know why. Back home, I’d go once a month by myself. When I’m creating, my mind is quiet. It’s nice to have that silence now and again.”

I swallow, my mind conjuring images of her nude, with clay covering her body, one of her hands holding a bowl as the other has a paintbrush.

“What about you?” she asks, and I straighten, sputtering for an answer because I hadn’t been paying attention, nor am I ready to answer.

“Oh, right, you play and compose. Maybe I ought to get another question, hm? We did get to know one another when we played twenty-one questions. At least, I thought we did.”

She absently picks at a chocolate croissant, not paying attention to my inward spiraling.

“We did. It’s just that our game got cut short,” I tell her.

“Mm, it did. You were chasing bad guys, as I recall. Do you do that often, by the way? Run toward the danger?”

The implication of her words is dangling between us, real and heavy. She wants to know that if she commits and lets go of all her fears with me, she’s going to end up hurt in a way neither one of us can help.

I can’t give her reassurances, either.

I sigh. “This life is dangerous, tesoro. I won’t pretend that it isn’t. Yes, I often run into the danger. It’s who I am.”

She nods, her eyes flicking down to hide some emotion from me.

“Do you want kids?” she asks, and my heart nearly stops. After what we've gone through with our little scare, I wouldn’t think the question was something she’d want to ask.

“I do. With the right person,” I add.

I have to keep some mystery about my person, after all.

She grins. “Fair. I think I would, too. I don’t know that I’d be good at it, but if I did, I want to break the cycle.”

“The cycle?”

Part of me knows she means her parents’ divorce, but I want to be sure.

“I want a love that’s lasting with someone who will put in the effort to make it so. I don’t want to have to sit my children down, as I was done, to tell them our family is breaking apart. I don’t want them to have to go between houses or, worse, never see one of their parents again,” she says, and sadness fills each chamber in my heart for the little girl still hurting inside her.

“I want the same. Even though there’s nothing wrong with divorce, Alyssa. Sometimes, for two people to be happy and grow, they need to be separate. They need to grow in different directions. I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault, either.”

I think she’s going to argue back, but she doesn’t. She only nods.

Time flies as we continue to talk and get to know one another. By the time we leave, Alyssa has a nice brunch buzz, and we’re holding hands like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

When we leave, I open the car door for her, and she hesitates before getting inside. The kiss she gives me before she does so is warm and has my head spinning more than the mimosas, and I take my time walking around the car, smiling the biggest I have in years as I head to my door.

“May I?” she asks, reaching for the radio once I’ve pulled away from the curb.

I nod. “Of course, just no Taylor Swift,” I tell her, a stern look in my eyes as I look toward her.

“Yes, sir,” she answers, and I note the snark in her answering tone as I plan to bend her over my knee once we’re back at the townhouse.

It’s only a seven-mile trip from the cafe to home, but it’ll take thirty minutes in this traffic.

Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood blasts through the and I try to change it, but Alyssa swats my hand away as she sings the words loud as shit along with the radio.

“I said no!” I shout, laughing as she sings louder.

We go through an intersection, the light green. We’re still swatting one another back and forth as everything changes. A loud crash fills my ears before they begin to ring.

The world is spinning so fast that I can’t understand which way it’s going. Glass floats by my face, and it looks like it’s suspended in time. It’s like Alyssa and I have become astronauts, and gravity no longer applies to us.

My arm goes in front of Alyssa’s chest as she flies forward from the force of the car’s spinning, and the left side of my face feels as though it’s been crushed somehow.

It happens so fast that I can’t understand what’s going on as the car flips and skids to a halt, and my vision goes dark.

Alyssa is screaming my name, and Taylor is singing through the sound system as tires screech away from us and cars honk in the background. My hearing becomes muddied by blood rushing in.

The song does seem like the perfect choice. I wonder if fate had a hand in the choosing.

“Dante!” Alyssa shouts as I slip away into darkness. “Dante, I swear to God! Don’t you leave me! Run into the danger. Fight, baby!”

Fate is a cruel bitch.