“Okay?” he asks.
I nod.
“We need to wash your hands.”
I nod again and he helps me stand.
“We should move,” Matthaeus says. “I don’t know how they found us, but we need to go.”
“A minute,” Dante says, walking me toward the bedroom door.
“Wait!” I call out.
He stops and I slip my hand from his and go back to pick up the bloody Swiss army knife.
I feel Dante’s gaze on me when I wipe it on Miguel’s pant leg. When I straighten, I look down at his dead body once more. And I kick it. Kick him hard in the shins, then his thighs and finally between his legs. I kick and I kick and I kick. And it feels good. It feels so fucking good to hurt him.
I don’t realize I’m screaming until powerful arms wrap around me. I’m lifted off the floor, legs kicking at air as Dante carries me out of the room and into his bedroom, to the bathroom.
My heart pounds when he sets me down in front of the sink and stands behind me. His arms locked around me. When I squirm, he only tightens his hold on me.
“Shh.”
He’s so close we’re touching. His big, hard body at my back.
“Be still.”
I can’t though.
He leans his mouth to my ear. “Be still,” he commands. “I have you.”
I nod. Quiet as I take a deep, shuddering breath.
He runs the tap and checks the temperature before taking the knife from my hand and letting it fall into the sink. He picks up the bar of soap and washes my hands. I can only watch as he does it. His hands calloused and rough, mine small and soft, disappearing inside his. He scrubs away the blood and I watch the pink water run over the knife and down the drain.
I look up at our reflection. At us together. I’m surprised to find him not looking at our hands, at the task he’s performing, but watching me. The line between his eyebrows deepens and I see the gray hairs at his temples. He’s too young for gray, isn’t he?
He has blood on his face, too. I wonder if he’s seen it. I don’t think so because he’s not looking at anything but me. His gaze is so intensely locked on mine that it makes goosebumps rise along my flesh.
He blinks, finally looks down and he switches the water off. He sets his hands on the counter on either side of me, arms like steel bars. Not that I’d run. There’s nowhere I want to be but here. He switches his gaze back to mine and I feel it in the pit of my stomach. That fluttering, like butterflies inside me. He still hasn’t cleaned the blood off his face.
I turn inside the cage of his arms and reach up to wipe away the splatters of red with my fingers. His skin is rough with several days’ worth of stubble. There’s gray here, too, sprinkled through the dark. I like it. I look at his lips and remember them on mine. Remember how he tasted. And when he swallows, I watch his Adam’s apple bob. I think again how beautiful he is. My broken avenging angel. The man who has saved me twice. The one slaying my dragons.
“Dante,” comes Matthaeus’s voice from inside breaking the spell. “We need to move.”
“One minute,” Dante calls out, not moving, not shifting his gaze.
I want him to kiss me again. I want to feel his lips on mine. Taste his taste. Smell his smell. I put my hands against his chest, move over solid muscle as I take them over his arms and wrap them around his shoulders. I feel his strength. And even when he winces as I touch what I realize is the bullet wound, he doesn’t move. Doesn’t pull back.
I climb up on tip toe and I touch my lips to his.
All I can think is how right this is. How this is exactly where I want to stay. Right here. In this moment in time. And when I move my lips, opening them to him, I feel his open too. Feel his body shudder as he draws me into him, kissing me.
My body melts against his and I feel myself relax. Then, in the next instant, everything changes. His lips tighten and he stiffens. His hands close around my arms, drawing me away.
“No,” he says. Just that one word and it makes my world go dark again.
I look up at him, confused. I try to kiss him again, but he stops me.
“No, Mara.”
Heat flushes my neck and face. I drop my gaze to the floor, to his booted feet, to my bare ones.
He keeps hold of one arm as his other hand creeps up my spine to cup the base of my skull. His fingers weave into my hair and tug, making me look up at him.
“I shouldn’t have done what I did. I shouldn’t have touched you.”
I can’t look at him. I’m embarrassed and hurt. How could I think he’d want me? After all that’s happened, all they’ve done to me. It’s stupid, really. Who would want me after that?
I feel my lip quiver and I bite back the pain, swallow down the hurt.
“It won’t happen again,” he continues. “I wouldn’t be any better than the rest of them if I allowed it. Do you understand?”
I turn misty eyes up to study him, see how the green of his eye is darker as if with the weight of his words, the feeling inside them. But I don’t care about that. I don’t want to hear this. I harden myself. Lock away any emotion.
“No,” I tell him. And I grab my Swiss army knife, turn, and walk away, out of the room, needing to be away from him. Needing to figure out these strange new feelings. To manage my disappointment at his rejection.
20
Dante
Fuck.
This is my fault.
I watch her walk away, wondering what the fuck it is I think I’m doing. Bringing her in here, standing so close, looking at her the way I did after what happened that night.
No wonder she’s confused.
I adjust the crotch of my pants. Because I meant what I said. I can’t let what happened the other night happen again. There’s a very delicate line that divides me from the monsters. I’ve been toeing it. I need to step back because my cock got the wrong idea having her pressed up against me like that and I almost obliterated that line.
But now isn’t the time to analyze this. Because inside, one of my men is lying on the kitchen floor with his head half blown off. They ambushed us. And I wonder what Jericho St. James had to do with it. Because it’s fucking convenient that I was with him when it happened. Convenient what his last words to me were.
Mother. Fucker.
I walk out of the bathroom, grab the duffel bag from under the table of clothes, stash a pile inside. In the kitchen I find Matthaeus laying a blanket over the body. I walk toward him, crouch down to help. I lay one hand on the dead man’s chest. Micah. A kid. I close my eyes for a moment, apologizing, saying a little prayer even though I don’t believe in any god. Such a cruel world could not have a god.
“I’ve already called to get someone in here to pick him up, but we should go.”
I nod. “Where are the others?”
“Outside.”
“Mara?” I find I have to look away when I ask him.
“Getting changed. The clothes you’d ordered had come. Someone had carried them in.”
“How did they find us?” I ask as we straighten, and a bedroom door opens. We both turn to find Mara walking out wearing a pair of dark skinny jeans, a black sweater, and a pair of combat boots. Suddenly she looks older. Not so much like the lost girl I know she is, but like a woman. I wonder if she realizes her appeal and think maybe I should have bought her baggy, oversized clothes. But I chose these on purpose. Wanting her to feel safe, secure, in command of herself. I wanted her to feel like a woman. Not a lost little girl. Not under anyone’s control. Even if there is a deviant part of me that wants her under mine.
She stops mid-step when she sees me, and I swallow hard. It takes a moment for my mind to shift from remembering how her ass felt pressed against my hardening cock to remembering what I said. Because I meant it. If I touch her, she will yield to me. And then I’d be just like the rest of the monsters who have ruled her life for fifteen years.
And so, I straighten, narrow my gaze, and cut off any emotion, any warmt
h. I tell myself it’s for her own good.
Her face morphs from neutral to confused, to hurt and then finally, goes cold. She takes a step toward us, gaze locked on mine, and I see how the sapphire of her eyes has turned to ice.
Good. It’s what I want. What we both need.
I clear my throat, shift my gaze to the large shopping bag in her hand. More clothes.
“Ready?” Matthaeus asks.
She nods to him.
Matthaeus goes first and I wait for her to pass me. I don’t speak a word when she does. And I don’t let my gaze fall to her ass for more than a split second as I follow her out.
Matthaeus opens the trunk of his waiting SUV and puts his bag in. I reach out to take Mara’s bag but when our hands touch, in that brief instant, there’s a spark of energy, an electrical current passing between us. Before I can remind myself that electricity kills, she pulls her hand away, clutching it like it’s been burnt. I get it.
I load her shopping bag into the trunk and watch as she climbs into the backseat and Matthaeus closes the door. Once she’s inside he turns to me.
“You being careful?”
“What do you think?”
“She’s vulnerable.”
I face him squarely. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
“You’re closer to this than I am but you can’t let your emotions get the better of you.”
I grit my jaw, force myself to breathe in deeply, force myself to the matter at hand. I glance at her, seeing only her profile through the tinted glass. “How did they find her?”
“I don’t know,” he says, eyes on the two men smoking outside the warehouse. “It’s not our men. I’d bet my life on that.”
“Agree.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We get her back home where she’s safe. Out of reach. We figure out what the fuck was said at that meeting that St. James needs kept quiet. And we find Felix Pérez and take him out. Apart from the first part, the rest can happen in any order.”
He snorts.
“Let’s find a hotel near the airport. I’ll call Charlie to arrange a flight.”
I take my phone out and dial Charlie. Matthaeus climbs into the driver’s seat. I take the passenger side and we ride in weighted silence.
21
Dante
We spend the next few hours in a hotel room. Mara doesn’t say a word to either of us. She just sits in the small nook at the window of the fourth-floor room looking out at traffic on the highway below.
Later, four hours into the flight to Naples, she’s asleep and I’m still watching her. It’s all I can do. I think about her life. How she has lived. How did she spend her days? Was she locked in a room? Waiting for them? Locked in a cellar?
Christ. I run a hand through my hair. The thought makes me sick.
I remember how she looked when she was kicking that asshole on the floor. Remember how she sounded, a mad, screaming, wild woman so different from the quiet, sleeping girl in the chair across from mine.
She’s messed up. I knew she would be going in, but I didn’t feel the extent of it in my gut like I do now.
She moves, muttering something as she turns over, her forehead creasing. Something slips from her hand and hits the carpet with a soft thud.
I look down. See the orange handle of Matthaeus’s Swiss army knife. One I’d given him a few years ago. The blade is open. I stand, bend to pick it up. She must have been holding it under her blanket. Waiting for the next attack.
Fuck.
I close it, take the seat beside hers.
The instant I do, her eyes fly open and for a moment, they’re panicked. Like she doesn’t recognize me. Is it always going to be like this?
“It’s me,” I say. “You’re safe.”
She takes a moment to adjust her features, to put on the mask of cool detachment. She shifts in her seat and the blanket falls away. I catch it before it slides all the way off, adjust it over her.
“It’s not safe to keep this open,” I tell her, holding my hand out to her, palm up, the now closed knife there for her to take.
She reaches out, snatches it, careful not to touch me. “Did I kill him?”
“No. That was me.”
She nods, shifts her gaze away. “But Felix will come for me.”
“He’s not going to get to you. I’m going to make sure of that.”
She looks down at the bracelet on her wrist. “Samuel knew Felix too.”
“Samuel?”
“My friend.”
That’s right. “What do you mean he knew Felix?”
“He used to work for him before he worked for Petrov. I had known him since I was little.”
“The guard who gave you the bracelet? You knew him?” What. The. Fuck.
She nods.
“Petrov hired him knowing he worked for Felix?” I ask. That makes no sense.
“Petrov didn’t know. I never said anything.”
“When was this that he came to work for Petrov?”
“A year ago, I guess. He shouldn’t have died.” She trails off and I can almost hear what she’s thinking. Hear the guilt she feels over his death.
“It wasn’t your fault. Petrov killed him. Period. That wasn’t on you. You know that, right?”
She shrugs a shoulder. But I’ve got another question.
“Can I see that bracelet?”
“Why?”
“Just let me see it.”
She holds her wrist out to me. I take hold of it, feeling her soft, warm skin. Remembering how she felt the other night. I clear my throat, banish the memory and remind myself how small she is. How delicate. I turn her wrist over, the underside seeming even more vulnerable, and unclasp the bracelet.
“I want it back,” she says.
“You can have it back. Just one minute.” I study the thing, look at the gold square plate. See the tiny screws holding the two sides together. “Matthaeus,” I say. He’s got his eyes closed but I know he’s not sleeping. He gets up and comes over to us. “These screws, let’s get them off.”
“Why?” Mara asks.
Matthaeus takes the bracelet and sits back down in his seat. He sets the bracelet on the table in front of him and unzips his computer bag. From inside it he retrieves a small case of screw drivers. He chooses one, tries it then replaces that one and takes another.
“He’s breaking it,” Mara says. She pushes the blanket off to stand but I put my hand on her knee.
“Stay.”
She looks down at my hand then up at me. I hold steady, not letting her go. Because thing is, I don’t want to let her go. I don’t want to pull my hand away. No matter what I said, no matter the right thing, I know what I want.
She sits back and turns to watch Matthaeus as he takes the screws out. They’re tiny. He sets them on the table.
“But he’s going to ruin it. It’s all I have left,” she says.
“Mother fucker,” Matthaeus says and holds up the small chip. He brings it to me and drops it in the palm of my hand.
It’s quiet for a moment before Mara speaks. “What is that?”
“It’s how Felix found you.” He must have been tracking her for some time. Why would he do that? “And when I got you out, when I took Petrov out of the picture, he made his move.”
I look at her, see the tears in her eyes. See how the skin around them reddens when she’s about to cry. See how the dimple on her chin deepens when she bites her lip to stop the tremble. And all I want to do is wrap her in my arms. Tell her that none of those men matter. Because I’m going to send them all to hell.
Tell her I’ll take care of her. I’ll never betray her.
But then her face hardens, and she’s shut herself off again. And it takes all I have not to pull her to me. Not to hold her tight.
“He lied to me too.”
I don’t say anything because it’s true. He did.
“And he paid for it,” she mutters. I think it’s more to herself than me. She c
loses her eyes, turns her head away. “I’m glad he paid.”
22
Mara
I watch the sun rise out of the airplane window. It’s so pretty up here. I wish I could stay up in the air forever. I wish I could just keep flying, chasing the sunrise for the rest of my life up here in the air where no one can touch me. No one can hurt me. Betray me.
Below the sea sparkles crystal blue. We’re descending. I see the mainland. We’re too far to see the island but I know it’s there. I know that’s where he’s taking me. My heart beats a little faster, my hands growing clammy.
The captain comes over the intercom telling us we’ll be landing in fifteen minutes. To make sure our seatbelts are buckled. I doubt not having a seatbelt buckled would make much difference if the plane took a nose-dive into the water, but I do it anyway.
Fifteen minutes.
I close my eyes, my hand automatically coming to the wrist where the bracelet used to be. The gift Samuel had given me. He’d told me he’d had it since he was little. Said his mother had given it to him when he was just a child. He gave it to me after a particularly bad night, so I’d know I wasn’t alone. I remember how I’d felt. How his words had made me cry, made me sadder than I already was.
But I know now his words were lies. His friendship just another betrayal. He’d been working for Felix all along. Felix had been tracking me that last year. Why? And when Petrov found out, he’d made it seem like it was my fault they’d sawn off Samuel’s hand. It was my fault that he’d been killed. But that, too, was another manipulation. Another game. Another way to fuck with me.
It should be easier thinking about Samuel’s death now. Knowing he wasn’t my friend at all. But it isn’t. It somehow hurts more.
A tear slips down my cheek, but I make sure I’m facing out the window, so no one notices. I wipe it away quickly. Steel myself as I finally see the small dot that is the island. I take a deep breath in and grip the arms of the seat, closing my eyes for the rest of the flight. I’m going to need to get better at this. At shutting myself off.
Stolen: Dante’s Vow Page 13