Stealing Candi

by Loki Renard

  “Do you, Candice Smith, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?” The priest interrupts the awkwardness with a traditional question.

  “I….” there is a long pause, where I look into Dante’s eyes, with my own narrowed into two slits. “… do?”

  “Aww!” Steffy makes a little cooing sound. I really don’t know what he did to convince them to come. Dante can do anything, it seems. He makes the world shift around him.

  He is asked the same question. He answers in the affirmative, and the marriage is deemed legitimate, sealed with a searing hot kiss which drives breath and sense both from my head.

  “Good girl,” he murmurs.

  “You’re going to regret this,” I whisper back.

  “No. I won’t. And neither will you,” he says, turning me to face my family. I plaster on a smile as my parents and friends come forward and congratulate us. Even Madison seems happy for me, which is utterly bizarre until she clasps my hand super tight and whispers thank you.

  “Thank you for what?”

  “Dante’s given me a scholarship,” she says. “I won’t have to pay for the rest of college. He said it was a wedding gift.”

  So he’s bought my friends off. Just like my family. They say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy compliance and social acceptance and apparently, me.

  “Shall we have this first dance?” He says, pulling me into his arms and turning me about on the spot, my gown swirling about my feet and legs, his hard, hot body against mine.

  We dance on the pier beneath the moon, the strains of string music wafting out and meeting the waves which roll on forever. I find myself held in the arms of a man who has taken everything he wants from me, and who I am sure will not let me go until he has consumed me entirely.

  Dante

  She’s my wife. Before god, her family, her friends, she made that vow to me. She’ll claim she was under duress, but we both know she could have said no, and we both know she didn’t want to say no anymore than she wanted to say yes. Our relationship is one of opposition, defiance, and control. She wanted to be dragged down the aisle. She had to settle for a blindfold and car ride instead.

  I feel her arch against me as I run my hand down the small of her back, the smooth silk of her gown so elegant and delicate, just like her. She leans in to me, rests her head on my shoulder, taking a break from her refusal to admit what has been between us from the beginning.

  “That was fucked up,” she murmurs to me.

  “Yes.”

  “You do what you want. You take what you want.”

  “I want you.”

  Our quiet conversation is lost to the others in the music and the waves, the only private thing between us in this otherwise public display.

  “I love you.”

  The words are gruff because I haven’t spoken them before. Not to her. Not to anyone. I have not lived the kind of life where love happens. I thought love was what you felt when you came inside a woman, but it is different with Candi. It is intense. She consumes my whole fucking world. If only she knew how every single thought I have these days occurs with reference to her. She is my everything.

  Her eyes shoot up to mine. “You love me?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes search mine with suspicion. “You did all this… because you actually love me? That’s not a lie, or a trick or…”

  “There is nobody I’d let do what you’ve done to me,” I tell her, pulling her close. “Baby girl, you lost a shipment of cocaine, you stole a car, you…”

  “It was cocaine in those bottles?”

  “Not in them. Packed between them. Not important.”

  “Kind of important,” she hisses. “I’ve married a drug dealer.”

  “You’ve married worse than that, and you know it.”

  She stares into my eyes, and then gives a little nod. “I guess I do.”

  “I know you hate me,” I tell her. “I don’t mind if you do. Your hate is better than anyone else’s love.”

  She just stares at me. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I don’t know what she’s feeling. I hope she understands I’m real, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought this was just some way to fuck with her. Our relationship started out as an act of revenge. It’s hard to shake that. Might even be impossible.

  “Dante…” she whispers my name, her eyes filling with emotion. “I don’t hate you. I… I think I love you too. You’re just always such a fucking…”

  “Careful,” I warn her. “Don’t make me spank your ass here.”

  “You make it hard to love you,” she says, slowing her roll long enough to avoid trouble. “But I do. Love you. I never met anyone like you, and I don’t think I ever will.”

  Candi

  This is really, truly, absolutely, not how I pictured my wedding day. I never dreamed I’d be abducted and taken to my wedding venue to find my guests all lined up on the side of a dock, wed in the middle of the night to a man I might never truly know. Dante remains a mystery to me, and I think I could be a mystery to him too. We are two players, forever on opposite sides of the board, but at least we are now playing the same game. Marriage.

  God help me.

  I didn’t choose this. I don’t think I’ve chosen anything since I met him. It was like the moment we met, fate took over. Or more to the point, Dante did. He’s had me on the hook since our eyes first met. I put up a fight. I pulled some shit. I did some things that should probably have gotten me killed, but he never gave up. He just got ahead of me again, made sure I learned my lesson.

  I am safe with Dante. And not just because he’s massive, violent, and runs a gang, but because he can run me. I have a secret truth too. That is that I’ve been getting into trouble on and off my whole life. I have some serious impulse control issues. I know it. He knows it. And he doesn’t care. He wants me anyway.

  “You still should have told me we were getting married…” I mumble against his chest.

  “Naw, it was better this way,” he says. “You look cute in a blindfold and a wedding gown. I can’t wait to fuck you.”

  Desire races through me, a dark sensation that doesn’t belong among family. They don’t know how it is between Dante and I. They think that this is some quirky small wedding. I overhear them talking about how he said he wanted to keep it private and intimate. They have no idea how intimate this will become in very short order. I think of all the ways he used me before. I can barely imagine how he will use me now that I am his entirely.

  Soon, limousines come to pick up my parents and friends. They’re going to a hotel to finish the evening. Dante and I are going somewhere else entirely. Somewhere colder, darker, and with no furniture at all.

  He leads me to the car, not as my captor, but as my husband. I get in and he drives. There is silence between the two of us. I could ask where he is taking me, but it doesn’t matter. It will be as it always is with Dante: a surprise.

  He takes me back to the warehouse… maybe not such a surprise after all. We slip in through the big door that stands ever so slightly ajar, a thin sliver of light coming from one bulb lighting the very center of the space. Most couples spend their wedding night in a plush hotel room. Dante has prepared nothing but a length of ominous hemp rope for me.

  I am drawn over to it, my gown sweeping across the ground as I follow in his wake. I am under his spell, feeling a sensual ecstasy that goes to the very core of me. What a strange thing an honest declaration of love is, how it transforms the carnal and perverse into an act of devotion.

  He picks the rope up, holds it in those two huge hands and beckons me toward him. There is nothing but him in this moment; every breath I draw seems to pull an ever decreasing amount of oxygen from the world. I am light headed, enthralled. A man who knows brutality as a way of life loves me. He owns me. He is my husband. I have given myself to him, and now I stand obediently as he swathes me in rope, each coil representing how it was the first time he touched me, the first time I knew that I was
going to be his.

  He leaves the wedding dress on, but lets the hemp of the rope pull tight over the lace and silk, folds of material trapped as he pulls the bindings tighter and tighter, snugging my arms behind me, spreading my legs lewdly, lifting the dress out of the way and tying it back until I am a perverse mockery of a virginal bride, my pale legs spread wide, sex on display for him as he tosses the rope up over the gantry above and uses the leverage to winch me up into position, my feet dangling above the floor, my entire being helpless.

  “I love you,” he growls, the words a mantra of possession as he kisses me, roughly, deeply, completely. I don’t know why I ever thought I should fight him, let alone could fight him. Dante is not a man. He is a force of nature, the proper counterpart to my body and my mind. We match, even though we seem so foreign to one another.

  He pulls my hips close, his hands cupping my exposed ass… he never put any panties on me, just a garter that does not impede his access to my holes. I feel the hardness of his cock grazing against my inner thigh before finding my pussy and sinking inside me in a slow, sensual thrust which makes my head spin.

  “Mine,” he growls in loving triumph. “All mine.”

  His. I am all his. But who is he? He is a mirage. A hard mirage, fucking me mercilessly, keeping me bound as he thrusts in and out of me, bonding our bodies the same way he has bonded our souls. But still I don’t know him, and I have to. This is our wedding night. I must see him, the man inside the hard shell, even if it is only for a moment.

  “Who are you, Dante?”

  My voice must hold all the meaning of the question, because he stops, holds himself inside me, and cups my face between two massive hands. “I’m the man who can’t live without you,” he says softly. “I know you don’t understand, Candi. I’m not really anyone. I’m a ghost. I break men and I make money. The price for living the way I do is that you can’t ever be yourself. I am whoever I need to be that day. But when I’m with you, I’m the one who loves you. I’m the one who can handle you. I’m the one who will do anything for you. Save you from yourself. And maybe, one day, you’ll do the same for me.”

  There are tears on his cheeks, but they're not his. They’re mine. I feel an inexplicable welling of sadness and joy, both of them together and all at once. I see now with utter clarity. He is as lost as I am. He is strong, but he is empty. He fills me, but maybe I can fill him too, the hollow part of him where a soul should be.

  “I need you,” he says, his voice rough with emotion. “I literally cannot live without you. If I lost you, whoever I am now would die. I have to have you, Candi. Without you, there is no me.”

  I see now that this was never about revenge. This was about the curiosity of a man who finally felt something, the same way I finally felt something when I met him. We have been a mutual catalyst for one another. We have been fused together through a chance meeting, a chemical encounter that had to lead to this moment.

  “You don’t have to tie me anymore,” I whisper. “I won’t run again.”

  His grip tightens, and I feel his possession, as well as the fear it has always masked.

  “Promise?” He growls the word at me.

  “I promise,” I say, my hips grinding to meet his as we make love with a new soulful rhythm, his flesh meeting mine, our bodies joined, our hearts one.

  Epilogue

  Dante

  Chase a girl, and she’ll run.

  Tie a girl up, and she’ll struggle.

  Give her a man to save, and she’ll be his.

  Forever.

  I thought I had Candi. I thought the game was over, and that I’d won.

  But really, she was only getting started.

  I’m at one of the warehouses handling inventory while Candi is at school. Things are starting to feel almost normal, which is strange, because things have never been normal.

  One of my guys comes for me, boots slamming up the stairs. “Paddington is here. He’s pissed.”

  “Okay. Send him up.”

  Arthur and I don’t always get on, but we are friendly. As friendly as it is possible to be in this business. He doesn’t step on my toes, and vice versa. We share cross-country trade in a few vital areas. I handle California; he’s the master of NYC. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t fuck with me every now and then, test me to make sure I’ve still got it, like he did the day I had Candi here with me all tied up.

  The day one of us slips is the day the other takes over, but for now we’re both strong enough to hold our territories, so there is peace. Or there was. Seeing him burst into my office, I’m no longer so sure.

  “Hi Arthur, how are you?”

  “Don’t give me that, Dante,” he growls with narrow eyes. “You just fucked me.”

  “I’m pretty sure I didn’t.”

  “When I was here the other day. The day your wife shared your predilection for satin underclothing…”

  “Yes,” I interrupt. “I remember.”

  “Something was taken from me. Something of great value. I thought we had come to an understanding, Dante, but it seems you’re going to take me for everything I’m worth, by means fair or underhanded.”

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Arthur.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “What was taken?”

  “As if I need to tell you.”

  “Arthur, I have a teenage wife who plays fewer games than this. Just tell me what it is I’m supposed to have and I can tell you I don’t have it.”

  He’s angry. Very angry. He fully believes I have whatever it is.

  “Dammit, Dante. Just… give it back!”

  “Give what back?”

  He is turning red with anger. “I will give you twenty four hours to return what is mine. If you do not in that time, I will start executing your men.”

  Now I am angry. I push up from the table and glare at him. “Don’t threaten me, Arthur. And definitely do not threaten my men.”

  “Don’t steal from me.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Well, I had it when I got here, and when I arrived at my next destination, I did not.”

  “What?”

  “My wallet.”

  I lean back and stare at him. “This is all over your wallet? You’d kill for some cash and credit cards?”

  “I’d kill for less than that, and you would too,” he says. “But there was more in there than that. I need it back.”

  “Nobody stole your wallet.”

  “I think they did. I think your wife put on a display of distraction, and I think while we were distracted, you pulled the wallet from my pocket and…”

  “No,” I say, running my hand over my face. “No. Wait. Hold on… Let me make a call.”

  I sit back down, frowning to myself as I take my phone out. I’m starting to think I might know what happened, and if it is what I think it is…

  “Dante?” She answers the phone, sounding surprised. I don’t usually call her when she’s at college in case she’s in a class, but some things take priority.

  “Candi.” I put her on speakerphone so she can be easily heard. Arthur is not fucking around, and though I’m not scared of him, it’s not good to have a furious business partner who wants to murder your men. Gets inconvenient.

  “Hii!” She trills happily. “I’m just between classes. Steffy has dyed her hair green! Can you believe it? I can’t. Oh my god!”

  “Candi. Did you happen to pick up a wallet when you were here the other day? You know, before the wedding?”

  The line goes immediately ominously quiet

  “Uhhhm…. I don’t think so?”

  I look up at Arthur and I shake my head. I’m starting to think there’s actually something wrong with Candi. Her taking my drugs could have been explained as an impulsive teenage thing to do. Her stealing a car and a gun, and money, yeah, it all made sense. But the girl just seems to take anything she gets the opportunity to take.

  “Where is the
wallet,” I growl at her. “I know it wasn’t on you when I got up here. So where did you put it?”

  There’s a little sigh on the other end of the line.

  “If I tell you, will I not be in trouble?”

  “Oh you’re in trouble,” I growl. “You’re in huge trouble. You tell me where it is. Now.”

  A little whimper at the other end of the call only serves to stall matters as far as I’m concerned. I’m already planning what I’m going to do to her. She’s not going to sit for a week.

  “It’s under the couch,” she says. “Between the cushions, kind of.”

  Arthur strides over and looks. Sure enough, the slim leather wallet is where she said it would be. He pulls it free and starts going through it.

  “You stay there,” I tell Candi. “I’m coming to get your ass.”

  “Dante…”

  I don’t hear the rest of the sentence because I terminate the call and start apologizing to Arthur.

  “I’m real sorry, man. I didn’t know she’d done that. She’s…” I pause. “She’s got some bad habits around taking what isn’t hers.”

  He snorts. He’s much happier now the wallet is back in his possession, and whatever he was so wound up losing about seems to still be inside, so the tension has gone. From him, anyway. Now I’m pissed. What the hell was Candi thinking?

  “Get a handle on that wife of yours, or she’ll start something that won’t be fixed so simply,” he says.

  “Yeah. No kidding. She shouldn’t have done that. Not to you.”

  He nods, seeming to appreciate the fact that I do respect him after all.

  “Hey, she’s just a kid, right?” He smirks. “Maybe there’s a way to teach her a lesson.”

  “No fucking maybe about it.”

  Candi

  “Uhm guys, I have to go. Dante is going to come get me.

  “You mean your husband,” Madison smirks at me. “Because you’re a married woman now. So mature!”

  They’ve been teasing me about that ever since the wedding, but I don’t feel mature. I feel like I’m in trouble. I know I’m in trouble. I never thought Dante would find out about the wallet. I’d actually forgotten it myself.