Dane

by AC Arthur

  Their tongues moved slowly together in a dance that was familiar and yet, this time, different. He wrapped his arms around her waist to hold her close. Her palms moved over the back of his head sending tendrils of hunger down his spine. The kiss turned hungrier in seconds and before Dane could think better of it, he was lowering Zera to the soft grass they’d been standing on.

  He lay on top of her, deepening the kiss.

  One of her hands came to rest on his cheek as she pulled back slightly and nipped at his lips.

  “I never stopped thinking about you, Dane. Not in all this time. You’ve always been in my mind,” she whispered.

  Dane moaned as his pulse quickened. He needed to feel her. His hands went lower and he hiked her dress up around her waist. Dane rubbed his fingers up and down her skin, loving the feel of it along her thighs and on the curve of her ass.

  “I thought of you,” he admitted. “I tried not to, but I couldn’t stop. I needed you and I just didn’t know it.”

  Zera lifted one leg, wrapping it around his waist while Dane kissed along the line of her jaw and down her neck.

  “Dane,” she whispered.

  “Zera,” he replied on a ragged moan.

  In the next instant he was undoing his pants and when she whispered his name again, Dane ripped the thin wisp of silk away from her juncture. He wrapped her legs around his waist and sank deep into her moist core without another word.

  She lifted her hips to meet his thrust and their gazes held. He was deep inside of her, so deep he thought he could touch that part of her that he never thought he wanted. It was in her eyes. The way she looked at him and the way she reached up to touch his face. Did he finally have her heart?

  “Dane,” she said his name again and Dane began to move inside of her.

  She said it many times while he made slow love to her and he found himself simply whispering hers as well. This was not the type of sex talk Dane was used to. Not with Zera or anyone else for that matter. But it was right. For this moment it was just him and her. Dane and Zera. Nothing more and nothing less. So when they both climaxed at the same time, it was like fate, and an earthquake. Shaking up everything in it its wake to make what was supposed to be, a reality.

  “Zera,” Dane whispered as he buried his face in her neck.

  Their hearts beat wildly in a matching rhythm. Together, he thought. Dane wanted them to be together. Forever.

  Zera felt like Cinderella awaking the night after going to the ball and meeting her Prince Charming.

  No, Dane was not a prince and she had never believed in fairy tales or waiting for some man to come and rescue her from her life. But she could imagine the depth of the magic that Cinderella had experienced that night. She could imagine it because that’s how Zera had felt last night being with Dane’s family and then making love with him by the lake.

  It had been perfect. If she were telling a story of how to be properly romanced by a man, last night would have been it.

  She didn’t require candlelight or flowers, love songs or gifts. Being with Dane in the company of his family, in an environment without stress or worry, was like a dream. One she had not allowed herself in the last four years.

  This morning she woke to an empty room. Dane had left a note on the bed, written in his small, but neat, handwriting. Aunt Birdie requested a meeting with him, Roark, Ridge and Suri to discuss the new company. Linc and Jade were taking the girls into town to visit some of the castles in the area and Aunt Maxine was meeting with the house staff to discuss the menus for the remaining time that the family would be there. That meant Zera was on her own. Dane suggested she go for a swim and told her he would join her as soon as finished.

  Zera opted to go for a walk instead. She was glad she had this time alone because she had so much to think about.

  First and foremost was Dane.

  So after she’d showered and dressed in white capri pants, a black tank top and her favorite polka dot tennis shoes. Zera slipped her cell phone in her back pocket and eased her sunglasses onto her face, before heading to the back of the house. She’d learned yesterday that going the back way would lead to a path that wrapped around the property. One of the Interpol agents assigned to stay at the house with them was coming in the door. His name was Jesse and he looked a lot like Chance the Rapper, which to Zera meant he seemed a bit young to be doing this job.

  “Good morning, Ms. Kennedy,” Jesse said as he stepped into the sunroom.

  The kitchen was beside the sunroom but Zera figured that’s where Aunt Maxine was meeting with the staff and she hadn’t wanted to interrupt them.

  “Good morning, Jesse,” she replied. “I’m just going to walk around the grounds.”

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s a beautiful morning. I’ll follow you. Do we need to wait for Mr. Donovan?”

  “No. He’s in a meeting. So it’s just me,” she told him.

  Jesse nodded and held the door open for her.

  Zera didn’t mind that she wasn’t totally alone. Jesse stayed a few feet back while she called Ines to check on her. They were in the States now staying at a temporary location until their permanent placement was finalized between the Marshals and the FBI.

  “I love it here,” she told Ines on the phone. “It’s so beautiful and so quiet. So far away from everything.”

  “Then stay,” Ines said simply.

  “I can’t stay here, Ines. This is the Donovan property. Am I supposed to ask them if I can rent a room?”

  “No. But you’re seeing a Donovan, shouldn’t that give you some type of privilege to stay there after the family leaves?” Ines asked.

  She was always optimistic. Always believing the best about everyone and every situation. Hiari was like that too and Zera wondered if that similarity had been one of the things that drew her to Ines.

  “I don’t think it works that way,” Zera said and chuckled. “Besides, Dane and I—”

  “Please do not say that nothing is going on between the two of you because that would just be a lie. You talk about him every time you and I speak now. I can hear it in your voice how much you like him,” Ines told her.

  Zera shook her head. “No. I’m not going to lie. I like him a lot.”

  Nobody needed to know that she was in love with Dane. That was her secret.

  “Then there is no problem. Keep liking him and keep staying at that beautiful house. It’s probably safe for you there anyway,” she said.

  “Yes, it is safer for the moment.” At those words Zera turned to see that Jesse was still behind her.

  He’d put on sunglasses as well. Coupled with his black suit and shoes he looked like he could be a star in the next Men In Black movie. Zera smiled and turned back to the path. She was getting close to the gardens where nine-foot bushes were neatly trimmed and looked like they stood guard of the English garden with pride and victory.

  “Or do you want to go back to your home in Kenya?” Ines was now asking.

  “I cannot go back without Hiari,” Zera replied. “My mother and my grandmother are counting on me.”

  “Did they say you could not come back without her?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Oh, because I was going to say that was very foolish of them,” Ines quipped. “You are not responsible for her kidnapping so you cannot be responsible for bringing her home. That is just nonsense.”

  “I would feel like I failed them,” Zera said.

  “Again with the nonsense. I am certain your family will not feel that way,” Ines said.

  “Well, that’s how I feel—” Zera’s words were paused as she thought she heard something fall.

  She stopped walking and once again looked back for Jesse, but this time, he was gone.

  “Shit!” Zera shouted.

  “What?” Ines asked.

  Zera didn’t answer because she was looking around now. She didn’t see anything or anyone. Something was very wrong.

  “Zera? What’s happening?” Ines was screamin
g into the phone now.

  “I gotta hang up now, Ines. I’ll call you back,” Zera said and cut off the call.

  She immediately opened her text messages and started to type a text to Dane, but before she could finish it and hit send, her fingers froze, her heart almost stopping at the sight before her.

  “Hello, Zera.”

  “Emmet?”

  PART III

  Ashes fly back into the face of him who throws them.

  --African Proverb (Nigerian)

  Chapter 16

  “You always did follow instructions well,” Emmet said when Zera stepped through the old wooden doorway.

  This place looked like a shack, an old forgotten shack that could fall to the ground at any moment. Zera didn’t speak, but walked all the way inside until she stood in the center of an open space. The only light came from the sun filtering in through scratched and dingy windows.

  “You’re not dead,” she said, the words bitter in her mouth.

  “And you’re a liar,” Emmet replied.

  He closed the door, dropping a steel bar over it so that it could not be opened from the outside. The gun that he’d held to her back to get her to walk through a thick brush of trees to get here, was comfortably in his right hand.

  “So now that we’ve gotten the pleasantries out of the way,” Emmet continued. “Let’s talk about the real reason I’m here.”

  “Because you’re a sick demented criminal,” she snapped.

  He stepped close to her and raised his hand to slap her, but Zera was faster. She leaned back as far as she could without falling, so his strike missed her. Emmet laughed.

  “You would have learned that in your F.B.I. training,” he said in a way that enunciated and separated each letter.

  But that wasn’t what caught Zera’s attention. It was his accent.

  “Who are you?” she asked and took a step back.

  He looked the same as he had six months ago. He had a honey brown complexion, with dark curly hair that he wore cut low. His beard was still trimmed to a thin line along his jaw and his brown eyes still bore into her as if he had x-ray vision. Zera had always been afraid that at any moment Emmet would be able to look through her and see the truth, that she was hunting him and everyone he worked with in order to bring her cousin and the other South African girls they’d kidnapped home.

  “You should have asked Aasir who I was,” Emmet said.

  “No,” Zera gasped.

  “Yes,” Emmet said coming close enough so that he could reach out and rub the gun’s nozzle over her temple.

  Her heart sank with the thought. Emmet was African, his accent was—he’d never spoken with an accent before. Then again, neither had she, not around him anyway. They’d both hidden their true identity.

  “You see, I always wondered how it was that the news of the kidnapping of that last group in Nairobi had spread so quickly. We had pulled off many in the region that were still not noted. Perhaps because the people in those villages knew what was at stake. They did not speak of it for fear we would return. It took me a while to put it together but Debare was helpful in that regard. Did you ever wonder how Aasir knew it was Debare who had taken that last group? How did he know what girls had been taken before there was any news of it in the world? Did your mother or grandmother ever tell you how they found out Hiari was gone?”

  Zera felt sick. Wave after wave of horrific pain gripped her stomach and her arms instinctively went around her waist in an effort to stop them. Emmet’s eyes were glazed with lunacy. She’d seen it before in videos of criminals who were being interrogated by agents, or interviews that had been conducted in jails and mental institutions. The first tendril of fear slipped down her spine.

  “Who are you?” she asked again, because she had to know.

  No matter what happened to her from this point on, Zera was determined to know the whole truth, once and for all.

  “I am Emerho Pepple,” he said. He watched her then as if waiting for her to say or do something.

  Zera did neither. She simply stared at him. Emerho Pepple was Aasir’s half-brother. They shared the same father, different mothers. And because Emerho’s mother was jealous of Aasir’s, she moved to Cameroon when Emerho was five years old. Zera only knew about him through stories that Aasir had told her. She’d never met Emerho or his mother before. And as far as she knew, Aasir had never seen his half-brother again.

  “Yes, you recall now. I know Aasir told you because that is what he does. He talks and talks and talks. That is why he could not be recruited. We knew he did not have the courage to become kings the way we did. Debare had tried hard to bring Aasir on board, but he was determined to stay where he was and to work for the SSA believing in a government that was never meant to protect us or our way of living.”

  Tears welled in her eyes and Zera looked away from Emmet. She did not want him to see any fear or weakness, but she could not continue to look at him. Not when she was feeling the brutal sting of betrayal before he could even finish the story.

  The feel of his cool lips against her cheeks had bile forming in her throat.

  “Shhh, my Black Queen. Do not shed a tear for the unworthy,” he whispered.

  He always called her his Black Queen and Zera hated it. She hated that he’d thought she was anything to him.

  “Aasir told me that Hiari had been taken. Then he called me back and said that he thought Debare was responsible,” she said when she thought she could speak without vomiting. “Why?”

  Zera lifted her head and stared directly into Emmet’s eyes as she asked that question. “Why did all of this happen? What did I ever do to him?”

  Emmet laughed. “I will tell you, because none of it matters now. You will not be able to do anything with the information that I give to you.”

  That meant he planned to kill her. Zera wasn’t ready to die, but she would deal with that when the time came. For now, she steeled herself against all other thoughts and stared at Emmet. “Tell me,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He shrugged and this time rubbed the nozzle of the gun over her lips.

  “Such a pretty mouth,” he said, shaking his head. “A great body, lovely face, educated. That is the power of the Black Queen. I did not know this until the days before my fake death, but Aasir was in love with you. He told me he had been in love with you all of his life. You were the reason he would not turn to us. But you would not come home to him. No matter how hard he tried to convince you that your place was there in Nairobi by his side. You were to be his Black Queen.”

  Emmet threw back his head and laughed and Zera pushed the gun away from her face. He planned to kill her anyway, she didn’t have to make it easy. Besides, he was getting off on telling her this story. Of watching her react to every malicious, but suspiciously true word that he said. She felt ill and angry and wanted to lash out. To find a gun and kill. But she’d been trained better than that. Impulsivity could lead to an agent’s death, or the death of one of their teammates. Or worse, an innocent bystander. So Zera remained as calm as she could.

  “He was never more to me than a friend,” she replied to Emmet.

  He stopped laughed instantly, looking at her with a serious gaze. “None of us are anything to you. Another trait of a Black Queen. Your heart is cold, your cut vicious and wounding.”

  Emmet came closer. Zera stepped back, until she came up against the wall. He pressed his body into hers.

  “I did not know who you were until the very end,” he said. “I thought you were my everything, that you understood me and wanted nothing more than to make me happy. Imagine how I felt when I found out I was in love with the same queen as my half-brother. It was hilarious and horrendous at the same time.”

  “I never asked you to love me,” she said.

  “No!” Emmet yelled. “But you tricked me. You got close to me and you made me believe. You did what no other man has ever been allowed to live to see done. But I’ve got you now.”

  He
leaned in and licked down her cheek. Zera sucked in a breath. He moved to her ear and licked her lobe before biting down on it until she screamed.

  Then he whispered, “Aasir told Debare to take Hiari to get back at you for breaking his heart. Then, when you still would not come to him, he told Debare to tell me who you really were.”

  Zera wanted to scream again. She wanted to punch Emmet in the face and kick him in the nuts. She wanted to fly home to Nairobi and slice Aasir’s lying throat!

  Instead she pushed Emmet back away from her and clutched her stomach once more.

  Emmet was laughing again. He loved this. Zera didn’t want to give it to him. She really didn’t, but the pain was threatening to take over.

  “Where is she?” Zera asked through the pain. “Where is Hiari?”

  Emmet sobered again. Just like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde his transformations were quick and diabolical.

  “That bitch is dead, just like you’re gonna be!” he yelled and raised his arm to point the gun at Zera’s head.

  Dane slammed Nyle, the Interpol agent who had driven them to Le Boulay, against the wall. His hand was wrapped in the guy’s shirt and he was pressing upward so that his fist leaned hard into his throat.

  Behind him Dane heard the clicking of a gun.

  “Let him go, Mr. Donovan,” Jon, the other Interpol agent ordered him.

  “Dane,” Roark said when Dane hadn’t flinched nor released Nyle. “This is not helping. Let him go so they can work on finding her.”

  “They fucking shouldn’t have lost her,” was Dane’s heated retort.

  But a few seconds later he did release Nyle and took a step back. The agent attempted to punch Dane at that point, but Roark stepped in, grabbing the agent’s wrist and shaking his head. “Not a good idea,” Roark said before pushing Nyle back.

  “It’s not a good idea for you both to catch charges for assaulting international agents,” Jon told them.