by T Stedman
“Fucking stop it, Dante!” Jay said, breathing heavily, sitting on his chest.
Both men had cuts on their faces and skinned knuckles. Dante had a split lip and a black eye. Jay’s cheekbone was swollen and he had a cut above the eye. Both were trying to catch their breath.
Jay eventually stood up and held his hand down and pulled Dante up.
“I won’t give her up Jay. It’s impossible now.” Dante said, spitting blood onto the floor.
“I know.” Jay said, still breathing hard with the exertion.
“What now?” Dante asked.
Jay walked right up into Dante’s face. “I’m gonna go … but you fucking know I’m her Protector. A job for life, and if she comes to me of her own free will, I won’t turn her away. Do you hear me? And you …” He almost touched Dante’s nose with his. “You won’t stop her.”
Dante nodded slowly, eyes narrowed. “Deal.”
Jay turned and walked towards the door just as Sean and Cash managed to push the oak chest far enough for them to squeeze into the room. They looked around at the damage; at the state of Dante and then the state of Jay.
“Make sure you tell her I’m still here for her.” Jay said, over his shoulder on his way out.
Tia was standing with her back to the wall in the hallway, tears streaming down her cheeks as he walked by.
Jay made sure he looked down at the floor – not able to look at her. He walked briskly past her and out of the front door.
Tia slid down the wall, hugged her knees and wailed.
***
Dante poured the remainder of the second bottle of scotch into a glass and plonked into the chair behind the desk; the only one not smashed to pieces. He felt his face for damage, winced and looked at the blood on his fingers, and wondered where the hell he’d go from here.
The two Protectors had gone out of the room to see to Tia who was understandably very upset. He heard her brothers’ voices outside as well. Shit! This was a fuck-up of mammoth proportions.
He looked up as his father pushed around the door, which was still partially obstructed by the chest Jay had put there. Fucking hell, he was all he needed.
“Jay’s been then,” his father said, scooping up any salvageable ornaments off the floor.
“You knew he was with her and never said a word,” Dante accused, disgusted.
“Because you are such a fucking sap Dante, you would have refused to marry her,” Christian shouted at the top of his voice and threw a china figurine, which bounced off the arm Dante used to protect his head. “That boy’s worth ten of you.”
“Once a waster always a waster,” Dante replied, draining his glass. He’d heard it all before.
“When are you going to be a man,” Christian spat. “Be a king,” he added at a shout.
Dante was about to come back with some juvenile comment when he heard Tia in his head. Dante … Dante. You are king. Always remember that. I pledged to you in the pool and I meant it. You have the power of my spirit always, so use it.
Christian was going red from shouting, infuriated at Dante’s apparent lack of response.
Quickly Dante’s mind came back to his father.
Tia slipped into the room, and Cash, Sean and her brothers followed her. Her eye make-up was all gone from crying, he noticed. She came up to him and put her arm around his back in support and stood under the arm he put around her in a daze.
Dante looked back at his father. “I am king,” he said quietly.
“Show it then,” his father hissed.
Dante focussed his mind with every fibre of hatred in his being, for this man who had mentally and physically battered him for years, and brought him to his knees.
Christian’s hands went to his throat while he choked, as if to remove an invisible noose. Dante went and stood over him. “I am king,” he said, low and furious, pointing a finger. “You will address me as, Your Royal Highness. And if you ever raise your voice to me like that again, I will kill you.” He let go of his mental hold and Christian sagged onto all fours, breathing and gulping for air.
Dante walked up to Tia, picked up her hand and led her towards the door. All Christian could do was meekly watch them go. Dante stopped at the door and faced Cash and Sean. “She won’t need you anymore tonight.” And then he turned to Tia’s brothers. “Please tell your father, that we thank him, but could not wait to go home and be alone.”
Dino and Luca nodded and bowed.
Dante held Tia’s hand, squeezed it, and walked through the hallway and out into the night with purpose.
***
When they got back to the Dubonnetti home, Dante went to walk up the main staircase to his old room.
“No Dante, let’s sleep in the pool house,” Tia said, laying a hand gently on his arm.
He looked at her hand and slowly turned and looked at her.
“We can do anything we want now you are king. We don’t even have to live here if you don’t want to.”
“We?” he asked weakly.
“Of course, we.”
He allowed her to lead him back down the stairs and in the direction of the basement in a daze.
When they reached it, “Lock us in,” she said.
He did as she told him in confused silence. When he’d finished locking the entrances she was already sitting on the bed and taking her shoes off. Taking his cue, he began undoing his cuffs and shirt buttons. He eyed her with suspicion. “What is this, damage limitation?”
“There were no winners tonight, Dante, we were all losers,” she said, wearily.
She wasn’t wrong. He nodded with a deep sigh and put his silk shirt neatly over a chair.
She winced looking at his cuts and bruises. “Lay down,” she said. “Let me get something for those.”
She walked over and wet some hand towels in the shower under the cold water and dabbed one over the bruises on his chest and used another to clean his cuts. “To think I was worried about him earlier,” she said, as she dabbed his split lip.
He flinched slightly. “He can take care of himself.”
“You didn’t use your power?”
“I’m not really used to it yet, and to be honest I’m not sure what difference it would have made.”
“Have you fought with him before then?”
“All the time when we were kids,” he said, smiling to himself. “My father used to bring him to play with us when we were small. I used to push him around getting him to do stuff I wanted him to do. But when he’d had enough, he’d punch me in the face and scrap with me like a navvy.” He laughed at the good memories.
He got serious again. “Why did you help me, Tia?”
“I am married to you,” she said, sounding a bit wounded. “I meant what I said when I pledged myself to you.” She looked so genuine looking into his eyes. “And when your dad said that if you’d known you wouldn’t have married me, and not been king, well, I thought, that’s true, you wouldn’t.”
Dante sagged and his eyes shrank away from her.
“No, Dante,” she said, making him look at her again. “That makes you a strong person, not weak. And then I thought, if this Atlantean nation – whatever it is – needs a king … well then, I thought you’d make a good one.”
He looked at her with something like adoration at that moment.
“I never lied to you Dante. My feelings for Jay haven’t changed. But, nor have they for you either.” She bent down and planted the gentlest of kisses on his mouth and then either side of it and above each eye so as not to hurt him. “Come lie with me in the shallow end.”
He grimaced as he stood up. His bruises had begun to come out around his ribs. She undid the button and zip on his trousers and helped him out of them. He undid her dress at the back and she pulled it over her head. She took him by the hand down to the shallow end, which you could paddle in, only a few inches deep. She helped him lay down and splashed him all over his body and then lay next to him and held his hand. They both looked up at
the ceiling like a couple of kids watching clouds.
“He made me promise to tell you he’s always there for you, if you need him,” he said, without looking at her, not wanting to see her response.
She turned her head to look at him for a long moment. “You are a good friend, Dante,” she said, eventually.
“Am I? I don’t feel it.” He felt the worse kind of traitor at that moment, but he wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else in the world.
She turned onto her side and ran her fingers down his chest, barely touching him, down the trail of downy hair from his naval to his growing erection.
***
She allowed her finger to gently go along it. Around the top, down to the weights underneath, to the inside of his legs and back again. She could see the flush already in his cheeks.
“You managed to do it with him?” he said, quietly.
She knew the question had to come eventually, “Yes, but only him.”
He nodded as if this satisfied him.
Without saying anything else and wanting to cure both their hurt, she leant on her elbow and took him into her mouth. Then she began to slowly lick the route her finger had taken earlier. It felt necessary to worship his body in this Human way, although she knew, as she manoeuvred herself over him, looked into his fevered gaze and sank her body down onto him, that it would never be enough for them. “Open your mouth…I don’t want to hurt you.”
He parted his lips. His eyes never left hers.
While she still rode him in a gentle rhythm, she began a steady blow into his mouth. The light blossomed in his face like a flower opening to the sun. He groaned in ecstasy as his orgasm crept over him with a growing force. He gasped her name and she followed him over and over, on and on, relentless.
Chapter 17
Forgetting his aches and pains he pushed her into the deeper water to support their weight. He grabbed her hips roughly and re-entered her from behind. He wanted to control every part of her; completely encase her with his body so she could never escape.
Just when she would need to allow water into her lungs to breathe or pass out, he pulled her head to the side and reciprocated with his essence so she was forced to gulp in every particle of him, over her tongue and into her being. He pushed her forcefully on, owning everything.
An act of Human love was soon buffeted and bruised into something alien, but as necessary to them as breathing. It was a need that they could only satisfy with each other; both understood it like a solemn oath.
***
If you could bottle this feeling you’d make a fortune, Tia thought, as she luxuriated in the soft bed with Dante half on top of her, breathing into the crook of her neck.
A silk sheet covered their lower bodies and she wasn’t too hot. Maybe because his body ran a few degrees cooler than a Human, as hers did. Wow, a first. She felt mellow and comfortable; the words, ‘most compatible mate’, echoed in her head.
Her perfect honeymoon night was only marred by the memory that Jay had gone and she didn’t know if she’d ever see him again or whether Dante would allow it. She swallowed the lump in her throat that appeared whenever she thought of Jay.
Then she looked at Dante’s sleeping and gorgeous body so wonderfully in tune with her own. God, it called to her with a power just as strong as any Siren and the attraction was growing exponentially. But he would need careful handling. He was passionate and unpredictable and used to always getting his own way. Pushed from pillar to post all her life, she valued her freedom more than anything else.
She felt him stir, especially below the waist. He knew what buttons to press with very little movement at all. Gyrating his hips and biting her shoulder was enough to ramp her temperature to over a hundred. She was covered in an instant film of sweat.
“Again,” he said, as he lifted her arms above her head moving his lips down her body before too much heat was generated.
When he saw her skin at her hips flush red, he sat up scooping her up with him and walked to the pool.
“I need food, Dante.” She pleaded from his arms.
“After.” And he jumped straight in the deep end with her.
She had no time to even let the water in her lungs before he put his lips on hers to breathe into her mouth. Shocked with the charge of electricity she went limp. Along with the overwhelming euphoria came an understanding of him: want, need and love eternal. It simply took her breath away. Such honesty and emotion was humbling and she melted to him as she found she always did, finding her rhythm with him under the water. Breathing life into him and him her, over and over, through every inch of the pool, at the surface, on the floor, until they were weak from hunger.
Three days they kept this up.
Mrs McNally brought them provisions through the garden entrance several times a day to keep their strength up. “How are ya lovely honeymooners doing?” she’d ask, every time she brought in a tray.
Tia couldn’t help get caught up in the constant love and body worship that Dante showered on her, morning, noon and night. She certainly never had to question how he felt. Even without the bond he was ever passionate and demanding.
On the third morning the sun streamed in through the bank of windows and French doors that led onto the garden behind them.
Dante woke up and smiled his devilish smile, which was always a prelude to something wickedly naughty.
“Can we have breakfast outside today, Dante? It’s beautiful outside.”
He groaned. “We haven’t got any clothes down here though.”
“Come on, you can put your suit trousers on.” She jumped up and slipped the green silk dress over her head that she’d worn to the party three nights previously, with no underwear on.
“You think you’re safe in that?”
“I have no idea what happened to my knickers.”
“Well, at your own risk,” he said, as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
He phoned Mrs McNally in the kitchen to bring them some food.
Tia was already throwing the double doors open and breathing in the beautiful day. The garden was like a picture book, with flowers and shrubs and daisies in the lawn. She sat on the grass, cross-legged. Dante joined her, in just his suit trousers, and lay next to her with an arm around her backside.
Mrs McNally came along with a tray. “Well, this is an improvement honeymooners. You’ve made it twenty feet. Perhaps you’ll make it up to the house tomorrow,” she said, smiling at them.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit,” Dante replied, in his thickest Irish accent to parody Mrs McNally.
“Oh, I’m just kiddin ya, my lovelies. It’s grand you’ve found each other, just grand. Ah, here’s Master Stephan to join you, and Miss Joselle.” Mrs McNally spread the picnic blanket on the grass, left the tray and went back to the kitchen.
“Stephan!” Dante, said, in greeting. “What’s bothering you?”
He sat on the grass sombrely with Joselle, who gracefully sat next to him.
Tia noticed Joselle eyeing her messy appearance disdainfully. She didn’t blame her actually, as she hadn’t put a brush through her hair for three days, and it had been wet and dried more times than she could remember. The ache between her legs made her think it was worth it and she smirked to herself.
Dante caught on to her smugness, and bored with his brother already teased her telepathically. He warned her of what he wanted to do to her as soon as they were alone. She answered him playfully and pointed out he’d have to catch her first and she’d have to tie a knot in it. This made them both giggle.
“Dante…Dante?” Stephan shouted, bringing back Dante’s attention to him. “For fuck sake Dante, listen to me, this is important.”
“Sorry Stephan,” Dante tried to keep a straight face. “We can talk to each other in our heads, that’s all … I wasn’t listening. Please say it again.”
“Really?” Stephan replied, almost longingly, obviously unaware that this was even possible with a Siren. His face
got serious again. “Look Dante, Joselle and I want to be married like you and Tia. I demand to have the same as you.” He sounded like a petulant child.
Dante sat up showing genuine concern. “It’s not that easy Stephan, you know?”
“Why isn’t it, you’re the king aren’t you? I’ve read the books. There has been some generations where all the Sirens married into the same family.”
“That only happens when the rings in that family all went purple for each son … yours didn’t for Joselle.”
“So, why can’t I just keep her?”
Tia giggled.
Dante tried to keep the smile off his face and failed. “She’s not a puppy Stephan.” He pulled himself together. “It means she has a mate out there in one of the other families.”
Stephan looked sideways at Joselle. “What about if she knew where her sisters were?”
They were all silent at the bombshell.
“You do?” Dante said, eventually.
“Da,” Joselle said. “We have connection. We are close.”
Tia just stared at her absorbing what she said. This girl was supposed to be her sister and she felt nothing. She’d put it down to all the events over the last few days but now hearing her speak of a connection with her other sisters, why didn’t she have that? Was there something wrong with her? Instead of growing on her, Joselle was starting to severely piss her off.
Dante looked at Tia and then back again. Deep thought creased his brow. “No Stephan. As soon as her uncle found out, he’d have to notify all the families. What you are suggesting is against the rules.”
Tia didn’t know why she was so relieved at his answer but she was.
“What could they do if we just married them first anyway?” Stephan said.
“Oh I don’t know Stephan. That would cause some major fucking agro, wars even.”
“What if we all married you?” Joselle threw in. “We pledge, but have our own partners.”
Tia looked at Dante shocked. He looked like he was actually considering it. Shock was quickly turning to horror. She got up and stomped back towards the pool house, the unzipped back of her dress flapping behind her.