Chapter 11
Dante
S he’s asleep.
Sprawled across the rumpled black sheets of the playroom bed, her limbs lax, lips parted. Her hair’s a dark halo against the pillow, and her skin glows in the low light—marked by my hands, my mouth. The collar gleams at her throat like a brand.
She’s still flushed from what we did.
From what I let myself do.
I should leave. I always leave.
But I don’t.
So many firsts with her. Like fucking without a condom.
I was stunned when she ticked the box about no protection.
Stunned and relieved, because I sense I would’ve slipped up and fucked her raw anyway.
The joy of reverse hacking my little thief is that I know everything about Dahlia. More than is wise, probably.
I know the last time she was fucked—two years ago. Know the exact location of the shithead too. He’s not a threat so I’m leaving him alone. For now.
I stand there like a fucking idiot, pants still half-undone, sweat cooling on my back, staring at the girl I swore I’d break—and wondering if maybe she’s the one breaking me.
I turn, move to the console. Pretend I’m checking something. Anything. But my eyes keep drifting back to her. Her body. Her goddamn face . I still feel the exquisite clutch of her pussy around my cock. Each stroke a lock finding a key. Each second inside her a homecoming.
Fuck .
I crave a repeat more than my every lifelong wish. Combined.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Not tonight. Not ever.
She moaned my name like it meant something. Her cunt clenched around my cock like it didn’t want to let go. She came so hard I thought I’d have to hold her down to stop her from floating away.
And I felt it. That thing I swore I’d buried years ago.
Need .
Not just the kind that rips through you and demands you drain your balls. I’ve mastered that kind of want. I’ve controlled it, weaponized it. Used it to rule boardrooms and boiler rooms to blackmail assholes.
But this…
This is something else.
Something slower. More dangerous. A slow-moving avalanche.
Beautiful, mesmerizing but deadly.
I move to the liquor cabinet across the room and pour myself two fingers of Oban. The single malt burns down my throat, sharp and clean. I watch her the whole time, her back rising and falling in a soft rhythm. Her hand twitches in her sleep like she’s reaching for something. Someone.
For me?
No. Fuck no.
I take another sip and set the glass down harder than I mean to.
Because I can’t stop thinking about the other thing that has me riled. ?The revelation out on the terrace. The other someone . My sister.
Rina .
About the last time I let someone inside.
It’s been six years.
Six long, brutal years since she died. Since the Vesper Syndicate carved a warning into her body and left it on my doorstep like a gift wrapped in horror. She was nineteen. Bright. Reckless. Full of fire and code and stupid, stupid hope.
She’d gotten too close to something she didn’t understand.
Just like her .
Just like Dahlia.
Except Dahlia understands everything. She’s smart in ways that scare me. Clever in ways I didn’t prepare for. She walks into rooms she knows are traps and still dares you to spring them.
And when she kneels… when she obeys… when she opens her thighs with trembling pride?—
It fucking undoes me.
Even suspecting she’s faking half of it. I know she’s playing a long game. She’s a thief, a manipulator. She’s lied to every face she’s ever shown the world, and I’d be an idiot to think I’m any different.
But the other half?
The part that looks at me like I’m more than a monster? Like she could consider trusting me with her goals and her needs and her surrender?
I want to believe it. God help me, I do believe it.
I sit on the bench across from the bed and just… watch . One arm slung over the backrest. Drink in hand. My chest still heaving like I just came inside her all over again.
I should hate her.
She breached Obsidian’s firewalls. She touched that folder. She got too close to Ironveil— again . I should be punishing her, not laying her down like she’s mine. Watching her like she’s a fucking oracle.
But she is mine. For the next twenty-something days.
That thought hits me like a bullet. No blood, just impact.
She’s mine in a way that makes my skin feel too tight.
Mine in a way I never allowed anyone to be after Rina.
Because Rina believed in people.
I stopped. Went dark. Obsidian black.
I’ve spent the last six years destroying the men who took her from me. One by one. Patiently. Brutally. I dismantled the Vesper Syndicate until their name was a whisper in the dark. But ghosts still haunt and harm.
And now?
Now I’m teaching the one piece of collateral they never accounted for how to wear a plug and beg for my cock like it’s her salvation.
Because that’s what Dahlia is.
Collateral damage.
She doesn’t know it yet, but the heist I’m planning—the one I’ve coerced her into executing—is the final strike in a war she was never meant to be part of. A war she’s bleeding in now, just for being in the wrong place. With me.
But what happens when the game ends?
When I’ve burned the last of the Vesper Syndicate’s legacy to ash and I can finally fucking breathe?
What happens to her?
I drag a hand down my face and let my head fall back against the chair.
She should be a tool. A bystander. A forgotten footnote.
But I want to tell her.
Everything.
She asked why tonight and I came within a whisker of cracking open my most sacred secret. I want to peel open the scar of Rina’s name and show Dahlia the rot underneath. I want to whisper every secret into her ear while she’s naked and trembling and tied to my bed.
And that’s how I know I’m fucking losing it.
Because wanting to expose my secrets?
That’s not strength. Not control.
That’s fucking surrender.
And the man I used to be—before Rina, before Ironveil, before the blood-soaked empire—died a long time ago.
I’m not that man anymore.
I can’t be.
Because Dahlia is a thief. A manipulator. A target . And I’m the one holding the detonator.
I get up and cross the room. Stand over her. Just watch. Waiting for this insane feeling to pass so I can feel inhuman, myself again.
Her lashes flutter. Her lips part. She murmurs my name like it’s a lullaby.
Fuck. My fingers twitch. Damn need. But I don’t touch her.
But wanting to, so much, this much? Fuck no.
I back away like she burned me. Because she will .
If I’m not careful, she’ll ruin everything I’ve built.
Dahlia
The water is hot, sharp needles against my skin.
I close my eyes, letting it run over the aches Dante put in my body last night.
My thighs are still tender. My lips, still swollen. My insides, still quivering like they remember the stretch of him. The way his cock beat inside me like it wanted to take control, not just of my pleasure but my very heartbeat.
Because how could I forget any of it?
He kissed me like he owned my mouth. Took me like he had something to prove. And afterwards—after I’d cried out for him and given him every broken sound I had—he stayed.
He stayed.
No one ever stays. Not friend or foe. Not even Dad. When it came right down to it, he chose the weighty blankets of grief and pain and memories over his child.
I’m still trying to decide what that means when the shower door opens and Dante steps in, naked and predatory and utterly unapologetic. His charcoal-gray eyes drag down my body like he’s already deciding which part to mark again first.
Water beads on his skin, rolls down the taut planes of his abs, glistens around the thick, pierced cock already rising between us.
“Morning,” I say, voice sticky with sleep and sarcasm.
“On your knees, Specter.”
A flash of heat shoots between my legs but I narrow my eyes. “No coffee first?”
“You’ll earn it.”
Of course I will.
But I’m already kneeling, eager excitement the steam curling around me as he steps closer. My heart jackhammers. I should be used to this by now—his bluntness, the way he doesn’t ask. But there’s something about doing it here, under the bright heat of morning, that makes it feel realer.
Rawer.
More mine.
His fingers sink into my damp hair. Tighten. Reminding me of his ownership.
His other hand holds his engorged dick an inch from my salivating mouth. And we both still. Until he nods. Gifting permission.
I wrap my eager hand around the base of him, guiding him toward my lips. I lick slowly, from root to tip, tasting the clean salt of his skin.
The cool metallic tang of his barbells against my teeth. Weird. Wonderful. Absurd and addictive.
I lap lap lap. Moaning for more.
His breath hitches, the only crack in his titanium armor. “Eyes up,” he growls. “I want to watch you worship.”
I meet his gaze. His pupils are blown wide. Hungry. Possessive.
I take him deeper and feel the weight of him on my tongue. My lips stretch around his girth, and I swear I hear him hiss through his teeth.
“Fuck… that mouth,” he rasps. “You’re addicting , Dahlia.”
The word slams into me harder than his cock ever could.
Addicting .
My gut flips. Something sharp and terrifying blooms in my chest. Because he didn’t mean to say that. His voice was too raw. Too honest.
And it hurts —the way my body thrills at it, sharp and deadly, like cutting yourself on the deadliest blade. The way it makes me feel seen and wanted and so stupidly fragile I almost choke.
So I cover it up the only way I know how.
I pull back and smirk, licking his tip like a lollipop. “You say that to all your criminal conquests, Daddy?”
He barks a laugh. “No,” he says, voice hoarse. “You’re the first thief who sucks cock like it’s revenge.”
I swirl my tongue around the head in answer, then take him deep enough to make his legs tense.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “Keep going. Don’t stop.”
And I don’t.
I find a rhythm, hands working with my mouth, sucking him until his head falls back against the tile and he groans my name like it’s a fucking confession.
“Such a good little thief,” he grits out. “So fucking eager. You love it when I use your mouth, don’t you? Bet your pussy’s dripping just from this.”
I moan around him, and he loses it.
“That’s it, baby. Suck it just like that. Jesus—your mouth’s like sin.”
His voice roughens, frays. “Shit—Dahlia—” His voice breaks on the next word. “Gonna come. Gonna fucking come down your throat. That what you want? You want Daddy’s come choking you?”
His abs clench. His thighs shake.
“Fuck—yes—goddamn it, just like that, fuck—I can’t?—”
When he finally comes—thick and hot against my tongue—he pulls me up and slams his mouth onto mine. No hesitation. Just possession. As if the taste of himself on my lips only turns him on more.
The kiss is savage. His hands grip my ass, his tongue relentless. I melt into him, even though I know I shouldn’t. Even though I swore I wouldn’t.
Afterward, he lathers soap in his hands and starts washing me. Efficient. Focused.
But when he kneels to clean between my legs, his fingers slide in slow and deep, like he’s reminding me who owns me now.
I squirm. Moan.
He smirks. “Still sore?”
“Yes, Sir,” I breathe. Shaky, hips rolling into his seductive strokes.
“Good. I like you wrecked.”
I gasp when his tongue joins the cleaning process.
My hands land on Dante’s shoulders, my eyes drowning in obsidian black and he strokes and licks my pussy, coaxing another soul-shaking surrender.
“Come for me, little thief,” he croons.
And heaven fuck it all. I whimper and shudder and come.
Once I’m clean, he steps out and grabs a towel, drying me off with practiced care. Like I’m not a criminal he’s keeping under lock and collar.
Like I’m… something else.
“What are we doing today?” I ask, just to distract myself from weighty emotions.
“It’s the weekend,” he says simply, sliding the collar into place around my throat. “We’re taking the day off.”
My breath catches as the clasp clicks shut. The weight of it feels heavier today. Not physically, but emotionally. Like it means more now. Like I don’t know where the game ends and something real begins.
He sees the flicker of emotion on my face, but doesn’t press.
Just leans in and murmurs against my ear, “You’ll keep it on, little thief. All day. You’ll eat with me, walk with me, exist with me. And everyone will know exactly who you belong to.”
I swallow hard. My pulse flutters. Because there’s no pretending anymore. Not when my body obeys him before my mind catches up.
Not when I want the collar.
And definitely not when part of me is scared to take it off.