16. DANTE #6
He shrugs. "…The possibility that the last thought, the last moment of my existence…
would be as gray as all the others. That the end would just be…
more silence." His eyes turn back to me.
The melancholy suddenly is inherent to him.
"I started studying that day. Systems. I didn't lie to you—it was with YouTube tutorials. "
That confession. Love. Was he telling me that I was the only thing that prevented him from jumping?
The rage I brought into this room deflates. In its place, a vacuum.
The genius who brought down my systems, the worm who moans under my touch, the boy who almost threw himself off a bridge because he was bored. The pieces don't fit. They form a fractured image I can't categorize, can't control .
Threats die in my throat. Insults sound childish.
"All of this… the systems, the games, the pain… is it just so you don't have to go back to a fucking overpass?"
He sees humor in that. He smiles. "Something like that."
Fuck Svetlana and her concern. Fuck Dmitry and his logic. They think I'm dealing with a problem and they don't realize I'm holding a broken piece of glass that thinks the only way to prove it's not in a thousand pieces is by cutting itself on me.
I move. I take the few steps separating us, stopping in front of his chair. I stare at the empty energy drink cans, the cold coffee remnants.
"When was the last time you ate something that didn't come out of a can or a plastic bag?"
He frowns. "I… I don't know. Today at lunch, maybe."
"A tuna paste sandwich doesn't count."
I look at his thin body, his hunched posture.
"And sleeping? Is that part of your ‘bad health' plan? Killing yourself from exhaustion?"
"You… gave me deadlines?—"
"Fuck the fucking deadlines. When you finish this," I order, pointing to the tablet I gave him, "you're going to the kitchen. You're going to eat a real meal. And then, you're going to bed. Eight hours. No screens."
I move closer, until I'm hovering over him. I lower myself to his level. I force him to look me in the eyes.
"Listen here," I snarl. "You're not going back to any fucking overpass. Never again."
I see the confusion in his eyes, the way he tries to process my order.
"This isn't a request, Leonel. It's an order ."
Nyx's mask cracks. The smile, the audacity, the armor of indifference… everything falls apart. For a second, I see only the exhausted boy behind it, the boy from the overpass, looking at me with a raw vulnerability.
His eyes fix on mine, confused, exhausted, and reverent. He leans forward.
He kisses me.
Soft, hesitant. He kisses me with adoration , and his cold fingers slowly slide along the contour of my jaw.
I should push him away. I should reassert my dominance, I should remind him who's in command.
But I can't.
Instead, I touch the back of his neck, entwine my fingers in his hair, and pull him to me, shattering the gentleness of that hesitation. I force his lips apart, yet it isn't enough to erase what he told me. It isn't enough to drown his broken glass edges, and they cut me, they cut me everywhere.
And he kisses me with the desperation of someone who only found a reason to exist in this life because I told him he couldn't throw it away. He kisses me, and I hate it because it breaks every wall I built, because I need this just as much as he does.
"No viaducts and no Nicole," he murmurs against me. "I can work with that."
I push him back, pinning him against the backrest of his chair, and it takes every shred of my self-control not to tear his shirt open. "Don't fucking say her name."
Nyx laughs softly. "I'll say yours. I'll scream it if you want me to."
"Nyx—"
" Dante ," he whispers my name like a prayer. He runs his hands over my back, my neck, as if he can't stop touching me. And fuck, I want that.
"Don't—"
He silences me, pulling my shirt and kissing me again, and again, and again, and every attempt at control I have goes to hell.
My hands are on his waist, pulling him closer, and I'm about to slam him against the fucking wall when an insistent vibration starts in my pocket.
"Fuck," I curse, pulling my face back a few inches to check my cell.
Svetlana.
Nyx stares at me, his lips swollen and red with a mixture of desire and adoration that makes me want to ignore this fucking call.
I pull away from him and straighten up, walking away from the chair. I try to recompose my posture as a boss, as an older brother, as anything other than the man who was about to completely lose himself.
Work. The encryption. The fucking tablet. My sister, who already looked at me like I was an uncontrolled monster. Everything is a fog with him looking at me like that.
I answer, hoarse. "Svetlana."
All she says is, " Update ."
I see him out of the corner of my eye. Nyx gets up from the chair, bites his lower lip, and starts walking slowly towards me.
"He's working on it," I say, following Nyx's every move. "Your paranoia isn't going to speed up quantum encryption."
He stops in front of me. He raises his hand and, with torturous slowness, touches my chest, sliding his fingers over the fabric of my shirt.
" I need a timeline. Sal is having a breakdown. "
I hear the department voices in the background of the call. My mind doesn't compute that when Nyx leans forward and anchors himself to me, sliding his hand to my waist, pressing open-mouthed kisses on my neck.
My free hand, of its own accord, holds his hip. I pull the phone's microphone away. "How long?" I whisper to him.
He kisses the corner of my lips and murmurs against my skin, "Give me an hour."
I turn back to the phone. "He said one hour."
Svetlana's silence is long. Suspicious. I know what she's thinking. She knows I took too long to answer. She knows my voice is different.
" Blyat ," I hear her curse in Russian.
And Nyx doesn't give a fuck. His hands move over me as if there aren't other things to think about. As if the rest of the world can burn around him as long as he can touch me.
Fuck. I can't. I can't think with him like this.
" Don't get too close to this ," Svetlana says. " If something goes wrong, you're the one who will have to put the bullet between his eyes. So don't get too close to him. Understand? "
And that, at least, gets me to think clearly.
"You don't need to remind me how to do my fucking job."
I don't wait for her answer. I hang up. And then I stare at the fucking mess in front of me.
He's fucking killing me.
I grab him by the neck. He doesn't resist when I pull him back.
"One hour," I say. I didn't notice I was out of breath. "And then, you eat. And sleep."
"Eight hours?" he asks with a lewd smile, the fucking asshole. "Will you watch ?"
"You'll really sleep, you fucking nymph." I push him towards the desk. "Go to work."
I move towards the door and slam it as hard as possible behind me, ignoring his eyes following me to the threshold.