23. Chapter Twenty-Three Jade
Chapter Twenty-Three: Jade
T he room was quiet, the early hours of a New York autumn morning casting a faint glow through the curtains. Dante wasn’t here yet. I peeled off my escape outfit with trembling fingers—gloves, scarf, coat—all discarded then on the tile floor. The idea seemed ridiculous then, childish even. Thinking I could run? Crazy.
Dante stepped into the room, and relief flooded through me so fiercely it was almost a physical thing. He was there, alive, not a bullet hole in sight. “Hey,” he said simply, as if his life hadn’t been hanging by a thread mere hours ago. He kicked off his shoes and sat heavily on the edge of the bed; the mattress dipped under his weight. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled deeply.
“Hey,” I echoed back, unsure of anything else to say. My eyes scanned him for any sign of injury, but I knew there was nothing. Just the man himself looking every bit as composed as always except for strain lines around his eyes.
I found myself sitting on the bed then dressed only in my underwear and an oversized T-shirt feeling oddly exposed - not because of my attire—I’d grown used to being on display in front of him—but because something about that night scraped away another layer between us.
The terror of losing him hit me square in the chest—a feeling I didn’t expect to have—it was real and raw—the fear of seeing him lying in a pool of his own blood, taken out by a rival’s bullet. Even though he held me there against my will, the thought of a world without Dante terrified me more than I wanted to admit.
“So…rough night,” I said, because what else could I fucking say?
He laughed humorlessly. “Yeah.”
“Sleep. You need it,” I told him and I meant it.
“You need it more. You’re pregnant,” he said. “You’re carrying our child. You need your strength.”
“Help me out of these?” Dante’s voice broke through my thoughts, his shaky hands trying and failing to undo the button on his slacks. “Sorry, I just…”
“Of course,” I said, sliding off the bed. My bare knees met the cold tile floor with a soft thud as I positioned myself in front of him. I reached for the clasp of his slacks, fingers brushing against his skin, and felt a jolt of something electric pass between us.
“Jade,” he murmured, the sound of my name on his lips sending an unexpected rush of warmth flooding through me.
I looked up at him, our eyes locking. “Yeah?”
“Nothing,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Just...thanks.”
“Anytime.” The truth was, there wasn’t anywhere else I’d rather be. Despite the chaos of our lives, this strange captivity had bred a peculiar kind of intimacy between us—one that I couldn’t deny, even if I wanted to.
As I slid his slacks down his legs, the fabric whispering its descent, I found myself asking, almost without thinking, “Do you want to have sex?” It wasn’t just about desire—it was a question loaded with all the complexities of our arrangement, the need for connection, and perhaps even a small dose of solace we could offer each other.
Dante looked at me, obviously a little taken aback by the directness of my question. There was a pause, a moment where everything seemed to hang in the balance, before he answered with a simple nod.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I always want to have sex with you.”
The early morning air was heavy with the scent of rain from the night before, the city slowly coming to life outside Dante’s penthouse. I was acutely aware of the weight of his gaze on me, a mix of darkness and desire that seemed tethered to the very essence of who he was.
“Jade,” Dante’s voice cut through the stillness, tinged with a note of concern I hadn’t expected. “Do you want to put a pillow under your knees first?” He handed me a pillow, his movements mechanical, as if he was performing a duty rather than partaking in an act of intimacy.
“We don’t have to…”
“No, I want to,” he said. “I do. I love your mouth on me. Don’t stop. I’m just still winding down because the night was crazy. This will help.”
“Okay. But you’ll tell me if you want to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop, Jade,” he replied, a smile creeping into his voice.
“Thank you for the pillow,” I murmured, adjusting the pillow beneath me.
I brushed aside the thought, focusing instead on the man before me. Leaning forward, I nuzzled into the warmth of his thigh, feeling the unmistakable hardness that betrayed his body’s reaction to my proximity. My lips found the sensitive skin between his legs, and I could feel him tense, a silent struggle against the vulnerability of pleasure.
“Relax,” I whispered softly, coaxing him. It was a strange dance, one I’d never performed for him before, and the conflicting surge of power and submission left me breathless. He was so hard and ready, his desire palpable, yet the tension in his body betrayed a reluctance to let go completely.
“Just let go,” I whispered against him, tracing the length of him with my lips. “I’ve got you.”
And he did let go. His body relaxed beneath me, every breath ragged and unsteady as he gave himself over to the experience.
“Jade,” he gasped out my name like a prayer, fingers grazing my cheek before tightening their grip on my hair.
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes and explored further, letting my lips and tongue guide me. Hearing Dante’s sharp intake of breath, feeling his fists tighten around my hair, was more exhilarating than anything I’d experienced in the lab. The realization startled me; this man had come to mean so much more than just my captor.
Dante lay back, a silent surrender in the tension of his frame easing. I kept my pace, the taste of him both unfamiliar and intoxicating. As I moved, I reveled in the soft groans that fell from his lips, hating myself for the joy it brought me to hear him unravel.
“Jesus, Jade,” he muttered, the words strained as if they were being ripped out of him. And then he was coming, his body convulsing in quiet intensity, the grip on my hair a little too tight as he rode out his climax. I stayed with him until he was spent, until his hold on me loosened and his body relaxed into a state of satiated lethargy.
He was panting hard when I finally moved back, carefully extricating myself from him. Dante lay still for a moment longer, catching his breath before he slowly sat up.
“Come here,” he said, patting the bed beside him. Obedience, need, or something else entirely—I wasn’t sure which—compelled me to rise and join him under the sheets. We lay together, skin to skin, and for a moment, the world outside the walls of the penthouse ceased to exist.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” I asked him.
“Maybe,” he said. “I missed you. I want to talk to you.”
“Okay…is everything okay?”
“I told my father about the baby,” he murmured, his breath warm against my skin.
Dante’s gaze locked onto me, his eyes reflecting a man who knew the art of reading others—a necessary skill for someone in his line of work.
“Okay…what did he say?”
“He asked when we were going to get married.”
I had no idea what to say to that. He must have seen the subtle shift in me because he prodded gently, “What are your thoughts on marriage, Jade?”
It felt like stepping into a minefield, but his question unearthed a past I thought I’d buried deep. “I mean, I never thought it would happen…I had a really awful break-up with a man I was probably going to get engaged to, so you know.”
“What happened?”
“Well, he was Indian–”
“Damn, okay, didn’t know I was going to have a baby with a racist–”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing. “That’s not what I meant. Let me finish.”
“Alright. Keep going.”
“He was in line for some sort of throne or something,” I said. “Like, the richest person I’ve ever met. Went to Eton. Then he went to Oxford, and then he came to do his PhD here. We met ’cause we were studying the same thing.”
“Wait, he was royalty?” Dante’s brows shot up in surprise. His mirth was short-lived as his eyes traced the shadows that danced on my face.
“Not quite,” I said with a small laugh. “But from what I understood, his family was pretty influential back in India, so there might as well have been a crown in the mix somewhere.”
His fingers traced lazy circles on my arm, the sensation grounding me as I gathered my thoughts.
“What happened between you two?” he asked. His tone was void of judgment, coaxing me to continue.
I took a deep breath. “I got the book at BioHQ, and he wanted to go back to London, where I didn’t have a job offer at a lab or a university or, you know, anywhere. He asked me to marry him. Said I would find something there, but I had worked so hard to get this job, I was so interested in the research and I, I don’t know...I chose my career over him.”
Dante was silent for a moment, his fingers still moving on my arm. Then, he murmured, “I can see why that was a difficult choice.”
“It was not a difficult choice. It sucked that I wasn’t going to London on someone else’s dime, but that was the worst part. So I guess that says everything about how serious that relationship was.”
It was quiet for a moment, Dante’s fingers tracing comfort into my skin. His silence brought a sense of unease, the tension building like a slow-burning fire. Finally, he broke the silence.
“It sounds like you made the right choice,” he said softly, and I felt his lips press against my bare shoulder.
“Yeah.” I sighed, shifting closer to him. “It would have never worked in the long-term anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”
I nodded, leaning into his chest as I closed my eyes. Now that I had talked to him about it, it really felt like I was running in circles…different man, same scenario.
And I had no idea how the fuck I was supposed to get out of this one.