11. Dante
Chapter 11
Dante
“Y our guest no longer resides in the dungeon.”
My mother doesn’t bother looking up from the newspaper, yet somehow, her words tear through to the heart of my own silent ruminations.
“Seemed a little like overkill.” I try for nonchalance but am rewarded with a stern look over her reading glasses. “It’s not like she could get past the guards.”
The morning sunlight trickles through the large windows, casting the breakfast table in warm tones that promise yet another beautiful day.
“Does this change in accommodations have anything to do with your dismissal of Miss Roma last night?”
Carmen’s breathless gasps, the tightness of her body coiled like a spring as I licked along her neck.
I shake my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Evelina narrows her eyes at me. “I will speak plainly, then.”
Something cold and fearful wraps around my lungs. There’s no way she could know. No one saw us last night. She couldn’t have any idea…
“Your…colleagues, in America. They reported news to you, did they not?”
I try not to let my shoulders sag in relief. “I told you I can’t disclose information about the Prince’s Guild.”
“I do not care for this Guild. I care for why my son is acting erratically.”
“Then why ask?” I snap back, then catch a glimmer of something in her eyes. “Why ask if you’ve already figured it out?”
Evelina disregards all pretense of reading. “How long did they tell you you are to stay here?”
A silence descends upon the table that manages to stave off the warmth of the morning.
But there’s no getting past this; my mother will discover the truth one way or another.
“It could be months yet.”
Evelina doesn’t bother disguising her smile. “This is good news, amore mio. ”
“My family is across an ocean fighting a war I have no part in,” I snap back.
“And who am I? If not your family, hmm?” She’s guilt-tripping me, and we both know it. My shoulders still sag in defeat. “Do not resent me for wishing for more time with my son.”
“I don’t resent you.”
We share one long, honest look. Whatever my mother sees in my expression, she must believe it as she turns back to her paper.
“This is good news,” she repeats. “As we are to host a ball at the end of the month.”
I blink at her for a moment. “Can I retract my previous statement?”
“This is important, Dante. The Grasso di Ferro must host an occasion, and where better than the Castello of our namesake?”
“You want to host your gaggle of bachelorettes here at the castle?” Fury begins to lace my every word. It was just like Evelina to rub salt in an open wound like this.
“The ball is a diplomatic display of power for families across Emilia-Romagna. It is to build alliances.”
“Through marriage, ” I bite back. “I told you, Madre , that you will not force my hand with this.”
Never one to back down, Evelina rises to her feet. “You promised me you would consider this, that you would present me with your course of action. But you have not once attempted to assure me of this. Not once have you considered?—”
“I will consider nothing! ” I find myself roaring, having risen too. “You ask me to take my position as the head of this family and yet you insist on treating me as a child.”
“That is because you are behaving like one,” my mother says, matching my tone. “You can not escape your responsibilities again, Dante. You can not run like a coward this time.”
She should have slapped me across the face. It might have stung less.
I back away slowly. Swallowing my shame as I glower at the burning expression on my mother’s face. No hint of remorse is betrayed in her expression.
Because we both know she’s right.
Unable to bear it, I march out of the sunroom without another word.
* * *
The problem is that Carmen has her own kind of gravity.
I had intended on leaving her alone. I had intended to leave everyone alone after such a volatile breakfast.
There was a significant number of things on my mind, after all. Enough that a smarter man might have spent time musing and cataloging his thoughts in order to understand them better.
The news that we would be staying in Emilia-Romagna, in the Iron Castle, indefinitely had floored me. The fact my mother now had an indefinite timeframe to spring a wife on me terrified me.
But the sound of my name on Carmen’s breathless lips had destroyed me.
Truly, it was all I could think of. The way she had clutched at me, sunk into me. How she’d trusted my every word until she’d climaxed in my arms.
The way she had tasted.
It was enough to drive a man insane.
So there was really no surprise that I ended up at her new bedroom door, driven by a primal kind of hunger. An insatiable one.
One that I desperately needed to get under control. And yet…
“Is everything to your liking?”
Carmen’s eyes snapped over to me from her perch by the window. She hadn’t heard me enter, clearly too enraptured by whatever she saw through the glass.
She’d asked for sunlight and it grazed over her now like a second skin, illuminating all of her finest details. In this light, she shone brilliantly, like the embodiment of the sun itself—but even I noticed how the glow seemed too ethereal, too pale.
How long had it been since she last felt the sunlight on her skin? We arrived here weeks ago.
Suddenly, the window didn’t feel like enough.
“It’s all awful, actually,” she said after a moment. Her voice was flat as she gestured around the room. “I truly can’t comprehend how you could stand living somewhere as terrible as this. No wonder you’re so desperate to go back to Brooklyn.”
Her words clashed sarcastically against the incredibly decadent master bedroom and matching en suite. The stone walls are softened by rich tapestries—reds and golds woven into intricate patterns.
A four-poster bed dominates the room, its heavy wooden frame carved with elaborate details. The bed is draped with lush fabrics that spill onto the floor like a cascade of opulence.
I lean casually against the doorframe. “Not as nice as your castle back home, princess?”
She pretended to ponder this for a moment. “I suppose the dragon guarding me is slightly more handsome.”
This, too, was destroying me. Her sudden shift into backhanded flirtations to try and disarm me. Each delivered with that same sense of unwavering indifference as if she were stating a fact instead of an opinion.
She’s goading me. And mortifyingly, it’s working.
“Come to the gardens with me.”
Carmen’s calm expression shatters in alarm. “What?”
I push away from the doorframe and hold out my arm. “You look like a wilted flower stuck in here.”
“And who’s fault is that?” She’s scowling, but she gets to her feet anyway.
I don’t make another comment as she takes my arm, and I escort her outside. I don’t miss the way she begins to breathe deeply as soon as the fresh air hits her face. I don’t hold back a smile when she takes in the view before her.
Gravel paths wind through a maze of fragrant blooms and towering cypress trees, their shapes casting long, dappled shadows in the late afternoon sun.
There is a spattering of ruined walls and beyond them, cultivated vegetation that lies in the distant vineyards, months away from harvest now. The grounds stretch on for miles. It would be impossible to explore them all in one day, but I’m content with trying.
We walk in companionable silence, admiring the flowers, avoiding all the things we should probably say.
But when I look over at her, she has her head tilted toward the sky, a small smile playing on her lips. And it’s hard not to want to share in that small joy.
“So,” I say casually.
“So,” she agrees.
Our footsteps crunch along the gravel in tandem.
“How’s your day going so far?”
She glances at me with a smirk. “Fine, I guess.”
“What have you been getting up to?”
“In my glorified prison cell?”
I roll my eyes. “I’ve always wondered what you do with all that time on your hands.”
“When I’m not listening to you complaining about how hard your life is, you mean?” She gestures around for emphasis.
“Indulge me.”
“How do you expect me to answer that? You know already. ”
“I’m curious.”
Her eyes narrow. “Fine. Besides eating and sleeping and strategizing all the ways I could possibly wring your stupid neck…I alternate between practicing Italian curses and pleasuring myself.”
She delivers the words with such indifference it takes me a moment to realize what she’s said.
I swallow hard and attempt to match her tone. “And have you noticed much progress?”
“My tutelage has left something to be desired,” she quips back. “But then again, I’ve been learning from a book.”
“I wasn’t talking about Italian.”
She turns around to me, a smug smile on her face. “I know. But the sentiment still applies.”
I find myself stepping forward to crowd her. “I can’t recall you complaining before.”
“That’s because I find it difficult to fuck myself with my own fingers when I know what yours feel like now.” Bold. Petulant. Challenging.
There she goes, blindsiding me again.
The garden suddenly feels alive around us, with the hum of bees in the air and the rustle of leaves in the soft breeze.
I have to remind myself that we’re not alone. That, between the gardeners and the patrolling members of the Grasso di Ferro and the windows of the castle behind us, there’s no escaping scrutiny.
But I can’t stand this tension a moment longer.
I snatch up her wrist and half drag her across the gardens toward the only place I can think of that will give us even a slight semblance of privacy.
Tucked away behind a crumbling stone wall at the far end of the garden, there’s a small alcove that nature has begun to reclaim. Vines creep along the wall’s jagged edges, and a single bench sits half-hidden by overgrown ivy.
The alcove isn’t entirely shielded; the sound of footsteps on the gravel paths is faint but ever-present. However, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Carmen only has a moment to take in the location before I push her flush against the wall, shielding my body with hers should anyone try to peer through the gaps in the ivy.
“I wonder,” I say, merely a whisper against her cheek. “If I fucked you properly, would you curse me in Italian or Spanish?”
Her lips part in a small gasp, and her pupils become so large I can barely make out the ring of caramel.
Oh. She wants to find out.
“Have you tried thinking about that?” I continue as my lips absently begin to caress her neck. “When you touch yourself? Have you tried thinking about all the ways I could take your precious virtue?”
She’s trembling then, finally dropping her mask of indifference. “We can’t.”
“We can imagine it, though, can’t we?” I press myself further into her neck. It’s torturous. Divine. “You liked the feeling of my fingers, of my tongue. I liked the way you tasted, princess. I think I would taste you again, make sure you were ready for me.”
“Dante,” her voice is strained as I suckle at her exposed collar bones.
“I would ease you open, bring you to the very cusp of your orgasm, feel you shivering in my arms.” The fact that she’s shivering now only adds hunger to my words.
“It would be painful the first time. But I’d be so very gentle with you. I’d make you feel so, so good. I’d hold you the way you like. I’d stroke your hair. I’d kiss your neck. I would be positively romantic about it.”
Carmen suddenly becomes eerily still. Her eyes are distant.
I pause, a cool sense of dread washing over me. Have I overstepped? Did I push too far…
“He won’t be gentle with me, will he?” she whispers.
And suddenly, the world feels like it’s on fire.
There’s no need for me to ask who she’s referring to or wonder why she suddenly seems so afraid. I can see it now, plain as day.
And Carmen is shaking now. Not of lust or desire.
“Dante,” her voice is desperate. “He’s…he’s…”
My arms wrap around her instantly, pulling her into the safety of my chest. Having her so close dulls some of the raging inferno, but she’s still shaking.
There’s only one solution in my mind that seems suitable. Hernando Lacruz must die.
“He won’t touch you,” I say with certainty.
“You don’t understand. He will. He has to. He…”
“He won’t.”
But she’s shaking her head. Out of fear or disbelief of my conviction, it’s hard to say.
“I always knew, but then I never really thought…” she cuts herself off. Her eyes suddenly find mine, and there’s something no mistaking the conviction that lies behind them.
“Kiss me.”