15. Riley
I’m sostartled it takes me a minute to pick my jaw up off the floor. And then another moment—okay, maybe two—to decide Dante’s not just pranking me.
“You were a mole?” I shake my head in disbelief even as the words come out of my mouth. I wouldn’t have thought anything could truly distract me from my fears for Chloe right now, but Dante’s managed it.
He always calls Maddoc his brother, and for all the faults these men have, the depth of loyalty and trust I’ve seen between the two of them—between all three of them, really—gives truth to that title, regardless of blood. So his bombshell just doesn’t make sense. I can’t see Dante ever betraying either of his brothers, and yet even though he’s still smiling, those gorgeous green eyes of his turn serious as he confirms it.
“I was.” He idly rubs his fingers over the red dagger inked onto the back of his right thumb, a habit I’ve noticed before and wonder if he’s even aware of. “After my dad was killed, I was aimless for a bit. Aimless and fucking angry. And then I was recruited by the Crimson Crows.”
I flinch without meaning to, and his mouth quirks up in a knowing smirk. “So you’ve heard of them?”
“Only enough to know Chloe and I were safer staying away from them.”
Smarter to stay away from all gang activity, of course, but from all accounts, the Crimson Crows were…
“They were brutal,” Dante says, like he’s reading my mind again.
I shudder. “Yeah. That’s what I always heard.”
Dante’s nodding again. “You heard right. Worse, the Crows treated their people like they were disposable. They had my loyalty at the time because I didn’t know there was another way. Not back then. But still, seeing the leadership of that organization rise to power by stepping on the backs of the ones who got them there started to rub me the wrong way even before Shank, that was the name of the dickhead in charge, decided Madd needed to be taken out.”
“Taken out?” I repeat, my stomach clenching. “He wanted you to kill Maddoc?”
Dante’s expressive mouth tightens. “He wanted me to do a lot of things. First and foremost, he sent me in to find out how the fuck someone with no allegiance and no rep had managed to do what Maddoc had in such a short period of time. He wasn’t really a player before the Reapers. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he claims and holds some significant territory, and then goes on to grow it and strengthen his ties every fucking time we turned around.”
“And did you find out how he managed to do all that?” I ask, sucked into the story despite myself.
Dante grins. “Fuck yeah, I did. I found out there was a better way to run an organization after all. I found out what loyalty was actually supposed to mean.”
“But Maddoc must have found you out too. And he actually let you live after he discovered you were a mole?” I shake my head before Dante can answer. “I mean, obviously he did, but damn. How the hell did you manage to save yourself?”
Maddoc is the last person I can imagine showing mercy after someone betrays him. Which, yeah, is ironic given how easily he decided to do it to me. Or maybe it’s not. After all, I guess it doesn’t count as a betrayal when he screws over someone he was never loyal to in the first place.
That thought hurts, so I’m glad Dante gives me something else to focus on.
“Find me out?” he says with just enough cockiness to make me laugh. “Nah, never happened, princess. But what did happen is he won me over. Not like he was trying to, ’cause he didn’t realize I was a threat, but he managed it anyway by being himself. By showing me what it actually meant to lead an organization the right way. He was building it for the people who pledged their allegiance to him, instead of on their backs.”
I’m not really in the mood to hear how great Maddoc Gray is right now, so I can’t resist getting a dig in. “So you’re saying he was clueless. That the big, bad Reaper leader had an enemy right under his nose and didn’t even know it.”
Dante smirks. “What can I say? I guess I’m just that good.”
Something in my core starts to heat up. Cocky is a damn good look on him. I’m never going to admit it though, so I punch his arm—which, for the record, feels like punching fucking steel—and he laughs.
“You’re wrong though,” he says, going on with the story “Madd caught on pretty quick to something being off after I came on board, and he was definitely suspicious. Not of me, ’cause I really am that good, but he knew there had to be a mole in the gang based on the way I managed to start fucking up his operations before I came around to a different way of thinking. And not gonna lie, princess, it would have been easy as hell to frame a member of the Reapers and slip back to the Crows once the damage was done, but I…”
He shakes his head, his usual care-free smirk replaced by a faraway look, like he’s remembering.
“You what?” I prompt him, wanting to know.
Dante blinks, coming back to himself. Then he shrugs. “I didn’t want to, so I came clean. Told him everything. Who I was, why I was there, what the Crows were planning.”
“But… why?” I ask, my stomach tightening as I imagine how terrifying that would be. “He might have killed you.”
Obviously it all turned out well in the end, but Dante couldn’t have known it would go down the way it did at the time. He was either really brave or really stupid… or else he really believed he’d found himself a forever home.
And he was right.
My throat tightens up at that, thinking how up in the air having a home is for me and Chloe now. Will we ever have one again? A place we actually feel safe and don’t have to be looking over our shoulders all the time?
I guess it’s possible with that money she’s going to inherit, but she doesn’t even have it yet and it’s already causing problems, so it sure as shit doesn’t feel like any kind of guarantee. It’s all too easy to imagine the two of us actually getting away from the Reapers, but then having to live the rest of our lives wary of who might try for us next, with no one to guard our backs.
Fuck. I’ve been short on money and scrambling to get just enough all my life. Now, on the cusp of actually having some, it feels a lot like it won’t solve any problems at all.
I swallow hard, and whatever Dante sees in my face has his eyes going soft.
He squeezes my knee. “Madd might have killed me, yeah,” he admits, thankfully not commenting on my all-too-obvious emotions. Then his lips quirk up and he adds, “Or, you know, he might have tried.”
I scowl at him, shoving his hand off my knee. “Cocky, much?”
Dante laughs. “Just calling it how it is. But the thing is, I wasn’t worried about it, because Madd had already shown me who he was. He’s fucking ruthless against his enemies, but he’s just as ruthlessly devoted to those who’ve given him their loyalty. I decided I wanted to be one of those people. I wanted to be a Reaper. I wanted… something different.”
I snort. “Are the Reapers really so different from the rest of the gangs here in Halston?”
It comes out sounding a little bitchy, but of course Dante just grins at me like he knows I’m being petty and he thinks it’s cute. He grins like he expects I already know the answer.
I huff out a breath, refusing to admit that I do, and he laughs again, smoothing the hair back from my face and then cupping my cheek.
“Yeah, princess, we are different,” he says softly. “Better.”
I want to argue it just for the sake of being contrary, but as pissed off as I still am at the three of them, I really can’t. The Reapers may be brutal and ruthless, but there’s a code behind the way they operate. One that’s nothing at all like what I’ve seen from that sadistic fucker, Austin McKenna, and his West Point goons, or like any of the horror stories I used to hear back in the day about the Crimson Crows.
And then of course there’s that gang whose members we took out when we rescued Chloe. Capside. They sounded… bad. Really bad. I shudder, hating the thought that my sister was ever anywhere near them.
But still, Dante talks like Maddoc is the second coming or some shit, and I’m still too raw from everything that’s gone down between us to just accept that at face value.
“I saw that map in Maddoc’s office, and it looks like everyone’s just fighting to be top dog without ever giving a shit who gets caught in the crossfire. I don’t really see how you guys are all that different.”
I suddenly remember that the Reapers were part of that gang shoot-out at the little bodega Chloe and I used to go to, near our old apartment. It was pure chance that neither of us were there at the time, so Dante can preach about how “different” they are until he’s blue in the face, but I’ve lived in Halston all my life and the truth is it just isn’t a safe place to live. Not in the parts Chloe and I can afford, at least. It’s honestly a bit of a miracle that this is the first time we’ve really been caught up in the violence the city seems to thrive on.
Dante gives me an assessing look. “There are dozens of street gangs, large and small, here in the city. More even than Madd bothers to show on that map. And there’s always gonna be some fucker trying to make a name for himself, to create an organization that will rise to power. But trust me, princess. The way Maddoc runs shit really is different.”
“Trust you?” I snipe in self-protection… because god help me, I realize that that’s exactly what my instincts want me to do.
Dante’s eyes go soft again, and I want to fucking smack him for confusing me.
Or else crawl onto his lap, straddle him, and thank him properly for it.
“After the Crows sent me in,” he goes on before I can embarrass myself by doing any of the above, “it didn’t take me long to realize that helping them take the Reapers down would just turn into yet another bloody battle in a never-ending war, ripping this city apart a little more every day. But if I helped the Reapers rise to power instead? That’s actually gonna end up keeping the city safer, because unlike fucktards like McKenna who don’t give a shit about collateral damage, Maddoc does. He’s not ever gonna hesitate to do what he has to, but at the end of the day what matters most to him is his people. And he’ll do fucking anything for the people he cares about. It’s why I’m ride or die.”
A sharp pain spikes through my heart, and I snort, looking away. “Yeah, well, that’s all well and good unless you’re someone like me. Someone he’s willing to destroy to help the people he cares about.”
Dante grabs my chin and turns me back to face him. “I get why you may not see it right now, but you’re in that second category, princess. Not the first. Maddoc cares.”
I shake my head, brushing him off. I don’t want to hear it. Sure as shit don’t want to think about it or get fooled into believing it again. So I change the subject back to him. “What did the Crimson Crows do when you betrayed them?”
Dante’s eyes gleam, his normally laid-back smile turning sharp. “What do you think, princess? They went down.”
“You mean, you took them down.”
“We took them down. The Reapers did. The shit I knew about their organization helped Madd turn the tables on them. He destroyed their entire organization, claimed their territory, and accepted allegiance from every one of their former members who were smart enough to realize that shit was all for the best.” He holds up his right hand, tapping his thumb. “You know those gaudy rings West Point wears?”
I nod. I’ve seen them. The initials WPG in chunky gold that looks more like brass knuckles than jewelry. The goons who our father brought to our apartment when he sold Chloe out all had them on.
“Well, the Crows marked their members with something similar,” Dante says. “Tattoos instead of rings. Two black interlocking Cs on the thumb. The day I got rid of those, something inside me finally felt right.”
I want to tell Dante to shut the fuck up. To stop opening up and sharing real feelings with me. It’s just one more way he’s adding to the confusing mix of emotions I can’t make sense of around him anymore.
But I also want to know more. I want to know everything.
I reach out and stroke my finger over the gorgeous red dagger on his thumb. It’s centered over an ice-blue infinity symbol that, now that I know what used to be there, I can tell must perfectly mask the original interlocking Cs. “Why this?”
Dante’s quiet for long enough that I almost think he’s not going to answer. That maybe he’s regretting opening up to me too. But then he speaks again.
“I wanted fucking color in my life,” he says, his voice full of an intensity I don’t often hear from him. “The dagger is for my father. My past. Everything I came from. And this…” He traces the figure-eight of the infinity symbol, his fingers brushing against mine. “…is how I felt once Madd taught me what loyalty is truly about. It’s without beginning and end. Calm and sure. I’ve got a future now. A sense of purpose.”
I swallow hard, something aching inside me. Longing.
“With the Crows, I was part of something,” Dante goes on, “but it wasn’t a family. I hadn’t had that since my dad died, and I didn’t find it again until I finally got here. This is my place in the world, where I’m meant to be, and Logan and Maddoc, those two just get me. They see my darkness, they see all the messy colors, and they understand all of it. They accept it, and we just fit, you know? They’re…”
“Your brothers,” I whisper as his voice trails off, my heart aching a little.
Dante gives me a crooked smile that’s more real than any I’ve seen on his face before. “Yeah, they are. But they’re even more than brothers too. Like I said, we’re ride or die.”
The ache inside me builds and builds. I want that too. I want it so bad it hurts. It’s part of the reason I miss Chloe so hard, but even though she is my ride or die, Dante’s talking about something more than what I’ve had with her in my life, when it’s always been just the two of us against the world. He’s talking about something bigger. Being part of something that’s more than any of its parts. A family group dynamic stronger than blood.
The kind of family that’s forever.
I do my best to keep the longing inside me off my face, but I know I fail when Dante tips my chin up.
“Princess?” he asks, his gaze burrowing deep.
I force a smile. “You’re lucky to have Maddoc and Logan in your life.”
He nods, serious. “I am. I’ve almost never met anyone else who gets me the way they do.”
“Almost never?” I tease, pretty sure he’s misspoken since I’ve seen the three of them together.
They don’t just have each other’s backs, they’re always actively looking out for each other and letting their different strengths support one another without any in-fighting or jealousy getting in the way. They’re so tight knit that there’s simply no room for anything to ever come between them. And I’m not jealous. Not exactly. But no matter how mad I am for all the shit with Chloe, I can’t deny that part of me wishes I could find something like that. That I could have that kind of connection, trust, and security beyond just me and Chloe.
“Yeah, almost,” Dante says, still holding my gaze. “Only one other person sees me down to my soul like that.”
Now I am jealous, even though I shouldn’t give a shit.
“Who?” I ask, my voice tight.
Dante grins, my reaction making something flare to life in his eyes that’s so hot and bright it burns right through my pissy attitude and leaves me feeling vulnerable and shaken even though I don’t know why. At least, I don’t until he answers me.
“It’s you, Riley.”
I shake my head, because it hurts to hear. Hurts to want, to believe.
Especially since he’s already betrayed me.
Dante doesn’t break, though. Doesn’t crack a smile or say he’s joking. Instead, he reaches out and strokes the backs of his fingers down my cheek, then wraps his hand around the back of my neck, leaning in to rest his forehead against mine.
“It’s you,” he repeats softly, the vibrant green of his eyes pulling at me like a magnetic force. “Just you.”
I suck in a sharp breath, my heart starting to pound, and then, before I can figure out what the hell to say to something like that, his lips are on mine and an embarrassing sound escapes me as I fist my hands in the material of his shirt and hold on like he’s the lifeline I’ll never admit to needing.
Dante hums, and I can feel his mouth curling up in satisfaction. “I ain’t going anywhere, princess,” he murmurs against my lips.
“Shut up,” I whisper, letting my eyes flutter closed. Shutting out all the bullshit of today and everything that’s still fucked-up between us so I can just feel for a little while.
Notfeel all my messed-up, chaotic emotions, but just feel this. Him. What he does to me.
He’s still smiling against my mouth, the kiss soft, like a gentle promise that twists something up inside my chest. Something that’s already too bruised to bear it.
“Kiss me for real,” I demand, yanking him closer.
Our knees bash together and it makes it awkward given the angles we’re sitting at, but Dante just chuckles, a vibration in his chest that I feel through the tips of my fingers, and does it. He takes over and turns the kiss into everything I need right now. Hot and filthy, just like I’m asking for, but also tender, which I never would but suddenly want like air.
It’s like he’s telling me without words how bad he wants me, but also that whatever’s happening right now, it’s about more than just getting off. It’s everything that’s been simmering under the surface between us all these weeks, suddenly boiling over.
I moan without meaning to, and he thrusts his tongue into my mouth hard and fast, so much like fucking that I shamelessly whine and scoot closer, already wet for him. Wanting him. Wanting more.
“That’s right,” Dante mutters, his hand tangling in the back of my hair. He tugs, forcing my head back, then trails hot, open-mouthed kisses over my jaw and down my throat. “Let me hear you, princess. Let me fucking taste you.”
He surges to his feet without giving me a chance to reply, lifting me with him and setting my ass on the edge of the sink before shoving my tight shirt up, bunching it just above my breasts.
“Damn,” he says appreciatively as they bounce free.
I’m just not large enough to worry about a bra half the time, so I don’t.
Then his mouth latches onto my left nipple, his palm completely covering my right one, and pure fire shoots down to my core.
“Dante.” I grab the back of his head to hold him there, arching up against him. “Oh fuck, yes, please.”
He makes the most delicious sound, as if I’m the one pleasuring him, then starts to take me apart. Licking me like I’m candy. Sucking each nipple until I scream. Biting, just hard enough to sting, like he fucking knows what it does to me, until I’m a squirming, panting, begging mess.
No, not like he knows what it does to me. He does know. He said it himself. I see him… but he sees me too.
All the way down to my soul.
The thought rocks through me so hard I freeze, not wanting to look at it. And Dante, thank fuck, doesn’t let me. His mouth pops off me the moment I tense up, and his hands are suddenly everywhere, stealing my attention back. Lifting my ass. Opening my pants. Tugging my shirt the rest of the way off and sliding everything off me down below too.
“Fucking gorgeous,” he murmurs once he has me naked, running his hands all over me before settling me against the sink again and crowding between my legs.
I brace my arms behind me as the rough denim of his jeans rubs against my inner thighs, and Dante tips my chin up and smiles down at me, then cups my pussy with his other hand and pushes two fingers inside. “You promised me a taste of this.”
“I never… promised you that.” I start to pant, tremors of pleasure rippling through me. “You just… you’re the one who said you wanted…”
I give up talking and he grins down at me, a look both wolfish and tender that does really fucking confusing things to my heart.
“Fuck yeah, I did. I still do, princess,” he says, distracting me perfectly from my confusion with the wicked things he’s doing with those fingers of his.
I give up on trying to talk and give in to what I wanted in the first place, just letting myself feel.
My head falls back as I writhe on his fingers and let my eyes drift closed, and Dante swoops right in with a groan, sucking the side of my throat hard enough to leave a mark.
It stings, and I love it. Almost as much as I love the way he keeps grinding the heel of his hand against my clit, slowly moving his fingers inside me like he’s on a single-minded mission to drive me crazy.
It’s working. Before I can stop myself, I’m begging again. Promising him anything he wants. The fucker still doesn’t go any harder, though. Doesn’t speed up the pace or fuck me with his thick digits the way I crave. Instead, he just keeps repeating a slow, sensual beckoning motion, over and over and fucking over, deep inside me. Stroking my G-spot so damn well that my knees start to shake and my bones all but liquify, until I know—I just fucking know—that if I let him make me come this way, it’s going to completely wreck me.
It’s too much. It makes things too unequal. With him only giving, totally focused on me, watching as I fall apart… I can’t. I just can’t.
I force my eyes open and clutch his shirt. “Just fuck me already. Give me your cock.”
Any tenderness I thought I saw on his face burns away in a flash of heat so intense I almost do come, right then and there. Then he smiles at me.
“Can’t fucking deny you, princess,” he growls, sliding his fingers out and straightening up, keeping his eyes on me the whole time as he licks them clean and uses his free hand to pop the button on his jeans. He slides his zipper down and frees his cock. “This what you’re asking for?”
Hell yeah, it is.
I knock his hand away and wrap my own around his thick length. “Less talking, more fucking.”
That wolfish smile is back. “I do like it when you sweet talk me.”
Then, taking me at my word, he slams his mouth over mine and hitches my leg up over his hip, lining himself up and driving straight into me. He goes balls deep in one thrust, filling me so completely that it blocks out everything but this moment.
I lose myself in it, overwhelmed by the dirty things he promises as he finally starts fucking me hard. His fingers dig into my hips to hold me steady, making it clear that he’s just as needy and hungry for this as I am. That he doesn’t just want the release of sex, but that he feels things between us too.
All the things that made the Reapers’ betrayal over Chloe hurt me so badly in the first place.
The thought is like fucking ice water on my brain. It doesn’t do a damn thing to cool off the inferno inside me—because Dante’s cock is like magic, and he’s got me so close that I really do want to scream—but at least it brings me to my senses.
Gritting my teeth, I force myself to put my hands on his chest and shove him away. Hard.
Dante’s cock slides out of me as he stumbles backward, just a step before he catches his balance.
“Princess?” His thick brows draw together as he gives me a confused look. His hand wraps around his length, which is shiny with the evidence of my arousal. “What’s wrong?”
“Fuck you,” I grit out as he watches me with hooded eyes.
“Pretty sure I was just doing that,” he says, his lips quirking up in a smirk.
I scramble off the counter, pressing my back against the wall opposite the sink to help fight the addiction. I just need a little space between us to get myself under control, but dammit, there isn’t any. Not when I’m suddenly bereft of his closeness and still reeling from what I just did. Not when the bathroom is too small and Dante is too large.
Even though he doesn’t make a move toward me, I still feel crowded by the sheer overwhelming presence of him. All too aware that he’s still right fucking there, close enough that I can still feel the heat of his body as the slick-sounding thwap of his hand echoes around us.
I can’t escape the awareness of just how close he’s standing, how fucking hot he looks as he jerks himself off, how much my body still craves everything I just shoved away.
I squeeze my eyes closed, fisting my hands at my sides. “I hate you.”
He leans in, and I feel his breath ghost across my cheek. Sense the motion of his hand, speeding up just like his breath does.
“Nah, that’s not what this is,” he whispers. “Don’t hide from it, wild thing.”
That pisses me off enough that I snap my eyes back open and glare at him.
Dante smiles back, bracing one hand against the wall next to my head. Still stroking himself in front of me, right in front of me, as if he’s not at all bothered by me pushing him away mid-fuck.
“That’s it,” he says as I narrow my eyes, my whole body still throbbing from his nearness. “Fuck yeah. I love seeing that fire inside you. It’s like living, breathing color.”
“That’s not color you see,” I bite out, my chest heaving. “It’s rage.”
He grins even wider, his hand moving over his cock even faster as his eyes settle on my lips. “It’s fucking gorgeous is what it is, but being pissed at me… ain’t gonna make this connection between us… go away. It’s real. No point hiding from it.”
“I’m not fucking hiding.”
No, what I’m doing is shaking. Wanting. Craving, damn him.
“Good,” Dante grunts. “’Cause I’m close, and I wanna fucking see you come too. It’s so much better together.”
“We’re not together,” I rasp, my body betraying the lie. He may not be inside me anymore, but my core still pulses with the heat he kindled there. My pussy tightens with every ragged breath he sucks in. Every forceful thrust through his closed fist pushes me closer and closer to the edge.
Dante’s eyes burn into mine like green fire, his lips hovering close enough that I can taste each exhale. It’s all I can do not to grab him and take a real taste. Climb him like a fucking tree to get what I still so desperately need.
What I was so fucking close to having before my head got in the way.
“Dante…”
I don’t even mean to say it, but whatever I may or may not have followed it up with is cut off by the sexy-as-fuck groan that rips out of him when he hears me say his name.
And then he’s coming. Painting my bare stomach with hot jets of his cum. Stroking his cock as his face tightens in a grimace of pure pleasure, and then cracking his eyes back open and locking them onto mine, just the way he said he wanted to.
I can’t look away, and I don’t want to. We are together. The moment is hot and intimate and obscenely sensual, just like Dante’s cum, sliding down my body.
It drips over my swollen, throbbing clit like liquid fire, sending a white-hot shock of pure pleasure through me. I’m so worked up from watching him jerk off that it’s more than I can take. It tips me right over the edge, making me come so hard that my knees quake, my bones instantly turning to mush with no chance in hell of actually holding me up anymore.
Dante groans, finally touching me again. He pins me to the wall, keeping me upright with the weight of his body. His breath is ragged, and he strokes my face like I’m something precious as his spent cock gives one final jerk against the heat of my skin.
“Fucking hell, that was gorgeous,” he whispers, tangling his cum-drenched hand in the back of my hair and tipping my head back. “It’s always so good with you. Because it’s you.”
My breath hitches. God damn him. He can’t say shit like that.
Before I can tell him so, he leans down, his nose gently bumping against mine and his breath ghosting across my lips. “Can I kiss you now?”
“No.”
The word comes out breathless and needy in the wake of my orgasm, and my fists curl into his shirt without my permission, pulling him even closer.
Dante’s lips curl up in a slow smile that turns the warm afterglow curling inside me into something terrifyingly tender, almost too fragile to bear. “Okay.” His lips brush lightly against mine as he says the word. “Then I won’t.”
“Asshole,” I whisper, smiling against his mouth despite my best intentions as I go up on my toes and—
And then jump back when a loud, forceful knocking shakes the bathroom door.