4. Dante #3
"The alley. Behind the warehouse. Blood everywhere, Dante. He's gone."
The phantom smell of wet copper fills my lungs. I am choking on it. Drowning in it. I try to breathe, but the air is filled with rain and blood.
My left hand betrays me, vibrating with a force I can’t suppress. The adrenaline crash tearing through my nervous system. Twenty-year-old trauma ripping its way to the surface. The phantom phone call ringing endlessly in my ears.
I drop the knife. The metal clatters loudly against the floorboards.
I press my hands to my ears, trying to block out Matteo's voice. The broken sobs. The sirens.
"Stop," I gasp, my chest heaving. "Stop."
I squeeze my eyes shut. I am in the hotel. I am thirty-six. I am the guard.
But the teenager on the phone is screaming in my head. The helplessness. The crushing inability to protect my family. To be there when they needed me.
I wasn't in the alley. I didn't see the blood. But I heard it. I absorbed the trauma through the phone line, stealing Matteo's memory and forging it into my own armor.
The panic threatens to consume me. My lungs burn. The darkness closes in.
Then, a scent cuts through the cordite and the wet copper.
Sweet orange. Warm cumin.
A hand touches my shoulder.
I flinch hard, my combat instincts taking over. I sweep my arm out, intending to neutralize the threat, to break the attacker's arm.
My forearm connects with soft, yielding flesh.
Gemma gasps, stumbling backward.
The physical contact shatters the hallucination. The hallway vanishes. The phone disappears. The smell of blood evaporates.
I am back on the fourteenth floor. The dust. The velvet. The moonlight.
Gemma is sitting on the floor a few feet away, rubbing her arm where I struck her. Her eyes are wide. Not with fear. With concern.
"Dante," she says softly.
"Don't touch me." My voice is a ragged snarl. The beast lashing out because it is wounded.
"You dropped your knife," she says, pointing to the blade resting on the floor between us. "You were shaking. You were miles away."
"I'm fine. Go back to sleep."
"You're suffocating." She doesn't retreat. She shifts closer. The oversized shirt swallows her curves, but her heat radiates toward me. "Your breathing is shallow. You're having a panic attack."
"I don't have panic attacks. I assess threats."
"The only thing dangerous in this room is the memory of what happened. I’m the reality."
Her words slice through the remaining armor. She sees it. She sees the cracked foundation, the sixteen-year-old boy hiding behind the tattooed frame of the guard.
My jaw clenches. The humiliation of being seen in this state is a burning acid in my veins. A Costa does not show weakness. A Costa does not break.
But the tactical detachment is gone. And without it, I am just a man drowning in a twenty-year-old memory.
"Stay away from me, Gemma. I am a dangerous man right now."
"I know exactly how dangerous you are," she whispers. "You just pinned me to a wall and made me scream my own name. I'm not afraid of you."
She reaches out again. Slowly. Deliberately.
I track her hand. The soft curve of her wrist. The delicate fingers.
Her palm settles flat against the center of my chest. Right over the small, jagged scar.
The warmth of her touch seeps through the fabric of my t-shirt. It anchors me. The phantom scents vanish, replaced by the intoxicating aroma of her skin.
"Breathe with me," she commands.
I stare at her. Defiance. I want to throw her hand off. I want to roar and tear the room apart.
But I don't.
I inhale. The sweet orange fills my lungs. I exhale.
"Again," she says.
I obey.
The need inside me quiets. The roaring in my ears fades to a dull hum.
She doesn't ask what I saw. She doesn't ask who I was talking to in my head. She just sits there, an anchor in the storm, her hand over my rapidly beating heart.
The contrast is staggering. Minutes ago, I was destroying her against the wall, a predator consuming his prey. Now, she is holding the pieces of my fractured mind together.
This is the danger. This is why I should have taken her to the compound.
Because the forced proximity is doing more than just driving me insane with lust. It is stripping away the layers of the guard.
"You're a stubborn bastard," she murmurs, a faint smile touching her lips.
"And you belong to me." The possessive instinct flares, stronger than the panic.
"I am my own person, Dante Costa."
"Not anymore."
I reach up and cover her small hand with my larger one. My fingers swallow hers. The oversized gold watch on my wrist glints in the darkness.
I press her palm harder against my chest. Let her feel the steady thumping beneath my ribs.
Let her know exactly what she has claimed.
Because the terrifying truth is no longer hidden in the shadows of the abandoned hotel. The tactical detachment didn't just crack. It shattered.
I’ve become a slave to this obsession, and I will burn the world before I let her leave my sight.
The rest of the night passes in a tense, vibrating silence. She eventually returns to the bed, taking the velvet drape with her. I resume my post by the door.
The physical ache of my arousal has settled into a permanent fixture in my groin. The agonizing restraint is a tightrope I walk with every breath.
I replay the tease against the wall over and over in my mind. The wetness of her slick pussy against my thumb. The hard clench of her climax. The way she screamed my name.
It wasn't enough. It was barely a drop of water in a desert.
When the sun finally breaks over the horizon, painting the dusty fourteenth floor in streaks of pale, bruised purple, I know the truth.
The next time I touch her, there will be no restraint.
I will tear the black lace to shreds. I will lose myself inside her. I will stretch her walls and claim her until she begs me to stop. And then I will keep going.
I watch the dawn light hit the messy tangle of her dark hair on the bare mattress.
The guard is dead. The monster is awake.
And the monster is hungry.