Chapter 33
EMBERLINE
He took off his shirt.
Because of course he did.
Dante Dominico was an asshole put on this earth to torture me, and apparently, the best way to make me miserable was naked from the waist up.
Fucking fine.
I was immune to his perfect abs and slabbed chest. To the fact he looked like he’d been carved by some old Italian master at the top of his game, like one of those fallen angels on a pedestal in Rome.
“Bet I can kick your ass, even in a dress.” I locked my fingers together and stretched, my vertebrae popping back into place, one by one.
Asshole overplayed his hand, challenging me right now.
I was running on super high-grade petrol when I was used to spluttering along on regular. A Maserati instead of a Fiat. My husband’s own blood was going to help me humiliate him, and I couldn’t wait to rub his nose in defeat.
“I’ll take that bet.” His black hair was damp at the temples as he gathered it back into a ponytail, powerful chest rising slow and controlled, as if his lungs didn’t know how to work hard. “What are we fighting for?”
I reached behind me and pressed my foot to the small of my back. “I want Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to train. Alone. I think you’re right. We shouldn’t share.”
Not with him looking all muscley, handsome, and sweaty.
Smelling like pure sin.
Not with my libido stomping all over my common sense like a vat of grapes.
The corner of his mouth tugged. “Barefoot.” His voice was rough, like gravel. “My little barefoot wife, so cocky after her first feed. Feel like you can take on the world, do you?”
“I feel like I can toss your ancient, decrepit ass to the ground,” I taunted in a sweet voice. “What do you say, you old buzzard? Want to give this a go?”
He laughed, throwing his head back until the sound bounced off the worn beams. “Good gods, you are something else. Fuck yes, I want to give this a go, and as far as me being old…” Dante ran a scarred hand down his rippling torso, over that perfect chest and those abs.
My gaze followed that trail of dark hair while my mouth watered.
I hadn’t gotten a clear look at Dante before, but those tattoos…
I’d never seen anything like them. One pectoral and one arm were completely covered in a strange pattern I didn’t recognize but made my hair stand on end, as though they were somehow filled with power.
Pagan symbols of some kind, etched deep into his skin.
“I’ll take that bet. You win, you get your days, but I win… and we train together. Every fucking day.”
His gaze dragged down my body, the line of my throat, the dark fall of my dress. When it lifted again, his eyes were the color of clear skies and a mind made up.
“You really think you can take me?” He rolled those mighty shoulders, pure power shifting beneath scarred, battered skin. “You really think a belly full of blood and an attitude is any match for what I’ve been through?”
A jolt of pity went through me, a brief, weak hesitation as I imagined what it must have been like for him. Alone. Cut off. Forced to fight day after day, just to survive.
“I want you,” I challenged, “to stop assuming you’re the only person in this room who’s suffered. The only one who knows how to fight. The only one who has something to prove.”
Something shifted in his expression, interest maybe.
Respect, if I was being optimistic.
He tilted his head. “You want to spar, we’ll spar. But I won’t hold back.”
“Well…” I tipped my head to the side, measuring the distance between us, those enormous rubber-soled boots on his feet, that four-foot reach. “I wasn’t planning to talk you to death, buzzard.”
“Such a mouth on you, wife.” Dante moved closer until he was within arm’s reach. I didn’t back up. I’d learned a long time ago that retreat was as bad as losing outright, and today, I didn’t intend to lose.
His eyes flicked down my body again—this time stopping on my bare feet on the mats.
“If you break a toe,” he tipped his head, “I’m not carrying you back down those stairs.”
“Have no fear, I’ll never let you carry me anywhere again,” I waved my hand in the air between us, stirring up a cloud of dust motes. “You’d probably drop me on my ass out of pure spite.”
“I’d only drop you because you called me old.”
“Bet you’re slow, too. Slow and old and…”
Dante moved. Faster than anyone alive should be able to move.
Faster than Gabriel or Nico… or me.
He came at me with a feint—left shoulder dipping, right hand half-lifting as if to grab—but I didn’t bite. I pivoted, slipping past his reach, my dress sweeping around my ankles. My palm snapped up toward his throat in a perfect jab—
He caught my wrist.
Not hard, just enough to trap me in place.
I twisted, turning into his grip instead of away, using the momentum to drive my elbow up toward his ribs. Dante shifted just enough that I clipped muscle instead of bone. The impact jolted down my arm until the vibration numbed the ends of my fingers, as if he was made out of iron or something.
He grunted—more approving than hurt.
“Not terrible,” he offered.
“Wow, I might faint from such lavish praise,” I panted, pinned against that hard-as-iron body before I yanked my wrist free and dropped my weight, sweeping at his legs.
Dante hopped over my foot, but I’d already anticipated that move, my fist already aimed at his jaw as I lunged upward.
He jerked away back—not far enough—and my knuckles caught his chin, sending him reeling back a step. Two.
He rubbed his cheek, something dark and dangerous flashing in those blue eyes.
I didn’t hesitate, though the stupid dress slowed me down by a few seconds.
I surged forward, striking fast—the heel of my palm to his sternum, a knuckle punch to a shoulder, a knee sinking deep into his midsection, every bit as toned as it looked.
Each move was from hours of training and the endless surge of power rushing through me.
Gods, his blood was amazing.
Why had I been drinking out of bags my whole life when I could have felt like this all along?
Powerful. Invincible. Fuck yes, I would have chosen this.
I enjoyed the briefest moment—barely a breath—of triumph.
Then Dante stopped holding back.
He turned into a blur, closing the distance between us in a blink, hand around my forearm, the other bracing at my waist, and suddenly I was pressed to the floor in the simplest, most infuriating hold—tight enough that I couldn’t strike back, close enough his body heat bled into mine.
I snarled and thrashed, trying to wrench free.
Dante’s mouth brushed my ear, every word taunting. “You fight like you don’t want to win, Emberline. If I were a betting male, I’d say this is what you wanted, to find out how it felt, to be pinned underneath me.”
“Dial back that precious ego of yours for a minute, asshole,” I hissed, struggling in his unforgiving grip. “You’re heavier than a fucking bus, and you smell like a sewer.”
He chuckled. “Sticks and stones, love, sticks and stones. Looks like you’ve lost this round.”
I went still for half a second—pretending to concede, my body going limp, his eyes going all dark and hooded, fixed on my lips. I darted my tongue out and deliberately ran the tip along my bottom lip. He looked like he was going to have a fucking aneurysm.
Then I headbutted him.
A full-on head butt that left me seeing stars, but the look of shock on his face was so worth it, I would have done it again if I wouldn’t give myself a concussion.
I shoved him away and was up on my feet, leaning over him. “Old.” I leaned closer and hissed, “Slow.”
Dante’s laugh came out as a rasp, hands braced on his stomach, a red lump growing on his forehead, blood trickling from his nose.
Satisfaction warming my belly.
“I can do this all day, all I need is…”
One second, I was gloating over my fallen enemy, the next… my stomach dropped as I flipped through the air, landing flat on my back on the mats, the air driven from my lungs. Dante straddled me, my wrists in his hand, pinned up over my head.
Dante didn’t crush me, but I couldn’t move, back arched up off the floor, his hips—his erection—pressed into me so there was no mistake what was between us, close enough his heart hammered furiously against my chest.
His lips hovered inches from mine.
I glared up at him, chest heaving. “That was a dirty move.”
“Pit fighting isn’t exactly rule-driven,” he said, as if that explained everything. “And,”—his eyes landed on my mouth—“you’re the one gloating before your enemy was fully neutralized.”
“Oh, I’ll neutralize you,” I shot back, squirming to get my knee free. “You won’t walk right for a godsdamned week.”
“Oh, I’m not letting you loose, wife. I’ve been kneed in the balls by the best, but somehow, I think you’ll really make it hurt.”
I tugged against his grip, more to prove a point than because I expected to win. My wrists didn’t budge. My body might as well be encased in stone. And every time I moved, I rubbed harder against him, and the friction… I was completely on fire.
Dante dragged that stare back down my body, slow and deliberate, like a predator taking inventory, and his hard cock pulsed against my lower belly, sending a rush of wetness between my legs.
His mouth curved. “Say it.”
“Say what?”
“That I won.” He tipped his head to the side, and his hair came loose from its tie, spilling down over one of those powerful shoulders like a flood of dark silk. “Tell me I won, Emberline.”
“I’m not telling you anything, you old buzzard, except you cheat.”
“I don’t need to cheat to win.” His expression turned serious. “Although if you’d had a weapon… I’m not so sure we’d be here right now. You might be on top of me, holding a blade to my throat.”
His pupils dilated, two black dots swimming in an azure sea, and all that heat between us suddenly seemed dangerous and inevitable. I wanted to see if his mouth tasted like his blood, if I could lick those soft lips the same way I’d licked the skin on his throat.
“Holding a blade to your throat does hold a certain appeal right now,” I ground out, trying not to grind against the erection pressed between us. An erection that felt impossibly massive and was getting bigger by the minute.
Surely that would never fit, right?
His grin widened. “Now you’re just flirting.”
“I’m thinking of a thousand ways to kill you, all of them bloody and incredibly painful,” I corrected. “Slow, too. Very slow.”
“Sounds fun.” His grip loosened enough for me to move my wrists, for my hard nipples to scrape against his chest, nothing but a thin layer of fabric between us, and for one breathless moment, I wanted there to be nothing between us, nothing but skin and sweat and mouths and fingers and…
“It’s only the blood.” Dante’s breath came out choppy around his words. “What you’re feeling…” He sighed, squeezing his eyes closed. When he opened them, his gaze was clear, but the need was still there, plain as day.
“It’s only my blood, hitting your system for the first time.
Drinking an older vampire’s blood gives you a rush of power, but it also makes you horny, Emberline.
And I’ve been tempted by you,”—his voice dropped—“since the moment you walked into my life with that cold little stare and that mouth that doesn’t know when to shut up. ”
My pulse jumped, the traitorous thing, and I swallowed. “And you hate my mouth?”
Dante’s gaze locked on my lips. “I do hate your mouth. Fucking hate it.”
He leaned in, slow, giving me time to refuse.
I didn’t refuse.
When he kissed me, it wasn’t gentle. His lips were soft, but the way they pressed against mine was hard, demanding. Heat spiraled through me as he pressed his tongue into my mouth, and the sharp edge of pressure that had been building for hours settled between my legs, a hot, demanding weight.
He made a needy little sound, and I strained against him, still pinned, still furious, my heart fluttering against my ribcage like butterfly wings, as if it wanted to fly away.
All while his mouth moved against mine like he was claiming victory and losing control all at once.
I bit into his lower lip—hard enough to make him inhale, a sound half-pain, half-grunted lust. Blood bloomed on my tongue, powerful, sweet, and delicious, and I sucked hard, ravenous for another taste as he groaned, grinding himself against me in a frenzy.
He pulled back a fraction, eyes burning, a bright stain of red on his wet lips.
For a moment, neither of us moved, my pulse racing, body on fire.
The room smelled like sex, arousal, and canal air seeping through the cracks in the windows, but I didn’t care because all I could smell was him.
Dante’s weight anchored me to the mat, his hands still gripping my wrists—possessive, dominating.
Gods, I’d never felt so alive.
Dante was bigger. Stronger. This was a fight I couldn’t win—and didn’t want to win.
But this… horror spread through me like ice. This couldn’t happen. Ever again.
“I despise you. I want a fucking divorce.”
Dante’s laugh was quiet, his expression wrecked. “You’re going to be a real problem for me, tesoro.”
Then he brushed his mouth over mine again, softer this time, like a promise he didn’t know how to say out loud. “I’m kissing you again,” he growled. “And this time, I’m not going to be nice.”
“Emberline, are you somewhere in this awful hovel? Don’t make me come up there.” My brother’s shout drifted in through the open window.
Reality crashed back in, breaking the spell. Thank all the gods.
But… what the fuck was Luca doing here?
“Ah, I hear your brother’s melodic tones.” Dante sighed, rolling off me and offering me his hand, a glimmer of disappointment in his face. “Your trunks have finally arrived, Emberline.”
“I thought I needed to keep my distance from my family?” I stared up at him, confused. “What was that whole speech before?”
Dante wiggled his fingers, and after a pause, I placed my hand in his and let him pull me to my feet.
“I figured your brother deserved an explanation, so I might have suggested he help with the delivery.”