by Lucian Bane
“Hmm,” he said. “Twenty-seven.” Her heart sputtered when he took her finger between his lips and bit the tip. “Ten years difference? You would have been practicing your reading in second grade.” He suddenly lowered and gobbled up her neck. “I bet you were cute in the second grade. How many boyfriends did you have?”
“None,” she moaned. “I was homeschooled.”
He pulled up with raised brows. “None?” He appeared happy about that. “And at my ten year anniversary in prison, you were graduating.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “And getting ready to go to Bible College.”
He kissed up her neck. “And when I was being released from Hell five years ago … you were two years into yours.” He ended at her mouth, kissing her deeply as though to steal away any bad thoughts his words might bring up. It certainly worked. Just when her body was burning up and fighting to melt into his, he pulled up and got back to his original spot, head propped on his hand, those blue eyes boring into hers. Seeing her. She felt suddenly very naked and lacking under his gaze. “Tell me all about it, Rin,” he whispered.
She stared at him, fear slowly cooling her body down. “All about what?”
“Your hell.” He draped his leg over her hip and pulled her into him. “And I’ll tell you mine.”
She swallowed, considering. She wanted to know all about his life. Every second, every detail. But could she give him what he asked of her?
“How about we only give details we’re comfortable with. And I’ll go first,” he said.
Her pulse was back to hammering, hammering for what he offered. She wanted so much to hear his story and she nodded. When it was her turn to share, she’d figure a way. “Tell me what your first day was like.”
Chapter Thirteen
He laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling and it was her turn to get up on her elbow and wait. “First day in the big pen.”
“Do you remember it?” she whispered.
He gasped a single dark laugh. “More than any other day.”
“I bet.”
“That first day was so terrifying.” His words were soft and full of awe. Rin imagined a younger, skinnier version of him. Smooth complexion and scared blue eyes. She laced her fingers in his, wanting to be there with him even if it was just in memory. “While it was the most terrifying day, it was the day I met my angel.”
“Really?” she wondered, curious.
“Tin Tin,” he said with a half-smile. “Of course at the time I thought he was the head guard to hades, there to escort me personally to the scariest part of hell.”
“What did he look like?” she wondered quietly.
“Oh, he was … “ His head shook slowly with slightly squinted eyes. “This immense wall of white muscle. Short black hair that reminded me of Spock. But the dark eyes under those uni-brows of fury were what made him scary as hell. Made Charles Manson look like Boy George. And here I am, on the prison grounds with nobody. I’m praying so hard that I just blend in and go unnoticed. Meanwhile, it’s like the entire prison yard is taking notes!” He looked at her. “I’m not kidding when I say every single man had stopped to stare at me.”
He gave a light snort, back to staring at the ceiling. “Here I am, young, prime ass. My last day on Earth because I’m damn sure I’m being shopped and one of these dudes, or maybe all of them, was going to try and fuck me, and I was going to die while trying to kill him. Hopefully.”
“Dear God,” she whispered.
“Right,” he chuckled. “Then the weird thing happened.”
“What?”
He looked at her. “Not a damn thing.”
“Nothing happened?”
He shook his head with raised brows. “Nothing. Nothing for three whole days, not one thing. It was the strangest shit, strangest feeling,” he said, back to looking at the ceiling. “You knew it was coming and it got to the point where I was ready to provoke whatever it was, because something had to be coming.”
“Right,” she agreed.
“It finally came on the fourth day.” He looked at her again. “Until then, Tin Tin was this statue in my peripheral vision, sitting in the same spot with that your pasty white ass is mine if I should so decide look. I kept track of this statue on the bleachers because my survival instincts said always know where that one is located at all times.” He gave a barely there laugh and went back to seeing that past, right there in the air above him.
“Well, that day, the statue locked his eyes on me.” He turned a serious look to her. “I felt it before I saw it,” he whispered astonished. “From across the yard, it was a literal grip on my throat. I don’t even remember what I was doing,” he mumbled, returning his gaze to the ceiling again. “I just remember stopping, turning, and being sucked into the gaze of that giant statue now staring me down. And then, the horrific moment sped up when this giant slowly stood and began moving … toward me.”
“Oh dear,” Rin gasped, clutching his hand tighter.
“Oh fucking dear God is more like it,” Dante laughed, seeming amused. But Rin wasn’t, she was not amused at all.
Dante sat up now and put his back against the headboard, staring straight ahead. “So here comes this slow moving locomotive of death, walking straight for me, and I’m standing there, frozen to the spot, staring. Petrified. Paralyzed.”
He looks at her. “Then he stops. A foot before me. And I’m looking up into this iron face of twisted, cruel flesh, and I think … his eyes are not brown. They’re dark blue.”
His laughter erupted but Rin couldn’t appreciate the humor of his odd thought in that second. “W-what did he do?” she asked, breathless.
Dante looked at her and a slow smile filled his face. “He said to me … you’ll be with me now.”
Rin watched Dante explode in laughter again, more than before. But Rin was still too bothered about his fate to even manage a smile. “What else?” she urged.
He finally settled down and gave her a look that said the story was about to get good. “Okay, so, to me? That was a death sentence. All my virgin ass heard was I’m going to fuck you to pieces day and night, forever and ever.”
“Oh no,” she whispered, having to remind herself that Tin Tin was the angel in the story, not the monster Dante had thought.
“Then came the torment of waiting for that shit. Because you can be damn sure,” Dante said, “that I went with him, all the while plotting how I might manage to get killed before facing that asinine fate. Yes, asinine,” he said at her. “I remembered feeling like the biggest fucking moron to end up where I was, facing what I was. So, there we are, sitting on the bleachers.” He spread his arms out. “Just sitting on the bleachers for another four days.” He let his hands plop down onto his lap. “Four days of excruciating silence,” Dante strained, his brows crimped with the agony. “Sitting and silence, that’s what we did and then one day he says, ‘Go show me what you can press.’ Just like that.” He gave into fits of laughter again, slapping his leg.
“Press?”
“On the weights in the yard. Trust me,” Dante shook his head with an angled look at her, “I’m as confused as you are but for different reasons. I’m feeling none the safer and still trying to figure out how this monster’s going to use me. And I’m coming up empty.”
“Me too,” she agreed, sitting now and pulling a pillow onto her lap and holding it to her chest.
“Well, of course I go to the weights and there’s a line. It’s going to be an hour before I get to show him what I can press, which, I’m pretty sure isn’t a whole lot. A few minutes later, everybody vacates the rig I’m waiting to use. I turn and notice Tin Tin is there. I think it was in that second that I got the slightest inkling that maybe, just maybe I’ve been handpicked by the biggest bad-ass there, yay fucking me. But it’s just an inkling,” he says raising a hand, “because remember, nobody has said squat to me up to this point. So, I make my way to the rig in the sudden silence and I hear it. The sound of kissing noises.” He
eyed Rin and whispered, “And all. Hell. Broke. Loose.”
“Why?” she gasped.
“Well, it broke loose on the dude who made those noises at me. Tin Tin went from a slow moving locomotive to a ballistic missile with a fist. One punch. No,” Dante shook his head, with wide eyes. “This wasn’t a punch. This was a running, jumping, jack-hammer to the jaw, lights out instantly, punch.”
“Wow,” Rin said, clutching the pillow tighter. “Did he die?”
Dante shook his head. “No. But he did shatter his jaw to the point it had to be wired back together.”
“My God,” Rin whispered.
“I know,” Dante agreed. “Not exactly your typical angelic behavior.”
“And then you knew? That he was your angel?”
“God no,” Dante said strongly. “I knew he was as psycho as he seemed, that’s what I knew.”
“When did you know he was your angel?”
“That happened the day he let me get the shit beat out of me.”
“What?” she gasped. “I don’t understand how…”
“I know, like I said, not your typical angelic behavior but it’s what he said after, that made me realize it.”
“What did he say?”
Dante’s head shook slowly, seeming to see it clearly in his mind. “I can still see his face while the world flashed in and out. Different angles every time. I got really scared when I realized he wasn’t planning to help me,” he said, barely laughing. As if that memory wasn’t funny to him.
“Did it … hurt?”
He didn’t answer right away but he was nodding slowly. “It did.” His voice was soft and absolute. “It hurt in many ways.” The pain in his voice made her chest tighten and her stomach burn. “I realized I had come to count on Tin Tin’s protection, I guess. And it felt like … he broke that. Every bone they broke, and they broke a lot, felt like a shovel of dirt on my coffin. I was going to die, I was sure of it. And Tin Tin was letting me die.” He shook his head then tilted it, still thinking. “I think I did die.” He turned his burning blue eyes to her and his pain stabbed straight through her until she trembled from it. “On the ground, that day. Something needed to die, though. I didn’t understand it then but when I was finally able to walk out of the infirmary a couple of weeks later, I could feel it. Something different.”
Anger slowly took over Rin until she was beside herself. “Of course you were different,” she hissed, “you had the life beat right out of you!” He eyed her, a look of surprise on his face. She glared back at him. “He should have protected you,” she whispered.
“He was,” he whispered to her.
“How?” she cried. “That’s not protecting and if it is, I think …” she shook her head, trying to find the words “…I think it’s … it’s stupid!” she blurted.
“I’m sure you do,” he said, seeming to understand but not agree. “When I made my way to the yard, I found Tin Tin in the same spot as usual. I hobbled my way over and sat next to him. We didn’t talk for a whole thirty minutes it seemed like. The strange thing was?” He looked at her, those blue eyes glowing with passion. “I had this … peace.” He put a hand on his chest. “I can’t explain it but it was there and somehow, some part of me knew that what had happened needed to happen. I suddenly had this knowing inside me that said things were right on schedule.”
“So he just let you sit there? Not a word?” Her fury returned and she was shaking with it. How dare anybody let him, an innocent boy, get broken when he had nobody to help him? When he could help him!
“We didn’t need words, Rin.”
She snorted angrily. “That’s … shit.” He eyed her again and she shook her head. “I won’t take it back. It was shit, he shouldn’t have let you get so broken, not when he could protect you.”
She kept her gaze locked to his hot one. He finally said, “He protected me, Rin.”
The stupidity of those words shot anger through her. “By letting you get killed?”
“By letting me know what it is to be broken.”
“More shit! What good does getting broken to the point of near death do you?”
He was smiling a little at her now and it didn’t help her anger. “It breaks the old things and makes way for the new. You of all people should get that.”
Her? Did he think what Daryl did was an equivalent? This only added more anger. “That’s not the same,” she hissed.
“How is it different?”
She stared at his casual demeanor, bothered he would dare draw that conclusion. “What he did was … was not the same, it was. It was just not the same.”
“I think it was exactly the same,” he assured calmly.
“When they beat you it was just to do it, to show they could.”
He sat up more, his brows raised at her. “I guess telling you that Tin Tin requested it won’t help his cause.”
Horror filled her and she gasped, unable to form words. “He’s not an angel, he’s a monster,” she whispered.
“So do you want to know what he told me?”
“No,” she said furious, not even thinking. “I don’t. I don’t even want to hear his name. And if I ever see him I will … I will …” Dante’s slow grin fed her anger. “I will tell him. I will tell him exactly what he is!”
He slowly moved toward her and she slowly leaned back. The sudden lust in his gaze almost derailed her anger. She put up both hands. “I mean it, I’m serious.”
“Oh God, I know you are,” he whispered, making her heart pound as his face loomed closer.
“I am upset,” she gasped, hoping he would give her a moment to cool down.
But he didn’t, he kissed her. He kissed her and his deep groan filled her mouth, the sound of impossible hunger finally being fed. “I like you upset,” he whispered, pushing her back with his kiss until she was trapped between his mouth and the bed.
Chapter Fourteen
She pressed at his chest with her hands, needing to finish explaining how serious it was. How serious she was. “I’m not playing, I mean it.”
The words were like wisps of silk in a storm. And he was the storm, his hand on her jaw, growling even more, like she only fed the fire.
“Dante,” she tried again, dizzy. “It was wrong.”
“Was it?” His croaked words burned along her neck just before he captured her breast in one hand and forced her nipple up. “Tell me how wrong it was.”
Her mouth flew open when he ravaged her nipple with a mind blowing force. “Dante!”
“Tell me how wrong it was,” he strained, his finger shoving inside her.
“Yes,” she cried sharply, pulling her legs back for it. “So wrong,” she whispered, giving in to the plunge of his tongue in her mouth and finger to the bottom of her soul. His breaths were ragged as he kissed her, as she clasped his thick forearm, feeling the dance of muscles with the drive of his delicious assault.
“Soon this will be my cock,” he grit, biting her lip while one hand gripped the back of her neck and his other slammed so fast inside her. “Soon you will come all over me.”
She cried out, holding onto his arm for dear life. He pressed his thumb into her clit and wiggled, detonating a blinding orgasm. Oh God, oh God.
He growled with a fury right on her open mouth, eating up the loud cries pouring from her. Still clutching his arm tight, she arched her back with the sudden hot suction of his mouth on her breast. He bit her nipple and she shrieked with the jolt of pleasure it shot through her sensitive body.
“God you fucking drive me crazy,” he whispered, sliding his finger out of her and sucking it while she fought to catch her breath.
“What?” he asked after a few seconds.
She tore her gaze from his cock and looked at him. “I … I just noticed.”
“You just noticed what? How fucking hard you make me?” he said with a winded laugh.
“No. Why … why don’t you have any marks there? I mean I’m glad you don’t, it would … hurt.�
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He stared at her and she fought the desperate urge she always had to study his stunning body. He stood next to the bed and raked one hand then another through his hair. “Tin Tin said I should wait to mark those two places.”
“Two?”
His grin was a little tight maybe shy as he pointed to a small clear spot over his heart.
“Ohhhh,” she said, angling her head. “Right, I see it. Not a lot of space.”
He shrugged. “It’s enough.”
“What are you going to put there?” she wondered, her heart suddenly racing.
“I’m not sure yet.” He continued to stare at her, his breaths slowing with a slight smile on his lips. “I’m still considering my options.”
“Why … to wait?” His cock jerked in her peripheral and she lowered her gaze to it then forced it back up to his mirthful one.
“For that special someone. Oh and this life here? It ain’t nothing but a flash. Fifteen years? That’s coming and going and one day you’re gonna walk out of this place and face your real enemy. You. But I’m gonna make sure when you leave here, you’ll know three things very well. How to think. How to not die. And how to live.”
She stared at him, confused.
“That’s what he told me. Tin Tin. That day on the bleachers? You really needed to hear it. As in you … really needed to hear it.”
“What do you mean?’
“I mean those words, you needed them. They’re now yours.” He pointed to his chest. “From me. Passing them on to you.”
She thought about the words and regarded him again, fascinated. “You were supposed to pass them?”
He pursed his lips thinking, his eyes squinted before he shook his head. “No.” Then his gaze went slowly suspicious. “Or maybe. Maybe I was, and I didn’t know it till just now.” He nodded a little. “Yeah, that’s just what it feels like,” he said, hitting her with those passionate blue eyes. “You were supposed to hear that and I was supposed to tell you.”
He suddenly held both his hands out to her and she realized he wanted her to take hold of them. She did and he wrapped his hands tight around hers and sat, putting his face close enough to make her breathless. “Your life back there, Rin?” he said in soft sincerity. “It was nothing but a flash. Seven years? That came and went and you walked out of there. Now you’re facing your real enemy. You. But don’t worry,” he said heatedly. “I’m gonna make sure you learn three things very well. How to think. How to not die. And how to live.” He gave her a slight smile. “And how to be loved. By me.”
