CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Dante

ANOTHER SHITTY DAY.

At Eagle Elite.

After letting Chase punch me repeatedly, he’d been thankful that I’d outed Mil, but with that thanks, came his stress, which meant I got to play the bag to his punching.

I sighed and looked around for El

I should feel guilty that she was sitting by herself, that people were whispering like they always did.

But I had a job to do — and that job didn’t include holding her hand and making sure the kids weren’t being mean to her. I snorted in disgust and tossed a fry back onto my plate.

Andrei approached like I knew he would — hey he was the one who invited me to eat by them.

Silence ensued.

It was becoming annoying, the way people looked at him like he was God, when I knew it was more like he was the exact opposite of anyone or anything you ever want to worship.

I could almost feel the tension dripping from the atmosphere as he calmly sat across from me and folded his hands on the picnic bench.

I had an hour before my next class.

And was spending it trying to eat shit food and not stare at El while she read a book under the tree.

“Still so pretty.” Andrei nodded in her direction. “Too bad she’s used goods, yeah, surprised you still kiss her knowing where her mouth’s been.”

I kept my face indifferent when my heart slammed in defiance of his words, like it was taking offense even though it wasn’t even meant to. Damn it, that mouth was mine.

With a shrug I grabbed another shitty fry and shoved it into my mouth.

“She’s worse than a Russian whore,” he said in a low voice. “Next time you bring her around, know that we will take advantage of her in every way. It’s our right. Besides…” He stood and winked. “She’s got no name to protect her, not that it’s surprising. No Italian was brave enough to take her, huh? What has it been? A few days?”

His voice rose.

She was only a few feet away from me.

Tears filled her eyes, and she glanced back down at her book.

“What makes you think I haven’t?” I said calmly. “Don’t assume I haven’t spread her legs for my own pleasure and laughed at the way she screams my name as if no one’s ever made her feel that way before, Xavier must have had a pretty small dick.” Smirking, I stood. “So fucking tight, I almost passed out. Probably a good thing Xavier’s dead, or I’d kill him for being such a shit sexual partner.”

“Watch it.” Andrei’s face cracked a smile. “He may have been an idiot, but he was our idiot.”

“And now he’s a dead idiot,” I added with a smirk.

“I can’t decide if I should trust you or just kill you,” he mused.

“You’re asking the wrong question, Andrei.”

“Am I?”

“The only thing you can trust in this business is money and blood. You don’t need to trust the person, trust the greed you see in my eyes, trust the blood I spilled for you. End of story.”

He nodded slowly. “Soon.” He knocked on the table and started walking backward away from me. “We have a few loose ends and then you’ll have all the money you could possibly want — and enough blood to spill to quench even your thirst, Dante.”

I eyed him up and down with a bored expression and said. “Doubtful.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, I like you.”

When he was a few feet away from me, his back turned, I imagined pointing a gun at his head and firing off the trigger at least a dozen times.

If I didn’t need information on him, his contacts, what the hell he was doing at the University other than stalking the shit out of El — he’d be dead.

Slowly, I approached El, casting a shadow over her form. She turned the page, scrunched up her nose like she was concentrating when we both know she probably heard every ugly part about that conversation.

“Am I supposed to thank you?” She didn’t look up.

“Don’t.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

I sat down next to her, our thighs grazed each other. She sucked in a breath and leaned her head back against the trunk of the tree. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Not if I kill him first.”

“That’s a gamble. They’re putting you in a bad position — the bosses, if this goes badly, if you’re no longer useful—”

“That’s where you’re wrong El — I will always be useful to men like Andrei because they can’t see beyond their own arrogance. I’m just dangerous enough for him to want me on his side, I have all the right connections, and there’s a sick satisfaction he gets thinking that I’d ever cross my own family just to build a name for myself. Nah, he won’t fire first, because he sees himself in me, and you don’t shoot yourself in a war, you shoot the enemy. My bullet will be lodged in his head, it’s just a matter of when.”

She shivered and closed her book. “I hope you’re right.”

“Why?” I turned to her. “You gonna miss me?”

She rolled her eyes. “Must be nice, sinking between my thighs, huh Dante?”

I stood and offered her my hand. “I wouldn’t know since you keep them so fucking tight I’m surprised you can even put pants on without difficulty.”

She scowled and jerked away from me. “Thanks… for making him think I was your whore too.”

I wrapped an arm around her. “It’s to keep you safe.”

“I know.” Her voice was muffled against my chest as I walked her away from the crowds of people and toward the business building. “I just… it makes me feel — dirty again.”

I stopped walking, dropped her book onto the ground right after her messenger bag, then cupped her face between my hands, my mouth found hers in a searing kiss as my tongue slid past her defenses, my hands dove into her luscious midnight hair. When she gasped, I deepened the kiss until all I tasted was her.

With a sigh, I pulled away, kissed her forehead, grabbed her messenger bag and discarded book and then her hand.

We kept walking.

“What?” Her voice was hoarse. “What was that for?”

“That was a kiss, El.”

“I know what it was Dante, I’m asking what it was for.”

“A reminder.” I shrugged.

“Of?”

“The purity of kissing, the simplicity of kissing just to kiss, because it feels good because sometimes sex is just fucking and emotionless, but when you kiss, damn when you kiss you feel everything don’t you? You feel it everywhere, it consumes you more than any sexual act you’ll ever do. People don’t really remember their first sexual experience, but their first kiss? You’ll remember it until your dying day. Just giving you something happy so you can replace the ugly. Sometimes kissing is the only way to give innocence back that’s been taken.” I stopped walking. “Now, El. Now you can thank me.”

She sighed and then whispered, “Thank you.”

It was unexpected.

The feeling in my chest that told me the kiss wasn’t just for her.

But for me too.

My kiss had been selfless and after two seconds in her arms, it had quickly turned selfish.

Because I wanted more.

And a part of me was disgusted with every thought that was directed at the very girl I was supposed to stay away from — to protect.

She would never be mine.

But for a few minutes.

When our lips fused together.

I was hers.