Stolen: Dante's Vow

“Mara.”

She startles, turns, eyes vacant for a moment before surprise registers on her face, her mouth freezing in an O.

“What are you doing, sweetheart?” I ask.

But she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t get a chance to when she shifts her position and loses her footing, letting out a scream as rocks slip out from under her bare feet and the ground gives way beneath her.

27

Mara

I feel my feet go out from under me and it’s in that instant that I realize something.

I don’t want this.

I don’t want to die.

My scream rips through the night, louder than the wind. Sharp rocks cut into the bottoms of my feet. When I look down, I see the sea, black now in the darkness, black without the light of the moon as clouds obscure it and rain begins to fall. Black but for the churning white as it crashes against the cliff wall.

That sensation of falling sends my belly into my throat. This is it. I will die on this island after all like I was meant to all those years ago.

But then I’m jolted to a stop, the vise like grip on my wrist threatening to pull my arm from its socket.

I look at my feet dangling naked and pale above the water, look up into Dante’s terror-stricken face.

I want to tell him that I’m sorry. That I didn’t mean it. But there’s no time for that as he moves and more rocks spill over the edge. I’d scream if I could find my voice. Scream as I watch those stones bounce off my feet and into the white cloud of water disappearing into the vast, raging sea.

And when I feel a tug on my arm, I lift my gaze up to his again. To his face as he shifts his position, anchoring himself.

“Give me your other hand!” he calls over the wind.

I reach my other arm up to him. It takes two tries, but he catches it and tugs hard. Knife-like rocks tear my clothes, cutting my chest, my stomach, and thighs. But he has me. He’s pulling me to safety.

Another tug and I’m wrapped in his arms, my feet still not touching the ground as he carries me away from the cliff’s edge and back toward the mausoleum, holding me so tight it’s hard to breathe. At the mausoleum where just a little while ago I’d paid my respects to the dead, he stops, puts me down. His hands come to either side of my face, thumbs brushing back wet hair and raindrops, grip a little too tight, gaze a little too dark.

He opens his mouth to say something, closes it again, teeth tight, jaw tense. And I see that he’s raging too. Angrier than both sea and wind as he mutters a curse then bends to pick me up. He hauls me over his shoulder and begins a hurried descent back across the beach to the house, Cerberus barking, running alongside us.

The knowledge of what I’ve done hits me when we’re in the house. I shudder.

“Good boy,” Dante tells Cerberus, petting him before pointing to his cot.

The dog obeys after a glance at me. I feel guilty even looking in his eyes.

I expect Dante to put me down. I expect him to rail against me. To let loose his rage on me. I deserve it.

But he doesn’t. Not yet. Not as he stalks up the stairs and into his room. Not as he locks the door and carries me dangling over his shoulder into the bathroom where he sets me down in the shower stall and pushes my back to the wall.

He’s furious.

Too furious to speak.

I open my mouth, but he puts up a finger. “Shut up. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

He switches on the water, and I yelp at the sudden momentary cold before it warms up. He shifts his attention back to me, hands on me, angrily ripping the clothes from me before pushing me fully beneath the flow. Only when I’m trapped in the glass enclosure does he release me, his body blocking the exit. He strips off his shirt, pushes off his boots then his jeans and briefs and steps into the shower with me.

28

Dante

I am furious.

I take hold of her face, one hand on each side, and make her look up at me. She blinks against the spray of water, but I don’t care. I pull her to me, hug her tight. Because if I don’t, I’m going to shake her. Because all I can think is how close I came to losing her again. To losing her finally this time.

I push her away.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I ask.

She winces at my tone.

“What were you fucking thinking?” I demand.

“You shouldn’t have brought me here!” she cries out.

“Where should I have taken you then? Where?” Christ. The urge to shake her is back. I want to fucking rattle her bones. Jolt some sense into her.