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He grabbed my face with both of his hands and started kissing me.
Eventually I pulled back. “I need to start packing. I’m going to find a flight out tonight. I can non-rev if I have to.”
“You’re not going anywhere tonight.”
“I’m not?” I don’t know why, but at this point, I was only amused.
“Try to leave. See what happens to you.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.”
~Emily Brontë
I have no excuse for myself. No justifications that don’t ring hollow.
I let him keep me there.
I could have escaped, could have fought him harder, could have easily talked Bastian into getting me away. It would have made the brothers come to blows, but it would have worked.
I didn’t do any of that.
This was the whole problem, the entire reason I was so stubbornly devoted to hating Dante’s guts.
Because when I didn’t, I was too weak to fight him. Just a few days in his proximity and I didn’t even have the will anymore.
Without the hate, I forfeited all of my power against him. I lost and he won.
Even knowing it was temporary, transient, even knowing it was all a lie, that when it finished I’d be in much, much worse shape than when we’d started, I let him keep me there for another day.
It’s no secret how we spent that day. We locked ourselves in my room and barely came out even to eat.
The day went too fast and the morning came too soon.
The sun rose and drama was not far behind it.
Something had happened between Bastian, Leo, and Adelaide in the middle of the night, the details of it shrouded in mystery, but word had it that Dante’s mother was throwing a fit to end all fits, so much so that the reading of the will was postponed.
I was in the kitchen pantry scraping together the ingredients to make crepes when Dante told me the news.
“God, she’s crazy. I can’t stay another day. I have work. I need to leave tonight.”
His answer was to grab me and kiss the breath out of me. “No,” he said simply.
I bit back a smile. “You know there’s a term for what you’re doing here, right?”
“Kidnapping,” he supplied without an ounce of shame or remorse.
But a few hours later he changed his mind completely, did an abrupt about face.
I was soaking my sore, overused body in the bath. He’d gone downstairs to grab some water, but I fully expected him to join me when he returned.
He burst in the door, looking agitated. “You need to get packed. You need to go. Now.”
I sat up, completely caught off guard. “What? Why?”
