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“Who did you lose?” I asked gently. I was tempted to touch his hand again, but since he’d pulled away from me earlier, I decided against it. For all the sexual innuendo he’d sent my way the past few months, my touches actually seemed to make him uncomfortable, no matter how innocent they were.
Dante sucked in a deep breath and chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “My brother. Aleksander…Aleks.”
“When?”
“Ten years ago. He was eight.” Dante’s voice shook with emotion and he dropped his eyes.
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
I ignored the fact that I knew Dante didn’t like me touching him and used my fingers to push his hair back so I could see his face. “What happened?”
Dante shook his head before stilling. His whole body was drawn up tight and his hands were once again fisted on his legs.
“He was kidnapped.”
I managed to keep the curse word that nearly slipped from my lips to myself. “Did they ever…”
I hesitated, not knowing how to ask my question. But Dante solved the problem by shaking his head. “Everyone was holding out hope that there’d be a ransom call.”
When he didn’t continue, I said, “But there wasn’t.”
He let out an ugly little laugh. “Kids from favelas don’t get kidnapped for ransom.”
I stiffened. “Favelas…those are…those are slums in Brazil, aren’t they?”
Dante nodded. “Only one reason to take a kid from a neighborhood that the rest of the world doesn’t give two shits about.”
My stomach fell as I realized what he meant. Human trafficking.
As a Ranger, I’d been exposed to the practice on more than one occasion, but many of the victims we’d encountered had been held by the men they’d paid to get them over the border. It wasn’t until the victims paid an additional fee or “tax” that they were released by their captors. But there was only one reason to kidnap an eight-year-old kid.
I felt tears stinging the backs of my eyes as my heart broke for Dante and his family. “Dante-”
“That kid’s really something,” Dante suddenly interjected as he jumped up. A rough laugh escaped his throat, but it sounded forced.
“He is,” I acknowledged, since I knew he was talking about Matty. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to change the subject. I was feeling sick just thinking about what little Aleks, who hadn’t been much older than Matty when he’d been abducted, would have had to suffer through…what he would still be suffering through if by some miracle – or curse, depending on how you looked at it – he was still alive.
“Putting the fact that I’ve got a dick instead of a pussy aside,” Dante said as he went to sit down in one of the arm chairs, putting several feet of distance between us. “You couldn’t afford me.”
I knew the joke for what it was and decided to humor him. He wasn’t the only one who needed to deflect some really ugly emotions.
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“Well, I’d be your trophy wife, right? This” – he waved his hand down the length of his body – “doesn’t come cheap.”
“So, I’m the sugar daddy in this scenario?” I asked.
“If the toupee fits.”
I couldn’t resist laughing at that. The humor finally reached Dante’s eyes and I felt the warmth return, along with my body’s excitement at having him so close, though he wasn’t quite close enough.
Dante was looking so proud of himself for the barb that I felt like having a little fun of my own. I ran my fingers through my hair and said, “This is all real, baby,” I drawled, adding an extra twang to my words. “You want to get a good grip and feel for yourself?”
My comment did exactly what I’d intended. Dante’s eyes went wide and his breathing ticked up as he settled his gaze on my hair. No doubt he was thinking about the many things he wanted to be doing to me as he had a good fist hold on my hair. Hell, I was thinking about it too now and it didn’t freak me out like it probably should have.
My little experiment had definitely answered the question about whether or not Dante was still attracted to me. Which left me wondering why my little touches seemed to bother him so much.
Interesting.
I released the hold I had on my hair and settled my hand in my lap. Dante’s eyes shifted to mine and we both hung there for a moment before he averted his gaze. “I should probably go call in my report.”
He sounded about as interested in leaving as I was interested in seeing him go.
“Probably,” I murmured as what little humor we’d managed to find seeped from the room like a balloon being slowly deflated. I watched as Dante got up and headed towards the den. I searched out the remote for the TV and turned it on, but didn’t register what was happening on the screen because I was too lost in my own thoughts to care.
