Chapter 29
Lachlan knelt over him. The rough fabric of his trousers dragged against the stone floor.
He threaded his fingers through Dante’s sweat-damp hair.
His knuckles grazed the sensitive skin of the scalp.
His thumb traced the sharp line of the cheekbone.
The tenderness felt obscene. Dark bruises were already blooming along Dante's ribs.
"I've been keeping you safe since you were seven years old," Lachlan said.
His voice was low and conversational. "I found you kneeling in the mud. You were seconds from execution. You were fighting a war you never chose and never understood."
The words arrived slowly. They filtered through a heavy fog in Dante’s mind.
Dante forced his eyelids open. Lachlan’s face hovered inches away.
His expression was unreadable. It was a cocktail of dark longing and regret.
"You... you're..." Dante’s voice was dry as scorched paper.
Lachlan’s expression did not shift. "That is fourteen years, Dante. I watched from a careful distance. I made sure you survived every bad decision. I waited for you to find your way back. To me."
Dante’s throat felt permanently blocked. His chest heaved in shallow, frantic pulls. Every expansion of his lungs hurt against the cold stone.
"Just a little longer," Lachlan murmured. His hand slid to the back of the neck. His fingers found the knotted muscles. He squeezed with precise, deliberate pressure. "One more time. Then you can sleep."
"I can't—" Dante started.
"Yes, you can. Just say stop whenever you want me to stop."
The protest dissolved into a strangled gasp.
Lachlan’s fingers closed around Dante's penis. The sensation hit like a live current.
Dante’s nervous system was already critically overloaded.
Every nerve ending felt raw and screaming.
"God—please—I can't—"
Dante’s back arched violently off the stone.
His spine bowed under the structural strain.
His shoulder blades ground against the floor.
His hands scrabbled at the grit. His nails dragged until the skin at his fingertips split.
"You can," Lachlan whispered. Dante felt the vibration in his own bones. "You were made for this. Let me prove it."
A sound tore from Dante’s throat. It was half-sob and half-scream.
"Why?" he choked out. His head thrashed. "Why spare me then? Why all of this now?"
Lachlan paused. His shadow stretched long and predatory across the floor.
"At seven years old, you didn't beg," Lachlan said. "You didn't cry. You looked at me with those eyes. I saw something that deserved to survive."
A beat passed. Lachlan’s grip tightened. Dante’s breath locked in his lungs.
"I told myself it was mercy," Lachlan leaned down.
His breath was warm against Dante's ear. "But the truth? I wanted you. Even then. I wanted to watch what you’d become. And look. You became exactly what I needed. Dangerous. Broken. Perfect."
The release arrived like a tectonic event. It built in his marrow and his blood.
Dante tried to hold back. His thighs shook. His toes curled against the stone.
Lachlan knew the rhythm with terrifying precision. Dante’s fingers curled into fists. His nails bit deep crescents into his palms. The sting of broken skin was his only coordinate. It kept him from dissolving entirely.
"You must do something," Dante panted. His lungs burned. "Drugged me. Some technique—"
"I did nothing." Lachlan’s hand shot out. His fingers grasped under Dante’s jaw.
He tilted the face up. Dante had nowhere to look but into those amber eyes.
"Your body did this on its own," Lachlan said. "Your mind built this cage. You made the choices. Now the bars are too strong to break."
"No," Dante whispered. His lips trembled.
"Yes." Lachlan’s thumb pressed hard against Dante’s lower lip. He forced the mouth open.
"You know why you came back here? Not for answers about your past. Not for revenge. You came back because nowhere else felt right. Because every contract you took, every city you ran to, every person you tried to touch—none of it worked. Nothing satisfied the hunger I'd built into you."
Dante wanted to argue, to fight, to prove him wrong. But his body betrayed him.
His lips parted against Lachlan's thumb, tongue darting out to taste skin without conscious thought.
Salt and leather and something underneath that was purely Lachlan.
A small sound escaped his throat—part whimper, part surrender.
"Let go," Lachlan commanded. "Stop fighting. Give me everything."
And Dante did.
He surrendered completely, let the wave crash over him, drag him under, shatter him into pieces.
His mouth fell open on silence — jaw locking, voice gone, his body moving through a series of convulsions that felt less like physical event and more like structural demolition.
Tears tracked from the corners of his eyes into his hair.
His vision went white at the edges and stayed there.
His heart beat against his ribs like something that wanted out.
When it ended he lay as he'd fallen — limp, heavy, his limbs with the consistency of wet clay against the cold stone.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, aimless pulls that barely qualified as breathing.
"There it is," Lachlan murmured. His voice had the particular thickness of deep satisfaction.
"Not your body breaking — that was hours ago. Not your mind accepting — that came when you walked through my door. This is your soul admitting what it has always known."
A pause.
"You are mine."
