The Emperor (Dark Verse, #3)

by RuNyx

But she did know that he’d become important to her, very important. And watching him dance closely with a pretty woman? It kinda hurt. Okay, it really hurt.

While she had begun speaking to a few people, she didn’t to him. It wasn’t like she didn’t want to. She did. But god, she hated her new voice. And she really, really didn’t want him to hate it.

“You need to find something or someone to live for,”

“Something or someone who makes you want to push through all the shit the world will throw at you.”

“You have someone you live for?”

“Yeah.”

“Look at me,”

came the soft command from above her. Amara closed her eyes for a second, before giving him her eyes, to find him watching her with an intensity that had become harder and harder to ignore as the weeks went by. He looked at her like that more often, like a condemned soul being offered salvation, like a blind man seeing the sun. That look always flared in his eyes before he caged it in. Usually, he was charming and easy-going with everyone else that she saw him interacting with, but with her, there was that intensity she never saw him have with anyone else either. Just with her. And every time she felt his eyes on her, she knew the look she’d find in them.

“Are you s...

he asked her, his voice rough, his words rolling over her in the quiet of the room. No, she wasn’t scared. She was hungry for something she shouldn’t be. Amara shook her head. He straightened, taking a step closer to her, close enough that she could feel dwarfed in his presence. Amara loved that about him, that he was the only man she knew who could make her feel so small, so protected. She watched as he slowly raised his hand, slow enough that she could stop him if she wanted, and hooked his index finger in her scarf, tugging it down her neck. The skin underneath exposed. Her breasts heaved. Heart hammering inside her chest, Amara fisted the sides of her dress to keep her hands from doing anything they shouldn’t. She watched him, his dark eyes never wavering from hers even as he exposed her scar to the light in the room, the scar she always hid from everyone. His gaze never flickered down to it, their eyes locked on each other as he touched the skin with his index finger. A soft, barely-there touch. It seared her, from the point of his finger to her flesh, burning and not in a way that was painful. No. It was decadent, like the warmest of fires that seeped into her cold soul, k...

“Say some...

The soft command made her lips part, as he continued to lightly rub her scar with his fingers. She looked up at him, seeing for the first time how much her silence had affected him. She swallowed once and he felt it, her throat bobbing against his touch, and his gaze darkened. There was something in that moment — a vulnerability she had never experienced before, one that she didn’t mind with him, interspersing with the tension that had layered between them, thickening over the years. He had seen her at her worst, continued to see her at her worst, and he still looked at her as though she was something precious. The...

“Kiss...

Silence. Heavy silence, punctuated just with their breathing. Something flared in his eyes and she broke their gaze, her eyes moving to his mouth, to trace his lips and his jaw, as her toes curled in her shoes. She closed her eyes, unable to believe she’d voiced that to the boy she had been half in love with most of her life, the young man who had become something so important she didn’t even have a name for it anymore. She felt the air between them change, the woodsy scent of his signature cologne that she loved permeating the space between them. His breath brushed over her face—warm and whiskeyed. Her breaths stuttered in response. His hand went to the back of her neck to hold her in place, tilting her face up, and her heart thundered, waiting for the kiss, knowing she would cherish it in her heart for eternity. She should have known not to expect a norma...

“We shouldn’t d...

he whispered against ...

“No, we shou...

Amara whispered back. He kissed the full horizontal length of her scar again, and inhaling the line of her neck, he stepped back. Amara blinked her eyes open, her heart thumping, his dark orbs blazing o...

“I will kiss you and brand myself upon your...

he told her q...

“Just make sure you’re ready ...

sometimes, it’s knowing I want Dante but knowing I’ll probably never have him.”

“We belong in different worlds. Girls like me don’t get happy endings with guys like him.”

I... I want more.”

“With a boy?” the other woman asked over her framed glasses.

“With...

Amara clarified. “Him specifically?” She gave a...

“It’s always be...

“I fantasize about him. Dante, I mean,”

“Sometimes, he’ll carry me out to sit in the sun and I imagine how it’d feel if he picked me up for more naughty reasons. Or sometimes, when he’s talking, I look at his lips and imagine how they’d feel moving on my skin. I just look at him and imagine what he’d do if I kissed him. I mean I did ask him to kiss me and he didn’t so I’m not sure how…”

Amara watched him standing there in the middle of the day, the boy who had been her dream, the man who had become her reality, the one who had carried her into the light every single day when her body couldn’t move, the one who had made her smile through her nightmare time and time again, the one who had kissed her scar and looked at her like she was a treasure. Amara looked at him, waiting for her, and she knew. She was in love with Dante Maroni.

“What-”

before she could voice her question, she was out of her seat, straddling a very hot Dante Maroni, his hands spearing into her hair, his mouth crashing on hers. His mouth crashed on hers, and the tension that had built between them through the years snapped, the recoil of it exploding her senses. She shivered from the suddenness of it, feeling, truly feeling, him under her, one of his hands holding the back of her head, the other sliding down to the small of her back, pulling her flush against him. She gripped his hair, pulling him closer still, her breasts crushed against his shoulders, her core burning, unashamed of the pleasure just the kiss brought her.

He groaned against her mouth, his tongue flicking at her closed lips, parting them, swooping in to lick at her tongue, and she felt it between her legs, right where his bulge was pressing into her. Slanting her face to the side with his hand in her hair, he deepened the kiss. Her heart pounded, tasting him. He pulled back to catch his breath, his eyes pools of darkness that made her feel safe, his lips wet from her mouth.

“You’re the beat to my heart, Amara,”

he whispered against her mouth, pressing his forehead to hers, and something that had been wilted inside Amara unfurled, opening, soaking, blooming in the emotion she could see in his eyes. She was the beat to his heart and he was the beat to hers, both of them pulsing togethe...

Kissing Dante had become one of Amara’s favorite things. It wasn’t boring at all like her ten-year-old self had thought. No. Kissing him was heaven. Kissing him was sin. It was everything in between, and she was addicted. Some days, they’d go for a walk in the woods and he’d press her up against a tree, slanting his lips over hers. Some days, he’d pick her up from her appointments and they’d pull into the same dirt road, making out for hours in his car. Some days, she’d sneak over to his house, feeling his mouth dance with hers in perfect rhythm. They kissed a lot, but Dante never, not once took it further. His hands stayed above her waist, his lips above her neck, and even though she felt him get hard every time, she never, not once, felt unsafe with him.

“I don’t know why you’d spend time with me, Dante,”

she’d told him one day.

“I’m young and damaged and nobody. I have scars and a broken voice and my head isn’t right. You’re the heir to the Outfit and have your pick of people. Sometimes, I feel like you’ll open your eyes an...

To that, Dante had dragged her close and kissed her hard, reassuring her t...

“I have an offer for you, Amara. I’ll pay for your entire education at one of the best universities in the country. In return, you simply stay there after your graduation and cut all ties with my son.”

“He always had a bit of my heart, but I’m not that girl anymore. My heart isn’t the same anymore. This new heart, it doesn’t just love him, Ma. It beats for him.”

“He came into this new heart to help me rebuild it, day after day, and he just never left.”

“That’s the ancient art of kintsugi,”

his voice, that warm, husky, masculine voice of sinful chocolate and twisted sheets

“It’s the art of putting cracked or broken pieces of pottery together, repairing them with gold, and making a stronger, more ...

He took the shoes out, placing the box to the side, and held her right ankle. Amara felt a current shoot up from the spot to her core, tingling her body in a way she had only felt with him before. He placed her foot on his knee, the slit of her dress gaping open, exposing her entire leg to him. Amara saw his eyes rove over the exposed skin, before coming to hers, the heat in them knocking her breath out of her lungs.

“Ask me to kiss you,”

he told her, his voice rough, grating over her skin in the most delicious friction. Her toes curled on his thigh in reaction, her throat dry. God, she loved him and right then, she wanted him to take his fill, to touch, to devour. Every sexual fantasy she’d harbored for him in secret came to the fore of her mind. She didn’t know wher...