The Emperor (Dark Verse 3)

Did he possibly have a girlfriend?

Amara didn’t know why it jolted her out of her reverie, but it did. As she watched him lead the beautiful woman across the floor in a dance, Amara realized she’d somehow fallen into the safety of the time he spent with her.

Over the last year, Dante had become something like the sun. She waited every day to feel his warmth, if only just for a few minutes before the clouds returned. But as long as she had the sun, the clouds were bearable.

She didn’t know what she felt for him anymore, everything inside her convoluted in the way he’d been weaved into her life. 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.

But it made sense. He was older and more mature and needed someone who could compliment that. And it wasn’t a traumatized seventeen-year-old girl in therapy who never spoke a word to him. 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.

Taking a deep breath, Amara walked the edge of the dance floor at the mansion, heading towards the kitchen where her mother was. There was a party at the big house for Mr. Maroni’s 50th birthday, and while Amara wasn’t supposed to attend, she had needed something out of her routine.

The compound had started to suffocate her, to the point where she actually looked forward to her therapy sessions in the city. Yeah, she was going to therapy, had been going for a year. And she’d been homeschooling with the same tutors who came to teach Tristan, helping her with her education.

But she honestly didn’t care anymore.

She didn’t recognize herself anymore.

Things she once cared about seemed pointless to her. She knew the people around her cared for her, and after a few weeks, she’d realized she couldn’t hurt them as she hurt. So, she had put a smile on her face and listened to them talk, and lived on, pretending something very, very wrong, very ugly hadn’t taken root inside her.

She didn’t know how to push it out. She didn’t want to talk to people, didn’t like the sound of her own voice, didn’t like the look of her skin. She felt the scars under her feet every time she put on her shoes, felt the slight twinge in her back every time fabric slid across her flesh to cover it up. Worse, she saw the ugly, mottled skin on her wrists, vertical lines on the sides of her stomach, and that one surgical slit across her neck.

Her torture had been written on her skin and stained on her mind. And she hated who she was at that point – lost, adrift, clueless.

The ballet flats she wore as she made her way through the people reminded her she probably could never wear heels. Her sense of balance had been a little off since the incident. There wasn’t any physical reason for it, as her doctor had reminded her kindly. It was psychological. A lot of things were psychological with her.

God, she hated her brain some days for not shielding her, not blacking out the entire memory, and leaving her with a clean slate. That would’ve been better. Some days, anger at herself made her want to do something drastic. Some days, the knife on the kitchen counter looked friendly. Some days, all she wanted was to let go, but only knowing how much the people around her would hurt stopped her every time. She took hot showers to clean her skin but the filth stayed buried in, no matter how hard she scrubbed.

“Ma,” she called out to her mother, her new voice barely louder than a high whisper, and felt the eyes of the staff come to her. She ignored the awkward looks they gave her. Yeah, that was a new development – the staring, the whispers, the gossip. She had become a pariah. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Her mother looked up from where she was talking to two waiters, a smile on her face.

Amara swore her mother was a superhero at this point. She saved her, every single day, without even knowing. Just by giving her the same smile she used to give her before, loving her the same way she used to love her before. When everything around her had changed, her mother had been her constant through it all.

“I’m heading home,” she told her ma, feeling the strain in her throat as she spoke. The doctor had told her it would get better over time as her cords healed completely, but this would be her voice now.

At least, she’d never have to listen to her own screams again.

“I’ll walk you out,” the feminine voice beside her had her looking up at another new development in her life. Her half-sister, Nerea.

She had shown up one day out of the blue, with attitude for everyone else except Amara, and Amara really didn’t know how to deal with that. She already had too much on her plate without adding an older half-sibling she’d never known about.

And she wanted to be alone.

Giving Nerea a small smile, she shook her head. “It’s okay, enjoy the party.”

God, her voice.

“Are you sure?” Nerea asked, looking concerned. “I’d love to spend some time getting to connect with you.”

“Me too,” Amara reassured her. “But another time?”

Nerea nodded.

Leaving the staff to their duties attending to the party and her half-sister standing there, Amara walked out the back door, exiting into the lawns. Wrapping her scarf around her, even though it wasn’t cold, she looked up at the clear sky, watching the stars twinkle, and headed to the lake.

A few people milled outside, the noise from the party loud on the wind as Amara kept her head down and made her way down the hill.

This was another development over the year. While she still had her social graces, she didn’t like being around many people anymore. They always stared and not because she had grown up to become beautiful. She didn’t feel beautiful. She felt ugly and rotten on the inside. Where they just saw a tall girl of seventeen with wild black hair framing a face with pretty features and dark green eyes, she saw a girl who didn’t know who she was under that skin.

Who was she?

Coming to a stop by the lake, she looked up at the sky, hoping for an answer she knew wasn’t coming.

Someone came to stand by her side.

Amara turned her face, slightly surprised to see Tristan standing there, looking up at the stars too. This was another new development. For some reason, after the incident, he’d just become more present in her life. He never spoke to her, not much, but he was always there in the periphery, lingering, letting her know he was there.

And he never stared at her.

Amara looked at him, wondering how he did it. She had heard of his screams over the years from the staff. Sheknew he had scars of his own, and she wondered how he lived like this with all the memories in his head.

“How do you do it?” she voiced the question to him, hating the way her sound didn’t even come out properly. “How do you forget?”

He was silent for a beat, his eyes on the stars. “You don’t.”

Amara swallowed, looking back up at the sky.

“You need to find something or someone to live for,” he spoke quietly beside her, his tone the same gentle one he always used with her. “Something or someone who makes you want to push through all the shit the world will throw at you.”

Amara paused for a beat, considering his words. “You have someone you live for?”

“Yeah.”

With that, Tristan turned and left her alone, mulling over his advice. He was right. That’s what she was missing – something to live for, something that was just hers.

Inhaling the crisp, fresh air of the night, she shook off her morose thoughts and headed back towards the staff quarters which were mostly empty since everyone was at the party.

Dante’s dark house made her pause.

Even though he had become a constant in her life, she had never actually been inside his house. The closest had been years ago when she’d brought him cookies early in the morning and he had answered the door in all his shirtless glory. God, she’d been a fool for him then.

She was still a fool for him, just a more traumatized fool.

Curious, Amara looked around her to see no one was around and climbed the steps to his door. Her hand went on the knob and for the first time in a long time, she felt a thrill shoot up her spine. Checking one final time to see if anyone saw her, she turned the knob and sneaked into the darkened house, quietly shutting the door behind her.

She probably shouldn’t be invading his privacy like she was, but her curiosity overrode her common sense. There was just one light turned on in the kitchen area, and Amara looked around, seeing the space in its entirety.

The kitchen was about the size of her living room, with wooden panels and granite countertops, the island some kind of stone with four stools on one side. There was also a small dining table for four people off to the side before the backdoor. Though clean, the place looked cozy, lived in.

Inquisitive, she walked deeper into the house guided by the single light, coming to a stop at the stairs. Pausing briefly, telling herself everyone was at the party, Amara ascended quietly, her eyes exploring on the way. There were two rooms on the floor, both with their doors shut, and knowing one of them was his bedroom, Amara stayed clear, not wanting to invade his privacy to that extent.

A small set of stairs to the side went higher up to an open space she couldn’t see.

She climbed up, letting her eyes adjust to the dark the higher she went.

It smelled different in there – like wet earth and wax. It was quite pleasant actually.

Running her hands up the wall, she came to a switch and flicked the light on, turning to face the room.

And froze.

Sculptures, dozens of them, littered the area.

Amara felt her eyes widen as the surprise hit her, her gaze taking in everything in the room. There was a workbench with tools, and a window, and nothing but sculptures. So many sculptures – some finished, some half-done, some with a plastic sheet over them. There was everything from small vases to busts to two full-blown statues, all varying in degrees of skill.

Dazed, she walked forward towards one of the busts, a woman with a half-finished face, taking in the rough textures over the skin that had yet to be polished. She raised her hand to touch it, to feel what it felt like when suddenly, she became aware that she wasn’t alone.

Spinning on spot, her eyes flew to the entrance to see Dante Maroni leaning casually against the doorjamb with his hands in his pant pockets, still dressed in the beautiful tux he’d worn for the party, his hair swiped back from his face, pushing his cheekbones and jawline into sharp relief, his dark eyes on her.

Amara swallowed, her heart pounding as a flush covered her face. She almost opened her mouth to speak before biting her tongue, remembering she couldn’t let him hear her voice. Eyes to the floor, she rushed towards the exit, hoping to simply get out. She expected him to step to the side so she could pass, as he had done countless times before.

He didn’t. He stayed exactly as he was, forcing her to stop or barrel into him. 

Amara felt her blood rushing to her ears, her chest starting to heave as her breathing escalated.

“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 scared?” 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, kindling her chilled bones, warming her from the inside out.

His dark eyes, still the most beautiful she had ever seen, focused on her own as he deliberately brushed her scar again, almost as though he was learning its texture.

A small shiver went down her spine, raising goosebumps on her arms and making her breasts feel heavy for the first time with such wild arousal. It was a heady sensation – almost enough to want to make her close her eyes and luxuriate in the feel of the body she usually hated so much.

“Say something.”

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 words left her lips before she knew it, in her new, raspy voice not louder than a whisper – words he felt on his hands before they filled the space between them.

“Kiss me.”

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 normal first kiss from Dante Maroni.

His lips came, landing softly on the skin of her neck, right over her scar.

He kissed it once, twice, and Amara felt her lips tremble, the significance of what he was doing not lost on her.

“We shouldn’t do this,” he whispered against her neck.

“No, we shouldn’t,” 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 on hers.

It was over in seconds. It felt like lifetimes.

“I will kiss you and brand myself upon your heart, Amara,” he told her quietly. “Just make sure you’re ready for me to.”

He turned his back to her and Amara walked out on shaky legs, her neck tingling with the memory of his lips. She went down the stairs, out of the house, across the lawn, replaying the scene over and over in her head, a small laugh bubbling out of her throat by the time she entered her apartment, remembering the first time she’d seen Dante kissing a girl years ago.

Back then, she’d thought to herself he’d be her first kiss. He had been in a way. 

And while her lips were still famished for his, the ugliness inside her didn’t feel so ugly anymore. 

“If he had a girlfriend, how would you feel about that?” her therapist Dr. Das, a gorgeous woman in her late thirties, asked Amara, looking at her with solemn eyes behind round glasses.

How did she feel about that?

“Angry,” Amara told her in her new voice and looked around the room that had become a sanctuary of sorts for her over the last year. Dr. Das saw her clients – she didn’t like calling them patients – in the study of her brownstone house in South Tenebrae.

It was a room contrary to Amara’s expectations of what therapist offices looked like. The walls were white, the windows covered with bright green and yellow drapes, letting in an abundance of natural light, a huge Mandala wall-hanging in brown and black taking an entire wall opposite the door. The adjacent wall had stacks of shelves housing numerous books. There was no desk, just a comfortable couch, and armchair with a small table in between. It belonged more to a bohemian yoga instructor than an acclaimed psychologist.  

“And why does it make you angry?” Dr. Das asked in her neutral voice that Amara somehow found soothing.

Because he’s mine.

Amara didn’t voice that, just stared at a spot on the wall.

“Okay,” Dr. Das moved on, understanding she wasn’t going to answer. “Do you feel any bouts of depression still? Not wanting to get out of the bed, any suicidal thoughts?”

“Very occasionally,” Amara admitted. She probably would have felt it more had she not had the people around her, holding her up all the way through. She didn’t know how women who didn’t have anyone believe them or support them did it. Just the thought of speaking her truth and having people reject it made her stomach knot. 

“Panic attacks? Anxiety?”

Yeah, those were there. She nodded.

“What triggers them?”

Amara paused, thinking of every time over the last year that she’d felt the beginning of an incoming attack. “I don’t know,” she rasped out.

Clearing her throat, she spoke again softly, wishing her new voice could magically change. “Sometimes, I just smell raw tobacco somewhere and everything comes flashing back. I just freeze and no matter how much I try to bring myself back to the present, it doesn’t work until the flashes are done. And the entire thing exhausts me. Sometimes, it’s thinking about the future and not knowing anything. The unknown scares me. And sometimes, it’s knowing I want Dante but knowing I’ll probably never have him.”

Throat dry, she leaned forward and picked up the glass of water, gulping it down.

“And why can’t you have him?”

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

“Yet, you asked him to kiss you last night,” Dr. Das pointed out. “You spoke to him for the first time since the abduction. You initiated, or rather invited, a physical intimacy. And now, you are able to identify some of your triggers. That’s tremendous progress, Amara.”

Amara stared at the older woman, realizing it was true. It was progress. She wasn’t stuck in the same hole she had been when she first came to therapy.

“And how do you feel after last night?”

She looked down at her printed dress, picking at it. “Good. I… I want more.”

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

“With him,” Amara clarified.

“Him specifically?”

She gave a helpless shrug. “It’s always been him.”

“Could it be that you’ve only known him since childhood, so you naturally associate any budding romantic or sexual attraction with him?”

Amara was shaking her head before the other woman finished speaking. “If that was the case, I should have had these feelings for Vin. He’s been more constant in my life for longer. I love him but platonically.”

“And what about your sexual fantasies?” Dr. Das asked, getting back to the topic they had been working on for the last few weeks.

“I fantasize about him. Dante, I mean,” Amara admitted, looking down at the table. “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…” she trailed off.

“But he didn’t reject you,” Dr. Das pointed out.

Amara shook her head, sipping more water. No, he hadn’t rejected her. “I think he’s being careful with me.”

“That’s considerate of him,” the older woman noted. “But you don’t sound too happy about it.”

“I mean,” Amara bit her lip. “I like that he’s thoughtful because I don’t know how I’ll react in a situation like that. But I just want him to do it, you know. It makes me anxious. Can we not talk about this?”

Dr. Das nodded, tucking a stray curl back in place, making a note in her journal. “Okay. What about Nerea? How are you dealing with her?”

Amara thought of the woman and bit her lip. “I’m not really thinking about it, honestly. It’s conflicting.”

“Why?” Dr. Das asked.

Amara leaned back on the comfortable couch, staring up at the ceiling. It had a nice abstract pattern. “My father has never been in my life. It’s just been Ma and I and I’ve never felt anything was missing. But knowing he had another kid he actually raised, and we never even knew. It’s just too odd. I mean, I’m not jealous or anything. She’s actually really nice to me. It’s just weird. I always wanted a sister, but I don’t know if I’m projecting that desire to see her affection, or if she’s truly affectionate for me. I don’t want to hinder any potential relationship we can have but I also don’t want to trust too easily.”

“Fair enough,” Dr. Das spoke from her chair. “Seems like you want her to earn your trust.”

“Yes,” Amara agreed.

The other woman stood up, indicating their time was ending. “I want you to think about two things for me this week, Amara.”

Amara nodded. She liked the direction Dr. Das gave her. While she knew a lot of people in their world didn’t believe in therapy, Amara knew her time with Dr. Das was one of the main things keeping her together.

“You’re seventeen so I want you to think about the two things any average teenager would think about at your age,” Dr. Das told her as they walked out towards the main door. “First – think specifically about not what you wanted to do with your life, but what you can see yourself doing now. What is something you could get passionate about, something you could truly believe in doing? Think about that.”

Amara nodded, willing to work on that. She wanted to know herself and learn this new girl she had become, whoever she was.

“And?” she asked, opening the door to the house, knowing Vin would be waiting to drive her back home. She wasn’t comfortable driving yet.

“And I want you to think about the young man waiting for you.”

Amara frowned, turning her neck to see who she was talking about.

Dante. Dante in a suit, leaning against the side of his Range Rover, eyes hidden behind shades, waiting for her.

He was waiting for her.

“I specifically want you to think about what you feel for him.”

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.

“You’re unusually quiet,” Dante noted as he drove them back. “The session went okay?”

Amara glanced at him. Dante drove the same way he did everything else – confidently, with ease, like he’d been born to it. She had been on the passenger side of his car a grand total of two times and she already loved being chauffeured by him.

“Yes,” she answered him, keeping her eyes on his profile. God, he was a stunning specimen of the male variety – strong nose, high cheekbones, defined jawline, proportioned full lips, that vein that went down the side of his neck and into his collar, and those dark, fathomless eyes she had called pretty as a kid. She was intensely, insanely attracted to the physicality of him, but Amara knew she would have loved him even if he had been disfigured and ugly. It was who he was on the inside, who he was with her, that made her soft for him.

“We just talked about how to navigate sex,” she said, partly answering him.

She saw him cast a glance at her from the corner of his eyes, his jaw clenching. “I didn’t know you were sleeping with anyone,” he said casually. Too casually. “Anyone I know?”

He’d probably break the fictional guy’s bones. God, he was easy to rile.

Although he had never really made a move on her, Dante was possessive of her, but in a weird way. It had started out as protectiveness of her after her abduction, and somewhere down the line, possessiveness seeped in. He didn’t mind that she had a very hot guy best friend. In fact, he loved her friendship with Vin and her nascent bond with Tristan. But he watched with dark eyes that burned when they were alone, stamping her entire being just with a look. When anyone was around, he somehow toned that look down, hiding it with the charm that had become second skin to him. But she knew. He had already branded her heart deep.

Amara rolled her eyes. “I’m not. But eventually, I probably will.”

His hands tightened on the wheel, that vein at the side popping. “Any candidates?” he asked, his voice a little rough.

Amara looked down at her hands, seeing the scars on her wrists she usually hid with bracelets.

“You.”

Her word shot through the tension in the car like a bullet, notching it higher and higher, until she could feel blood rushing to her face, unable to look at him.

He swerved the car to the shoulder suddenly, making her look up and grab the door handle to keep from falling to the side, her eyes taking in the little dirt road he pulled into.

“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.

She deserved this pleasure. She shouldn’t have to be ashamed of her body for wanting it. Even as she knew this logically, she fought the curl of shame that beckoned her, telling her anything pleasurable after everything her body had been through was wrong, that her desire for any man to penetrate her was wrong.

No, no, it wasn’t wrong. Her wanting this man wasn’t wrong. Her wanting to have sex and feel pleasure wasn’t wrong.

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 together.

Maybe, they were both the same beats.

Maybe, theirs was the same heart.