past and worrying about the future, because his attention demanded I be fully present, right now, in this moment.
But I still couldn’t speak, too caught up in whatever was happening. So I just shrugged a little, unsure how to explain it. I could do a move like that when I needed to, but not under the watchful eyes of my fellow club members, because it wasn’t a game to me. These skills weren’t for play, like the sparring Jazz and Dante had done. This could be life or death for me—it already had been once, when Crave’s guy had a knife to my throat.
“What changed?” Dante asked. “What made it different, now?”
“It mattered now,” I said carefully. “Downstairs I thought—it felt like you wanted a punching bag. Someone to demonstrate on, so you could show everyone what you knew. Like—like you wanted me to fail.”
Dante’s face fell. He looked pained, like I’d physically struck him. To my surprise, that made me feel awful. I didn’t like that expression on him. I realized I’d been so upset not only because I’d felt humiliated, but because I’d felt like I’d failed him. Because it wasn’t crazy of him to suggest that I demonstrate the move with him. I did know how to do it. It was only my own nerves that had kept me from pulling it off. And if I was less anxious, less—I didn’t know—less myself, I would’ve been able to do it.
I wanted him to see me as capable, strong. But when he put me on the spot like that, I’d frozen like a kid. That was the really humiliating part.
If I had pulled it off, maybe I would’ve impressed him. Maybe he would’ve been proud.
I wanted that. I wanted him to be impressed. Which I knew was weird—I hardly knew him! And yet there the feeling was, rattling in my chest.
“No, no, that’s not what I wanted at all,” Dante said, surprisingly earnest. “I knew Jazz had been teaching you. And I’d heard about how you handled those Viper guys at the college campus. You’ve already got some skills—more than some of the other Hell’s Ankhor members do, for sure—and I just wanted a demonstration.” His big, handsome smile tentatively appeared on his face again. “Like the one you just gave me.”
Oh. He didn’t want to make an example of me—he’d wanted me to make an example of him. To show the others how a guy with my build could take down a guy like him. “I didn’t realize…”
Dante waved away my explanation. “I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that,” he said. “I should’ve talked to you about it first.”
My breath caught in my throat. Dante took a small step forward. He towered over me, but it wasn’t scary now—it was intoxicating, even a little overwhelming. I had to tilt my chin up to meet his eyes. His gaze darted over my face, and his smile faded as it was replaced by something a little darker. A little more wanting. His lips parted and his tongue darted out to wet his lower lip.
No fucking way.
If I’d thought I’d seen interest in his eyes when he was looking at Joker, it was nothing compared to how he was looking at me now.
He wanted me.
How was this possible? I’d wanted him to desire me, but in an abstract way—the way you imagine being a millionaire someday. It wasn’t ever going to actually happen.
And yet here he was. Looking at me like that.
I was so fucking out of my depth.
A guy like Dante had to be, um, experienced. He clearly knew what he was doing, just from the way he held himself, and from the way he looked at me. What if I screwed it up? He’d just think I was a naïve kid. And he wouldn’t necessarily be wrong.
But also, I didn’t want to let this moment pass by.
If I wanted experience—if I wanted love—I had to go for it myself. Leaving home and joining the club had taught me that. No one was going to hand me anything. I had to push my fears aside and jump.
So I raised up onto my tiptoes and kissed him.
10
Dante
I couldn’t stop looking at Heath.
His expression was so open, so curious, so different from the narrow-eyed anger he’d turned on me when I’d first come to his room. His brown eyes gleamed, and a pink flush was high on the apples of his cheeks. The sweat from the training session made