Page 55 of Ivory Crown
“Jesus, Jade,” he muttered, the words strained as if they were being ripped out of him. And then he was coming, his body convulsing in quiet intensity, the grip on my hair a little too tight as he rode out his climax. I stayed with him until he was spent, until his hold on me loosened and his body relaxed into a state of satiated lethargy.
He was panting hard when I finally moved back, carefully extricating myself from him. Dante lay still for a moment longer, catching his breath before he slowly sat up.
“Come here,” he said, patting the bed beside him. Obedience, need, or something else entirely—I wasn’t sure which—compelled me to rise and join him under the sheets. We lay together, skin to skin, and for a moment, the world outside the walls of the penthouse ceased to exist.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” I asked him.
“Maybe,” he said. “I missed you. I want to talk to you.”
“Okay…is everything okay?”
“I told my father about the baby,” he murmured, his breath warm against my skin.
Dante’s gaze locked onto me, his eyes reflecting a man who knew the art of reading others—a necessary skill for someone in his line of work.
“Okay…what did he say?”
“He asked when we were going to get married.”
I had no idea what to say to that. He must have seen the subtle shift in me because he prodded gently, “What are your thoughts on marriage, Jade?”
It felt like stepping into a minefield, but his question unearthed a past I thought I’d buried deep. “I mean, I never thought it would happen…I had a really awful break-up with a man I was probably going to get engaged to, so you know.”
“What happened?”
“Well, he was Indian–”
“Damn, okay, didn’t know I was going to have a baby with a racist–”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing. “That’s not what I meant. Let me finish.”
“Alright. Keep going.”
“He was in line for some sort of throne or something,” I said. “Like, the richest person I’ve ever met. Went to Eton. Then he went to Oxford, and then he came to do his PhD here. We met ’cause we were studying the same thing.”
“Wait, he was royalty?” Dante’s brows shot up in surprise. His mirth was short-lived as his eyes traced the shadows that danced on my face.
“Not quite,” I said with a small laugh. “But from what I understood, his family was pretty influential back in India, so there might as well have been a crown in the mix somewhere.”
His fingers traced lazy circles on my arm, the sensation grounding me as I gathered my thoughts.
“What happened between you two?” he asked. His tone was void of judgment, coaxing me to continue.
I took a deep breath. “I got the book at BioHQ, and he wanted to go back to London, where I didn’t have a job offer at a lab or a university or, you know, anywhere. He asked me to marry him. Said I would find something there, but I had worked so hard to get this job, I was so interested in the research and I, I don’t know...I chose my career over him.”
Dante was silent for a moment, his fingers still moving on my arm. Then, he murmured, “I can see why that was a difficult choice.”
“It was not a difficult choice. It sucked that I wasn’t going to London on someone else’s dime, but that was the worst part. So I guess that says everything about how serious that relationship was.”
It was quiet for a moment, Dante’s fingers tracing comfort into my skin. His silence brought a sense of unease, the tension building like a slow-burning fire. Finally, he broke the silence.
“It sounds like you made the right choice,” he said softly, and I felt his lips press against my bare shoulder.
“Yeah.” I sighed, shifting closer to him. “It would have never worked in the long-term anyway.”
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”
I nodded, leaning into his chest as I closed my eyes. Now that I had talked to him about it, it really felt like I was running in circles…different man, same scenario.