Page 44

“Don’t think you can distract me.”

“Why did you leave?” Dante softly asked again.

There was something she wasn’t telling him. It had been subtle, and if he were not so attuned to Rieka, it would have gone unnoticed. It happened before Kai interrupted them.

“Nothing.”

He’d trained himself to limit the number of emotions that trickled through his constructed barrier. Instead, he often chose when to open his heightened senses, in situations when he could use it to his advantage. But with Rieka, he wanted to know everything. Dante stilled; Rieka’s pain slammed into him. The anger had just been the top layer.

“How do you deal with the heightened senses?” Rieka asked. She leaned into him, placing her head against his chest. “It was like someone had turned the tap on, and all these emotions and scents just bombarded me. It was overwhelming.”

Dante wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, as if he could protect her from the world. The emotion should have horrified him, but Rieka triggered a primal urge within him—one that he needed to learn to control before he lost everything else.

He tucked Rieka into his body and breathed in her scent. She should not have been able to scent anything within the room. Every single Atlantean at the ball was well versed in controlling their emotions. A consequence of their accumulation of power and wealth. One that the elite excelled at. In a world where any weakness could be exploited, they had all learned how to mask their desires and their wants until they unleashed them. He had barely sensed anything at the gala. That Rieka had did not bode well.

The Atlanteans who had directed their anger and disgust at Rieka would be dealt with accordingly. “Who were they?” Dante asked. It would not take long to confirm.

Rieka pulled back, her brows furrowed. “What are you going to do? Get them to apologize?”

“Along those lines,” Dante vaguely responded. The sweetest hint of violence edged his tone.

“Delacroix, that is a bit much.”

Dante was going to ignore the protest. At the airstrip, Rieka had been adamant that she had no heightened senses, but what she had described to him was extremely rare, even within their species. “When did it start?”

Dante reluctantly released her. She moved to stand next to the table, just out of his reach. The bottom of her skirt added more space between them than he liked. “When we arrived. It started off with migraines, but now I’m getting flashes of scents and emotions; they come and go. And in there, as soon as I started walking through the hall, I felt them all.” Rieka shivered. “How do you stop it?”

Dante would need to consult Aadya. Perhaps his grandmother would know what had triggered Rieka’s heightened senses. There were records of Atlanteans who had been driven mad because of their hypersensitivity, individuals who had never delineated between their reality and the world around them. He would not let that happen to Rieka. “There is no way to stop it. You will learn to filter it. But it will always be at the periphery.”

Color returned to Rieka’s face. “Always the fount of good news.”

He watched Rieka cautiously. “Would you rather I lie?”

“No.”

Dante was far more curious about the extent of her senses. “What do you sense from me?”

Her flame-gold gaze focused on him. Red bled into the whites. “Coldness. Power,” Rieka said as she licked her lips. She traced her bracelet as she concentrated. “And beneath it, a tendril of desire.”

“What does that feel like?”

Rieka stared at him as she bit her bottom lip. The image sent a bolt of desire through him. “A cold flame.”

Dante smiled. It was somewhat fitting, as Rieka’s lust reminded him of wildfire. All-consuming, with the potential to become a raging inferno.

“When I’m around you, the overload is quieter, as if it’s just an echo of what it could be.”

The intensity of the protectiveness he felt toward Rieka almost brought him to his knees. He would destroy anyone who would dare hurt Rieka. That he could be the reason she lost everything was not something he was going to dwell on. Not now. He could have what he wanted, and Rieka. The two were not mutually exclusive.

“Can I touch you?” Her words were a whisper.

He could feel her heart racing. “Be careful what you ask for.”

“You don’t scare me,” Rieka whispered, her voice husky.

Looking at him with clear eyes, she tilted her head, studying him as her right hand came up to his face, tracing the outline of his jaw.

The touch was more intimate than anything else he had ever experienced. Rieka was his.