“I love you, Sash”, Dante continues. “I always have. Fuck this. Fuck all of this.”
Sash watches him step away from the podium. She can’t believe what she’s hearing. She’s stood in front of the TV now, trying to get as close to Dante as she can, the remote control long since thrown to the side, one of the batteries still spinning, yet to come to a rest.
“I don’t care who knows about us. I don’t care who we upset or what we lose. If people want to hate us for being in love, so what. So fucking what. Sash and I are bigger than all of this.”
Dante is walking off the stage and towards the crowd, and Alex is just looking at him with her mouth open, wondering whether she’s heard him right. The cameramen struggle to keep with him, and when one trips, another one takes his place so anyone watching at home has to quickly shift channel. The noise from the crowd is insane, it’s almost impossible to hear him. Sash doesn’t need the volume though. She’s stared long enough at those lips to be able to read what he’s saying, just from the movement.
“I almost lost her once, I’m not prepared to do it again”, Dante says, and then just before he drops the microphone, climbs the barrier and loses himself in the crowd, he shouts, loud enough for anyone across the world to hear, “Sash, I’m coming for you and our baby.”
Chapter 10
Somehow he fights his way through the crowd and finds his way to his car. Somehow, by some incredible miracle, that car is then led away from downtown New York by an escort of camera trucks and network broadcast vans all intent on filming the continuing story. In front of him, carving through the gathered crowd lead six of the city’s best mobile news reporters, six more behind to sandwich him in and close the road up again like a zip as they escape.
They take him out to the freeway in a chain, where Dante pushes his way to the front, all the power under the bonnet of his car to leave them for dust, but happy to have them trail him. He wants the whole world to see this and there is absolutely nothing he would do to stop that. It was always going to be Sash, and the narcissist in Dante wanted it to be done this way. Fuck his business, he’d make another. There was nothing about what he had that was indispensable, except for Sash. The camera trucks hog the two lanes behind Dante with three helicopters in the air above them, recording footage that looks like a bunch of undercover cops trailing a suspect.
Sash can hardly move for nervous excitement. On her screen, Dante is driving the route she has taken hundreds of times, out from the city and towards her house. Towards the house they grew up in together, and the one she stands in now, like a nervous wreck. Half of her can’t believe what’s going on. The other half doesn’t want to, just in case it’s another cruel trick. It isn’t though, and she knows it. Dante has chosen. He’s given up his business so they can be together. He’s chosen her.
When the car pulls into the drive, Sash is still watching it on the TV in Dante’s room, trapped in a weird bubble where fantasy meets reality. She can hear the roar of engines behind her like Dolby surround sound. When Dante gets out of the car, and she sees him, first on the TV screen and later through the window, she finally feels a whole world awaken inside her, and she can’t wait to go to him.
Dante waits patiently, three rows of camera lenses behind him all clamoring for space, while his stepsister bounds down the stairs, two steps at a time. She moves so quickly, she doesn’t even notice her dad and Tracy, who have risen from their seats in shock, nor Ghost, who she almost trips over as she speeds through the kitchen. With the cord of her dressing gown trailing behind her, Sash hurries to him, throwing the front door open so quickly the glass almost smashes out of the frame as she powers through it.
Her heart stops when she sees him, stood there casually waiting, sixteen cameras in behind him, broadcasting the story across the world to almost a billion viewers.
She’s crying and she can’t help it. Crying and laughing, completely overwhelmed by emotion. She’s about to say something but it just won’t come out. She doesn’t even know how to begin. It was here, six years ago that she first saw him. Dante Hix, the most beautiful, most complicated man in the world.
“Hello, Sash”, Dante says, and just to hear him say her name breaks her. She runs to him, and while a whole world watches, not a single person with a dry eye, he gathers her into him.
“I said all along you could trust me”, Dante says, his arms around her tightly. “I love you, Sash. I always will.”
Chapter 11
After Dante broadcasts news of their relationship and their forthcoming baby across the world and answers as many questions as he considers to be acceptable, he asks the journalists to respect their privacy, takes Sash by the hand and leads her back inside the house. There, still in shock at the news of their pregnancy, stand Tracy and Henry, who look at their progeny with barely concealed concern.
“Pregnant?” Tracy says finally, the word too hot to keep inside. “With a baby?”
A silence descends on them. Until now, Sash had forgotten they didn’t know. She looks to Tracy, over to her father and finally up to Dante. Dante squeezes her hand to tell her it’s ok.
“We’ll speak about this later”, he says firmly. “Sash and I need to talk in private first. We have a few things we need to catch up on, and iron out. Believe me, we are just as shocked as you are.”
“But-” Tracy begins to say, her head still shaking in disbelief, before Henry grabs her wrist to cut her off.
“Take as long as you need”, he says. “Congratulations, the both of you, we are very proud of you two.”
“Thank you, Henry”, Dante says. “Thank you for being so understanding.”
As Dante advances towards the stairs, keen to get on with what he came here to do, Henry and Tracy take a step back to let them through.
“Don’t wait up”, Dante advises, just before they climb the stairs. “We may be some time.”
***
As soon as they are back in Dante’s room, the door closed tight and the curtains pulled across to shut the whole world out, Sash can’t keep her hands off him. She’s angry with him for the way he made her feel today, but she knows there will be plenty of time for him to make it up to her. The most important thing is that he came back to her, and that he’s here now to stay. He finally put her first and demonstrated his love, and nothing else turns her on more.
Dante smiles as he pulls Sash into him and spreads kisses across her shoulders and neck.
“A few things to catch up on?” Sash asks, losing herself in him.
Dante pushes the dressing gown off her shoulders insistently, so it gathers up around her feet like a sleeping cat. “I told you I was going to punish you”, Dante says.
Sash squirms in his arms. She can already feel her skin begin to twist and tickle with pleasure. Dante goes for her pajama top, keen to pull that off her too, but Sash wriggles away from him before he can get a good hold on it.
“You know I can’t let you do that here”, she says sarcastically, already beginning to step away from him teasingly. “What if mommy and daddy were to hear us?”
Dante pulls off his tie instead, happy to let her get her way for now. He does it in one casual movement, o it looks like the coolest thing she’s ever seen. Sash skips to the bed
to watch him continue to get undressed, her eyes filled with desire.
“You didn’t tell me”, Dante says, letting his jacket slide off his shoulders.
“I know”, Sash says, “I’ve been a bad girl.”
“Do you know what happens to bad girls?” Dante asks, unbuttoning his shirt.
Sash shakes her head. There are a million and one things she could say in response, but this feels like the best option. That, and the fact that Dante’s body is so perfect, there is little else she can do but watch him.
“Bad girls”, Dante says, closing the distance towards her. “Bad girls get what’s coming to them.”
He has his shirt off, his belt undone and his tie in his hand. Sash can see his bulge forcing the front of his trousers out and it seems to be swelling even further in size the more time that passes. As he nears closer, Sash feels a swell of anticipation rise in her that makes her want to glide her hands across her chest and down towards her pussy. She’s wet just to have this incredible man beside her. Her whole body is tingling just at the anticipation of what she knows will come.
Dante takes her hands in his, and without a word to explain what he’s doing, he pulls them above her head and places them next to the bed head. With his tie, he forms a tight knot around each of her wrists that dig the silk into her skin, and then attaches it around the bed head in a series of loops that will only come apart with a pair of scissors. When he is finished, Sash squirms from side to side to try and see if she can escape, but can’t free herself, and the more she wriggles the more the silk of the tie cuts into her skin. The bed head clatters noisily against the wall. Sash kicks her legs against the bed and whines theatrically, pretending to have a tantrum.
“I told you, Sash”, Dante says, running his hand along her leg to calm it. “I told you I’d show you how to behave.”