Chapter 42

Dante frowned at the coarse profanity he didn’t want to believe had come from Rhys’s mouth, and Rhys promptly lowered his head. Tightening his grip around Dante’s wrists so he couldn’t move, Rhys pressed his lips firmly to the right side of Dante’s neck. It was the exact spot he had been staring at so blatantly ever since Dante had stepped out of the shower.

Hey, wait…!

The instant Rhys’s lips made contact with the reddened skin, a strange, electric sensation rose. At the sharp tingling that spread from the point of contact, Dante flinched and tilted his head back involuntarily. Rhys’s lips, after so long apart, felt softer and plusher than Dante remembered. His body reacted with hypersensitivity to nothing more than the simple brush of those lips.

“Since earlier… this exact spot has been reeking of that fucking smell,” Rhys murmured against his skin.

At his words, Dante remembered the unpleasant, heavy odor he had sensed when Santino had approached him earlier. But now that he had thoroughly washed, he couldn’t smell it at all, leaving him deeply confused as to how Rhys, who hadn’t even been there, could possibly know.

That was not the only strange thing. With his lips pressed against Dante’s neck, Rhys pushed out his tongue and began licking the skin, tracing the exact path where Santino had touched him. Dante had scratched the area so aggressively that it was merely red and mottled, but Rhys acted as if some unmistakable, vivid trace were clearly visible there.

When Santino had brought his wet tongue to Dante’s skin, Dante had felt an immediate, overwhelming disgust. Now, however, a sharp, intoxicating thrill shot straight through him. As Rhys’s long, thick tongue licked and pressed firmly along his nape, the pulse beneath the wet skin began to hammer frantically. The tingling sensations gathered together, surging through his blood vessels like a live electric current. He became highly aroused in an instant, and before he could stop it, an eager, low breath slipped from his lips.

“Haah… ha, mm… nnh…”

The moment that small, breathless moan escaped him, Rhys stopped licking and instantly met his eyes. Seeing Dante’s face—his lips slightly parted and his gaze thoroughly hazed—Rhys’s expression twisted. The hands pinning Dante down gained a sudden surge of strength, and at the exact same moment, Rhys’s distinct scent flooded the room, instantly overriding the faint smell of shampoo.

“What,” Rhys whispered, his tone dark, “you showed that bastard this face too?”

The rich, intoxicating perfume scent Dante had longed for so desperately nearly softened the sharpened edges of his anger, but Rhys’s biting words brought him crashing back to reality. Dante frowned heavily and glared up at him. He understood that a massive misunderstanding had occurred, but no matter how he rationalized it, Rhys’s reaction was entirely excessive. Hadn’t Rhys just coldly stated that Dante could go out and meet whoever he wanted?

“I told you I didn’t,” Dante said firmly.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“You’re the one who lied…!”

That single line flipped a switch inside Dante. If anyone in this room deserved to be interrogated for deceiving the other, it was not Dante—it was Rhys. Rhys had been caught red-handed lying about having no friends or connections, only to brush it off by declaring they were over. He had turned away, insisting he didn’t care whether Dante met someone else. If this was how he was going to behave, he should have never said it was over in the first place.

“There’s another bastard’s pheromone still violently clinging to your neck. Right here,” Rhys gestured aggressively at Dante’s neck, twisting his mouth in distaste. “And you honestly expect me to believe you?”

Something about Rhys’s choice of words bothered Dante for a split second, but seeing Rhys show absolutely no sign of believing the truth made Dante glare back with wild, defensive eyes. Fine. You won’t believe me? Then don’t. If you’re going to blindly accuse me, I can play along. At Rhys’s infuriating, stubborn attitude—refusing to explain his anger while blindly forcing his way forward—a wave of pure rebellion surged inside Dante.

“Fine, I did,” Dante shouted, matching the narrative Rhys had already decided upon. “I grabbed some random guy off the street and had a fantastic time! You said you’d find someone else too. You told me to forget you, so I did exactly what you said and went out to have a little fun. What the hell are you going to do about it?”

The moment Dante widened his eyes and hurled the reckless complaint, a vicious, terrifying strength poured into the hands gripping his wrists. From the exact instant Dante claimed he had grabbed a man off the street, the blue in Rhys’s eyes deepened until it was almost entirely violet. When Dante stated he had enjoyed himself, a brutal, bone-crushing force dug into his skin, so severe it felt as if his wrist bones might shift out of place. Pressing Dante down with an impossible, overwhelming weight, Rhys suddenly leaned down and sank his teeth deep into Dante’s nape.

“Ah! Rhys, are you fucking insane…?”

A sharp, blinding pain burst through his nape so violently that, for a terrifying split second, Dante wondered if a piece of his flesh had been entirely torn away. Startled and acting on pure survival instinct, Dante bent his knee and drove it up hard into Rhys’s abdomen. Rhys, who had been heavily covering him, lost his balance from the powerful blow and collapsed slightly to the side. In that brief, crucial opening, Dante violently yanked his wrists free and sat up.

Was this guy possessed by some kind of evil spirit? He had seemed deeply unhinged ever since Dante saw him at the Trevi Fountain that morning, but that bite just now had genuinely terrified him. The sheer reality of physically fighting with Rhys—who had always been like a delicate, untouchable flower to him—felt completely matrixed and unreal.

Dante shoved Rhys away and twisted his upper body to fling himself off the bed, but a rough, unyielding arm shot out and caught him securely around the waist. Ha, this was insane. Should he have stopped holding back his full strength? Rhys’s dogged, frantic determination as he clung to him without an ounce of quit now felt far more bewildering than infuriating. Capturing Dante effortlessly as he tried to flee, Rhys laid his ex-lover flat back onto the bed, climbing directly over him and heavily pinning down Dante’s lower body.

Wanting desperately to calm him down before they did something they would both deeply regret, Dante took a deep breath and forced himself to look at Rhys’s face. If Rhys still harbored those completely unhinged eyes, Dante resolved that he would simply have to endure the pain of subduing him physically.

“I told you clearly,” Rhys panted, his voice trembling, “not to come back with someone else’s scent on you.”

Suddenly, a lukewarm droplet fell directly onto Dante’s cheek.

The tiny drop grew hotter against Dante’s skin as it ran down the curve of his cheekbone. Dante stared blankly up at Rhys’s face, his eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing shock.

Moisture completely filled the stunning face shadowed above him. Long, golden lashes drooped wetly, and the blue-gray eyes shining within them rippled endlessly, like a disturbed lake under a heavy downpour. Dante could only watch, utterly speechless, as tears gathered into heavy drops and fell again and again onto his own face.

“But if you come back smelling not of a woman,” Rhys choked out, his chest heaving violently as he gasped for air, “but of an Alpha bastard… would I go insane, or would I not?”

Looking at Rhys’s chest heaving roughly, and at those wide, weeping eyes that showed no sign of blinking, Dante could feel Rhys pouring out pure, unadulterated hurt with his entire body. Staring in frozen silence at the beautiful blond hair in complete disarray and the clear, tear-stained face, Dante finally came back to his senses and parted his lips.

If you cry like this, I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

The fact that this lovable creature, who had been so frighteningly aggressive moments ago, was now weeping helplessly left him completely shattered. The pain in his own heart was so sharp it felt as if it might physically split him open. He wanted, by any means necessary, to make Rhys stop crying, but he simply didn’t know how. Dante had always been terribly weak to crying people—and when the person crying was the absolute love of his life, he was rendered utterly defenseless.

“Rhys… pretty one, don’t cry,” Dante called out to him, his voice dropping to a low, gentle whisper. “I’m sorry. Okay? Don’t cry.”

The man who had shown absolutely no sign of calming down—who had been acting like a rampaging beast—seemed to listen to Dante for the very first time. He had acted as though no words could pierce his fury, but now, with his lips pressed into a tight line, he merely stared down at Dante.

“Is it because you thought I met an Alpha?” Dante asked softly. “Is that why you’re so incredibly upset? I don’t understand why that…”

Because Rhys had been causing a massive scene while repeating the word Alpha over and over, Dante understood that it was the root cause. What Dante fundamentally could not comprehend was why that specific word meant so much to Rhys—a man who had seemed as if he had entirely sorted out his feelings. It was fine for Dante to meet someone else, but not an Alpha? Why? Rhys was a Beta anyway, so whether Dante met an Alpha or not should have been irrelevant…

…Huh?

…Huuuh?

Wait. Wait a single second.

A sudden rush of chaotic thoughts shot through his brain, but too many variables tangled together at once for him to organize them into a logical conclusion. Dante started trying to think it through, but promptly threw the mental attempt away and chose to act instead.

“…You’re saying there’s another Alpha’s scent on my neck?” Dante asked quietly, lifting a hand to touch the right side of his neck where Rhys had aggressively licked him.

The instant his hand reached his skin, Rhys violently snatched his wrist, pinning it back down onto the mattress as he lowered his upper body further. Reacting sharply, like an apex predator raising its fur, he brought his face dangerously close and hissed, “Don’t touch it. That filthy bastard’s pheromones are all over you.”

The eyes so close to his own shone with a fierce, terrifying intensity. Those pupils were completely dilated black, and the violet mixed into the center of the irises had deepened to an unnatural degree. Dante could feel Rhys’s remaining thread of reason wavering, nearly gone but still barely holding on. That hypersensitive, volatile state convinced Dante that the wild guess he had just formed was almost certainly the absolute truth.

As if driving the final wedge into the truth, Dante used his free hand to firmly pull Rhys’s shoulder closer, whispering against his lips, “Okay. I won’t touch it. Then… Rhys, you disinfect it for me. You can cover it entirely with yours.”

At Dante’s low, suggestive whisper—delivered like a secret, irresistible proposition—Rhys’s eyes widened instantly. His golden lashes lifted sharply, blinking as if he had been profoundly startled. He stared down at Dante with tear-wet, blue-gray eyes, and when Dante deliberately exposed the right side of his neck as if urging him on, Rhys drew in a sharp, ragged breath.

Then, with the exact same urgency as when he had pounced earlier, he lowered his head and buried his lips against Dante’s nape.

With a wet, heavy kiss, his lips sucked hard against the sensitive skin, sending a stinging, intoxicating sensation directly through Dante’s neck. As Rhys buried his face against him—embracing him fully while frantically sucking at every single inch of his neck—strange, overwhelming sensations bloomed everywhere.

Haah. Dante let out a weak, heated breath, gripping Rhys’s soft hair as he tilted his chin back to grant better access. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, feeling Rhys lick and suck at his neck as if quite literally devouring him, Dante finally arrived at the undeniable answer.

You… You’re an Alpha.