Chapter 76

As though their hearts were pressed tightly together, tears almost welled up from the raw emotions flowing into him without passing through his mind. The pheromones wrapping around Dante’s entire body were reinforcing that exact plea. They held him from all sides like the hands gripping his shoulders, screaming for him to please look at Rhys.

For him to please see how much Iris Elliott, the Alpha, loved him.

They were shouting so clearly and unmistakably that he could not ignore them even if he tried, yet until now, Dante Bellini had seen nothing and heard nothing. Thinking that Rhys had felt this way for the past four years—and the two years before that which Dante hadn’t even been conscious of, totaling six long years—tormented him to the point of madness.

I didn’t know any of this… and I was looking for proof.

In truth, even without living together, even without knowing Rhys’s acquaintances, he should have been certain that Rhys loved him. He could have known just by seeing the way Rhys’s face lit up the moment their eyes met. He should have known from the gaze that followed him no matter what he did, and from the way Rhys never got angry during the repetitive fights they had, always being the one to say he was sorry.

“What kind of thought?” Rhys pressed, his voice trembling. “What are you thinking that makes your pheromones this anxious…? Is it because you’re going to leave me?”

Those beautiful blue-gray eyes had been looking only at you since the day you first met.

“Do you hate me now… Tay? You got sick of me in the end, didn’t you?”

If that is not love, then what is?

“Because I said those things,” Rhys stammered, his words fracturing. “Because I… acted so… cruelly…. You hate me now, don’t you? That’s right. I said that. Because you shouldn’t keep staying by my side… yes… I didn’t know what I might do… right… I… to Tay….”

Even your own parents never looked at you like this, you idiot.

“I said something to Tay that I should never have said…. I did…. That I would sleep with another Omega, not Tay… ha ha….”

The hands gripping Dante’s shoulders suddenly fell away. Rhys, who had been muttering to himself as if he had lost his mind, repeated the final words he had thrown at Dante in Rome. His eyes looked shocked simply because he had put those words in his mouth once more. His vacant laugh sounded less like amusement and more like a ragged sob.

After several minutes of low muttering, Rhys’s voice cut off entirely, and his face turned stark white. The eyes looking at Dante lost all focus. A terrible premonition suddenly surged within Dante. Following an instinct he couldn’t identify, he tried to grab Rhys, but Rhys moved first by a hair’s breadth. Brushing past Dante, he headed straight for the counter—more precisely, for the knife block sitting on top of it.

“Rhys! Stop!”

The instant he realized the trajectory, Dante lunged. Perhaps because Rhys was so tall, he reached the counter in only three or four steps, his hand extending toward the neatly lined handles of the kitchen knives. A chilling alarm rang in Dante’s head, and his whole body went cold. He felt entirely certain that the moment Rhys grabbed one of those blades, something terrible would happen. It was an instinct close to absolute conviction.

In that split second, Dante threw himself forward with a speed he couldn’t believe he possessed. Just before Rhys’s pale hand could wrap around a knife handle, Dante tackled him around the waist with all his strength and yanked him backward.

“Please, Rhys, okay? Stop. I said stop! Are you really insane?”

Rhys staggered several steps back under the impact, but he did not fall. With Dante hanging off him, he managed to regain his balance and, completely ignoring the sudden interference, tried to forge toward the counter again.

Ha, fuck! This is really driving me insane!

Holding onto his mind, which felt ready to fracture, Dante urged himself to focus.

Think. Think, damn it. How do I bring my pretty one, who has suddenly gone mad, back to his senses? He doesn’t seem to hear anything. What can I say that will—

A thought flashed through him. He did not know whether it was a good idea, but instinctively, he felt it would work. It wasn’t based on logic. He simply thought that if he were the one in this situation, this is what he would want Rhys to do for him. If he were terrified by self-loathing for having hurt the person he loved, driven by uncontrollable anxiety, he would want Rhys to do this.

Dante tightened his arm securely around Rhys’s waist. Since ancient times, those driven mad by despair were the most frightening, and people who lost their sight to panic produced a tremendous, unnatural strength. Given that Rhys was already strong to begin with, the situation was dangerous. Dante had to go in as though prepared to die.

If you die, I’m following you. So just try dying.

Gritting his teeth, Dante twisted his entire body. Anchoring Rhys with everything he had, he launched them both toward the wall.

Bang!

With a tremendous crash, the two men collided with the wall, and a large framed picture hanging right beside them shattered against the floor with a frightening crack. Rhys’s movements halted instantly.

Perhaps the unexpected impact startled him, because focus returned for a fleeting instant to his clouded eyes. The moment Dante saw it, he released his grip on Rhys’s waist and grabbed him firmly by the collar instead.

“You and I both seriously need to fix our habit of assuming things on our own,” Dante panted.

You don’t even say what you’re thinking, then you get scared in advance and do insane shit that drives people crazy. Ha, maybe this is karma too. What can I do? He’s the man I chose. Dante decided to take full responsibility for his choice.

“But I love you, Rhys.”

Looking directly into Rhys’s eyes, which still seemed unable to comprehend the situation, Dante leaned in and kissed him. When he lifted his chin slightly and pressed their lips together, Rhys’s eyes widened in sheer shock. Seeing him shudder, his long lashes trembling, Dante felt an odd sensation—as if he had pounced on some innocent young man. Innocent. Right. Rhys had seemed inexperienced because he truly was. According to Blake, Dante had been his very first lover.

Then I must have taken your first kiss, too.

A chill of powerful, possessive satisfaction ran through him. Was it the adrenaline surging from the crisis? A dangerous impulse rose within him. I want Rhys. I want this man, who seems decidedly unstable and was trying to die because of me. From head to toe, he is mine.

My Alpha.

The moment that thought solidified, he felt a profound shift within himself. He did not know exactly how it worked, but it felt as if something was blooming deep inside his body. It was undoubtedly pheromones. He could feel Rhys’s pheromones, which had previously been trapping him, change abruptly.

Something flowing from Dante intertwined seamlessly with Rhys’s scent. Then, the fragrance transformed. A tart, sweet peach fragrance mixed directly into the dense flower scent—a sweet aroma that brought Bellinis to mind. Rhys’s pheromones grew increasingly excited, beginning to burrow deep into Dante’s body.

Rhys, who had been frozen in shock, finally moved. As if completely forgetting that he had been trying to reach the kitchen knives, he wrapped both arms around Dante’s waist and pulled him flush against his chest. Dante willingly folded into his embrace. Because they had moved so violently, the shattered glass from the frame pricked sharply at the soles of his feet, but the pain lasted only an instant. The moment Dante wrapped his arms around Rhys’s shoulders like a starving man, Rhys pushed his tongue into Dante’s mouth. As if both had been waiting for this exact moment, they tangled their tongues and held each other fiercely.

Their ragged breaths mingled. Rhys ravaged his mouth without giving him time to breathe, causing Dante’s body heat to spike fiercely. Since when could he kiss like this? Dante wondered, only to realize suddenly that the way Rhys licked his palate and tangled their tongues was an exact mirror of his own technique.

This… damn it. He learned this from me.

The moment Dante realized what he hadn’t noticed back in Rome, arousal shot straight to his head. His eyes burned, and his lower abdomen tingled with a sharp ache. Turning his head to deepen the kiss, Dante could not control his excitement; he gripped Rhys’s shoulders tightly before releasing them, moving restlessly.

All he could think was that he wanted more—something deeper, something more complete. While Dante continued the kiss, unsure of how to satisfy that aching void, the hand holding his waist naturally slid lower. Thanks to Blake buying him clothes, Dante had changed in a hurry into a pair of black jogger pants, and Rhys’s bare hand slipped beneath the waistband.

At the touch stroking his lower back and bare skin, Dante let out a soft, breathless moan and pressed himself closer to Rhys. The moment Rhys heard that erotic sound, he pushed his hand inside Dante’s drawers. His hand squeezed his firm ass, released it, and slid down between the cleft. Fingers slipped lower, sliding directly into his hole.

“… Ah!”

He had not been prepped, and no lubricant had been applied, but Rhys’s finger entered with shocking ease. Not understanding what was happening to his anatomy, Dante broke the kiss for a moment. What? Why? There should be tightness, but just now it was….

“Hnghh…!”

The finger sank in deep. His hole clenched wildly around the foreign object that had entered all the way at once. Inside the fluttering, frantic passage, a slick sensation rose before he even realized it. Huh? What? While he flippered in shock, a second finger pushed inside. His body swallowed Rhys’s two fingers naturally, a wet sound squelching from the friction.

“R-Rhys…!”

Forgetting that he had been the one to boldly pounce on Rhys, Dante tugged at his clothes in surprise. Rhys, who had been kissing him as if enchanted, his pale face heavily flushed, looked down at him. The violet rings at the center of his blue-gray eyes had darkened significantly. The instant Dante realized how aroused Rhys was, he also felt the hard, rigid shape of him where they pressed together below. With every sensation crashing over him belatedly, he felt as if he would lose his mind.

“Why… Tay? What are you afraid of, hm…?” Rhys murmured against his lips.

No, he was not particularly afraid. Something strange had happened to his body again, that was all, and he had been caught off guard. Dante parted his lips, barely managing to construct a sentence.

“My hole… feels weird back there….”

There was truly no other way to explain it except that it felt utterly strange. The slick interior kept twitching on its own, clenching around Rhys’s fingers, and every time it did, a tingling pleasure rose directly into his lower abdomen. It felt almost numb, as if every sensation below had converted into pure pleasure.

The moment Dante spoke, the fingers inside him began to move slowly. Rhys bent them slightly, scraping the inner wall as he whispered, “It isn’t weird…. It’s because Tay feels good.”