Chapter 3: The Cage of His Arms

The days that followed bled into a surreal routine. Each morning, Elara would walk into Room 303, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs, and the storm in Dante’s eyes would calm. The nurses now greeted her with knowing, grateful smiles. Dr. Matthews gave her encouraging nods in the hallway. She had become a fixture, the devoted, nameless fiancée of the hospital’s most volatile patient.

The lie was a living thing now, growing more complex with each passing hour. She had learned to navigate his silences, to anticipate the flash of frustration in his eyes when a memory wouldn't surface. He never called her Elara. To him, she was moya lyubov, my love, a name that was both a brand and a balm.

“You smell of rain again today,” he murmured as she helped him sit up, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through her. He would often do that, lean in and inhale as if her scent was the only thing he could truly trust. That impossible, terrifying detail about the turpentine had been a fluke, she told herself. A lucky guess. But every time he mentioned her scent, a cold knot of dread and forbidden fascination tightened in her stomach.

The line between her guilt-ridden performance and some terrifying, burgeoning reality was dissolving like watercolor on wet paper. Sometimes, when he’d catch her hand and his thumb would stroke her knuckles, she’d forget to be scared. For a fleeting second, the warmth of his touch felt less like a prison and more like an anchor in her own chaotic life.

By the end of the week, he had graduated from the bed to a wheelchair. The move did little to quell the restless energy that churned within him. He was a caged panther, and the four walls of his room were closing in.

“I want to go outside,” he stated one afternoon, his jaw tight as he stared out the window at a sliver of blue sky. It wasn’t a request. Dante didn’t make requests; he issued commands, even in his broken state.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Elara began, her institutionalized fear kicking in.

“I will go mad in this room,” he said, turning his piercing grey eyes on her. The frustration was sharp, a weapon he wielded with frightening precision. “I cannot remember the sun on my face. I cannot remember the feel of wind. All I have is this room, this bed, and… you.” He said the last word as if she were both his salvation and his torment. “Take me outside. Please.”

The ‘please’ was a crack in his armor, a moment of raw vulnerability that shattered her resolve. It was her fault he couldn't remember the sun. How could she deny him this?

After getting a reluctant but supportive go-ahead from Dr. Matthews—who saw it as a positive step towards re-engagement with the world—she found herself pushing Dante’s wheelchair down a quiet, little-used corridor toward a sign that read ‘Healing Garden’.

The garden was less a place of healing and more one of beautiful neglect. It was a small, flagstone courtyard, enclosed on all four sides by the hospital’s brick walls, giving it the feel of a secret, forgotten place. Roses grew wild and tangled, their petals scattered across the stone path. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine. It was quiet, secluded. Dangerously so.

She pushed the wheelchair to a stop near a weathered stone bench, shielded from view by an overgrown lilac bush. For a moment, there was peace. Dante tilted his head back, his eyes closed as a sliver of sunlight broke through the clouds and warmed his face. A flicker of the man he might have been—powerful, at ease, commanding even in stillness—surfaced, and Elara’s breath caught in her throat. He was devastatingly handsome. The thought was a betrayal to her fear, a traitorous whisper of attraction.

“Tell me about us,” he said suddenly, his eyes still closed.

Elara’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me how we met. Our first kiss. Where we lived.” His voice was low, laced with a desperate hunger for the memories she didn’t have.

“I… it’s hard to talk about,” she stammered, falling back on the excuse Dr. Matthews had provided. “The doctor said not to push your memories, to let them come back on their own.”

His eyes snapped open, and the peace was gone, replaced by a gathering storm. “I am not asking my memory. I am asking you.” He slammed a hand down on the armrest of his wheelchair, the sound making her jump. “I am tired of this! This half-life! I am a ghost, haunting a body I do not know, tethered to a woman who looks at me with fear in her eyes!”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she lied, her voice thin.

“Liar,” he snarled. He reached out, his grip like a vice on her arm, and pulled.

He was stronger than she could have ever imagined. With one brutal tug, he yanked her off balance. She cried out, stumbling, and landed directly in his lap, her candy striper skirt bunching up around her thighs. She was trapped, her back pressed against his hard chest, his arms caging her in. The wheelchair felt as solid and inescapable as a throne.

“Dante, no!” she gasped, squirming, but his arm wrapped around her waist was an iron bar.

“Stop fighting me,” he growled into her ear, his breath hot against her skin. “I just want to feel something real. Just for a second.”

His other hand came up, tangling in her honey-blonde hair, forcing her head back. His face was inches from hers, his grey eyes blazing with a potent cocktail of frustration, desire, and a desperate, aching need. He wasn't the calm, anchored patient anymore. He was the predator she had first seen, wounded and furious and claiming his territory.

And then his mouth crashed down on hers.

It wasn't a kiss. It was a possession. A raw, desperate claiming. There was no tenderness, only a fierce, plundering demand. He devoured her gasp of surprise, his lips hard and unrelenting against hers. It was the kiss of a starving man, of a king reclaiming his throne. One hand held her head captive while the arm around her waist tightened, pressing her impossibly closer, until she could feel the thundering beat of his heart against her back, a wild counterpoint to the frantic fluttering in her own chest.

A part of her screamed to fight, to claw at him, to bite him, to do anything to escape.

But another part of her, a secret, dark, and treacherous part, melted.

As his tongue swept into her mouth, stealing the air from her lungs and the thoughts from her head, a wave of dizzying heat washed through her. The scent of him—antiseptic, male musk, and the clean hospital sheets—filled her senses. The sheer, overwhelming force of his desire ignited a spark deep inside her, a shameful, terrifying answering flicker of need. Her hands, which had been pushing against his chest, went limp.

He felt the shift, the infinitesimal surrender. A low groan rumbled in his chest, and the kiss changed. The brute force gentled into a soul-stealing exploration, no less demanding but now laced with a possessiveness that was terrifyingly intimate. He was learning the shape of her lips, the taste of her, branding a memory of his own onto her soul.

When he finally lifted his head, they were both breathless. His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide, the storm within them now a churning inferno of satisfied desire. Her lips were swollen, tingling, and she could taste him on her tongue. Her entire body trembled, caught in the aftershocks of a cataclysm she hadn't seen coming.

She stared at him, horrified. Not just by what he had done, but by her own treacherous response. The lie was one thing. This… this was something else entirely. This was a truth her body had screamed without her permission.

He looked down at her, a flicker of triumph in his gaze. He had felt her surrender. He knew.

“There,” he rasped, his voice thick and victorious, as if he had just conquered a city. “Now I have a memory.”

The cage of his arms was no longer just a physical restraint. It had become the terrifying enclosure of her own shattered innocence and burgeoning, fatal desire.