He was born filthy rich, but he’d always struggled with it.
I was born stinking poor, so his struggle always pissed me the hell off because it was an affront to my own.
We sat as far apart as two people could get in the back of the cab.
I’d decided to fuck him tonight. That didn’t mean I had any desire to be near him.
It was a quick ride to the fairly modest establishment where he was staying. I say fairly modest only in comparison to what he could afford. He always did things like this, lived below his means whenever he could.
He was an asshole like that.
I made him walk ahead of me from the car into the building and then down the hallway to his suite. I knew if he was behind me he’d try to take my arm or lead me with his hand on the small of my back, both things I couldn’t stomach, because they were too familiar.
Everything about him was too familiar.
I felt a few flutters of misgiving right about the time he opened the door of his room and waved me in.
I ignored them, striding inside.
I can handle this, I told myself. He was the one that should have been worried.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he began but trailed off when he saw that I’d walked straight to the bed.
I perched on the edge, parted my legs, and started to inch my skirt up. It was short, so there wasn’t far to go.
“What? Are you going to say now that you didn’t bring me here to fuck?”
His throat worked as he swallowed hard, his eyes darting around, avoiding me suddenly. Just the mention of it had him looking like a junkie desperate for a fix.
He took a deep breath then expelled it. He knew what I was up to. In a great many ways, he knew me better than anyone else. “I actually didn’t. I swear it.“
I laughed, a seductively bitter laugh. Candy dipped in poison.
Eat it up, you bastard.
The sound of it made him wince, which made me happy. “Are you saying that you’re actually going to turn me down?”
His eyes latched onto me as he tugged his tie loose impatiently, then tore at the collar of his shirt. My eyes darted away when he exposed the chain he always wore around his neck.
God, why did he still wear that thing? Bile rose in my throat just at the sight of it.
“I’m saying that we really do need to talk,” he said.
With a sigh, I stood. This was an unusual amount of resistance from him.
He was easily led in matters of the flesh.
He’d never told me no before. I wondered if this would be a first.
Not fucking likely, I decided, reaching up into my skirt and tugging my panties off with a few impatient movements. I tossed them to the floor at his feet and turned my back on him.
I could hear his breathing change as I contorted my arms behind me and unzipped my dress. I tugged it down my hips as I strutted across the room toward a tall antique dresser. I gripped the edge of it and shot him a look over my shoulder.
I was nude by then, wearing nothing but stilettos and a bad attitude. “Go ahead,” I told him. “Talk.”
I wouldn’t admit this aloud under heavy torture, but as I watched him approach me, I began to tremble. In fear. Trepidation. Horror.
Anticipation. Pleasure. Delight.
When he got close, I turned my face away.
His hands, those big, beautiful, terrible hands of his, brushed my hair over my shoulder an instant before his lips touched my nape.
Head to toe, I shivered.
“I don’t have all night,” I told him, making my voice hard to compensate for the fact that my insides had gone utterly soft. “You don’t have to do your hours long foreplay with me.”
He chuckled into my skin. “It’s your fault, you know. You’re the reason I’m obsessed with foreplay. Remember when we were teenagers? When we made out for hours? God, you made me wait forever.”
His voice was so full of sweet nostalgia that I had to make light of it.
Had. To.
“If you cry while we fuck I’m putting it online,” I quipped.
He laughed and tried to turn my face toward his.
Going in for a kiss, I knew.
I hated his kisses.
Hated. Them.
Hated. Hated. Hated.
I wrenched my chin out of his hand and pressed my body back until my ass was flush to his crotch. He was hard as a rock, bulging through his slacks.
I rubbed against him, teasing him into action.
With a groan, he started kissing my neck again, both hands going to grip my breasts.
I circled my hips, working against him shamelessly. I knew what it did to him, knew he was a hair trigger the first time we made any contact after a long parting. I didn’t care. If I got him to embarrass himself before he’d even taken off his pants, all the better.
Humiliating him was a bonus, as far as I was concerned.
No such luck. He knew all my tricks.
He wrenched away suddenly, breaking contact. His hands went to my hips and he tried to turn me around.
“No,” I said firmly. “Like this. I want it just like this.”
The Bastard wasn’t having it. And he was much, much bigger than me, the fucker.
He picked me up like I weighed nothing and carried me straight to bed.
I let out an embarrassing little squeak as he tossed me on the mattress, then followed me down before I could scramble away.
Still fully clothed, he wedged himself between my naked thighs, pinning me.
Slowly, eyes watching me all the while, he cupped my face in both hands.
“I don’t think I have to tell you this. You already know it, but—I miss you. Even your bad attitude, I miss.” His voice was clear, vulnerable, and succinct.
Shut up, I wanted to snap at him. But it would reveal too much about what his words did to me.
“The feeling is not mutual, you fucking stalker,” I told him, voice fraudulently collected.
He just smiled and pressed his mouth to mine.
I turned my head away, gasping, “Don’t kiss me!”
He gripped my chin in his hard hand and turned my face back. His defiant gaze bored into mine as he melded our lips back together.
A feeling of raw, violent need quaked through me.
“Fuck you,” I snarled into his mouth.
“Yes. That, too,” he breathed back. “But first—kiss me, angel. Please.”
It was the please that did it. Dirty fighting bastard that he was, he knew how to use that word in the most devastating way—absolutely effective in its rarity.
With a moan, I gave in.
Kissing him ruined me. He knew it.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one out for blood here.
His lips were my own personal hell.
They were either his biggest lie, or his greatest betrayer. Every kiss he’d ever given me, when we were in love or in hate, told me how he cared. Told me how he longed. Craved. Pined. Mourned. Despaired. Told me he was as desperate for me as ever.
I hated him for it, and I couldn’t get enough, my hands driving into his hair, nails scoring against his scalp, tongue diving in to taste his liquor sweet breath, clashing with his as unwanted whimpers escaped my throat.
I let it go on for way too fucking long. I have no defense for myself there.
It was too good. Too sweet. Too bitter. Too pleasurable and too painful.
I lost myself so completely that at one point, I even let my hand pull at the chain around his neck, fingering the cursed object that it held, which was a complete slip-up. As soon as I realized I was doing it, I jerked my hand away.
Finally, it was my sex drive that put an end to that torture. I was throbbing from the inside out and addictive as it was, kissing him was not enough to physically satisfy me.
It was one of the few times in my life where I could say that my libido worked in my favor.
I started tearing at his shirt, wrenching at the f
ront until buttons flew, shoving it off his shoulders, then pushing impatiently at his chest when it caught on his elbows.
He wouldn’t budge, still kissing me like I was the air he needed to breathe.
I’d almost forgotten. Dante always turned fucking into making love. Even when he was drunk. Even when it was rushed, hurried, hard, angry, or desperate. You name it, he turned it all into something more.
I didn’t want any of that.
I wasn’t here to make love.
I was here to make war.
I bit his tongue hard enough that he recoiled with a curse.
I smiled at him, a hostile baring of teeth, and pointed at his pants. “Clothes off. I didn’t come here to make out with you all night.”
He was too far gone to tell me no, thank God.
His eyes were glazed over, his breath short as he started to unbutton his slacks.
I rolled over onto my belly and began to crawl across the bed.
If he could resist that view, I’d lost my touch.
I didn’t want him to have control of any part of this, and I didn’t plan to let him kiss me again.
My ploy worked.
He was on my back before I could make it to the other side.
He covered me, lips on my shoulder, hands cupping my breasts right as I felt him lining his thick tip up at my entrance.
He paused too long there.
“Do it,” I bit out.
I hid it better, but I was as far gone as he. I needed this. Needed it like the possessed need an exorcism.
“Ask for it,” he spoke into my skin.
There he was. The Bastard I knew and loathed.
“Go die in a fire,” I gritted out, pushing back against him.
“Ask me nicely,” he added. “Say, please, Dante.”
“Please go die in a fire, Dante,” I spat out right as my elbow connected sharply with his ribs. He grunted in pain, and I made a break for it.
He caught me just as my second foot hit the floor and had me flipped around and straddling his lap at the edge of the bed.
He looked up at me with a conciliatory smile and said, “I take it back. Old habits, ya know? But I take it back and I’m sorry. I meant it about the truce tonight.”
A please and a sorry from him all in one night?
It was a miracle.
Or the apocalypse.
One thing was for sure, it wasn’t fucking normal. Or right. Or even okay. I could count on one hand the number of times he’d said both words combined in the last five years.
And for this he was sorry?
He had plenty to be sorry for, grievances much worse than anything he’d done in the last five minutes.
I was once again torn between wanting to slap him, choke him, or fuck him blind.
I settled for a compromise, my fingers sliding around his throat and squeezing lightly as he pulled my head down to his and started kissing me again, almost clumsy now in his drunken passion.
His pants were opened, his thick cock jutting out, and I shifted my hips, poising myself over him. I gripped his neck and shifted until his tip pushed into me. With a groan, I tried to impale myself on him.
His stubborn hands on my hips halted my progress.
This was how it was with us. A never ending struggle for dominance.
Usually he won the bedroom portion of that struggle, but I always told myself I let him do it for the simple fact that it got me off harder.
He could dominate me physically, so long as I always had the last word.
I thought mine was the better deal, in general, but at that moment it was pissing me off to no end.
I pulled back to ask him what his problem was, but lost the breath to do so as just then he flipped me smack onto my back.
He stood, impatiently shedding the rest of his clothing while I watched. My wide eyes sucked up each luscious inch of tanned, muscled skin he unveiled.
I parted my legs wide and raised my knees up until my heels were digging hard into the mattress. Fuel to his fire.
It worked well enough. He was naked and on top of me between one gasping breath and the next.
“Scarlett,” he breathed his sweet liquor breath against my mouth right as he started to push into me.
Even his drunk breath I hated. Even that held bittersweet memories that reminded me inevitably of our love and our losses.
My eyes were shut tight as I breathed back, “Don’t talk. Your voice ruins it for me.”
“Scarlett,” he repeated, this time with a smile in his voice.
“Shh. I’m trying to pretend you’re someone else. Every time you speak it ruins the illusion.”
“It’s been too long, angel,” he murmured, then took my mouth and shoved in hard.
I was ready. Beyond ready.
I was wet, throbbing, aching, hungry, desperate for him.
I hated myself for it, but I hated myself for a lot of things. At least this thing brought me as much pleasure as pain, or rather this part of it did.
It felt so good when he started moving that I found my nails clawing into his back every time he started to pull out, then clamping into him with every rough shove in, until, as he began to move faster, I was scoring with gusto into the abused skin over his shoulder blades.
He wasn’t complaining, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
It was quick. It always was the first time.
“I can’t hold it back,” he moaned. “I’m coming.”
“Selfish prick,” I taunted into his ear.
Of course he took that as a challenge. I’d meant it as such. Either it’d motivate him to get me off faster, or it would make him feel inadequate. Both counted as a win for me.
He chose the former, one of his big hands snaking between our bodies, his familiar fingers going unerringly for my clit, working at it with a precision that made my eyes roll up in my head, my overactive mind gone blank for one glorious, regrettable moment.
Tears stung the back of my eyelids as I came. He followed me with a low groan, taking my mouth as he rooted deep and let himself go, emptying inside of me.
It was the sweetest torture, the most delightful torment, to let the man that had ruined me for joy bring it back into my body for one brief instant.
The full-on drunk I’d tricked him into earlier must have still been affecting him. He was usually good for more than one short round. A lot more.
But this time, after a soft kiss on my cheek (a second before I shoved him off me) he rolled onto his stomach and passed out cold.
With one last sneer at him I got up and started gathering my clothes.
I was just zipping my dress when my eyes caught on his shoulders. Or rather, what I’d done to them.
I’d scratched his back bloody. Literally. A few of the deep scores were bleeding.
He’d be wearing evidence of me for weeks, and though it hadn’t been as deliberate as he would no doubt assume, I wasn’t sorry.
I paused when I was dressed and ready to go.
I couldn’t help myself when he was sleeping like this. I moved closer to the bed, my eyes on his downcast, peaceful face in slumber.
I let myself watch him for a time, my mind worlds away and years ago, recalling a time when his beautiful face had been beloved to me.
This was the problem. Even with all the hate I had built up against him, being in his proximity brought back those other feelings, the ones that had nothing to do with hate.
To counteract such poignant, debilitating regret I felt like I should do something else, make some statement that he’d see in the morning that would further cement my victory here.
I thought about ways to humiliate him while he slept. Throw some dollar bills on him, draw a penis on his forehead, get creative, have some fun with it.
But alas, I was short on cash and I didn’t have a Sharpie handy.
I settled for leaving a short message written in lipstick on the bathroom mirror.
NICE TALK.
DON’T C
ALL ME, AND STAY OFF MY FLIGHTS.
I figured between that and the scratches, he’d understand that I knew I’d won this one.
I had to take this round for myself, but not for the reasons you might think.
Not to win. Not even to conquer. But to endure. It was imperative.
Because even when I won with Dante, I was defeated.
Because, to this day, I had a hard time walking away from him.
Something inside of me—some insidious thing, deep down in the dregs of my soul raged against every step that took me in the opposite direction of him.
Even after all this time, it raged.
CHAPTER
SIX
“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”
~Emily Brontë
I don’t sleep well. I never have.
My subconscious hates me. It exploits me at my weakest moments. When I can’t control my own mind, it conjures up new and old nightmares to taunt me—ruthlessly and consistently.
My dreams like to trap me. Take me back to places I badly want to leave. Back to feelings I desperately wanted to forget.
That night my sleep was particularly wretched, as I dreamed about Dante and the way it used to be. The could haves and the what ifs were my own personal hell and had been for a very long time.
I liked to blame Dante for everything that went wrong between us, and when I was in my right mind, I did. But my subconscious had other ideas. How much of our end had been my fault? And worse, how much of it had been preventable? He’d started the avalanche that ended us forever, but it was a fact that I’d fed that disaster once it had started rolling.
If I was brutally honest with myself, I’d even helped to start it. Not deliberately, but I’d always just been so insecure.
When I was a child, I thought that no one would ever love me. For the longest time, I was certain of this. It was me against the world, and the world was cruel.
But then.
Then.
Dante.
He loved me so deep and so hard that I was blinded by it.
I thought it was a miracle. I was so young, so impressionable, so infatuated.
So stupid. For years and years, all I had the sense to do was bask in it.