"What was the question?" she asked, sounding so annoyed that I knew she must have asked it several times before I heard it.
But seriously, what did she expect? She was topless now, playing with her incomparable breasts while she spoke. Of course she knew what she was doing. The amused glint in her eye told me that she was messing with me and she loved the results.
And even knowing she was toying with me, even knowing she thought it was all a battle, a game of war, none of that calmed my reaction to her. None of it quelled my undying desperation for her. It never had.
Just the opposite.
Panting, I answered, "I can't concentrate on anything when you do that."
She bit her lip, her brows drawing together in a fake coy expression that I fucking ate up with a spoon. Slowly, teasingly, she inched out of her skirt. "Is this better for your concentration? What did you come here for, lover? What was your question?"
She continued to strip, so slow and languid that I could hardly stand it.
But of course that was the point. She knew what she was doing to me. She always had, at least in this.
I tugged at my collar, outright sweating now. "Jesus, you're merciless."
Her expression did something at that, something vulnerable and twisted, her smile deepening and hardening, turning both more brittle and more real. "You have no fucking idea. Now ask your question."
She was naked now, wearing nothing but her fuck me heels. Jesus, this woman and her shoe-porn would be the end of me.
I tried to ask it. I really did, but before I could get a word out, she was straddling me, every inch of her perfect, bare skin suddenly within reach of my eager hands.
Lust charged through me like a ram. I felt the sharp, sweet ache of it deep in my loins, desire so thick and acute it'd turned painful.
I'm sure she thought I would touch her breasts, her hips, her ass, her cunt, some part of her outrageously beautiful body that she'd so generously draped over mine.
I did not. Both of my trembling hands went up to cup her perfect, oh so beloved face. My voice was somehow steadier than my hands as I asked her my question. "Do you love me at least as much as you hate me?"
That was all I needed, just that small aching bit for me.
Had I kept even some tiny piece of her love?
It made me wretched to ask and worry at her answer. Even so, I had to know.
But there was no mercy in her, not today.
She smiled, a gentle smile that made me tense up more than any of her venomous ones had.
I knew her. Knew the hatred she carried around inside of her. I was familiar with it. I'd studied every angle of it. Every harsh plane, every bitter hollow, every rough edge. Like everything about her, that hatred was only at home with extremes.
I knew where it began, what made it thrive, and why it had decided to focus so squarely on me.
I owned my part of it, my share of the blame, but that didn't make it easy, or even okay. It was simply a fact of life that I'd had to accept along with many others.
While I bided my time.
But the smile she gave me then, that one particularly, one almost as gentle as it was condemning, Jesus, I knew in an instant that it meant something had changed.
And I was terrified.
"I'll answer that," she said in a voice so throaty and resonant it could choke your soul. "I will. But not yet. First, I have a question of my own."
I was shaking my head before she'd even finished.
No. No. No.
There was something too meaningful in her eyes as they raked over my face, like a switch had been flipped, one that should not, could not, be turned on.
But she knew me too well, knew how to weaken me, what strategy to use to gut me the fastest.
Her mouth was my undoing, her lips my own personal heaven and hell. They were a weapon she used seldom but unrepentantly, and they were all the more potent for it.
I was a slave to those lips, a willing lamb to slaughter, and when she pressed them to mine, I was already past the point of all resistance.
I forgot my question, forgot hers, forgot everything but the simple joy of reveling in her—my weakness and my strength, my purpose and my distraction, my redemption and my undoing.
I couldn't even believe I was here with her, that she hadn't had me kicked out the second she found my drunken ass in her trailer. Instead she was straddling me naked, leaning over me as she kissed and kissed me, unbuttoning my shirt, pushing it aside to rub her naked breasts against my bare chest how she knew I loved.
She completely ignored the chain around my neck and the small objects that hung from it.
I was only relieved by that. She usually took exception to it.
But I would never take it off.
I returned her kiss with fierce abandon, not even trying to hold back.
When she spoke, it took a while for me to register her words, even as sharp as they were.
"What have you done to us, Dante?" she breathed into my mouth. "What have you done?"
I froze.
No. No. No. This could not happen.
Could not.
I was tense, ready for the next blow, the next unanswerable question, but it didn't come.