Breaking Her (Love is War #2) (29 page)

This was just a refresher course.

By the time his mouth made its way to mine I was near incoherent with need again.
 

He raised his upper body over me, bracing with his arms, his lower body pressed against me, staring down at me.

The look on his face then was hard to describe.

His blue eyes were filled with a dark light.
 
There was desire, yes, hunger, of a certainty, but also there was disbelief, reverence, hope.
 
Fear.
 
So much fear.
 

But above all, there was need.
 
It was like the sun, so brilliant it was blinding.

I wondered what he saw in my eyes at that moment, if my desperation was as transparent as his.
 
God, I hoped not.
 
It was too much just having to witness his.
 
Overkill.
     

He took me with ferocious delight, reveling in me, our hands clutching, every finger entwined.
 

He drove in and out of me with fast, solid strokes, kissing me, then pulling back, his eyes delving into my soul as his body plundered mine, then kissing me.
 
Again and again.
 

In spite of my better judgment, if I had such a thing, I didn't hold back any more than he did, taking fervent joy in every touch, every contact.

Every possession—physical, spiritual.
 

When I came, it was with our eyes locked and his name on my lips like an invocation.

My name on his lips was more like a prayer.

I thought I was finished, vanquished, filled up, satiated, but he was far from done with me.
 

He was indefatigable.
 
Insatiable.
 
A tireless machine.
   

This had been the nature of our separation.
 
It was always a flood or a drought for us.
 
I wondered if we'd ever get past that.
 

Certainly not today.
 

*****

We had ourselves a lazy morning.
 
I was off until the next evening, and Dante's schedule seemed to be completely aimless.
 

Eventually we had to eat.
 
He was the first one to scrounge up the energy to rise from the bed.
 

My smitten eyes were all over him.
 
He was naked, prowling the room on his way to the closet.

I just lay there, enjoying the view.
 
The symmetry and grace of his body would never get old for me.
 

It took a bit of effort on his part, but he did talk me out of bed.
 

It was a strange turn.
 
Usually he only ever talked me into it.
 

We had croissants and coffee outside in the sun.
 
The house had a heavy amount of decking, all of it private.
 

We ate silently for a time, and I studied him to my heart's content.
   

It wasn't always noticeable, the strange mixture of color in his eyes.
 
But as the late morning sun hit them, the blue came alive like a flame, and another color, a rogue little circle of gold around his iris, was revealed.
 
There were three colors if you looked closely.
 
That strange gold around the middle, an almost pale aquamarine that bled into a darker blue at the outer edges.
 
They reminded me of where sea met sand, but they were deep.
 
Drowning deep ocean blue.
   

God, I was a sucker for his eyes.

I realized right then just how much I'd missed such a simple thing as looking at him without restraint.
 
Without artifice.
 
Without hiding what I was feeling as much as I possibly could.
   

"What are you staring at?" he asked, clearly amused.
 

"Your eyes.
 
Your beautiful eyes."
 
Tears were running down my face.
 
God, he turned me into a sap.
 
I hated it as much as I loved it.
     

With a helpless, exasperated little moan, he pulled me out of my chair and onto his lap.
 
He started stroking my hair, his mouth at my cheekbone, lips tracing the tears, and murmuring, "Oh, angel," over and over.
 

After some time I found my composure again, and we went back to acting like things were normal and okay, because we were both starving enough to eat that lie.
   

"I know why you love to act," Dante told me.
 
He was distracting me from heavy with light.
   

"I crave the escape.
 
I long for it."
 

He nodded.
 
He had known.
 
"Who do you want to be right now?"

"Right now?
 
Myself."
 
It was sad how floored I was by that.
 
And a little exasperating how every subject seemed to be an emotional landmine if you spent any time at all treading over it.
 

I had more questions for him, of course I did, but I had no urge to ask them.
 
More truths could come later.
 
I needed to keep some of my fiction for a time.

There's only so much a heart can take.
 

Also, the deeper I delved with him, the more inevitable it would be that he began to do some delving of his own, and I did not want that.
 
It went beyond want.
 
I could not take it.
     

"You have to find a cover story for where you're at when you're with me," he told me later that night.
 

That was easy.
 
"Anton will be my cover."
 

I watched as his face went stiff, something dreadful and cruel crawling across it.
 

Jealousy, of course.
 

I watched his lips purse.
 
I swear the more mean his mouth twisted the handsomer he was.
 
It was out of hand.
 
I squirmed in my seat.
 

"Not him," he said, tone hard.
 
"You'll break it off with him, of course.
 
I don't want you to stay tied to him for any reason, not even as an excuse."
 

"There was nothing going on between me and Anton.
 
Never has been."
 
I saw his face.
 
"I was messing with you.
 
Again." I caught his expression.
 
"I don't know how you can be surprised.
 
I'm not going to say it's your fault that I did it, but you made it too easy.
 
Irresistible for me.
 
And do you have any clue how angry I was?"

"That hurt," he said simply.

"Yes, it did," I agreed, just as simply.
 
"And Anton's perfect as a cover, if I need one.
 
No one ever wants to believe that we really are just friends."

His mouth twisted bitterly.
 
"That's understandable.
 
You are a very
convincing
couple.
 

"I told you, we are strictly friends."
 

"You think that doesn't make me jealous, too?
 
I see how close you are."
 

"Would you rather I not have had anybody when I didn't have you?
 
Did you want me to be alone?"
 

I saw I'd gone too far, as I tended to.
 
I corrected the behavior with a quick and necessary subject change.
 
"What do I need the cover for, anyway?
 
Is your mother having me followed?"
 

"Worse and better."
 

I cocked my head to the side.
 
"How so?"
 

"You've been living with one of her spies."
 

"Excuse me?"
 
I asked him slowly, carefully, as though the way it came out might affect the answer.
 

"My mother has had someone close to you for quite some time.
 
She knows things that only one of your roommates could know.
 
So we have to be very careful.
 
All of your living habits are being reported to her.
 
That's why you still have to stay there some nights.
 
Why you have to have a cover for the nights that you spend with me.
 
It could be worse.
 
At least they're all gone half the week with work."
 

It could be worse?
 
I gave him a look of accusing bafflement.
 
"One of my closest friends has been betraying me to your mother?"
 

He sucked in a breath, punched it out, and said, "Yes, I'm afraid so.
 
Any clue which one it might be?"

I shook my head.
 
I only knew one thing.
 
No matter which one it was, if he was right, it would hurt like hell when I figured it out.
 

And in the meantime, there was the hurt of doubting three women who had each come to mean the world to me in their own ways.
 

Farrah, who made me laugh every day, rain or shine.
 
Demi, who made my heart lighter and less cynical.
 
Or Leona, who had taught me what it meant to have girlfriends, to need them, to know the power of being supported by other women.
 

It was only after a while that I realized Dante and I had been staring at each other.
 
His expression mirrored mine exactly, a moment of perfect understanding, that I'd only ever had with him, where I realized that we were taking the same information and doing the same pragmatic thing with it, processing it identically.

His mouth twisted up bitterly, but his eyes were affectionate on me, and I realized he'd just come to the same conclusion.
 

It was just another thing I'd made myself forget:
 
The way we dissected life, with a razor-sharp cynicism that held just the perfect amount of shining optimism peppered in.
 
Who else could ever love that about me the way he did?
 

What was a partner, if not someone who made you feel less alone in the universe?
 
Someone who validated your existence just by understanding you completely and loving you anyway?

Jesus, I was in trouble.

"Just be careful," he finally said.
 
"You can't let any of them know that you suspect them.
 
You have to behave as if each one is the culprit."

I hated that,
hated
it, but I knew he was right.
 
It was too much to risk if he was that certain one of them was spying on me.

"We'll know who it is soon enough," he continued.
 
"If they're on my mother's payroll to spy on you, they'll be quitting the airline job soon.
 
Adelaide wouldn't be satisfied with a part-timer."
 

"It can't be Leona," I said finally.
 
"She and I go too far back."
 

"I'd say she's the least likely, but better to be safe.
 
Like I said, we'll know soon enough."
 

CHAPTER
 

TWENTY-FIVE

"Love is born into every human being: it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature."
 

~Plato

"I'm home," I called out as I closed the massive front door behind me.
 
My voice seemed to echo through an empty house.
 

It was surreal to be doing this, to be coming home to Dante.
 
If you'd asked me just weeks ago if there was a possibility that I'd be shacking up with the bastard, I would have never even entertained the notion.

I hadn't seen him for more than brief stretches, stolen moments, for the past three days.
 
My roommates had been off work, and that, combined with fourteen hours of shooting each day, meant there'd been almost no spare time.
 

I missed him like it'd been months, not days.
 

My friends were off on another trip, and I rushed to him the first possible second I could.
 

It was truly getting out of hand.
     

"Dante?" I called out loudly, thinking for a brief moment that he wasn't there.
 

But he emerged a few seconds later, from a hallway to the right that I hadn't even noticed before.
 
I really needed to get a tour of the place.
 

I eyed him.
 
He was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of athletic shorts and running shoes.
 
He was holding both of his hands behind his back in a strange way, but I didn't notice the strangeness so much as the way it made his glistening muscles jump and skitter under his deliciously tanned skin.
 
"You've been out running," I observed.
 

He bit his lip and nodded.
 
He looked like he was trying to hold in a laugh.
 

It made my heart feel light to see that smile.
 
God, how had I survived even one day without it?
 

"Do you not have a job of some sort?" I asked him.
 
Last I'd heard he (predictably) worked for the Durant department store chain.
 
He was the heir apparent to the family fortune and one of the bigger shareholders.
 
He was filthy rich, so I supposed he could just spend his days playing around, but even in college, he'd always worked for and with his family.