Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(13)

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 CALL 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 Bront?





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.

I let our love rule my life. It was everything to me. He was. I became possessive of every part of him. And it didn’t take much for that possessive streak to turn ugly. My jealous rages were infamously brutal on us both.

How much had that desperate insecurity contributed to pushing him away? If I’d been less difficult, less needy, less fundamentally f*cked in the head, would things be different?

I tossed and turned all night with those impossible questions tormenting my overactive mind. I’d have been better off just staying up all night, but I was paralyzed, frozen to the hard hotel mattress until my alarm freed me.

I reported for work in a hell of a mood.

“I take it things didn’t go well,” Leona finally asked me as we strode through the terminal, headed for our plane. I hadn’t said a word to anyone on the ride from the hotel to the airport. Not so much as a good morning for a one of them.