Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(42)

Even more than my own pleasure in the kiss, I enjoyed what I was doing to him.

He was moaning into my mouth, his hands all over me, touching my neck, my shoulders, my ribs, all along my sides, then down to grab my hips.

It was wonderful.

It escalated too quickly, I later reflected.

I was so drunk on my first taste of him that I let it get out of hand.

He tentatively touched the side of a breast with his palm, the other still on my hip, moving me, urging me to rock against him, and I did, the core of me discovering the hardness of him and exploring it through our clothes. I felt empty, aching, and hot all at once. And I wanted more.

The hand at my chest stayed there for a while, and eventually I realized he was asking for permission.

With a little suck on his tongue, I took my fingers out of his hair and gripped his wrist, pulling his hand over and onto the center of my full breast, right at my nipple.

I gasped and he moaned as he palmed the aching globe. It was quickly not enough, and I found myself lifting my shirt, pulling aside my bra so he could touch skin.

We both groaned.

And that was when my grandma came home, hours and hours earlier than she usually did.

She went into such a rage, and I got into so much trouble that I avoided Dante for a solid week after that, which was not easy. I had to skip a lot of school to do it.

He finally cornered me at my house, climbing into an unlocked window to get to me where I cowered in my bedroom.

“Listen,” he said, looming over me where I huddled on my bed, “if we went too far, just say so. I’ll back off. Whatever we do, all of that sort of stuff, it’s all on you what pace we go, okay? We won’t do anything you aren’t ready for, not even kissing if you don’t want.”

“I’m okay with the kissing,” I told his feet. “But the rest was going too fast for me, okay?” Grandma’s hours of chewing me out had ingrained in me one important fact: I could not give a boy too much or he’d lose interest in me.

He grinned from ear to ear and perched himself on my bed. “But you liked the kissing, right?

I smiled back. “Yeah. But what does it—I mean—are we . . . “ I couldn’t even finish I was so embarrassed.

His entire gorgeous face was flushing in pleasure. “Yes, Scarlett. Of course. We’re together. We’ve always been together.”

I was bright red and I couldn’t look at him anymore, but I needed more assurances, something concrete. “S-s-s-so you’re my . . .”

“Ah, Scarlett,” he said softly and fondly. “I’m your boyfriend. You’re my girlfriend. Yes. Is that what you were getting at?”

I shot him a look. “Isn’t that something you’re supposed to ask a girl, not tell her?”

He got a real kick out of that, in fact I didn’t think I’d ever seen him happier. He leaned close, touching our foreheads together. “Not this. Not us. Neither of us have a choice in this. You and I being together is not a question, Scarlett, it’s a fact of life.”

And he kissed me. And kissed me.

After that we were making out every day. Every chance we could get. We kissed goodbye, we kissed hello, we kissed in the woods on the way home from school. Anywhere we went where we thought no one was watching, but he was true to his word. He didn’t take it any further until I was ready.





CHAPTER





TWENTY-TWO





“Go to Heaven for the climate. Hell for the company.”

~Mark Twain





PRESENT


Dante ripped his lips from mine so abruptly that it felt like a Band-Aid coming off.

He was panting into my face. “Tell me you don’t miss this,” he said emotionally.

This was what made him such a bastard. We were over, had been for years, but it didn’t matter. If he had his way, he’d keep me tied to him in so many ways I could never break loose. He was cruel like that.

I subjugated every pathetic thing inside of me that jumped to do his bidding. I would not feel what he was trying to make me feel.

“I don’t miss this,” I managed to get out through my constricted throat.

“Liar,” he breathed at me, madness in his eyes.

I shuddered, my own madness coming out to play. “No. No. No. I’m not the liar. You know why I don’t miss this? Because it’s a lie.”

It was his turn to shudder.

“Because it’s a lie,” I repeated.

He flinched.

“It was always a lie.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It was always a lie,” I repeated. “Want to know how I know?”

“Stop.”

“I won’t stop. I’m not finished. Want to know how I know?”

“Enough. Stop it. You’ll say any horrible thing when you’re in a temper.”

“I will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the truth. What we had was always a lie. I know because if it was real it wouldn’t have ended. It felt like forever, and forever was a lie.”

I’d won the round, I noted numbly as his shaking body withdrew back to his side of the car.

He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead, shoulders hunched.

After a few drawn out minutes of silence he started driving again.