Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(63)

Third, the room looked like it’d been ransacked. The bedspread was over by the window for some reason I couldn’t remember, every knickknack on my dresser had been knocked over or off, and Dante’s pants were literally directly in front of the door, like he’d left them there to send a message.

I wondered idly if he’d had the possessive foresight to leave a sock on the doorknob.

I glanced around, trying to decide what there was to be done about it, and also, where the clothes I’d gone to bed in had ended up. All I could see were his clothes, and they seemed to be everywhere, making it impossible to miss that there was a naked man in my bed even if I’d gotten rid of the naked man himself.

“Open the door, Scarlett,” a soft female voice that I’d recognize anywhere called.

My entire sated body stiffened.

Well, hell. I wasn’t going to hide this from her, of all people. In fact, if I ever had to set eyes on her again, this was the demoralizing setup I’d have chosen.

I stood, negligently wrapping a sheet around the essentials, but not bothering to cover too much. Let her see what he’d picked over her last night. Let her see what she could never compete with. Just as her rail thin body always brought out my worst insecurities, I knew my over the top curves made her feel just as inadequate.

How could a man desire two women of polar opposite looks? I’d often wondered. And worse, which type does he prefer?

Though some part of me, my gut I guess, always knew that it was me.

He was a slave to this body, helpless against every curve and hollow of it. If there was one thing I was certain of about him, it was that.

I swung the door open wide as I answered, hiding nothing. Well, nothing in the room. On my face was pure stoicism.

On my face I hid everything.

My hate. My contempt.

My jealousy. My fear.

“Good morning, Tiffany,” I said, deadpan.

And since Dante was sleeping and not dead, finally something jarred him out of his enviably peaceful slumber.

With a jerk he sat up. I watched his body flex with the movement, gaze darting from that drool worthy sight up to the dawning horror on his face.

I couldn’t decide which thing I liked looking at more.

“What the f*ck, Tiffany?” he snarled, the horror turning to something darker, something I liked even more if for different reasons.

As he began to scramble to find something to cover himself with, I turned back to the bane of my existence.

I saw her face when she noticed his back.

I saw her go pale as she took in every scratch I’d left on him.

She shot one hostile glance my way.

I feigned a cringe. “Ouch. Those looks like they hurt,” I said with a mock sympathetic pout.

“They do,” Dante grumbled, still looking for clothes.

The chain around his neck and what hung from it were conspicuous when he was naked and moving like that. I didn’t imagine she could miss seeing them any more than I, and that didn’t make me sad.

“What do you want?” I asked her, trying to make my tone neutral but landing on borderline rude.

I hated that she was still shamelessly watching him.

I was starting to understand the phrase claw her eyes out.

“I just had to see this with my own eyes, though I still can’t quite believe it,” she said, directing the words at Dante’s naked back, using a tone with something in it, some bit of ownership for him that I simply could not tolerate.

My hands were in fists, and I knew it wasn’t a good sign. My temper was quickly running away from me. “Are you kidding me?” Disdain dripped off the words. “Did you think we needed your permission?”

For that, she looked at me.

I took a step closer to her. “He was mine before you ever had him, and even when you did, know this, a part of him was still mine. You never got what I had. You had what was left when I was done with him. Even last night, and it was a long night, what I got from him had no piece of you in it.”

For that, I got the reaction I craved. In her dilating pupils, her shortened breath, her quivering lip, I saw how I’d annihilated her with a few brutal sentences.

Good. I had no mercy for her. She’d helped to ruin everything I cared about, helped to make me less whole.

But still, she didn’t speak to me, didn’t address my words.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know?” she asked him, a world of accusation in her voice that I for one thought she had no right to. “We’re sleeping under the same roof. Did you think you could keep this from me?”

It took him so long to answer that I thought I might scream, but then, “I think it’s none of your f*cking business,” he told her in a tone so black and deadly and overflowing with scorn that it made me shiver.

“You think that?” she glanced at me, her scathing eyes at my throat.

Even then, I didn’t catch the significance.

“What else don’t you think is my business?” she asked, something pointed in her tone that I didn’t catch right away.

It was the sort of thing that would float around for a while before it parked itself in my consciousness.

“I think none of it’s your f*cking business and it never was,” Dante thundered back, his gorgeous temper coming out to play. “How’s that? Clear enough for you?”

“You’re going to regret this,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was speaking to him or me.