Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(71)

I looked at Bastian.

“I guess I’ll go ahead and load up her car,” he said helpfully, and proceeded to gather a huge armful of clothes into the large suitcase, and holding it closed, he lifted it and started down the hallway.

“Thank you,” I called to his back.

After Hulk Dante had emptied the guestroom of every one of her possessions he came back to hover in the doorway.

No further, because I was blocking the way, acting as a barrier between him and the object of his rage.

He let me. I was tiny compared to him, minuscule, but he let me hold him in his place with just my will alone.

“What don’t you understand about get the f*ck out?” he screamed at her, the sound of it booming through the house like the roar of a lion.

Her chin trembled. “What did I do?” she asked, and started to cry.

“What did you do? What did you do? What didn’t you do? You think I don’t know? You think I buy your innocent act? You and my f*cking manipulative bitch of a mother ruined my life!”

“I’m going to tell your mother about this. I’m going to tell her everything I’ve seen here.”

“You do that, but you do it fast. Because if I have to look at you for one more f*cking second—" He took a step toward her, but I was in his way, shoving into him, cutting off his tirade and pushing him back into the room.

He was a brick wall of a man, but he let me do it, let me distract him.

As much as I loved to watch him rip into her, as much as I’d love to see her throttled, I couldn’t sit idly by as Dante got himself into serious trouble.

Also, he was unhinged, unpredictable when he was this out of his mind, capable of forgetting important realities.

Like the fact that he couldn’t confront her about what I’d just told him, no matter what.

No matter what.

There were skeletons in our closet that the world could never know about, and if he went down this path with her, it would lead her straight to them.

I kept pushing at him, backing him step by step into the room, and when we’d cleared the door, I shut it behind us.

I walked into his chest, eyes closing as I wrapped my arms around his ribcage.

He was panting, shaking, so upset that instead of accepting my embrace, he raised his arms so they wouldn’t touch me.

“Don’t touch me. You don’t even know. You don’t even have a clue,” his trembling voice said to the air.

“What are you talking about?” I asked him absently, my hand going down to cup his scrotum.

His head fell back, and I could feel his agitated body trying to calm itself.

I had just the thing. I got down on my knees.

He didn’t touch me as I sucked him off.

What do you know? It worked.

I rose, licking my lips, eyes on his face.

His eyes were still adrift, lost to madness, but my tongue darting out caught his attention, and he seemed to snap back into himself.

He grabbed my face with both of his hands and started kissing me.

Eventually I pulled back. “I need to start packing. I’m going to find a flight out tonight. I can non-rev if I have to.”

“You’re not going anywhere tonight.”

“I’m not?” I don’t know why, but at this point, I was only amused.

“Try to leave. See what happens to you.”





CHAPTER





THIRTY-FOUR





“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.”

~Emily Bront?





I have no excuse for myself. No justifications that don’t ring hollow.

I let him keep me there.

I could have escaped, could have fought him harder, could have easily talked Bastian into getting me away. It would have made the brothers come to blows, but it would have worked.

I didn’t do any of that.

This was the whole problem, the entire reason I was so stubbornly devoted to hating Dante’s guts.

Because when I didn’t, I was too weak to fight him. Just a few days in his proximity and I didn’t even have the will anymore.

Without the hate, I forfeited all of my power against him. I lost and he won.

Even knowing it was temporary, transient, even knowing it was all a lie, that when it finished I’d be in much, much worse shape than when we’d started, I let him keep me there for another day.

It’s no secret how we spent that day. We locked ourselves in my room and barely came out even to eat.

The day went too fast and the morning came too soon.

The sun rose and drama was not far behind it.

Something had happened between Bastian, Leo, and Adelaide in the middle of the night, the details of it shrouded in mystery, but word had it that Dante’s mother was throwing a fit to end all fits, so much so that the reading of the will was postponed.

I was in the kitchen pantry scraping together the ingredients to make crepes when Dante told me the news.

“God, she’s crazy. I can’t stay another day. I have work. I need to leave tonight.”

His answer was to grab me and kiss the breath out of me. “No,” he said simply.

I bit back a smile. “You know there’s a term for what you’re doing here, right?”