I stood, turned my back on him, and took two decisive, necessary steps away.  I didn’t know what to say to him, what to do with myself, but I knew I couldn’t wallow in his arms for another fragile second.

We were both silent for a solid minute and then another.  I stared at the wall, my shoulders hunched, fists clenched.

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I turned around to look at him again.

His gaze was so warm on me—tender—and I didn’t know what to do with how that made me feel.  He hadn’t had that warmth in his eyes for me in years.  I’d made sure he had no reason to.  Gone to drastic measures to make sure.

Why was he looking at me like that now?  Shared grief?  Rekindled feeling?

“Stop looking at me like that,” I told him slowly, reproach in every syllable of every word.

“Like what?”

“You know.”

“You think I can help it?” he countered softly.  “When could I ever help it?”

I lost my breath.  No, he’d knocked it out of me.

This was the problem with fighting Dante.  I got in my jabs, loudly and often, but it only took one good hit from him and I was stripped of my defenses.  A few sentences out of his gorgeous, manipulative mouth and I lost the whole fucking round.

K.O.  Done.

He needed to leave now.

I opened my mouth to tell him so, but just then there was a soft knock at my bedroom door.

“Scar dear, your boyfriend is here,” Demi’s concerned voice called.

My eyes were still on Dante’s, so I saw the moment when the warmth left them, watched unblinking as all tenderness was sucked out and replaced by something else.

Something cold and dark and all too familiar.

I told myself I was relieved at the change.  I almost believed it.

“Boyfriend?” he uttered softly, his voice rumbling and low, a distant clap of thunder, the way it got when he was on the edge of losing his temper.

Oh yes, he had a famous temper like me, though his was harder to provoke.

My own temper was quick to ignite and could be indiscriminately destructive but his was just as terrible of a thing to behold when things went south.

A small but powerful thrill moved through me.

Our eyes were still locked as I called back to Demi, “I’ll be out in just a second, hun.”

“Boyfriend?” he repeated quietly, punching it out in a dangerous clip, the thunder closer to the surface now, eyes going black as he began in earnest to lose the battle with the storm inside of himself.

I firmed my jaw and squared off against him.  It was almost easy for me to deal with him angry.  Familiar, safe ground.  Enjoyable, even.  A much needed distraction.  “You should go, Dante.”

“Does he know I fucked you last night?”  He did not say this quietly.  He said it loud enough to be heard, and not just by me.

I felt my nipples tighten, a slow, familiar throb starting up between my thighs.

I was a perverse creature and his jealous rages had always turned me on.

My mouth twisted in something not quite a smile.

Predictably, it set him off.  “Does your boyfriend know I rode you bareback last night?”  He said this even less quietly, voice pitched to be heard across the large apartment.

It was an effort to keep from showing any reaction to his increasing hostility.  “Your jealousy is showing,” I pointed out evenly.

He shook his head, lip curling as he spoke, “It wasn’t a rhetorical question.  Does he know what happened between us last night?”

“Does it matter?”

A shudder moved through his big, agitated body.

I tried not to shudder at the sight of it.  I was in a state.

“I can’t believe you,” he gritted out.

“Can’t you?” I countered, voice steady, pulse not so much.

He stood abruptly.  “I’m leaving.  As I said before, I’ll email you the details of your travel arrangements.”

He hadn’t had to do that, arrange it all for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to thank him.  “When do I leave?”

“The day after tomorrow.  Early.”

“Fine.”

His lip curled.  “Fine,” he clipped back and strode from the room.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“When I’m good, I’m very good.  But when I’m bad I’m better.”

~Mae West

PAST

Gram was old but that didn’t make her any less glamorous.

I’d never seen her without a face full of perfect makeup, expertly coiffed hair, and a flattering designer dress wrapped around her still trim figure.

She lived in a nowhere town now, and it was the town she’d been raised it, but she hadn’t always lived here and it showed in every sophisticated flick of her wrist.

In her heyday, as she’d say, she’d been an actress on the silver screen.  For nearly a decade, she’d reigned supreme as the undisputed Queen of Hollywood.

She’d lived a life that people had written books about.  Many, many books.

I read every one I could get my hands on.  Every time I’d finish one, I’d start badgering her about what was true and what wasn’t.

It tickled her when I did this.  She was a passionate storyteller, and she loved to reminisce about the good old days.

The books never got it right.  There were always some important pieces of her many escapades that they left out, and the way they portrayed her was always off.  They liked to make her into either a ruthless femme fatale or a clueless starlet, a caricature of a woman, when she was not that.  Gram was complex, her personality rich in delightful contradictions.