I smiled as she walked away. “You two don’t seem to get along so well anymore,” I noted gleefully.
“We sure as hell don’t.”
“You were engaged to her,” I pointed out. I was provoking him purposefully. He knew it and I wanted him to.
“I was engaged to you too. Didn’t do me much good, did it?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to? If it did you no good, it’s on you.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he noted bitterly. “I forgot I’ve been painted as that guy. Serial fiancé. Because that adds up to you. I’m the guy that makes promises and doesn’t give a damn about them, right?”
“Of course you are. Are you denying it?” I felt my temper boiling up from the bottomless place inside of me, that place that was so full of rage it could feed itself indefinitely. It was only ever looking for an excuse to erupt.
He didn’t deny it, at least, which was perhaps the best way to defuse my ticking time bomb of a temper.
We gave each other a moment of silence. I didn’t realize Dante was stewing in his own temper more than giving space to mine until he said, “How long have you been seeing him?” He was looking down at his glass.
I just stared at him. Somehow, even with all of our history, knowing the ins and outs of him, he still managed to surprise me. “Excuse me?”
“Man-bun from your apartment. How long have you been seeing him?”
“I’m not doing this with you.” I was infuriated at the very notion that he thought he was entitled to know even one thing about my love life.
“Does he mind sharing you? Does it bother him to go to your house to see you while you’re still filled with another man’s cum?”
It was an effort not to show him the reaction he wanted, but I kept my expression neutral, my tone even, “My God, you are out of line.”
He was leaning with casual ease against the counter, his posture nonchalant.
The eyes he turned on me were not nonchalant.
They were livid. Wild. “Did you fuck him after I left?”
“You’re a lunatic,” I spoke quietly and vehemently, “an absolute raging lunatic,” I repeated, “if you think I owe you one single answer about any part of my life.”
“He was in that TV pilot with you years ago. Have you been seeing him since then? For years?” There was so much accusation in his voice, as though he had any right at all to feel betrayed.
The sheer gall of it floored me.
“That is rich,” I enunciated slowly. “Here you are, staying in a house with a virtual stable of your exes, and you have the nerve to act possessive of me?”
His jaw clenched, he stared me down.
“You have me sleeping under the same roof as the home-wrecking whore that ruined us, and you have the balls to think you deserve answers from me?”
He looked genuinely taken aback. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tiffany is staying here. At Gram’s house. With me here. Don’t act like you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t fucking know! Why the fuck is she staying here?”
That knocked some of the fight out of me, and I found myself studying his face for deceit. “You really didn’t know?”
“No, I really didn’t, and it makes no fucking sense. Why wouldn’t she stay with her parents?”
“Renovations, she said.”
“Bullshit. That place is a mansion. There’s no way they don’t still have spare rooms. And if somehow that isn’t a lie, why doesn’t she stay with my mother? Those two are practically joined at the hip.”
These were all my thoughts exactly, but I hadn’t expected him to be so baffled by it.
In spite of my better judgement, I felt myself warming to him. I took my glass and tapped it to his. “It looks like she’s planning something. Don’t be surprised if a naked girl that’s shaped like a fourteen-year-old boy slips into your bed tonight.”
He smirked and toasted me back. “I’m not too worried. I had no intention of sleeping in my own bed tonight.”
A familiar burn started up just under the surface of my skin. I couldn’t mistake what he meant any more than I could stop my body’s reaction to him.
And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. Because again, fucking him meant fucking with him. Having Tiffany sleeping in the house had only upped the stakes in our little battle of head games.
But I just smiled blandly at him. “Luckily my room has a very good lock.”
His grin widened. “Good. No one will bother us, then.”
I straightened, setting yet another empty glass down. “On that note, I’m going to mingle.”
“Wait,” he said, snagging my arm and pulling me back. His finger went to trace over a spot on my collarbone where I’d missed one of the fuzzies from earlier. Carefully he brushed it away.
I shivered.
He glanced down at my nipples as I did that, watched them harden, protruding clearly through the thin material of my dress. He didn’t take his hand away, instead tracing down to circle one of the sensitive buds, rubbing it under his thumb.
His eyes were heavy-lidded on my breasts, his breath coming hard. I was very aware of the effect my body had on him, and he was in a state right then.