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Charlie
“I’m not hungry anymore,” I said, pushing my half-finished meal away. The weight of the day pushed me further into exhaustion. But I wasn’t ready to turn in for the night. I wasn’t ready to be alone. I was afraid to be alone.
“What is it?”
“What is what?” I asked.
“You looked like Bambi caught in headlights.”
“I didn’t realize I was so transparent.”
“For most, fear is a hard thing to hide. Here,” he said, handing me another finger of whiskey in a tumbler. “You’ve got some food on your stomach. This will relax you. Before long, you’ll be ready for a good night’s sleep.”
“If only,” I said, taking a sip of the alcohol. I was ready for relaxation now. I’d been a tense ball for what seemed like days. Had it only been this morning that I was drinking coffee and checking email in my kitchen?
“You will,” he said confidently, a tinge of a smile in his eyes.
“I’ll hold you to that. But until it happens, why don’t you tell me more about why you think things have come to a head with your brother.”
He leaned back, hooked his hands behind his head and looked up to the ceiling, almost as if he was consulting some ethereal power for the answer.
“I wish I could tell you how we got here. It’s always been me and Stefan against the world. When he turned on me, losing him—”
He stopped. I could tell that not knowing the answer; that not being in control was something he wasn’t used to.
“Dante...” I said, reaching out to him. His fingers were firm and callused, rough against mine. There was a small comfort in their difference from my softer hands. “Go on. Losing him was what?” I asked on a whisper, not wanting to interrupt his journey into the past.
His Adam’s apple moved up and down the smooth column of his throat. “It was ... it hurt.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve never been cut so deep.”
I instinctively knew he was sharing things with me he’d probably never shared with anyone else. Getting secrets from a government spy would have been easier. My instincts were confirmed when he turned his hand over underneath mine, so that he was the one holding onto me. The irony of the simple gesture wasn’t lost on either of us as he palmed my hand.
Heat gathered in my stomach, and not just from the whiskey. He continued to touch me; gently, his thumb gliding along the lines and ridges of my palm as if it was made of smooth glass.
My eyes never leaving his, I slid to the edge of the chair. The corner of the heavy wood pressing against my butt and between my cheeks almost made me gasp. I could do with something else hard there right now.
“Dante,” his name slipped from between my lips on a spasm of breath. I leaned closer to him, my eyes closing in anticipation of the velvety warmth to come. My lips brushed against something ... that definitely wasn’t a mouth.
Dante pulled his hand away, shaking his head as he tried to break the spell that had spun a web of desire around us. His chest heaved; his broad shoulders shuddered. I could feel the warmth of his body in our little web.
“Charlie. No.”
“Yes,” I rebutted simply. My brain felt like it had separated from the rest of my body, like I was watching from afar as two people in a bubble of heat fought the inevitability of desire.
“I’d be crazy if I didn’t want to,” Dante rumbled. His eyelids lowered, his impossibly long lashes covering the deep pool of earth-green that were his eyes. “But we can’t. I can’t,” he amended. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Even through the haze of desire and alcohol, I knew what he meant. He wasn’t referring to what would happen after sex; he meant what was going to happen after we got out of this mess we found ourselves in. For the first time since I saw his brother attacking him, I trusted that he was going to somehow find us a way out of this. Maybe it was hope. Maybe it was desire. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was the alcohol. Or, maybe it was a combination of all of it. But in that moment, the heavens opened and all I saw was a savior; my savior.
Dante stood up and gathered our plates. The spell was broken – for now.
“I’ll put this away. You may be hungry later.”
“I’m sure I will be, but not for food,” I said, the alcohol unleashing the base desire in me. It had been so long since I’d been this attracted to a man. Busting my hump just to keep food in my belly and a roof over my head, there wasn’t any time to think about pleasure, especially this kind of pleasure. And now he was so close. I could smell the woodsy musk of his cologne; practically taste the fruity burn of the whiskey on his breath; feel the tingling of the hairs on the back of his hand tickling my palm; and see the desire for me in his eyes.
It was all too real – and within reach.
The aching between my thighs became a burning as he shuffled me down the hall to the spare bedroom. Stopping at the door of the room, he said, “If you need anything, I’m right down the hall.”
“Anything?” I said, my gaze sweeping pointedly to his groin.
He backed away from the door and turned to head in the direction of his bedroom. But, not before I saw the front of his slacks tent outward.
“Goodnight, Charlie.”
“Goodnight Dante,” I said, watching his slightly bow-legged swagger as he sauntered down the hall.
Coming and going, the man was a walking ball of hedonism I could lose myself in.
And just as dangerous.
I couldn’t afford to forget that.