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I kissed him with devotion, with raw sexual reverence, starved to cut loose like this. I offered him my prayer, my challenge, the one that had gone eternally unanswered: Are you there? Are you as painfully alive and aware as me? Can you feel how much I’m giving you when I touch you like this? Are you worth me?
In other words, to my complete and utter horror, I kissed Ryodan with my whole heart. And that fuck so did not deserve it.
I exploded backward, scrabbling away from him.
Stopped.
Stood.
He stared at me, eyes full crimson, lust burning in them with such intensity I gasped raggedly and took another step back. I’d woken a beast and, at that moment, wasn’t entirely certain it could be returned to slumber. He lunged forward, checked himself and stopped, hands fisted at his sides.
I dragged my gaze from his. Looked around. Every eye in the room was on me.
I don’t even know why I just did that, I thought. Then I realized, to my complete and utter horror, I’d said the words aloud.
“Well, if you’re feeling the need for another moment, hour, or even year like that,” said one of the strapping laborers in a husky voice, “I’d be happy to volunteer.”
“You’re fired,” Ryodan snarled, without bothering to look at the man. He inhaled slow and deep, crossed his arms again and leaned back against the cracked marble column, staring at me with blazing crimson eyes. Not sparks. Pure, undiluted beast flamed in his gaze, fangs glinted at his mouth.
I hissed, “No, he’s not. You don’t fire people just because you don’t like what they said. You fire people if they don’t do the job right. He needs the work. You’re not firing him.”
“Ah, Dani,” he said tightly, “you beat me. You tell me what to do. I seem to have forgotten which of us is the man. Perhaps you need a reminder.”
I had no doubt what kind of reminder he had in mind.
You opened this door, bloodred eyes fired.
And I’m closing it, I shot back.
Try, woman. His lips curved with a dark smile, full of promise that he’d heard every word I’d said with my body and wasn’t about to let me forget a single one of them.
My emotions were all over the place, every blasted one of them lit up, sparking. While he was gone I’d had countless conversations with him, enumerating with elaborate, scathing details the many grievances I held against him. I’d lambasted him with witty, brilliant, incisive remarks. I’d reduced him to an apologizing, contrite male, eager to get back in my good graces.
I couldn’t come up with a thingle sing—I mean, single thing—to say. Bloody hell, someone had extracted my brain from my skull and stuffed cotton balls in the empty compartment.
I hefted the titanic weight of my humiliation and embarrassment up into the slipstream, blasted up the stairs, and exploded out the door with it.
“Goddamn,” Lor said roughly. He cleared his throat and said again, “Goddamn. Boss, that musta been worth every ounce of the beating she gave you plus a shit-ton more. Think I need a cold shower. Nah, five blondes.”
Men laughed, murmuring agreement.
Face hot, cheeks flaming, I didn’t linger to hear Ryodan’s reply.
A soul in tension is learning to fly, condition grounded
THE KISS WENT IN a box.
The entire debacle at Chester’s did.
I simply pretended it hadn’t happened and went about my day. People waste so much time mulling over things they’ve done when all the mulling in the world neither undoes nor changes one iota of what you did. The only thing that alters the unsatisfying state in which you’ve left things is future action.
Either never see the person again, or see them and do something to set the record straight. Like, lie. Claim you were possessed by a Gripper. Backpedal hard and fast.
I had no doubt I’d see the bastard again and, since I hadn’t wasted all that time in the interim annoying myself, I’d be cool, composed, and capable of redressing the facts. Somehow.
I spent several hours visiting the homes on my list and was pleased to be able to clear
both of them to place children. When I called Rainey, she was delighted I’d found her choices acceptable. To date, she’d never picked a home I’d deemed lacking, her record was impeccable, and I was beginning to develop a pleasant degree of trust in our working relationship.
