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“Wait!” she pushed him off. “You owe me. Tell me about your family. About you.” Dammit. He’d almost gotten away.
Anteros trailed his pointer finger from her cheek, along her neck, across her collarbone. Frankie closed her eyes, short breaths betraying her desire. He knew the way to get her to bend, saw she was on edge herself. He could tip the scales and push the conversation off, but he’d promised her three questions. With an exhale that sounded suspiciously like a growl, Anteros untangled himself and walked the short distance to the kitchen island.
“I guess you would say my mother and father were abusive, but that wasn’t a word I learned to use to describe them until much later. They died, I became an orphan. I picked the pocket of Lucio Pavoni, he brought me to America, I worked my way up the ranks from slave to soldier to Boss.” A few minutes passed, and Anteros didn’t turn around. He kept his eyes on the gray granite countertop, watching the way the joints in his knuckles bent.
“You didn’t tell me anything,” Frankie finally said to his back.
“I don’t want your fucking pity,” Anteros snarled. “If you know this, it will change how you see me.”
“You think I’m going to judge you for having a sad story?” Frankie said. “After what I just told you?”
He turned around, met her eyes. “My father hit me.”
She raised her brows. “We should start a club. Get t-shirts.”
“My mother touched me.” That shut her up. Her mouth parted, eyes widened, but as if she could see what her pity did to him, she quickly made her face stoic. “They had a dance worked out. My father would beat my mother bloody, then he’d turn on Blue Christmas and mop up the blood while singing.”
“The song…” She trailed off, opening and closing her palm as if wanting to say something else, but she didn’t. She let Anteros bleed his past, as Anteros had let her.
“While the song played through the house, my mother would come for me, seeking the only affection she could find. They were twisted,” he continued. “It didn’t come from a place of sadism, at least not intentionally. Occasionally there were glimpses of us as a family. For my birthday they gave me a cat, but when I opened the box, the cat was already dead. One of them forgot to put holes in the box.” They had argued back and forth, ignoring Anteros and his dead cat. Anteros had pulled the cat from the box, hugging the foul-smelling animal, trying to curtail the argument.
“Everyone was punished that night,” Anteros recalled. “The record played and we continued our twisted loop.” Frankie’s breath hitched.
“But they died?” she asked.
“They were killed.” Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything. “I turned seven.” His voice went frigid, recounting the memory robotically. “My father turned on the record player so my mother came for me. I started with her. I used the clock from my nightstand and bashed her head in. She didn’t expect it. Next I went for him. He didn’t expect it either. I took the record, snapped it in half, and stabbed it into his jugular.”
“The police?” she whispered.
“I was gone before they came. For a while I thought they would come for me, but they never did. Maybe they were corrupt, maybe they just didn’t give a shit about an orphan. Either way, I lived on the streets for a year before I found Lucio.” Frankie stepped toward him, trying filled the gap between them, but Anteros stepped back on instinct. After what he’d shared, he was too fucking vulnerable, like exposed, raw muscle. She paused, hand midair.
“No one knows this about me,” he said, eyeing her hand.
“No one ever will,” she said as she closed the distance, placing her palm on his chest.
It should have been awful bearing his truth like that, letting her know his deepest weakness, but instead it was emboldening. It was as if they became powerless so they could become powerful together.
“Enough questions,” Anteros said, pulling her in for a quick, fierce kiss. “It’s time you see the hot tub.”
“I wanted to try the hot tub at your place,” Frankie said, running her fingers along the fireplace adjacent to the tub. Stones crawled down the cobblestone fireplace to the floor, like a rockslide. The tub was set in the floor, overlooking a wall of glass. In the daytime, snow-covered beech and pine trees were visible, but now it was just black.
“You did?” He hadn’t realized she’d noticed the hot tub. She nodded, tiptoeing around the open water. Two rolled up towels sat next to the bubbling aquamarine tub that lit up the room in shimmering, uneven hues. Frankie dipped her toe in.
“I don’t have a swimsuit,” she said, shaking out her toe then looking at him. Frankie had thrown her curls atop her head, and even though Anteros loved them down, there was something to this too. He got to see her face.
“I wouldn’t have let you wear one.” Done watching her, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her close. Her eyes never strayed from his as he reached for the hem of the shirt he’d given her and pulled it over her head, throwing it to the side.
He got in the tub first, holding his hand out for her.
“Salty,” she said when she was fully settled, bubbles kissing the tips of her perky nipples.
“Sea salt,” he corrected, and she rolled her eyes, but smiled too.
“We can’t do this forever, can we? Stay out here?” Frankie asked, voice a hum in the steam. Anteros could watch her for fucking ever, with her palms floating atop the water and her big eyes glued on his—but she was right. They couldn’t stay at the safe house forever. Eventually Lucia would find them.
“No,” he said. “We can’t.” Frankie nodded at his response, gliding around the tub. He never would have imagined his life to turn out this way. Never would have hoped.
It had taken finding Frankie to realize his greatest fantasy, the want lurking deep inside his heart, the one he’d never acknowledged: someone to rule with.
