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“I don’t want it,” I said sullenly once Auntie had left the room. I was afraid to speak around her. I didn’t want her to smell the booze on my breath.
Not that I gave a shit what anyone thought at the moment, but I didn’t want to deal with the fallout I would face from drinking at six o’clock in the morning.
I glanced at my watch. Fuck it. It was after seven.
“Drink it. You will feel better,” he said, pouring me a cup of black coffee and sliding it across the table.
I took it and added a splash of whiskey from the nearly empty bottle on my desk. My cousin rolled his eyes. But he was right, I thought as I sipped the steaming hot drink. I did feel better.
Slightly better, anyway.
“When are you going to go and beg her forgiveness?”
“You think I am going to beg for her what?” I asked mildly, but inside I was fuming. I would never beg. A man never begged! She was the one who should have begged for my forgiveness for making me scared out of my goddamn mind!
I hadn’t been that frightened since I was a little boy.
Since the day I watched Mama walk up to the roof. She had been in a daze, almost as if she were sleep walking. I had never seen her so at peace. Since the day I saw her pretty lavender dress flutter in the air as she fell from the sky. Since the day I heard the terrible, thick sound of her landing.
“You were one hundred percent wrong. You must know that,” he said, fixing himself a plate of bacon and eggs. I stared at him, wanting nothing more than to strangle him. To make him shut up once and for all. “No woman alive would wear a collar, least of all our fair Francesca.”
“She’s my fair Francesca. Not yours,” I growled like a dog protecting a juicy bone. My juicy bone. She was mine, dammit.
“I mean, not unless it’s a sex thing,” he said, completely ignoring my outburst. “Even with a sub, you need to ask nicely. In advance,” he said with a pointed look.
“You are a kinky bastard.”
He chuckled and started eating.
“I was not trying to ‘collar her’, as in the whole BDSM thing. Or treat her like my pet. I just had to know where she was. I couldn’t go through that again.”
“Well, now you know where she is. How does it feel?” he asked with raised eyebrows. “And if she starts seeing someone else, are you going to enjoy watching that action too? How sensitive is that device, anyway? Can it tell if she’s getting plowed? And the position?”
I almost threw my coffee cup at him, but I restrained myself. Just barely.
“It’s a moot point. If any man tries to go near her, I will kill him.”
“That sounds real healthy, Vince.”
“Shut up,” I said. “Give me some fucking food.”
“Ah, so we are finally ready to admit defeat, eh? Want to get sober enough to go and get your woman?”
“No. And yes,” I grumbled.
“Hmm, acceptance is the most important part of the five stages of death. It will go easier for you if you do them in order,” he said with an assessing look. “You are still in the denial phase, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend, jackass.”
He rolled his eyes and made me a plate of food. I accepted the plate and a fresh cup of coffee, minus the whiskey this time. I ate it all, filled my plate again, and drank three cups of joe. By the end of that, I started to feel almost human again.
“What are you going to say to her?” he asked as I stood from my desk for the first time in hours. I squinted as I opened the door. It was brighter out in the hallway. When I passed the first window, I realized how long it had been since I saw daylight. I had been in my office more or less since she told me to go to hell.
Damned if I still couldn’t see her gorgeously round and juicy, completely bare ass as she walked away from me.
“No goddamn idea.”
“Better think on that,” he said, slapping my back. “And take a shower. You smell like a bar.” He paused and considered. “Actually, you smell like you got kicked out of the bar and may or may not have slept off your bender in the alleyway.”
I grunted and gave him a sour look as I turned and headed up the staircase.
“Fuck you, Michael.”
“Love you too, Cousin,” he said with a snicker.
I rolled my eyes. But he was right about one thing. Two things, actually. I’d better figure out what the fuck I was going to say. And I really, really needed a shower.
So far, my game plan was to tell her what I wanted her to do.
