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Donni reached down and grabbed the wine from the floor, twisting the cork out to take a long sip. The fruity burn of it poured down her throat as she rinsed the taste of him from her mouth like cleansing fire.Benediction in a bottle, she thought wryly.
When Rafe came back, she looked at him defiantly, but he was so distracted as he did up his shirt that he barely seemed to notice her at all when he slid back behind the wheel. Wordlessly, he rolled the windows back up and turned on the car stereo.
Her defiance crumbled. “Is something wrong?”
“No.” His voice was gruff.
“Did you see someone out there?” A hard spike of panic lanced through her words. “Was someone watching us?”
“Donni,” he said. “Just drop it.”
“If you did see someone, I—”
“There’snothingout there.”
They both flinched at the sound of his raised voice.
“There’s nothing,” he said, in a firm, quiet voice, but it was too late. She was already rattled, teeth chattering despite the residual warmth in the car. Her sensitized clit throbbed, once, and Donni bit down on her lip so hard that she tasted blood.
(You’re awake)
She had woken up to find him in her bed, half-dressed, his lips tasting of her when he kissed her. That was when he’d told her that he had been in love with her. “I’ve been waiting for you, Donni,” he had whispered. “And now, after all this time, I’m going to take care of you.”
The next morning she had made up a lie—she’d had to, for Marco, who had heard the sound of her screaming, and the clatter of Rafe staggering blindly out of her room, knocking a picture off the wall as she beat him over and over again with her pillow. She had lied and she had told her husband that she was tired of sharing the house with a boy who didn’t earn his keep. And not only that, she had added desperately, but she had caught him doing drugs in his room.
For a while, she had wondered if Marco believed her. She’d thought he had at the time, but then she’d catch him eying her, as if she were a stranger who had trespassed into his house.
She hated Rafe for that, too. For making her wonder for years if what had happened could have been in any way her own fault. If she’d led him on or, God forbid,encouragedhim.
But worst of all, she hated him for making her wonder if her husband’s voice could echo the ugly, berating one inside her own head.
The one that said,You deserve this.
The one that said,You asked for this.
The one that sounded so similar to the monster that haunted her dreams.
Things had never been the same between her and Marco, after that. And maybe that was unforgivable as well. Rafael Nicastro had a lot to answer for.
Maybe some of that showed on her face because Rafe said, “You’re looking at me like you hate me.”
She watched the dance of streetlights outside the window. “I just might, Rafe.”
“After all this time?”
“You’re not the only one who can hold a grudge.”
He ran his fingers through his mussed hair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For shouting. But not for what happened. Or what we did just now. I meant what I said before.”
She laughed scornfully. “You want me to hate you? Did you think I was secretly lusting after you in your ripped Levi’s 201s? I wasn’t. I had a husband. I wasn’twaiting. You were just a kid. You know there are people out there who do that? Lust after kids? There are people—men and women—who have actual calendars where they count down to a girl’s eighteenth birthday so they can jerk off to her body within the comfort of the law.”
“You’re not like that.”
“Of course I’m not like that. But you made mefeellike a fucking predator!”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said, and the fact that his voice could be so calm in the face of his irrational behavior made her crave violence.
“No,” she snarled. “Youmade me feel that way.” She gripped the empty wine bottle tightly in her trembling hands, feeling like if she didn’t, all of her ugly secrets would come flying out of the top like winged nightmares. “You were the coldest boy I’d ever seen,” she said, slightly more unsteadily now. “And that’s still true—but now you’re a monster.”
