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Her words twist into my skin like a knife.
I used to.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. A kid. Parents. Siblings. I’ve got a family.”
I used to have a wife. Her name was Julissa. She was my best friend. The best fucking partner and mother to our child. I used to have her, but I got her killed, and now I’m haunted by her memory because I’ll never fucking forgive myself.
“Why?”
She shrugs. “Just wondered. Are you going to ask me if I have a family?” She looks up at me. “That’s kind of how this is supposed to go. A conversation entails two sides: speaking, conversing, questioning, learning…”
“Do you have a family?” I appease her.
Would Julissa want this for me? Would she want me to ask another woman about her family? Care about another woman’s family? We never talked about what would happen if one of us died young.
“I have a big family. Typical stuff. Overbearing father who thinks he knows what’s best. Shell of a mother who goes along with anything her husband says and just wants me around to use as a show pony.”
She rolls her eyes, and I have to admit, if I had a daughter who looked anything like Giana, she would never leave the fucking house. Even as an adult.
I’m a man. I know what we’re capable of.
“What are you thinking right now?” Her words give me pause, and I don’t know whether to tell her the truth or make something up.
I don’t want her to know she’s getting under my skin. At least not until I can decipher exactly why she’s able to do it.
“If I were your father, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight either.”
“You can hardly say that. You may have a child, but you and my father are on totally different wavelengths.”
“You’re twenty-one, according to your profile. I’m quite a bit older than you.”
She pauses for a moment before asking the inevitable. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-eight and counting, kitten. I’ve got a son close to your age. Had him young and grew up fast.”
Her jaw literally drops open.
I’ve been told I look good for thirty-eight.
“Damn. You really are an old man.” She pauses but laughs, and this time, she’s the one earning an eye roll.
“Is your father older than me?” I ask, unsure why I’m asking about her father when I should be utilizing this time to my advantage.
“He’s in his fifties. He’s got an old-school mentality, you know? I swear, sometimes…” She turns away from me, and her gaze focuses in on the star-filled sky blanketing the world in front of us.
I decide not to interrupt her, instead using these silent moments to really study her, take her in. Analyze just why she’s got me under a spell.
Her dark hair falls over her shoulders, loose curls I want to get my hands on. They move back and forth as she shakes her head.
“Sometimes I think he wishes he could just lock me away in a gilded cage. Throw away the key. Never let me out again. It feels like I am, anyway. I’m just sitting around in this man-made cage waiting until I die for the thousandth time.”
“What are you, a vampire?” I try to make light of a conversation that’s going back out to the deep end.
At the beginning of this night, I just wanted her pussy, and now, I’ve been let in on more than I bargained for. I want to know these things, though. These small, private things she’s telling me? I want to know more.
And that’s fucking terrifying.
“Not a vampire. I’d have already drained you by now. Under the cover of night, alone on a rooftop? That’s like a J. R. Ward novel waiting to happen.” She exhales and scoots closer to me, and I don’t know if it’s just something she’s done on instinct for warmth or if she meant to.
