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“Four missed calls, huh?” he asks, smiling at me. I roll my eyes as he moves, lining his body over mine, arms caging in my face.
This is my favorite part about our nights together.
I love—no, seriously, I love—when this man fucks me. When my entire body comes alive and for the first time I can remember, I feel like the version of me I was meant to be: beautiful and powerful and worshiped. Strange to think a man fucking me is what gives me that feeling for the first time, but that’s just who Dante is. Who we are when we’re together.
But this part—when we’re both sated but not tired, when he rolls over me and we talk?
I could get used to it.
It's like the day in the club when he'd just pester me with little, insignificant questions, learning about me just because he wanted to know more. Except better because his warm skin is usually on mine while he does.
This is the part that makes me hate this stupid arrangement. This arrangement that I’m afraid to question or else have it disappear.
It was the fourth or fifth night of him coming here when I had the realization. He had rolled onto me just like this and started asking me questions—what was my major in school? What do I do for fun? That kind of stuff—and I realized he was listening. He wasn’t asking to fill time, wasn’t asking as a part of the facade, but because he was genuinely interested in what I had to say.
It was the same when we sat in that private room together, even though I didn’t realize it at the time. He was asking me questions to make me feel comfortable, but it was also because he wanted to know me. I think he answered them back because, in a way, he wanted me to know him too.
It was the fifth night of him coming to my place when I admitted I was working at Jerzy Girls to help with a family issue, leaving it at that, but that was enough for him. He didn’t put up a fight, tell me that it wasn’t right or that I was too good for it. He didn’t tell me I needed to quit like the girls have all complained about with men they date outside of work. He just nodded and kept talking.
But after two weeks of this move, of this beloved moment of honesty, I know he’s about to dig in.
“You not on good terms with your dad?” he asks, and I hesitate.
There wasn’t much my father put on me besides to be pretty, smile, and agree to whatever dates he set me up on. But one of them was to never talk about the family.
Even when I didn’t know everything or really, much at all, I knew not to talk about the family. A reporter asked a question? I was to give canned responses or no comment at all. A boyfriend asked about my father? Play dumb.
I remember him saying that when I had a boyfriend ask me about my father’s stance on making the Ocean View businesses become more eco-friendly to preserve the ocean it’s famed for.
“Play stupid, Delilah. Who fucking cares. Just sit there and be pretty. That’s all you have to do.”
The memory has me answering more honestly than I would have a few weeks ago, my mind needing to rebel.
“Not really,” I say, looking at the grimy ceiling behind his head. A thick hand moves, brushing blond strands back from my face.
“Why?” he asks. The word is simple, not pushy or prodding. Not trying to extract information from me to utilize later. Just a simple question a man asks a woman he’s just started to see.
So I answer with a sigh to the best of my ability without giving everything away.
“Things with my dad are . . . complicated.” I return the favor, using my acrylic-tipped fingers to comb the lock of hair that always falls onto his forehead. “I’m the baby, and my mom passed when I was ten. I have an older sister who took on a lot of the raising me.”
He doesn’t say anything, just keeps playing with my hair, watching me as I try and form thoughts without giving too much away.
“My dad’s in . . . politics.” I don’t elaborate. “And optics are important. My sister became the sweet, devoted daughter at the rallies, kissing babies and keeping the memory of our beloved mother alive.”
“And you?”
Another sigh.
“I told you I have an overprotective father. I was the . . . I was supposed to . . . win the male vote. I was the one who would date the sons of families my father needed to get in good with. Date, though—never more,” I say quickly when his body tenses, his face getting that deathly glare to it. “It was never anything dastardly. I just . . . I was to stay . . . pretty and clean. That was my part of the image we created. Lola, the strong, smart one, and me, the pretty, sweet one.” I lick my lips, embarrassed. “I didn’t . . . realize how deep it went until recently. I didn’t understand it, how . . . protected I was. Not for my sake, but for his.”
There’s a long pause as I think about how to proceed and what else to say, but Dante fills it in, pushing me along gently.
“What happened to make you see?”
How much do I tell him?
How much do I reveal of what changed, of my plan?
