“Why?” he asks, and I close my eyes again to stop the tears from jerking down my cheek. I feel his hand over my lower belly, his fingers spreading. “Why, Saint?”
I fail the hold, unleashing tears and allowing my forehead to fall against the door. My makeup will be ruined now. “Please stop.” Guilt and disgust intoxicate me, but that same magnetic surge that has always connected us will not go away. It never weakened. My heart still beats for Brantley today the same it did the first time I saw him, and I’m not sure it will ever stop. But it’s something I will have to learn to live with until I find another man. “I’m going to move on to make this easier for us.”
His other hand is on the door now, and I’m aware that he’s caged me in with nowhere to go. “See, now that just makes me angry. You know what I’m like when I’m angry, right? Or have you forgotten?”
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper, sniffling impolitely.
His tongue glides over the nape of my neck. “Did you fuck him?”
“What?” I snap, attempting to turn around. He slams me up against the door with his hips, his hand now at the front of my throat. He drags the edges of his canines across the tip of my spine, right below my hairline. Oh, I didn’t forget. “I said, did you fuck him? And I’m going to need you turned that way until you give me my answer.”
“Brantley,” I whimper, unable to move. “Let me go.” The tears are dripping down onto my breasts.
“No,” he growls into the back of my ear. For some reason, I feel that was a double answer.
“Why?” I sniff again, trying not to wipe my face so I won’t smudge my makeup any worse than I probably already have.
“Answer me, Saint.”
I don’t.
He squeezes my arms and turns me around quickly, shoving me against the door. His eyes are dark and void. One eye twitches when he watches a tear roll down my cheek.
I bring my eyes up to his, his face painfully close to mine. “I should. I need to fall out of love with you, Brantley.”
His lips part, and just when I think he’s going to yell at me, he leans down and catches that same tear with the curve of his tongue. “No, you don’t, Dea.”
“What?” I rear back, attempting to push the big wall of muscle that’s in front of me away. My neck aches from having to look up at him this long. “Of course I do! We can’t—this—” I shake my head. “No, Brantley. I draw the line at incest.”
“Saint…” he says, far too casually.
“Brantley, it’s wrong!” I shake my head.
“Saint,” he whispers again, his lips brushing ever so lightly over mine. I should push him away.
“Brantley, please, stop.”
His hand flies to my chin. “Look at me.”
I do, my eyes almost cross inward because of his proximity, but I do. I hold my breath.
“We’re not fucking related, Saint. She lied.”
My world stops spinning, and my tears dry.
“She. Lied.”
“How do you know?” I let out. “How can you be so sure?”
Brantley snickers. “Because Hector, though so hard to fucking believe, never stuck his dick inside my mother.”
A heaviness I didn’t realize I was carrying shifts off me. We’re not related. I didn’t do anything wrong. I take a second to recollect myself and my thoughts as a dark cloud slowly moves away from me. He backs away, but my hand flies up to his collar, stopping him. “Don’t you dare walk away without kissing me.”
He snarls at me. “I’m not kissing shit until you tell me that you didn’t let that piece of shit near you.”
“Brantley.” I grit my teeth. “The fact you even ask me that insults me.”
His jaw flexes. “Did he touch you?”
I shove him in the chest, reaching for the door handle and needing a desperate talk with my friends. “Shove your kiss. I don’t want it anymore.” I go to leave with the door wide open, but he wraps my hair around his fist, tugs me back, and slams the door closed again. He spins me around and lifts me from the ground, my legs wrapping around his waist. “Don’t. Fucking. Test. Me, Saint. I’ve got blood on my hands from the days I spent thinking I had fucked my half sister. The rage I accumulated in those days alone could match the ones my demons created all of my life. I would not fucking play with me right now.”
I rest both of my hands on his cheeks as some of that darkness dissolves in his eyes. Not all. Not even a quarter. Just a sprinkle. Enough to let me get through his rage. “I didn’t touch him.”
He searches my face. “I know.”